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>For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline Nope, they aren't. My home PC hails from 2008, runs the latest Windows 10 update, and a ra
by romwell 9y ago
>For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline
Nope, they aren't. My home PC hails from 2008, runs the latest Windows 10 update, and a range of software from early 2000s to 2018. It runs modern games, too (I like playing indie games that aren't too demanding).
Secret sauce? Modern SSD and a GPU from a few years back, plus an HDD to serve as a repository of all my data.
But even without the benefit or running Win 10 and hardware upgrades: I also spun up my old 2006 laptop the other day to rip a CD (my other machines don't have a drive), and guess what, FF Quantum runs well on it. Bring on your web apps, that XP machine will run 'em.
My point is that the PC's really don't suffer from the level of planned obsolescence that device like iPad do.
The PCs, ultimately, have one large window to see the online world with: the browser, and as long as that runs, the PCs don't lose any utility: whatever task they have enough computational power for today, they will be able to handle in a decade. The mobile devices, with their shift to the app-for-everything ideology pioneered by Apple, have thousands that are easily broken, prompting you to upgrade.
- brians 9y agoYou know, you can keep the same computer and get even more of a performance improvement by replacing the CPU (and motherboard, of course).
- rahimnathwani 9y agoTo my mind, replacing the Mobo/CPU is akin to building a new PC, but reusing some of the parts from the old one. Because it's a costly upgrade, and you might need to buy a different type of RAM. Adding an SSD or RAM or GPU to an existing system are relatively quick and painless.
- alwaysnotright 9y agoI did exactly this to my PC, and it feels almost like new again. I think my i7-2600k might give up soon, but for a seven year old CPU, it is running suprisingly well. 500$ was all I spent altogether for RAM (16 GB Corsair), GPU (GTX 1060 Ti) and SSD (Samsung 500 GB 850-EVO).
- pfranz 9y agoJust like my grandfather's axe!
- romwell 9y agoWell, to me, motherboard + CPU is the computer -- but yes, I could.
- scarface74 9y agoIt's not about planned obsolescence. Mobile has seen the same type of dramatic performance increase you use to see in PCs back in the day. Can you imagine using a computer from 1996 in 2008?
- jug 9y agoYes, and I am definitely seeing this curve already flattening out for mobile. My current iPhone 6s seems usable with even very good speed way longer than my 3gs did.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoThat's my experience on Android too (posting this from an S4 running Lineage OS).
- scarface74 9y agoI have no issues with my 128GB 6s running iOS 11. The only reason I'm thinking about "upgrading" this year is to hopefully get an upgraded SE. I want to go back to a four inch phone.
- samat 9y agoSadly, my iPhone 6 feels slower with every update. Battery is new.
- ixacto 9y agoThis. I repurposed a dell t3500 with a xeon x5650 (https://ark.intel.com/products/47922/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5650-12M-Cache-2_66-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI https://ark.intel.com/products/47922/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5...) GTX1060 6gb and samsung evo ssd, and the thing is still quite fast running ubuntu Mate and windows 10 LTSB. The only real obstacle is the lack of NVME support. SATA3 is a bit of an upgrade bottleneck on these old systems, but even software development on this box was just fine with a fast ssd.
- RachelF 9y agoYou can get a PCIe card for NVME. If you are lucky, your BIOS can boot from it.
- RachelF 9y agoPC CPUs have not really got that much faster in the last ten years compared to the previous decade. Each new Intel generation of the i- series was maybe 10% faster than the preceding one. A fast Core2 or 1st gen i7 is perhaps half the speed of a mid-range system today, and will probably beat some of the budget chips. Upgrading an oldish system with an SSD can make a big difference. Obviously, GPUs have also got a lot faster too. Hopefully, the recent competition from AMD will make us see better progress again.