11 ms·

How and why I stopped buying new laptops

96 points by pantalaimon 4y ago

As_You_Wish 4y ago
man, oh man. I haven't bought a computer in I don't know how long. Mainly, I just get the cast offs from my extended family. I let them buy the newest and best and just use their old stuff. I have 2 desktops and 2 laptops, all cast offs. It's fine for my purposes. 99% of what I do is internet browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, VOIP and a few other low resource apps. Why do I need a brand new computer? What do I care if the chassis is ugly or not? Who cares about the "looks" of it? I mean, sure, if I worked in some area with intensive CPU stuff, like graphics, I can understand that. But I don't, and 90% of the world does not. My parents got a new computer last year, they went from an i7 to an i7, their old computer is 8 years old, everything works in a flash, still super fast. A freaking i5 from 10 years ago is just fine. It's how I've always done it. I mean, if I purchased the two towers and two laptops brand new, in cash money, that would be $6000 or something like that. That would get me a lot of blow and hookers in Vegas. Let's keep our priorities straight, folks. For women..it would buy one little container of high-end mascara, so that's all to the good. Priorities.
deliriumchn 4y ago
Interesting article but it looks a bit too focused on ecological impact of manufacturing one laptop (its pointless if one person will skip buying it, they make them in hundreds of thousands of exemplars) and the use case of "only using webrowser as light as possible and notepad for text, thats it"
- 243423443 4y ago
  By your argument, it does not make sense not to eat meat, because they will kill the cow anyway.
  - rdevnull 4y ago
    I don't think cow anology is very appropriate. Technology is moving fast (well not as fast nowadays but still pretty fast) and if you don't update your tools your work will be as obsolte as your hardware. If any of your hardware is touching the internet running obsolete stuff is a big security risk. Vivaldi browser ? Notepad? seriously...
- rdevnull 4y ago
  well said! I read it but the "only using webrowser as light as possible and notepad for text, thats it" gives it away. I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete. Imagine having to do any testing for a mobile app or a new website and you go like "oh sorry I only use a light web browser" or having to code anything more complex than 90s cgi scripts "oh no I use only notepad" . Or receiving an excel or word document to edit, notepad is not going to cut it.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Most people have faster machines that they could RDP into when needing to test with a fully-featured browser. The key however is that this is a pretty rare need; you can do plenty of useful things without opening up a web browser at all. Even editing Office documents is a comparatively light workload these days.
    - rdevnull 4y ago
      You can do plenty of useful things without a computer too :-) but that is beside the point. For business use you do need a browser. Fast, with security updates etc. For some people doing web development having access to professional products e.g. Adobe suite is a must too. And no, you can't do that on linux.
  - RunSet 4y ago
    > I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete. I think the reverse: Silly to build software on a bleeding-edge machine then act surprised when it runs like trash on customers' hardware. Instead build it on a trash machine and it will fly on better hardware. I expect it is not such a good strategy for those whose code can't stand on its own legs outside of a Chrome distribution or VM, though.
- stevage 4y ago
  The "one person" argument doesn't hold up, since the article has an audience of thousands.
aviCC 4y ago
I use an 11 years old desktop computer, with a few upgrades (memory, SSD). It is good enough for my virtual machines and other heavy programs. I don't see a reason to invest in a laptop if 90% of the time you work in the same place. For the other 10% - buy a cheap laptop.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Also because of working most of the time in the same place, I have decided to not invest in a new laptop. However the solution that I have chosen for travelling, when that is necessary, is different. For my work, I need a large number of peripheral ports, as many Thunderbolt, USB Ethernet ports as possible and enough ports for multiple monitors. I also need at least 64 GB of DRAM, which excludes a very large number of the current laptop models, especially among the AMD models, which cannot be configured with so much memory. Also, after becoming older, I strongly prefer a larger display, so I would want a laptop with a 17" display. While there are a lot of laptop models that match my requirements, they are also very expensive and quite heavy. I have realized that I can get all the features that I want at a much lower price and even at a lower weight, by using an Intel NUC or similar computer, together with a portable 17" monitor and a compact keyboard for the occasions when I have to carry it. Even when I have used laptops, I have never used them on my lap or in any place where there was no power plug, so their advantages for such uses do not matter for me. Besides the lower price and weight, the NUC solution also has the advantage of a better performance than most laptops using the same CPU, due to a better cooler that allows a high steady-state power dissipation without thermal throttling (e.g. in the current Wall Street Canyon Intel NUCs, the Alder Lake P CPUs with a nominal TDP of 28 W are configured to dissipate 35 W for an indefinite time, while many thin laptops with Alder Lake P cannot dissipate even 28 W without throttling).
  - rdevnull 4y ago
    I can't really make up if this is a joke or not. Assuming it isn't, seriously ? If someone needs a laptop the pre-requisite is to be portable. This solution is not a laptop replacement. Why not simply move around with your desktop ? Actually this is what is suggested, monitor et al.
lucidlive 4y ago
I have a 8-core 2008 MacPro (desktop) which is still going strong. I replaced the video card and it’s easy to swap in new hard drives. Only issue with Macs is apple stops allowing so upgrades.
- rdevnull 4y ago
  going strong? you don't have security updates since..a decade. The browsers (I have such a machine too, for museum purposes and occasional fun) won't load most of the sites and will be super slow. I absolutely accept and respect whomever wishes to live in the past but technology is in the now. I do not understand people talking about "saving money". New hardware allows you to be faster and more efficiently. That is worth so much more than the machine cost. Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
  - michaelmcdonald 4y ago
    You may want to spend some time researching the "hackintosh" community. I, too, have a 2012 Mac Pro that's running strong (hexacore, 48GB memory, 1TB NVME drive, 8GB video card). Courtesy of OpenCore (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/) you can install new(er) versions of macOS on older hardware. I have all the security updates and don't need to update to newer hardware (albeit I did update the GPU and NVME drive, which for my purposes further extended the life of the machine).
    - rdevnull 4y ago
      Thanks for the hint. I am aware of this afecionados community. More power to them but none of this will make your old Mac grow an M1 processor. My previous laptoop was an Macbook pro intel 64gb ram full specs. The M processor is much faster, even with just 16GB ram. Now if going strong means use the terminal, Vim etc. all is good. If you use a laptop professionally you do want the latest updates from apple, not a Github repository.
  - wodenokoto 4y ago
    I had a 2009 model until 17, and had security updates all the way, so I'm sure a 2008 model had security updates through 2012. And even so, you you should be able to install chrome and firefox, so you can enjoy at least a modern browser. > Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong. Strictly speaking it must be the software that is obsolete.
rubychill 4y ago
My understanding of Thinkpads is the big keyboard change happened with the upgrade from the X220/T420 to the X230/T430. I picked up a used X220 back in 2014 for school and it's still kicking today. I usually end up reinstalling some flavour of lightweight linux on it whenever it dig it out of storage again, and it's a joy to use.
- kmlx 4y ago
  x220 was amazing, can confirm. had it for 10 years and finally sold it after the 2nd battery that i replaced needed replacing. one of the best keyboards in a laptop, great solid case that was dropped countless times without an issue. i even took it for djing in clubs. what a machine.
- AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
  I have a T430s and I actually like the keyboard.
what-imright 4y ago
- nindalf 4y ago
  The HN equivalent of “I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.”
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Do you have time to address just one of the points?
  - subjectsigma 4y ago
    3 month old account, 57 karma, strange name, history is full of aggressive comments, many of them downvoted and flagged. Somehow I don't think you're going to like his response. EDIT: I took a deep dive and I no longer think this guy is a troll, just a complete weirdo. His favorite topics seem to be Apple computers and eating people, and that is not a joke or an exaggeration. Hilarious lunchtime read.
    - what-imright 4y ago
      Well, it’s nice to be noticed at least
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
agentultra 4y ago
Excellent article! I too have moved towards buying refurbished laptops only and using them for as long as I can. Thinkpads are a decent line for this as they're built to be user-serviceable and have a great market for parts. The hard part is actually the software. Many industry developers will definitely choose convenience and ease-of-development over most other priorities like efficiency. Operating systems as well. My refurbished Thinkpads all run stripped down Linux distributions. I recommend getting a good battery and tweaking the power settings to get the best life out of them (eg: https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arch-linux-laptop-thinkpad-t14s/ https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arc...)
- riedel 4y ago
  The problem is that the last ThinkPad really was happy with was the X61s . Once I switched away, I now see myself buying newer models in the hope they get their thermal issues fixed.
macinjosh 4y ago
My new favorite laptop is my 11" ThinkPad 11e. It cost around US$200, it has 4 cores, 8GB of RAM, and a (small) NVME SSD. The battery lasts a full work/play day. The screen resolution is satisfactory for its size (1366x768), however I do wish the panel had better viewing angles. On top of that it has 1Gb ethernet, full size HDMI, mini-SD card, USB-C charging, and a great little keyboard. As a longtime "mac person" this capable, but ugly little laptop feels a bit freeing. I don't have to dote over it, worrying about breaking a $2k laptop, I get all the ports I need, and linux just works.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I hear you about it fitting your use case, but I'd hate to spend a day typing on a keyboard for an 11" laptop - the ergonomics don't work for me.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I'm glad that Framework exists for the primary reason Kris mentions in this article. Though on a side note, I think the chassis is ugly but for some reason I like the XPS laptops which aren't all that much more attractive. Maybe it's a branding thing. I digress. I'm typing this on a desktop that is a decade old, and I just Ship of Theseus'd it over the years.[1][2][3][4][5] I hope that this becomes more common for laptops soon. I think there's potential for an ATX-for-laptops layout, though I admit that would probably lead to slightly chonkier notebooks than what we use today. Maybe not though! Framework did it. [1]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/zkmCLk https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/zkmCLk [2]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/NDcFZL https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/NDcFZL [3]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/QNPcxr https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/QNPcxr [4]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/H8fMcf https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/H8fMcf [5]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/fB2jnQ https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/fB2jnQ
- guerby 4y ago
  Just upgraded my https://frame.work https://frame.work from gen11 to gen12 following: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard+Replacement+Guide/79 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard+Replacement+Guide/... I still have to 3d print the enclosure for the gen11 motherboard to become a headless low power consumption server in my home, but I test booted it and it worked :).
  - guerby 4y ago
    Note: my previous laptop was a Dell 7480 but the soldered USB-C port and the ethernet port are now unreliable, hopefully the design of the frame.work will allow a much longer lasting hardware (and reusable motherboard :)
viburnum 4y ago
My 2011 MacBook Pro is still a great machine. I’ll be so sad if it ever dies.
- anubiskhan 4y ago
  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
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    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.
    - ttfkam 4y ago
      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.
- pridkett 4y ago
  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.
smm11 4y ago
I used a Thinkpad 765d with Rhapsody (early developmental 'OS X' system from Apple that was not commercially available) from 2001-2006, then QNX on the same machine until 2012. My data was on a PCMCIA card. At work I was using a Macbook Air by the time I gave up on the Thinkpad, and my Android phone was taking over a lot of my use. The Thinkpad was hardly deficient even ten years ago; the hinge was the biggest problem.
Kon-Peki 4y ago
I'm completely on board with getting a long, full life out of a laptop. The only problem is that we've got plenty of thought-to-be-durable laptops around that are complete garbage, including a high-end Thinkpad. It's really sad to see. That said, our M1 MacBook Pro, an X1 carbon, and (very surprisingly) a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go (the cheap one that had terrible reviews - but with the SSD) are looking excellent in terms of long-term durability.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  I've got a bunch of Surface Gos (goes?) in warehousing and they have outlasted everything else I've tried for the application, including the purpose built industrial devices from Zebra and Caterpillar.
  - helf 4y ago
    We have a bunch of Surface Laptops and Surface Books (looove the books) where I work (auto parts factory) that have survived better than they have any right to. I dunno wtf the previous IT was thinking getting them. They have 8 million magnets and are constantly covered in weld dust. But they keep right on working... shorting out power bricks and docks as they go though. In the process of retiring all of them but I have already cleaned up and let several people take their units home as they still get 5-10 hours of battery out of them and have no other issues. It is kind of wild how durable they have been.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The Surface Go was not a performant computer when it was released. At least the Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell with 8GB RAM that was introduced in 2011 that I mentioned earlier was top of line when it was introduced.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    The Surface lineup has really unfortunate naming. The Surface Go and the Surface Laptop Go are two completely different things! The Surface Laptop Go is kind of a premium Chromebook-type thing that runs Windows (but can do Linux just fine). And it has AVX-512! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Laptop_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Laptop_Go
jvanderbot 4y ago
I bought a 2012 MacBook pro from eBay, replaced the battery and a few others, and it's been my workhorse for years. Best laptop around. Shout-out to ifixit for providing kits and walkthroughs!
- scarface74 4y ago
  I can’t imagine using an x86 based Mac in 2022. Especially with the $999 MacBook Air being so good. If you care about little things like speed, battery life, heat, etc.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    For 2-300, plus the fun of tinkering on it, it's been well worth it. The biggest thing I write on it is journal entries, emails, and mostly small microcontroller code or lambda endpoints for my own hobby projects.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    They're still excellent laptops, even if the M1 models are ridiculously good. My 2017 rMBP still flies. Even my 2017 Macbook 12" is a capable tiny laptop.
scarface74 4y ago
As I sit here using my 2021 MacBook Pro 16” that is twice as fast as my old Mac, with 16 hours of battery life, can run Chrome and Slack without dispersing enough heat to fry an egg all while not sounding like a 747, I can definitely say laptops have changed immensely. I also have a 2009 Dell Laptop 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM running Windows 2010 that I just cleaned up to give my parents. None of the above is true.
- helf 4y ago
  Chrome and Slack are both resource hogs from hell. No one is arguing that the specific innards haven't changed a lot. They are arguing that for a lot of people, depending on what you are doing and what you need, can get by just fine on a laptop that is few years to 15 years old and be perfectly happy. You are also trying to compare a laptop an entirely different architecture that literally just came out to the other. I mean, honestly, there were plenty of "arm laptops" the past 20 years and a lot of them ran cold to the touch and got 16+ hours of battery life. I know as I had several (Psion netbooks etc). The new Macs are latest evolution of H/PCs that have been around for decades. They just happen to be much faster ;)
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I didn’t choose an obscure use case like compiling the Linux kernel while editing 4K video. Chrome is a popular choice among Mac users. On the other hand, you would be surprised how well Office365 runs on Windows 10 on my old Core2Duo 2.66Ghz Dell. It also has a beautiful 1920x1200 display before laptops went 16x9 and Gigabit Ethernet. It was originally a company laptop for a failed startup I worked for and was to use to run Windows CE emulators while developing using .Net compact framework.
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      >Core2Duo 2.66Ghz Dell I've never seen people refer to processors by their ghz without giving a generation designation. I think stating what generation/model of c2d it is would be a far more effective means of communication that stating its ghz.
ramesh31 4y ago
An M1 Macbook Air is still the best laptop money can buy for general use, and they are easily had under $700. I cannot comprehend who is buying a $2000 laptop at this point outside of gamers and video editors.
pmontra 4y ago
Anything >= 1995 is enough for word processing offline. Maybe even anything 10 years older. The big problem here is that laptops from that era have clumsy screens and are loud as a jet. Battery life might be a problem too. The real problem is exchanging data with the rest of the world. My old backup laptop from 2006 (Core Duo 2 7xxx) is probably still OK to browse with an adblocker. I'm not sure it would be OK to edit on a site with a SPA frontend (Medium, etc.) My current laptop is from 2014 (i7 4xxx) and it's still perfectly OK to do anything I care about. It was never OK to do other stuff (e.g.: gaming or ML, which was not a thing back then.) Of course it's slower than more modern hardware but not by so much for what I have to do () Certainly not for browsing or word processing. () It's slower than my customer's M1 on Rails test suites (5 s vs 8 s on a project and 50 s vs 75 s on another one). To be fair, my customer is handicapped by running docker on his Mac but docker and the M1 are their choices.
josefresco 4y ago
My father in law said this about his last pickup truck: "This is the last new truck I'll ever buy!" "This truck does everything I don't need anything more!" "Older trucks are better, I can work on them!" He just took delivery of his 4th new truck since saying this. While he does get good value from his truck (150K+ miles each) they don't last forever, they do improve (slightly) and despite his claims that "older trucks are better" he keeps buying new.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  depending on when he got his previous truck new trucks are often far more fuel efficient than older trucks.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Really? Our old carbeurated GMC did better real world than the two trucks that followed (all are similar weight class, and V8s). They changed the EPA fuel economy rules after the first truck was released, so those aren't comparable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sys_64738 4y ago
Most people won't use a random distribution of Linux that nobody has heard of or knows how long support will continue for. Security is a big issue for older tech that is left behind. Make sure to back up your files from older tech as there might be no way to get your data off the old storage devices that have been cast adrift.
helf 4y ago
I used a laptop made in 2004 that I bought in 2005 as my daily portable driver till 2018 lol. I still have it. It's a Toshiba Portege 3110ct that I added a USB2.0 PCMCIA card to, IDE SSD, and bumped the ram to 192MB. Ran a customized stripped down debian based distribution with a lot of customizing on my part. A USB wifi adapter. Has a 300mhz pentium 2 CPU. Did literally everything I needed on a laptop perfectly fine (ssh sessions, IRC, pandora streaming, light web browsing, note taking etc). My current laptop is a ~10 year old Dell. Has a 4TB SATA SSD in it, 1TB secondary SATA SSD in the media bay using an adapter. I have two mediabay batteries as well as a BDRW drive I can hotswap whenever. Extended primary battery. 16GB ram, i5-3360 CPU. Express Card slot that I use with several adapters, USB3 ports, onboard gige, WWAN card, Wifi, BT, backlit keyboard.. If you aren't /needing/ the extra grunt of newer chips for gaming, video work, low latency realtime audio work, CAD, etc, or want the absolute best size to battery life possible, then there is no reason to not use an older system. Oh, it has an NVidia 5200M 1GB discrete GPU as well as the Intel IGP and the NVS has taken a massive overclock without blinking when I do want to game and runs stuff like Minecraft and older AAA and even new independent games at playable frame rates without any issues. Now, for /work/ I have a newer MS Surface Book that I absolutely adore. The battery life and display and portability are fantastic. But it is my work laptop. Not personal. I refuse to buy a brand new laptop for home use lol.
nemoniac 4y ago
The article is from 2020.
cesarb 4y ago
There's one thing new laptops have which old laptops don't: Warranty. If you depend on your laptop for work, and one day it suddenly stops working, with the manufacturer's warranty (assuming you checked the correct boxes when buying the laptop) you can have a technician with spare parts the next day fixing it, and it'll be as good as new (and unless it was the storage device which failed, you won't even need to reinstall anything). After the warranty expires, things are more dicey; you might or might not find spare parts (assuming you know which spare part you need; a technician can come with several sets and take back the ones which weren't needed), if you do they might take some time to arrive, and if you don't, you have to buy a new laptop on a short notice (which might also take some time to arrive). Unfortunately, the longest laptop extended warranty I've seen so far is only 5 years. Which means that, after 5 years of use, it becomes riskier to rely on it. It also means that the manufacturer expects it to work fine for 5 years (otherwise, they'd lose too much money on the technicians and spare parts), but not much longer than that.
- slt2021 4y ago
  Warranty is like the extended warranty on cars. Largely you are overpaying for it and not gonna use it. Vendors use scare tactics to force consumers to keep overpaying for warranty (what if it breaks?), just like car stealerships do. Meanwhile there is pretty significant chunk of people live just fine with laptop outside warranty. I have never ever used warranty on any of my laptops. If anything breaks - I just go to my nearest indie laptop repair shop, or just fix it myself (watch youtube video and order spare parts on ebay)
- hedora 4y ago
  Lenovo and Toshiba screwed me over on a warranty. I had a power brick on another laptop die the day after it went out of warranty, only to find the replacement was > $100 (in the early 2000's). I've heard other PC manufacturers are similarly bad. Do you know of any with a < 48 hour turn around time and a > 95% repair success rate?
hedora 4y ago
The article says building a new laptop uses between 3-4.3 megajoules. For reference, 4 megajoules is 1.1MWh, which is roughly 1 month of per-capita energy usage in the US/Europe: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stop... So, if you stopped buying laptops once a year, this would reduce your energy footprint by about 10%.
- jryb 4y ago
  These numbers seem suspiciously high. In the paper (from 2011), it estimated that laptops contain 871 grams of steel and 244 grams of epoxy, among other things (the total weight is 2kg more than a modern dell xps). The steel figure is from a teardown so that's believable to me, but definitely out of date. The epoxy is an estimate but seems incredulous to me, even for 2011. Does it really take 30-60 MJ to make a handful of glue?
  - hedora 4y ago
    My point was that most people don’t refresh their laptop every year.
- rdevnull 4y ago
  These figures are certainly bogus. Fabricated by green crusaders that know nothing. Energy footprint is a fabrication.
mrcheesebreeze 4y ago
POV: you begun using linux
faeriechangling 4y ago
I’ve owned a laptop since I was remarkably young mostly for typing documents on initially. Yes older laptops can do an okay job, but they’re heavy, bulky, have low battery life, and dim low-ppi screens. Something like a 1080p Chromebook even with Linux installed is not that expensive and a nice experience. I’ve seen some people who will retrofit the old shells with modern components, I can see the appeal in these, but honestly these old computers really aren’t that good at just typing. There’s something to be said about the waste of the extra cells of batteries you will burn though lol. I appreciate the environmental concern but I want to be real bout this aspect, because I HAD to use these computers for the purposes the author talks about. I have two of these old thinkpads that people rave about, both have fallen into disrepair and I keep one body around because I’m sure some modder will eventually be interested. Old computers also have LOTS of issues with things like video playback.
- jonwest 4y ago
  I feel like video playback is something that very rarely pops up in these discussions. Yes your old laptop boots up and runs Linux and you can write emails and browse a forum, but video streaming is pretty much off the table at anything above 480p since these older laptops aren’t likely to support modern codecs. They’re pretty useless to me on a daily driver perspective as things like Google Meet or Zoom similarly grenade the CPU and deliver a subpar experience in that regard. I wish the lifespan of these machines were longer or had some form of an upgrade path like the Framework, as they’re contributing a pile to e-waste, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I do keep a couple of old notebooks around for nostalgic purposes and occasional vintage gaming, but I wouldn’t want to use one as my daily driver.
albertopv 4y ago
In 2010 I bought an Acer 4810TG with Windows 7, I choose it for the battery, I was again at university far from home, once I have been able to run 7 Debian VM with 256MB RAM each for a network course. It lasted 10 years upgrading hdd to ssd and incresing RAM. But in the end I had to change PC, it couldn't run any browser, CPU was just too slow, even for Pale Moon.
nicbou 4y ago
I bought a 16 year old car because the price suits how rarely I use it. It's good to me because it's the newest car I've ever owned. However sitting in someone else's car I realise that I could get an extra 50 horsepower for the same fuel consumption, as well as working air conditioning, and a few other creature comforts. Yes, this car is simple in an almost brutalist fashion, and very easy to work on. There's also plenty of spare parts. But it's 16 years old and the bi-yearly inspections are getting scary. The last inspector pointed out that I'll need a new exhaust system soon. I'm not sure what is a fitting death for an old, dependable car once its maintenance becomes impractical. I feel the same way about an old laptop. My T510 is heavy, the battery life isn't great, and it's slow as molasses. I can't imagine carrying that behemoth around when I got used to a Macbook 12.
speeder 4y ago
My family have a lot of computers for various reasons. One of them is a HP laptop from 2003 or so, running Windows XP and Ubuntu. It still works just fine, and often is lifesaver when more recent laptops just break for no reason. That thing from 2003 just keep working happily, refusing to die no matter what.
midislack 4y ago
I bought a T25, hinge failed, so it's back to the X220 i7. I'll use it forever.

96 points by pantalaimon 4y ago

man, oh man. I haven't bought a computer in I don't know how long. Mainly, I just get the cast offs from my extended family. I let them buy the newest and best and just use their old stuff. I have 2 desktops and 2 laptops, all cast offs. It's fine for my purposes. 99% of what I do is internet browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, VOIP and a few other low resource apps. Why do I need a brand new computer? What do I care if the chassis is ugly or not? Who cares about the "looks" of it? I mean, sure, if I worked in some area with intensive CPU stuff, like graphics, I can understand that. But I don't, and 90% of the world does not. My parents got a new computer last year, they went from an i7 to an i7, their old computer is 8 years old, everything works in a flash, still super fast. A freaking i5 from 10 years ago is just fine. It's how I've always done it. I mean, if I purchased the two towers and two laptops brand new, in cash money, that would be $6000 or something like that. That would get me a lot of blow and hookers in Vegas. Let's keep our priorities straight, folks. For women..it would buy one little container of high-end mascara, so that's all to the good. Priorities.

deliriumchn 4y ago

Interesting article but it looks a bit too focused on ecological impact of manufacturing one laptop (its pointless if one person will skip buying it, they make them in hundreds of thousands of exemplars) and the use case of "only using webrowser as light as possible and notepad for text, thats it"

243423443 4y ago
By your argument, it does not make sense not to eat meat, because they will kill the cow anyway.
- rdevnull 4y ago
  I don't think cow anology is very appropriate. Technology is moving fast (well not as fast nowadays but still pretty fast) and if you don't update your tools your work will be as obsolte as your hardware. If any of your hardware is touching the internet running obsolete stuff is a big security risk. Vivaldi browser ? Notepad? seriously...
rdevnull 4y ago
well said! I read it but the "only using webrowser as light as possible and notepad for text, thats it" gives it away. I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete. Imagine having to do any testing for a mobile app or a new website and you go like "oh sorry I only use a light web browser" or having to code anything more complex than 90s cgi scripts "oh no I use only notepad" . Or receiving an excel or word document to edit, notepad is not going to cut it.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Most people have faster machines that they could RDP into when needing to test with a fully-featured browser. The key however is that this is a pretty rare need; you can do plenty of useful things without opening up a web browser at all. Even editing Office documents is a comparatively light workload these days.
  - rdevnull 4y ago
    You can do plenty of useful things without a computer too :-) but that is beside the point. For business use you do need a browser. Fast, with security updates etc. For some people doing web development having access to professional products e.g. Adobe suite is a must too. And no, you can't do that on linux.
- RunSet 4y ago
  > I am just surprised how many experienced coders don't realise that technology is moving fast and, if you use obsolte hardware, your work and code will be as obsolete. I think the reverse: Silly to build software on a bleeding-edge machine then act surprised when it runs like trash on customers' hardware. Instead build it on a trash machine and it will fly on better hardware. I expect it is not such a good strategy for those whose code can't stand on its own legs outside of a Chrome distribution or VM, though.
stevage 4y ago
The "one person" argument doesn't hold up, since the article has an audience of thousands.

aviCC 4y ago

I use an 11 years old desktop computer, with a few upgrades (memory, SSD). It is good enough for my virtual machines and other heavy programs. I don't see a reason to invest in a laptop if 90% of the time you work in the same place. For the other 10% - buy a cheap laptop.

adrian_b 4y ago
Also because of working most of the time in the same place, I have decided to not invest in a new laptop. However the solution that I have chosen for travelling, when that is necessary, is different. For my work, I need a large number of peripheral ports, as many Thunderbolt, USB Ethernet ports as possible and enough ports for multiple monitors. I also need at least 64 GB of DRAM, which excludes a very large number of the current laptop models, especially among the AMD models, which cannot be configured with so much memory. Also, after becoming older, I strongly prefer a larger display, so I would want a laptop with a 17" display. While there are a lot of laptop models that match my requirements, they are also very expensive and quite heavy. I have realized that I can get all the features that I want at a much lower price and even at a lower weight, by using an Intel NUC or similar computer, together with a portable 17" monitor and a compact keyboard for the occasions when I have to carry it. Even when I have used laptops, I have never used them on my lap or in any place where there was no power plug, so their advantages for such uses do not matter for me. Besides the lower price and weight, the NUC solution also has the advantage of a better performance than most laptops using the same CPU, due to a better cooler that allows a high steady-state power dissipation without thermal throttling (e.g. in the current Wall Street Canyon Intel NUCs, the Alder Lake P CPUs with a nominal TDP of 28 W are configured to dissipate 35 W for an indefinite time, while many thin laptops with Alder Lake P cannot dissipate even 28 W without throttling).
- rdevnull 4y ago
  I can't really make up if this is a joke or not. Assuming it isn't, seriously ? If someone needs a laptop the pre-requisite is to be portable. This solution is not a laptop replacement. Why not simply move around with your desktop ? Actually this is what is suggested, monitor et al.

lucidlive 4y ago

I have a 8-core 2008 MacPro (desktop) which is still going strong. I replaced the video card and it’s easy to swap in new hard drives. Only issue with Macs is apple stops allowing so upgrades.

rdevnull 4y ago
going strong? you don't have security updates since..a decade. The browsers (I have such a machine too, for museum purposes and occasional fun) won't load most of the sites and will be super slow. I absolutely accept and respect whomever wishes to live in the past but technology is in the now. I do not understand people talking about "saving money". New hardware allows you to be faster and more efficiently. That is worth so much more than the machine cost. Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong.
- michaelmcdonald 4y ago
  You may want to spend some time researching the "hackintosh" community. I, too, have a 2012 Mac Pro that's running strong (hexacore, 48GB memory, 1TB NVME drive, 8GB video card). Courtesy of OpenCore (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/) you can install new(er) versions of macOS on older hardware. I have all the security updates and don't need to update to newer hardware (albeit I did update the GPU and NVME drive, which for my purposes further extended the life of the machine).
  - rdevnull 4y ago
    Thanks for the hint. I am aware of this afecionados community. More power to them but none of this will make your old Mac grow an M1 processor. My previous laptoop was an Macbook pro intel 64gb ram full specs. The M processor is much faster, even with just 16GB ram. Now if going strong means use the terminal, Vim etc. all is good. If you use a laptop professionally you do want the latest updates from apple, not a Github repository.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  I had a 2009 model until 17, and had security updates all the way, so I'm sure a 2008 model had security updates through 2012. And even so, you you should be able to install chrome and firefox, so you can enjoy at least a modern browser. > Advocating obsolte hardware is just wrong. Strictly speaking it must be the software that is obsolete.

rubychill 4y ago

My understanding of Thinkpads is the big keyboard change happened with the upgrade from the X220/T420 to the X230/T430. I picked up a used X220 back in 2014 for school and it's still kicking today. I usually end up reinstalling some flavour of lightweight linux on it whenever it dig it out of storage again, and it's a joy to use.

kmlx 4y ago
x220 was amazing, can confirm. had it for 10 years and finally sold it after the 2nd battery that i replaced needed replacing. one of the best keyboards in a laptop, great solid case that was dropped countless times without an issue. i even took it for djing in clubs. what a machine.
AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
I have a T430s and I actually like the keyboard.

what-imright 4y ago

nindalf 4y ago
The HN equivalent of “I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.”
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Do you have time to address just one of the points?
- subjectsigma 4y ago
  3 month old account, 57 karma, strange name, history is full of aggressive comments, many of them downvoted and flagged. Somehow I don't think you're going to like his response. EDIT: I took a deep dive and I no longer think this guy is a troll, just a complete weirdo. His favorite topics seem to be Apple computers and eating people, and that is not a joke or an exaggeration. Hilarious lunchtime read.
  - what-imright 4y ago
    Well, it’s nice to be noticed at least

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

agentultra 4y ago

Excellent article! I too have moved towards buying refurbished laptops only and using them for as long as I can. Thinkpads are a decent line for this as they're built to be user-serviceable and have a great market for parts. The hard part is actually the software. Many industry developers will definitely choose convenience and ease-of-development over most other priorities like efficiency. Operating systems as well. My refurbished Thinkpads all run stripped down Linux distributions. I recommend getting a good battery and tweaking the power settings to get the best life out of them (eg: https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arch-linux-laptop-thinkpad-t14s/ https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arc...)

riedel 4y ago
The problem is that the last ThinkPad really was happy with was the X61s . Once I switched away, I now see myself buying newer models in the hope they get their thermal issues fixed.

macinjosh 4y ago

My new favorite laptop is my 11" ThinkPad 11e. It cost around US$200, it has 4 cores, 8GB of RAM, and a (small) NVME SSD. The battery lasts a full work/play day. The screen resolution is satisfactory for its size (1366x768), however I do wish the panel had better viewing angles. On top of that it has 1Gb ethernet, full size HDMI, mini-SD card, USB-C charging, and a great little keyboard. As a longtime "mac person" this capable, but ugly little laptop feels a bit freeing. I don't have to dote over it, worrying about breaking a $2k laptop, I get all the ports I need, and linux just works.

LegitShady 4y ago
I hear you about it fitting your use case, but I'd hate to spend a day typing on a keyboard for an 11" laptop - the ergonomics don't work for me.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

I'm glad that Framework exists for the primary reason Kris mentions in this article. Though on a side note, I think the chassis is ugly but for some reason I like the XPS laptops which aren't all that much more attractive. Maybe it's a branding thing. I digress. I'm typing this on a desktop that is a decade old, and I just Ship of Theseus'd it over the years.[1][2][3][4][5] I hope that this becomes more common for laptops soon. I think there's potential for an ATX-for-laptops layout, though I admit that would probably lead to slightly chonkier notebooks than what we use today. Maybe not though! Framework did it. [1]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/zkmCLk https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/zkmCLk [2]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/NDcFZL https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/NDcFZL [3]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/QNPcxr https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/QNPcxr [4]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/H8fMcf https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/H8fMcf [5]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/fB2jnQ https://pcpartpicker.com/user/andrewmcwatters/saved/fB2jnQ

guerby 4y ago
Just upgraded my https://frame.work https://frame.work from gen11 to gen12 following: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard+Replacement+Guide/79 https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Mainboard+Replacement+Guide/... I still have to 3d print the enclosure for the gen11 motherboard to become a headless low power consumption server in my home, but I test booted it and it worked :).
- guerby 4y ago
  Note: my previous laptop was a Dell 7480 but the soldered USB-C port and the ethernet port are now unreliable, hopefully the design of the frame.work will allow a much longer lasting hardware (and reusable motherboard :)

viburnum 4y ago

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

anubiskhan 4y ago
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
- mrweasel 4y ago
  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.
  - ttfkam 4y ago
    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.
pridkett 4y ago
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.

smm11 4y ago

I used a Thinkpad 765d with Rhapsody (early developmental 'OS X' system from Apple that was not commercially available) from 2001-2006, then QNX on the same machine until 2012. My data was on a PCMCIA card. At work I was using a Macbook Air by the time I gave up on the Thinkpad, and my Android phone was taking over a lot of my use. The Thinkpad was hardly deficient even ten years ago; the hinge was the biggest problem.

Kon-Peki 4y ago

I'm completely on board with getting a long, full life out of a laptop. The only problem is that we've got plenty of thought-to-be-durable laptops around that are complete garbage, including a high-end Thinkpad. It's really sad to see. That said, our M1 MacBook Pro, an X1 carbon, and (very surprisingly) a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go (the cheap one that had terrible reviews - but with the SSD) are looking excellent in terms of long-term durability.

jabroni_salad 4y ago
I've got a bunch of Surface Gos (goes?) in warehousing and they have outlasted everything else I've tried for the application, including the purpose built industrial devices from Zebra and Caterpillar.
- helf 4y ago
  We have a bunch of Surface Laptops and Surface Books (looove the books) where I work (auto parts factory) that have survived better than they have any right to. I dunno wtf the previous IT was thinking getting them. They have 8 million magnets and are constantly covered in weld dust. But they keep right on working... shorting out power bricks and docks as they go though. In the process of retiring all of them but I have already cleaned up and let several people take their units home as they still get 5-10 hours of battery out of them and have no other issues. It is kind of wild how durable they have been.
scarface74 4y ago
The Surface Go was not a performant computer when it was released. At least the Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell with 8GB RAM that was introduced in 2011 that I mentioned earlier was top of line when it was introduced.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  The Surface lineup has really unfortunate naming. The Surface Go and the Surface Laptop Go are two completely different things! The Surface Laptop Go is kind of a premium Chromebook-type thing that runs Windows (but can do Linux just fine). And it has AVX-512! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Laptop_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Laptop_Go

jvanderbot 4y ago

I bought a 2012 MacBook pro from eBay, replaced the battery and a few others, and it's been my workhorse for years. Best laptop around. Shout-out to ifixit for providing kits and walkthroughs!

scarface74 4y ago
I can’t imagine using an x86 based Mac in 2022. Especially with the $999 MacBook Air being so good. If you care about little things like speed, battery life, heat, etc.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  For 2-300, plus the fun of tinkering on it, it's been well worth it. The biggest thing I write on it is journal entries, emails, and mostly small microcontroller code or lambda endpoints for my own hobby projects.
- nicbou 4y ago
  They're still excellent laptops, even if the M1 models are ridiculously good. My 2017 rMBP still flies. Even my 2017 Macbook 12" is a capable tiny laptop.

scarface74 4y ago

As I sit here using my 2021 MacBook Pro 16” that is twice as fast as my old Mac, with 16 hours of battery life, can run Chrome and Slack without dispersing enough heat to fry an egg all while not sounding like a 747, I can definitely say laptops have changed immensely. I also have a 2009 Dell Laptop 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM running Windows 2010 that I just cleaned up to give my parents. None of the above is true.

helf 4y ago
Chrome and Slack are both resource hogs from hell. No one is arguing that the specific innards haven't changed a lot. They are arguing that for a lot of people, depending on what you are doing and what you need, can get by just fine on a laptop that is few years to 15 years old and be perfectly happy. You are also trying to compare a laptop an entirely different architecture that literally just came out to the other. I mean, honestly, there were plenty of "arm laptops" the past 20 years and a lot of them ran cold to the touch and got 16+ hours of battery life. I know as I had several (Psion netbooks etc). The new Macs are latest evolution of H/PCs that have been around for decades. They just happen to be much faster ;)
- scarface74 4y ago
  I didn’t choose an obscure use case like compiling the Linux kernel while editing 4K video. Chrome is a popular choice among Mac users. On the other hand, you would be surprised how well Office365 runs on Windows 10 on my old Core2Duo 2.66Ghz Dell. It also has a beautiful 1920x1200 display before laptops went 16x9 and Gigabit Ethernet. It was originally a company laptop for a failed startup I worked for and was to use to run Windows CE emulators while developing using .Net compact framework.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    >Core2Duo 2.66Ghz Dell I've never seen people refer to processors by their ghz without giving a generation designation. I think stating what generation/model of c2d it is would be a far more effective means of communication that stating its ghz.

ramesh31 4y ago

An M1 Macbook Air is still the best laptop money can buy for general use, and they are easily had under $700. I cannot comprehend who is buying a $2000 laptop at this point outside of gamers and video editors.

pmontra 4y ago

Anything >= 1995 is enough for word processing offline. Maybe even anything 10 years older. The big problem here is that laptops from that era have clumsy screens and are loud as a jet. Battery life might be a problem too. The real problem is exchanging data with the rest of the world. My old backup laptop from 2006 (Core Duo 2 7xxx) is probably still OK to browse with an adblocker. I'm not sure it would be OK to edit on a site with a SPA frontend (Medium, etc.) My current laptop is from 2014 (i7 4xxx) and it's still perfectly OK to do anything I care about. It was never OK to do other stuff (e.g.: gaming or ML, which was not a thing back then.) Of course it's slower than more modern hardware but not by so much for what I have to do () Certainly not for browsing or word processing. () It's slower than my customer's M1 on Rails test suites (5 s vs 8 s on a project and 50 s vs 75 s on another one). To be fair, my customer is handicapped by running docker on his Mac but docker and the M1 are their choices.

josefresco 4y ago

My father in law said this about his last pickup truck: "This is the last new truck I'll ever buy!" "This truck does everything I don't need anything more!" "Older trucks are better, I can work on them!" He just took delivery of his 4th new truck since saying this. While he does get good value from his truck (150K+ miles each) they don't last forever, they do improve (slightly) and despite his claims that "older trucks are better" he keeps buying new.

LegitShady 4y ago
depending on when he got his previous truck new trucks are often far more fuel efficient than older trucks.
- hedora 4y ago
  Really? Our old carbeurated GMC did better real world than the two trucks that followed (all are similar weight class, and V8s). They changed the EPA fuel economy rules after the first truck was released, so those aren't comparable.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sys_64738 4y ago

Most people won't use a random distribution of Linux that nobody has heard of or knows how long support will continue for. Security is a big issue for older tech that is left behind. Make sure to back up your files from older tech as there might be no way to get your data off the old storage devices that have been cast adrift.

helf 4y ago

I used a laptop made in 2004 that I bought in 2005 as my daily portable driver till 2018 lol. I still have it. It's a Toshiba Portege 3110ct that I added a USB2.0 PCMCIA card to, IDE SSD, and bumped the ram to 192MB. Ran a customized stripped down debian based distribution with a lot of customizing on my part. A USB wifi adapter. Has a 300mhz pentium 2 CPU. Did literally everything I needed on a laptop perfectly fine (ssh sessions, IRC, pandora streaming, light web browsing, note taking etc). My current laptop is a ~10 year old Dell. Has a 4TB SATA SSD in it, 1TB secondary SATA SSD in the media bay using an adapter. I have two mediabay batteries as well as a BDRW drive I can hotswap whenever. Extended primary battery. 16GB ram, i5-3360 CPU. Express Card slot that I use with several adapters, USB3 ports, onboard gige, WWAN card, Wifi, BT, backlit keyboard.. If you aren't /needing/ the extra grunt of newer chips for gaming, video work, low latency realtime audio work, CAD, etc, or want the absolute best size to battery life possible, then there is no reason to not use an older system. Oh, it has an NVidia 5200M 1GB discrete GPU as well as the Intel IGP and the NVS has taken a massive overclock without blinking when I do want to game and runs stuff like Minecraft and older AAA and even new independent games at playable frame rates without any issues. Now, for /work/ I have a newer MS Surface Book that I absolutely adore. The battery life and display and portability are fantastic. But it is my work laptop. Not personal. I refuse to buy a brand new laptop for home use lol.

nemoniac 4y ago

The article is from 2020.

cesarb 4y ago

There's one thing new laptops have which old laptops don't: Warranty. If you depend on your laptop for work, and one day it suddenly stops working, with the manufacturer's warranty (assuming you checked the correct boxes when buying the laptop) you can have a technician with spare parts the next day fixing it, and it'll be as good as new (and unless it was the storage device which failed, you won't even need to reinstall anything). After the warranty expires, things are more dicey; you might or might not find spare parts (assuming you know which spare part you need; a technician can come with several sets and take back the ones which weren't needed), if you do they might take some time to arrive, and if you don't, you have to buy a new laptop on a short notice (which might also take some time to arrive). Unfortunately, the longest laptop extended warranty I've seen so far is only 5 years. Which means that, after 5 years of use, it becomes riskier to rely on it. It also means that the manufacturer expects it to work fine for 5 years (otherwise, they'd lose too much money on the technicians and spare parts), but not much longer than that.

slt2021 4y ago
Warranty is like the extended warranty on cars. Largely you are overpaying for it and not gonna use it. Vendors use scare tactics to force consumers to keep overpaying for warranty (what if it breaks?), just like car stealerships do. Meanwhile there is pretty significant chunk of people live just fine with laptop outside warranty. I have never ever used warranty on any of my laptops. If anything breaks - I just go to my nearest indie laptop repair shop, or just fix it myself (watch youtube video and order spare parts on ebay)
hedora 4y ago
Lenovo and Toshiba screwed me over on a warranty. I had a power brick on another laptop die the day after it went out of warranty, only to find the replacement was > $100 (in the early 2000's). I've heard other PC manufacturers are similarly bad. Do you know of any with a < 48 hour turn around time and a > 95% repair success rate?

hedora 4y ago

The article says building a new laptop uses between 3-4.3 megajoules. For reference, 4 megajoules is 1.1MWh, which is roughly 1 month of per-capita energy usage in the US/Europe: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stop... So, if you stopped buying laptops once a year, this would reduce your energy footprint by about 10%.

jryb 4y ago
These numbers seem suspiciously high. In the paper (from 2011), it estimated that laptops contain 871 grams of steel and 244 grams of epoxy, among other things (the total weight is 2kg more than a modern dell xps). The steel figure is from a teardown so that's believable to me, but definitely out of date. The epoxy is an estimate but seems incredulous to me, even for 2011. Does it really take 30-60 MJ to make a handful of glue?
- hedora 4y ago
  My point was that most people don’t refresh their laptop every year.
rdevnull 4y ago
These figures are certainly bogus. Fabricated by green crusaders that know nothing. Energy footprint is a fabrication.

mrcheesebreeze 4y ago

POV: you begun using linux

faeriechangling 4y ago

I’ve owned a laptop since I was remarkably young mostly for typing documents on initially. Yes older laptops can do an okay job, but they’re heavy, bulky, have low battery life, and dim low-ppi screens. Something like a 1080p Chromebook even with Linux installed is not that expensive and a nice experience. I’ve seen some people who will retrofit the old shells with modern components, I can see the appeal in these, but honestly these old computers really aren’t that good at just typing. There’s something to be said about the waste of the extra cells of batteries you will burn though lol. I appreciate the environmental concern but I want to be real bout this aspect, because I HAD to use these computers for the purposes the author talks about. I have two of these old thinkpads that people rave about, both have fallen into disrepair and I keep one body around because I’m sure some modder will eventually be interested. Old computers also have LOTS of issues with things like video playback.

jonwest 4y ago
I feel like video playback is something that very rarely pops up in these discussions. Yes your old laptop boots up and runs Linux and you can write emails and browse a forum, but video streaming is pretty much off the table at anything above 480p since these older laptops aren’t likely to support modern codecs. They’re pretty useless to me on a daily driver perspective as things like Google Meet or Zoom similarly grenade the CPU and deliver a subpar experience in that regard. I wish the lifespan of these machines were longer or had some form of an upgrade path like the Framework, as they’re contributing a pile to e-waste, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I do keep a couple of old notebooks around for nostalgic purposes and occasional vintage gaming, but I wouldn’t want to use one as my daily driver.

albertopv 4y ago

In 2010 I bought an Acer 4810TG with Windows 7, I choose it for the battery, I was again at university far from home, once I have been able to run 7 Debian VM with 256MB RAM each for a network course. It lasted 10 years upgrading hdd to ssd and incresing RAM. But in the end I had to change PC, it couldn't run any browser, CPU was just too slow, even for Pale Moon.

nicbou 4y ago

I bought a 16 year old car because the price suits how rarely I use it. It's good to me because it's the newest car I've ever owned. However sitting in someone else's car I realise that I could get an extra 50 horsepower for the same fuel consumption, as well as working air conditioning, and a few other creature comforts. Yes, this car is simple in an almost brutalist fashion, and very easy to work on. There's also plenty of spare parts. But it's 16 years old and the bi-yearly inspections are getting scary. The last inspector pointed out that I'll need a new exhaust system soon. I'm not sure what is a fitting death for an old, dependable car once its maintenance becomes impractical. I feel the same way about an old laptop. My T510 is heavy, the battery life isn't great, and it's slow as molasses. I can't imagine carrying that behemoth around when I got used to a Macbook 12.

speeder 4y ago

My family have a lot of computers for various reasons. One of them is a HP laptop from 2003 or so, running Windows XP and Ubuntu. It still works just fine, and often is lifesaver when more recent laptops just break for no reason. That thing from 2003 just keep working happily, refusing to die no matter what.

midislack 4y ago

I bought a T25, hinge failed, so it's back to the X220 i7. I'll use it forever.