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Comment by viburnum | Hacker News Reader

My 2011 MacBook Pro is still a great machine. I’ll be so sad if it ever dies.

I’m rocking a bit newer machine - but still eight years old. Glad I got it with maxxed out RAM and over the years I upgraded to a larger SSD. Had to replace the battery (it was bulging bad) and a few keys - but those costs were a fraction of buying a new machine.

Amazingly durable hardware that just works. Unfortunately new major Mac OS versions are no longer compatible. I figure when it breaks, if it’s gonna be more than $250 to fix it, that it might be time to move on.

It will be sad when it dies. It’s been around the world with me. Helped me accelerate my career, beachball during an interview which I think caused me to not get the job, and helped me for dozens others. In the end, it’s a tool, like many others, just with my memories attached.

Mine died last year and I upgraded to the 16" m1max. I was not happy to spend the money, but I think I can easily get another decade out of this new beast

My 2013 MacBook became so unreliable that it was unworkable. Getting 8 years from a laptop is pretty good, but in terms of speed I could have gone another two years, no problem.

My main concern buying old PC laptops is screen quality. It still possible to buy a laptop with a shitty screen in 2022, even a brand new one.

Company issued laptops are also weird. If you replace laptops every two years, the why buy the top of the line model? Sure some jobs just benefit from the exstra resources, but even many developers could easily do with less.

Because the hardware is very rarely the most expensive part of a business, especially in tech. Software developers are paid 50-100x what a laptop costs per year. And if the employee leaves, the laptop goes to a new one. In the meantime, those 2yo laptops the devs had often get passed on to HR, sales, etc. It's not like they get tossed out with the trash.

If getting new hardware makes an employee happy and/or allows them to get a job done even slightly faster, it's basically free to the company, so why not?

A personal machine is a very different cost/benefit calculation to a work box.

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