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The comparison to a modern laptop is interesting, but a more apt comparison would probably be to a modern desktop, which would probably be pretty easy to keep r

by tom_ 8y ago

The comparison to a modern laptop is interesting, but a more apt comparison would probably be to a modern desktop, which would probably be pretty easy to keep running for more than 4-5 years. (The Amiga does have a bunch of outdated stuff in it, but the circuit board is quite large, with mostly standard-sized ICs, and other Amigas can typically be cannibalized for components. The repair options for a modern laptop on the other hand seem to be rather limited: everything's tiny, it's machine-assembled, there's five chips on the entire board and each one has 1100 pins. If something goes wrong, you need to replace all of it.)

ianwalter 8y ago
The comparison is definitely for the wow-factor and not accuracy, but I dont know why they would do this if their readers are geeks.
UncleEntity 8y ago
> The comparison to a modern laptop is interesting... Nah, my ~8 year old laptop was still trying to process all the js to render their site even after I finished reading the article and hit the back button -- that's probably the standard they're holding up here... But, really, the only problems I ever have with this old lappy is the occasional bug that slips through the Fedora testing process and a battery that really should be replaced.
- grogenaut 8y ago
  My 8 year old laptop has Quad 2Ghz Processors and 16GB ram and a 500GB SSD. It's running ubuntu on a swing arm wall mount in my garage over my electronics station next to the lathe and below the lexan protected 4k tv. It' works great in that capacity and I don't see it dying any time soon. 8 Years ago was 2010. My replacement laptop is basically 2x the power of the old one, and that's really only for short bursts due to thermal issues. Actually the one in the garage likely is better for large parts of the year because it's cold in the garage.
jen729w 8y ago
My mid-2011 MacBook Air is still going strong. SSDs changed everything. What’s to wear out other than fan bearings?
- 1stranger 8y ago
  SSDs do have a finite lifespan due to limited number of writes they can do before cells can't be rewritten.
  - jen729w 8y ago
    Oh, of course. But it’s many times the average spinning-rust laptop hard drive lifespan (for your average user).
    - opan 8y ago
      Not necessarily. There was a story just the other day about how someone's SSDs at their business were failing for unknown reasons without the proper warnings. I must've read it on another device, as I can't find it in my history. I believe I saw it on HN.
      - jen729w 8y ago
        Not necessarily, no. But on the average, definitely yes.
- tom_ 8y ago
  Probably nothing - but when it does go pop, you're going to open it up, and there's the world's tiniest circuit board, with 100 tiny little capacitors, and if you're old enough to remember the Amiga then they are all too small for your eyes to even see. There are 3 chips, and each chip has 700 pins, and each pin is ~0.5mm from the next. What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002? - oh dear, the answer is: everything. They redesigned the whole thing. Still, at least you didn't get revision 003, which is not only entirely different again but also coated in epoxy resin! Meanwhile, your Amiga has this enormous motherboard that's full of DIP-size ICs, many of them socketed, and even with your schoolboy soldering you can extract the ones that ain't. And it almost cetainly doesn't matter if you're hoping to get their replacements from an Amiga that's completely different, because Commodore just didn't have the money to make N different versions of their chips, even assuming you're trying to replace the custom ones in the first place. Or was it just the disk drive that fucked up, or one of the power supply capacitors, or something like that? - well, why didn't you say! No problem. Plenty of those about! P.S.: but, all that said: what I was thinking about, when it comes to a modern desktop, is that you'd just replace parts as much as possible, repairing things as required, then when it finally dies just buy another one and restore from your last backup. But while bench repair is more of an option with a desktop than a laptop, in either case you probalby wouldn't actually bother, and you'd just throw it away and buy a new one at the first sign of trouble. So in fact, maybe it doesn't make much of a difference overall.
em-bee 8y ago
i just retired a 10 year old desktop, and not because it would have stopped working, but because i couldn't get a RAM upgrade for it. i gave it to a schools hackerspace where it will hopefully do a few more years of service.

by tom_ 8y ago

ianwalter 8y ago

The comparison is definitely for the wow-factor and not accuracy, but I dont know why they would do this if their readers are geeks.

UncleEntity 8y ago

> The comparison to a modern laptop is interesting... Nah, my ~8 year old laptop was still trying to process all the js to render their site even after I finished reading the article and hit the back button -- that's probably the standard they're holding up here... But, really, the only problems I ever have with this old lappy is the occasional bug that slips through the Fedora testing process and a battery that really should be replaced.

grogenaut 8y ago
My 8 year old laptop has Quad 2Ghz Processors and 16GB ram and a 500GB SSD. It's running ubuntu on a swing arm wall mount in my garage over my electronics station next to the lathe and below the lexan protected 4k tv. It' works great in that capacity and I don't see it dying any time soon. 8 Years ago was 2010. My replacement laptop is basically 2x the power of the old one, and that's really only for short bursts due to thermal issues. Actually the one in the garage likely is better for large parts of the year because it's cold in the garage.

jen729w 8y ago

My mid-2011 MacBook Air is still going strong. SSDs changed everything. What’s to wear out other than fan bearings?

1stranger 8y ago
SSDs do have a finite lifespan due to limited number of writes they can do before cells can't be rewritten.
- jen729w 8y ago
  Oh, of course. But it’s many times the average spinning-rust laptop hard drive lifespan (for your average user).
  - opan 8y ago
    Not necessarily. There was a story just the other day about how someone's SSDs at their business were failing for unknown reasons without the proper warnings. I must've read it on another device, as I can't find it in my history. I believe I saw it on HN.
    - jen729w 8y ago
      Not necessarily, no. But on the average, definitely yes.
tom_ 8y ago
Probably nothing - but when it does go pop, you're going to open it up, and there's the world's tiniest circuit board, with 100 tiny little capacitors, and if you're old enough to remember the Amiga then they are all too small for your eyes to even see. There are 3 chips, and each chip has 700 pins, and each pin is ~0.5mm from the next. What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002? - oh dear, the answer is: everything. They redesigned the whole thing. Still, at least you didn't get revision 003, which is not only entirely different again but also coated in epoxy resin! Meanwhile, your Amiga has this enormous motherboard that's full of DIP-size ICs, many of them socketed, and even with your schoolboy soldering you can extract the ones that ain't. And it almost cetainly doesn't matter if you're hoping to get their replacements from an Amiga that's completely different, because Commodore just didn't have the money to make N different versions of their chips, even assuming you're trying to replace the custom ones in the first place. Or was it just the disk drive that fucked up, or one of the power supply capacitors, or something like that? - well, why didn't you say! No problem. Plenty of those about! P.S.: but, all that said: what I was thinking about, when it comes to a modern desktop, is that you'd just replace parts as much as possible, repairing things as required, then when it finally dies just buy another one and restore from your last backup. But while bench repair is more of an option with a desktop than a laptop, in either case you probalby wouldn't actually bother, and you'd just throw it away and buy a new one at the first sign of trouble. So in fact, maybe it doesn't make much of a difference overall.

em-bee 8y ago

i just retired a 10 year old desktop, and not because it would have stopped working, but because i couldn't get a RAM upgrade for it. i gave it to a schools hackerspace where it will hopefully do a few more years of service.