9 ms·

Why I Use Old Hardware

112 points by _xivi 4y ago

leephillips 4y ago
I have a similar attitude to hardware, but you don’t have to settle for a blurry screen as the x200 has. My approach is to buy used or refurbished machines from a few years ago. I spend < $200 on a machine that runs Linux fast and has a high resolution screen. One big advantage is that losing a computer to theft or breakage is not a big deal.
- foobarian 4y ago
  Can you share where you find hardware like this?
  - rozenmd 4y ago
    Look for a ThinkPad T480, I recently bought and upgraded one - much to HN's rage: https://maxrozen.com/replacing-my-macbook-m1-with-thinkpad-t480 https://maxrozen.com/replacing-my-macbook-m1-with-thinkpad-t...
    - CoolGuySteve 4y ago
      It's interesting you had problems with the AX200 chip, I bought one for my X13 specifically because it has good kernel drivers. On Ubuntu, there's a "hardware enablement kernel" package, linux-generic-hwe-22.04, that's just the kernel from the latest Ubuntu back-ported to the LTS version. I find it tends to fix most issues with newer hardware. Maybe PopOS has something similar? Anyways, I found the MIMO in wifi 6 was better enough that I even upgraded another old laptop I have with an AX210 I found for $14.
      - rozenmd 4y ago
        Apparently with the T480, the AX200 isn't great, but I just bought an AX210 this week and it worked without configuring anything
        cf100clunk 4y ago
        That AX200 bootup problem occurs on dual-boot Windows/Linux systems. The solution is to turn off Windows "Fast Startup" so that Windows does not leave the AX200 in a "locked" state between reboots. https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/Unstable-AX200-connection-in-Ubuntu-20-04/m-p/1205573#M30527 https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/Unstable-AX200-conne... Also, the latest Intel iwlwifi firmare is slowly evolving to address crummy AX200 speed issues that Windows does not suffer. On one of my laptops the AX200 is all over the place speedwise, but running wavemon shows it stabilize in the 600 range of rx and tx after awhile. Here's hoping for progress with that firmware on Linux. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linux-firmware.git https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linu...
  - blueflow 4y ago
    I got my thinkpads as leasing returns from ebay. They are 200-300 EUR/USD and that kind of hardware that is made for businesses, not consumers.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    At the moment I have two computers in my apartment. They are identical Microsoft Surface Pro 3 machines. I got one from ebay for $150 and the other from Amazon for (I don’t remember) less than $200. The SP3 runs linux very well, especially using the surface-pro kernel. My good experience may be partially due to the fact that I don’t use a “desktop”, but use the dwm window manager. It has a 216 dpi screen with good image characteristics. Everything (touch screen, bluetooth, cameras, etc.) works. I like having two identical machines because I keep them cloned continuously using my wifi network. If one dies I can just switch to the other with no data loss or interruption. I haven’t had to do this yet; the hardware seems reliable. I like this type of machine because it’s a tablet with the power of a modest laptop. I can pop in in a backpack for travel, take it to the couch to read on, or use it like a laptop with a bluetooth keyboard. Having the keyboard separate from the screen is better for ergonomics; I much prefer these to laptops. I have one problem, and it’s pretty annoying: I can’t seem to use video conferencing sites without problems. Zoom, jitsi, they all overload the system and my microphone stops working after a short time. I kept a Windows partition on one of the SP3s and boot into it just for Zoom meetings. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m eager to solve this.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      How's support for these machines under the mainline kernel these days? Why are we still relying on downstream kernel forks even for this old hardware? Shouldn't support be completely upstreamed by now?
      - leephillips 4y ago
        The mainline kernel works but I think the linux-surface kernel (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface -- I misnamed it in my previous comment) should be used. I accidentally booted one of the SP3s with the mainline kernel and saw some WiFi driver problems, though I can’t say I’ve tested this extensively.
hsnewman 4y ago
I always buy 1 generation behind because it is on typically alot cheaper and more likley to be vetted for hardware/firmware issues and nearly as fast.
globalreset 4y ago
That's why he doesn't like Rust is so big on C and Go. I don't buy into this mentality. It's just wasting time. Your user suffers due to bloat and slowness on commercial software (like websites full of tracking and heavy UI design) due to economical reasons (no benefit in optimizing user perf for the company) and not due to system software like one Drew writes. It's just kind of a LARP of "old school" and "minimalistic", which is fine. Just let's not pretend there's some practical benefit.
- blueflow 4y ago
  How many % of the worlds population doesn't have the means to acquire modern hardware?
  - thunderbong 4y ago
    Most of them might not be creators though, just users of said software.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Developers should be using hardware comparable to what their intended audience uses, at least some of the time. It's hard to effectively address the needs of your audience if you aren't experiencing their problems.
      - Jtsummers 4y ago
        I have to disagree, devs should use hardware appropriate to their development environment. They should test on hardware appropriate to their target environment (or at least a simulated version of it). Insisting on developing on underpowered systems can block you from using some more useful development tooling like many profilers and some debuggers effectively or even entirely. You need to know that it works in the target environment, but if the target environment is a 2005-era CPU because the customer wants a "ruggedized" laptop (aka, overpriced old hardware in a very tough case), there's no reason to restrict your devs to one core and 4GB of RAM for their development tools.
neilv 4y ago
I agree that X200 is a good choice for someone who wants a small vintage ThinkPad for Linux. They have real keyboards, and enough CPU to run Firefox and other things. If you also use larger vintage ThinkPads from that era, they can all probably share the same 90W AC adapters (though the X200 will also work on lower-Watt ones). I have a stockpile of high-res X200 units, which I've upgraded with more RAM, SSD, Coreboot, and newer WiFi cards. One thing you'll miss for some purposes is modern GPU. For ML models, I access my GPU server over the network (which means a beefier GPU than I could get in even a non-vintage ThinkPad, and easier to upgrade) and use cloud providers. For gaming, I use a Sony console, for compartmentalization and fewer cheaters.
precompute 4y ago
I spent six years with an entry-level pentium CPU (G4400) in my main (and often only) computer. I also did not use a SSD. It really did make me appreciate programs that make do with less. Moving to a 6C/12T Ryzen with a SSD was amazing, I couldn't believe how quick everything was. Even invoking thunar was appreciably faster, I had no idea I'd been using a "slow" system before. The Pentium went through a lot; I threw everything I was interested in as a student at it. It even did some 24+ hour encoding jobs, some NN training and some Wii emulation and Wine gaming. Moving to a faster computer with a SSD only really sped up the gaming parts. 95% of my time is spent in my text editor / browser / terminal, and they only really benefit from the SSD, not from higher clock speeds / more cores. Compiling software is much faster, but I don't do it often enough with programs large enough for it to matter. My desktop never did overheat, though. My laptop doesn't go under 50C without an external cooler. Hardware support for video codecs is a good reason to upgrade.
- xjia 4y ago
  Browser rendering should benefit from better CPU or GPU. And if you use VS Code as editor then that's essentially a browser-based workload as well.
  - precompute 4y ago
    Valid point. I went from using Palemoon to using FF right about when I switched computers, so nothing much changed, except I could play 1440p videos without stutter and could actually load some major websites. No role for VSCode because I use Emacs :).
johnklos 4y ago
Every piece of hardware was brand new at some time. Sometimes people forget that an old machine was once someone's awesome, fancy, new device. I've known too many people who couldn't articulate why they spent thousands of dollars on something new when their old machine worked perfectly well, but that's OK - most of my hardware I got for free or next to nothing because of this. Like Drew writes, do I need to play videos that're higher resolution than 1080p on a 17" 1920x1200 display? Nope.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I buy most of my machines from the local electronics reseller, so I'm usually 5-10 years behind what's current. It works really well for me because the latest and greatest doesn't really bring my significant benefits for my use cases. That may not be the case for everybody. But I do think there's a lot of people who buy more compute than they need. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into. It's like buying a muscle car when you don't race much.
badpun 4y ago
Both my laptop and desktop are roughly 10 year old. They both work as a charm. Unfortunately, it looks like planned obsolescence will get them both in Oct 2025, when MS drops support for Win10 (and they're not supported by Win11). Or I'll move to Linux.
- Offler 4y ago
  Linux is great on such hardware. I've a 10 year old XPS 13 running Pop_OS and it's perfectly usable.
nickpeterson 4y ago
How much faster can you make a thing by scaling it vertically on hardware? Not that much unless it’s embarrassingly parallel and you use ASICS or gpus. Ok so scale horizontal, but now you’re running a lot of machines and connections etc. it becomes very complicated, so you start introducing abstractions like k8s. To hell with all of it. Scale DOWN, not up or across. Get rid of all the unnecessary bits. Get rid of most IO, memory management, operating systems, abstractions. When people say, “that’s impractical, because …” I guarantee their solution to your concerns is involving more layers of shit. Then sit out your house and drink coffee and seethe, like I do.
wiz21c 4y ago
My desktop is around 13 years old. Upgraded a few times. Still more than enough for my linux, firefox, movies, casual photogrpah. However, I also work with machine learning and rust and both these tasks are a bit too heavy for the desktop (i.e. I can work, but it takes much longer than on my 64GB intel-top-of-the line PC at work).
jmclnx 4y ago
I use old Hardware because I can use whatever OS I want on it, no worries about secure boot and things like that. Right now I have a T420 with BSD and a W541 with Linux, both were bought used and cheap. Due to Nvidia, BSD has a rough time on the W541, but runs OK. I will never by new unless I get a 100% guarantee with full refund that NetBSD runs on that hardware without the slightest issue. You can guess how well that will go over That is why I run on Old hardware.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
I'm not exactly on this trend, but I noticed something going into that direction: 15 years ago, I wanted the latest everything. Now I usually want the latest minus one. Python 3.11 is out? It's finally time to use 3.10. The new phone model is ready? Let me buy the one from last year. Because it's almost as good, but a lot more reliable. You get all the patches, all the user report, all the ecosystem support that has accumulated since then. And this has a LOT of value.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Also I can generally pick up the previous generation used at a discount as the new stock is about to come in. This is especially good on big ticket items that people seem to crave having the newest version of. i.e phones, TVs, computers.
- guidoism 4y ago
  A couple weeks ago I realized I was still running the previous version of MacOS and I honestly don't want to put any effort into upgrading. It works fine right now. What a weird departure when I used to want to upgrade on day 1 and had to consciously wait two weeks for the big bugs to be worked out.
  - gofreddygo 4y ago
    > It works fine right now > don't want to put any effort into upgrading There is so much effort from Apple to reverse this. They want to make it harder to stay on older versions. So much so that upgrading feels like the less painful option. Be it hardware or software they really put in so many roadblocks, its almost like an evil masterplan. No more Apple for me.
    - D13Fd 4y ago
      > No more Apple for me. It would be great if there were a competitor with equal hardware and software, but there isn’t that I’ve seen.
      - 4y ago
agumonkey 4y ago
x200 is a bit of a stretch at times, they can get quite hot and throttling depending on the tasks (especially due to modern web requiring gpu acceleration for a lot of things). x201 is already a nice change. x220/x230 feel like a sweet spot.
ithrow 4y ago
Having only 4GB sucks (old macbook air)
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  Yeah, I recently picked up a 2015 15" MBP with 16GB of RAM from Facebook Marketplace for pretty cheap and I am absolutely loving it. I've got a much newer and beefier Lenovo Legion for CAD work and some other heavier tasks, but as a daily driver this machine is great so far. I had a much newer MBP for a while but it sadly died a coffee-induced death; I'll probably pick up an M1 or M2 at some point since this unit can't run the latest OSX, but other than that this unit leaves me wanting for nothing.
aidenn0 4y ago
I use old hardware just because it still works. My laptop is turning 7 this year. I wouldn't call it low-end though; it's got 32G of ECC ram. It runs KDE just fine though, it is from after Intel GPUs totally suck (but I won't be playing AAA games from after 2010 or so on it)
- dmos62 4y ago
  My desktop is closer to 10 years old with 8gb ram and i still don't have any reason to upgrade, as far i know.
agentultra 4y ago
I think that if you’re in the business of building compilers, tools, and OS level/system software you could give your users a leg up by using a low end, refurbished machine as your main. If you can make it fast enough to be your daily driver then it will certainly be fast for the majority of your users. And you can support more users: those who can’t afford high end machines or those who don’t want to for climate/ecological reasons. There is still a ton of good hardware out there that doesn’t need to be e-waste.
doublepg23 4y ago
I don’t know. I have an X200 and while this inspired me to hack around with it today (I ought to upgrade to a recent Coreboot) it really is just self imposed blinders with this decades hardware improvements. And let’s face it, if someone only has $200 to spend on a “computer” that “computer” will be a Smartphone.
cristiioan 4y ago
I can't imagine myself using such old hardware. It is cool and I like it(old thinkpads are awesome) but the slowness would hit me every time I do something a bit more intensive(like browsing the web with hundreds tabs). Maybe it is related to the fact that now I have really fast hardware. Also it really depends on your use case. I have a VM heavy workflow which benefits from the insane amount of RAM I have in my laptop and the number of cores.
- chasil 4y ago
  If you are sensitive about the Intel Management Engine, the original Core 2 Duo/Quad systems are the last where it could be fully disabled. Anything later will forcibly shut down after 30 minutes if (at least a fragment of) Intel's closed & bug-ridden monitoring code is not present. I ran me_cleaner on a few of these systems, and I do all my finances with them running OpenBSD (usually on q9550s). Yes, this effort to run old hardware is worth it for me. Below are the bios images that I was able to produce: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233 https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > a bit more intensive(like browsing the web with hundreds tabs). Maybe if you have hundreds of tabs active, but I have literally over 5,000 tabs in Firefox on one of my machines and that's 5 to 10 year old hardware with I think 8GB of RAM. (Aside: yes, I know I have a problem, but the point is that it works)
teddyh 4y ago
(2019)
sk1pper 4y ago
I’m still rocking my 2015 MBP. I have no issues at all. The battery says it needs to be serviced, but the battery life is still plenty good for my uses. I have no issues with slowness. And I’m not running a minimalist WM to accommodate this like Drew is, either - I’m running Monterey, and have the UX of a full DE. I can’t upgrade to Ventura, but that’s ok. I run VS Code on it a lot, often remote over SSH to my desktop to work on a personal raytracing project - I need the nvidia GPU to do CUDA stuff, and the 16 cores in my 3700x are pretty nice for non-GPU stuff too. I also stream games from my desktop to it using Parsec and Moonlight. I just play games casually, so no need for super low latency, and over my local network the experience is great. I’m not sure how well it’ll be holding up at the 11 year mark though (4 years from now). But I think this habit of doing most of my development over ssh will potentially extend the life of it. For the most part I agree with Drew. Based on all of the above, it does absolutely everything I need it to do. I can’t even remotely justify the cost of a new laptop due to this. However, if I get to the point where I can’t even run KDE comfortably, or get an equivalent desktop UX, it’s time to upgrade. I don’t prefer minimalist WMs (or Linux even really, but if anyone wants to reply, I’d prefer not to fight about using Linux as a desktop - it’s just not for me) - that’s where I draw the line and decide to get some newer hardware. Hopefully when I do, that hardware will last me another 7-10 years.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  My 2015 MBP sputters and overheats when running Firebase emulator + VS Code + Edge. I7 + 16 gigs of ram and an aftermarket OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD. I suspect it’s the Firebase emulator running in Java?
  - fzzzy 4y ago
    You could try replacing your thermal paste.
  - helf 4y ago
    [dead]
- sokoloff 4y ago
  If you do want to run Ventura, have a look at Opencore Legacy Patcher. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html#macbook-pro https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...
pjmlp 4y ago
I can easily relate to, my newest private computer is from 2017, and the oldest from 2009. They do their job, even for the GPGPU stuff I do, and will get replaced when they eventually die. At work, the 5 year replacement cycle is also good enough.
frje1400 4y ago
What's the display quality on these 10+ year old laptops? Looking at a low res blurry display all day can't be fun even if the performance is good enough.
helf 4y ago
I like how many people poo-poo this. There really is no reason you can’t use it shouldn’t use a 2012-2014 system in 2023. Even minor upgrades like an SSD are tremendously beneficial. And to the commenters going “try watching a 4K video hur hur!”… why? No one will argue that multimedia oriented stuff /doesn’t/ need, more often than not, beefier hardware. But let’s ignore the fact that most of the machines from this era that are laptops won’t have anything remotely approaching a 4K display. So it’s a moot point. My personal desktop is an i9-13900k and it’s awesome. My laptop is currently a 3rd gen i5 powered dell that works beautifully for everything I need or want on the go. Up till literally 2 years ago my daily driver laptop was a p 2-300 with 192mb of ram, 64gb ide ssd, and a 10” 800x600 lcd. You know why? Because it did everything I needed for a portable system and the rare instances I needed more I could RDP into a stronger rig. So, yeah, artificially limiting yourself on every rig to something old I don’t see the value of. But continuing to use, even as your primary portable, an older system is 100% fine. “But they can’t edit iPhone videos!” … smh
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
apricot13 4y ago
I try to be as simple as possible with my setups and use the defaults wherever possible but I have always bought the highest spec I can afford when purchasing a new machine to make sure they last. I had the perfect machine 3 machines ago until i upgraded and I've never managed to replicate that level of perfection since so I stopped trying! I've also been using a lot of services like gitpod and GitHub's codespaces recently they make the need for newer hardware unnecessary! I'm also increasingly multi platform so I can't commit to setting up all these things! My next mission is to look into remote desktop offerings or just get better at the command line.

112 points by _xivi 4y ago

I have a similar attitude to hardware, but you don’t have to settle for a blurry screen as the x200 has. My approach is to buy used or refurbished machines from a few years ago. I spend < $200 on a machine that runs Linux fast and has a high resolution screen. One big advantage is that losing a computer to theft or breakage is not a big deal.

foobarian 4y ago
Can you share where you find hardware like this?
- rozenmd 4y ago
  Look for a ThinkPad T480, I recently bought and upgraded one - much to HN's rage: https://maxrozen.com/replacing-my-macbook-m1-with-thinkpad-t480 https://maxrozen.com/replacing-my-macbook-m1-with-thinkpad-t...
  - CoolGuySteve 4y ago
    It's interesting you had problems with the AX200 chip, I bought one for my X13 specifically because it has good kernel drivers. On Ubuntu, there's a "hardware enablement kernel" package, linux-generic-hwe-22.04, that's just the kernel from the latest Ubuntu back-ported to the LTS version. I find it tends to fix most issues with newer hardware. Maybe PopOS has something similar? Anyways, I found the MIMO in wifi 6 was better enough that I even upgraded another old laptop I have with an AX210 I found for $14.
    - rozenmd 4y ago
      Apparently with the T480, the AX200 isn't great, but I just bought an AX210 this week and it worked without configuring anything
      - cf100clunk 4y ago
        That AX200 bootup problem occurs on dual-boot Windows/Linux systems. The solution is to turn off Windows "Fast Startup" so that Windows does not leave the AX200 in a "locked" state between reboots. https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/Unstable-AX200-connection-in-Ubuntu-20-04/m-p/1205573#M30527 https://community.intel.com/t5/Wireless/Unstable-AX200-conne... Also, the latest Intel iwlwifi firmare is slowly evolving to address crummy AX200 speed issues that Windows does not suffer. On one of my laptops the AX200 is all over the place speedwise, but running wavemon shows it stabilize in the 600 range of rx and tx after awhile. Here's hoping for progress with that firmware on Linux. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linux-firmware.git https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linu...
- blueflow 4y ago
  I got my thinkpads as leasing returns from ebay. They are 200-300 EUR/USD and that kind of hardware that is made for businesses, not consumers.
- leephillips 4y ago
  At the moment I have two computers in my apartment. They are identical Microsoft Surface Pro 3 machines. I got one from ebay for $150 and the other from Amazon for (I don’t remember) less than $200. The SP3 runs linux very well, especially using the surface-pro kernel. My good experience may be partially due to the fact that I don’t use a “desktop”, but use the dwm window manager. It has a 216 dpi screen with good image characteristics. Everything (touch screen, bluetooth, cameras, etc.) works. I like having two identical machines because I keep them cloned continuously using my wifi network. If one dies I can just switch to the other with no data loss or interruption. I haven’t had to do this yet; the hardware seems reliable. I like this type of machine because it’s a tablet with the power of a modest laptop. I can pop in in a backpack for travel, take it to the couch to read on, or use it like a laptop with a bluetooth keyboard. Having the keyboard separate from the screen is better for ergonomics; I much prefer these to laptops. I have one problem, and it’s pretty annoying: I can’t seem to use video conferencing sites without problems. Zoom, jitsi, they all overload the system and my microphone stops working after a short time. I kept a Windows partition on one of the SP3s and boot into it just for Zoom meetings. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m eager to solve this.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    How's support for these machines under the mainline kernel these days? Why are we still relying on downstream kernel forks even for this old hardware? Shouldn't support be completely upstreamed by now?
    - leephillips 4y ago
      The mainline kernel works but I think the linux-surface kernel (https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface -- I misnamed it in my previous comment) should be used. I accidentally booted one of the SP3s with the mainline kernel and saw some WiFi driver problems, though I can’t say I’ve tested this extensively.

hsnewman 4y ago

I always buy 1 generation behind because it is on typically alot cheaper and more likley to be vetted for hardware/firmware issues and nearly as fast.

globalreset 4y ago

That's why he doesn't like Rust is so big on C and Go. I don't buy into this mentality. It's just wasting time. Your user suffers due to bloat and slowness on commercial software (like websites full of tracking and heavy UI design) due to economical reasons (no benefit in optimizing user perf for the company) and not due to system software like one Drew writes. It's just kind of a LARP of "old school" and "minimalistic", which is fine. Just let's not pretend there's some practical benefit.

blueflow 4y ago
How many % of the worlds population doesn't have the means to acquire modern hardware?
- thunderbong 4y ago
  Most of them might not be creators though, just users of said software.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Developers should be using hardware comparable to what their intended audience uses, at least some of the time. It's hard to effectively address the needs of your audience if you aren't experiencing their problems.
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      I have to disagree, devs should use hardware appropriate to their development environment. They should test on hardware appropriate to their target environment (or at least a simulated version of it). Insisting on developing on underpowered systems can block you from using some more useful development tooling like many profilers and some debuggers effectively or even entirely. You need to know that it works in the target environment, but if the target environment is a 2005-era CPU because the customer wants a "ruggedized" laptop (aka, overpriced old hardware in a very tough case), there's no reason to restrict your devs to one core and 4GB of RAM for their development tools.

neilv 4y ago

I agree that X200 is a good choice for someone who wants a small vintage ThinkPad for Linux. They have real keyboards, and enough CPU to run Firefox and other things. If you also use larger vintage ThinkPads from that era, they can all probably share the same 90W AC adapters (though the X200 will also work on lower-Watt ones). I have a stockpile of high-res X200 units, which I've upgraded with more RAM, SSD, Coreboot, and newer WiFi cards. One thing you'll miss for some purposes is modern GPU. For ML models, I access my GPU server over the network (which means a beefier GPU than I could get in even a non-vintage ThinkPad, and easier to upgrade) and use cloud providers. For gaming, I use a Sony console, for compartmentalization and fewer cheaters.

precompute 4y ago

I spent six years with an entry-level pentium CPU (G4400) in my main (and often only) computer. I also did not use a SSD. It really did make me appreciate programs that make do with less. Moving to a 6C/12T Ryzen with a SSD was amazing, I couldn't believe how quick everything was. Even invoking thunar was appreciably faster, I had no idea I'd been using a "slow" system before. The Pentium went through a lot; I threw everything I was interested in as a student at it. It even did some 24+ hour encoding jobs, some NN training and some Wii emulation and Wine gaming. Moving to a faster computer with a SSD only really sped up the gaming parts. 95% of my time is spent in my text editor / browser / terminal, and they only really benefit from the SSD, not from higher clock speeds / more cores. Compiling software is much faster, but I don't do it often enough with programs large enough for it to matter. My desktop never did overheat, though. My laptop doesn't go under 50C without an external cooler. Hardware support for video codecs is a good reason to upgrade.

xjia 4y ago
Browser rendering should benefit from better CPU or GPU. And if you use VS Code as editor then that's essentially a browser-based workload as well.
- precompute 4y ago
  Valid point. I went from using Palemoon to using FF right about when I switched computers, so nothing much changed, except I could play 1440p videos without stutter and could actually load some major websites. No role for VSCode because I use Emacs :).

johnklos 4y ago

Every piece of hardware was brand new at some time. Sometimes people forget that an old machine was once someone's awesome, fancy, new device. I've known too many people who couldn't articulate why they spent thousands of dollars on something new when their old machine worked perfectly well, but that's OK - most of my hardware I got for free or next to nothing because of this. Like Drew writes, do I need to play videos that're higher resolution than 1080p on a 17" 1920x1200 display? Nope.

JohnFen 4y ago
I buy most of my machines from the local electronics reseller, so I'm usually 5-10 years behind what's current. It works really well for me because the latest and greatest doesn't really bring my significant benefits for my use cases. That may not be the case for everybody. But I do think there's a lot of people who buy more compute than they need. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into. It's like buying a muscle car when you don't race much.

badpun 4y ago

Both my laptop and desktop are roughly 10 year old. They both work as a charm. Unfortunately, it looks like planned obsolescence will get them both in Oct 2025, when MS drops support for Win10 (and they're not supported by Win11). Or I'll move to Linux.

Offler 4y ago
Linux is great on such hardware. I've a 10 year old XPS 13 running Pop_OS and it's perfectly usable.

nickpeterson 4y ago

How much faster can you make a thing by scaling it vertically on hardware? Not that much unless it’s embarrassingly parallel and you use ASICS or gpus. Ok so scale horizontal, but now you’re running a lot of machines and connections etc. it becomes very complicated, so you start introducing abstractions like k8s. To hell with all of it. Scale DOWN, not up or across. Get rid of all the unnecessary bits. Get rid of most IO, memory management, operating systems, abstractions. When people say, “that’s impractical, because …” I guarantee their solution to your concerns is involving more layers of shit. Then sit out your house and drink coffee and seethe, like I do.

wiz21c 4y ago

My desktop is around 13 years old. Upgraded a few times. Still more than enough for my linux, firefox, movies, casual photogrpah. However, I also work with machine learning and rust and both these tasks are a bit too heavy for the desktop (i.e. I can work, but it takes much longer than on my 64GB intel-top-of-the line PC at work).

jmclnx 4y ago

I use old Hardware because I can use whatever OS I want on it, no worries about secure boot and things like that. Right now I have a T420 with BSD and a W541 with Linux, both were bought used and cheap. Due to Nvidia, BSD has a rough time on the W541, but runs OK. I will never by new unless I get a 100% guarantee with full refund that NetBSD runs on that hardware without the slightest issue. You can guess how well that will go over That is why I run on Old hardware.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

I'm not exactly on this trend, but I noticed something going into that direction: 15 years ago, I wanted the latest everything. Now I usually want the latest minus one. Python 3.11 is out? It's finally time to use 3.10. The new phone model is ready? Let me buy the one from last year. Because it's almost as good, but a lot more reliable. You get all the patches, all the user report, all the ecosystem support that has accumulated since then. And this has a LOT of value.

jpgvm 4y ago
Also I can generally pick up the previous generation used at a discount as the new stock is about to come in. This is especially good on big ticket items that people seem to crave having the newest version of. i.e phones, TVs, computers.
guidoism 4y ago
A couple weeks ago I realized I was still running the previous version of MacOS and I honestly don't want to put any effort into upgrading. It works fine right now. What a weird departure when I used to want to upgrade on day 1 and had to consciously wait two weeks for the big bugs to be worked out.
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  > It works fine right now > don't want to put any effort into upgrading There is so much effort from Apple to reverse this. They want to make it harder to stay on older versions. So much so that upgrading feels like the less painful option. Be it hardware or software they really put in so many roadblocks, its almost like an evil masterplan. No more Apple for me.
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    > No more Apple for me. It would be great if there were a competitor with equal hardware and software, but there isn’t that I’ve seen.
    - 4y ago

agumonkey 4y ago

x200 is a bit of a stretch at times, they can get quite hot and throttling depending on the tasks (especially due to modern web requiring gpu acceleration for a lot of things). x201 is already a nice change. x220/x230 feel like a sweet spot.

ithrow 4y ago

Having only 4GB sucks (old macbook air)

tonyarkles 4y ago
Yeah, I recently picked up a 2015 15" MBP with 16GB of RAM from Facebook Marketplace for pretty cheap and I am absolutely loving it. I've got a much newer and beefier Lenovo Legion for CAD work and some other heavier tasks, but as a daily driver this machine is great so far. I had a much newer MBP for a while but it sadly died a coffee-induced death; I'll probably pick up an M1 or M2 at some point since this unit can't run the latest OSX, but other than that this unit leaves me wanting for nothing.

aidenn0 4y ago

I use old hardware just because it still works. My laptop is turning 7 this year. I wouldn't call it low-end though; it's got 32G of ECC ram. It runs KDE just fine though, it is from after Intel GPUs totally suck (but I won't be playing AAA games from after 2010 or so on it)

dmos62 4y ago
My desktop is closer to 10 years old with 8gb ram and i still don't have any reason to upgrade, as far i know.

agentultra 4y ago

I think that if you’re in the business of building compilers, tools, and OS level/system software you could give your users a leg up by using a low end, refurbished machine as your main. If you can make it fast enough to be your daily driver then it will certainly be fast for the majority of your users. And you can support more users: those who can’t afford high end machines or those who don’t want to for climate/ecological reasons. There is still a ton of good hardware out there that doesn’t need to be e-waste.

doublepg23 4y ago

I don’t know. I have an X200 and while this inspired me to hack around with it today (I ought to upgrade to a recent Coreboot) it really is just self imposed blinders with this decades hardware improvements. And let’s face it, if someone only has $200 to spend on a “computer” that “computer” will be a Smartphone.

cristiioan 4y ago

I can't imagine myself using such old hardware. It is cool and I like it(old thinkpads are awesome) but the slowness would hit me every time I do something a bit more intensive(like browsing the web with hundreds tabs). Maybe it is related to the fact that now I have really fast hardware. Also it really depends on your use case. I have a VM heavy workflow which benefits from the insane amount of RAM I have in my laptop and the number of cores.

chasil 4y ago
If you are sensitive about the Intel Management Engine, the original Core 2 Duo/Quad systems are the last where it could be fully disabled. Anything later will forcibly shut down after 30 minutes if (at least a fragment of) Intel's closed & bug-ridden monitoring code is not present. I ran me_cleaner on a few of these systems, and I do all my finances with them running OpenBSD (usually on q9550s). Yes, this effort to run old hardware is worth it for me. Below are the bios images that I was able to produce: https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233 https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/233
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> a bit more intensive(like browsing the web with hundreds tabs). Maybe if you have hundreds of tabs active, but I have literally over 5,000 tabs in Firefox on one of my machines and that's 5 to 10 year old hardware with I think 8GB of RAM. (Aside: yes, I know I have a problem, but the point is that it works)

teddyh 4y ago

(2019)

sk1pper 4y ago

I’m still rocking my 2015 MBP. I have no issues at all. The battery says it needs to be serviced, but the battery life is still plenty good for my uses. I have no issues with slowness. And I’m not running a minimalist WM to accommodate this like Drew is, either - I’m running Monterey, and have the UX of a full DE. I can’t upgrade to Ventura, but that’s ok. I run VS Code on it a lot, often remote over SSH to my desktop to work on a personal raytracing project - I need the nvidia GPU to do CUDA stuff, and the 16 cores in my 3700x are pretty nice for non-GPU stuff too. I also stream games from my desktop to it using Parsec and Moonlight. I just play games casually, so no need for super low latency, and over my local network the experience is great. I’m not sure how well it’ll be holding up at the 11 year mark though (4 years from now). But I think this habit of doing most of my development over ssh will potentially extend the life of it. For the most part I agree with Drew. Based on all of the above, it does absolutely everything I need it to do. I can’t even remotely justify the cost of a new laptop due to this. However, if I get to the point where I can’t even run KDE comfortably, or get an equivalent desktop UX, it’s time to upgrade. I don’t prefer minimalist WMs (or Linux even really, but if anyone wants to reply, I’d prefer not to fight about using Linux as a desktop - it’s just not for me) - that’s where I draw the line and decide to get some newer hardware. Hopefully when I do, that hardware will last me another 7-10 years.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
My 2015 MBP sputters and overheats when running Firebase emulator + VS Code + Edge. I7 + 16 gigs of ram and an aftermarket OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD. I suspect it’s the Firebase emulator running in Java?
- fzzzy 4y ago
  You could try replacing your thermal paste.
- helf 4y ago
  [dead]
sokoloff 4y ago
If you do want to run Ventura, have a look at Opencore Legacy Patcher. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.html#macbook-pro https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

pjmlp 4y ago

I can easily relate to, my newest private computer is from 2017, and the oldest from 2009. They do their job, even for the GPGPU stuff I do, and will get replaced when they eventually die. At work, the 5 year replacement cycle is also good enough.

frje1400 4y ago

What's the display quality on these 10+ year old laptops? Looking at a low res blurry display all day can't be fun even if the performance is good enough.

helf 4y ago

I like how many people poo-poo this. There really is no reason you can’t use it shouldn’t use a 2012-2014 system in 2023. Even minor upgrades like an SSD are tremendously beneficial. And to the commenters going “try watching a 4K video hur hur!”… why? No one will argue that multimedia oriented stuff /doesn’t/ need, more often than not, beefier hardware. But let’s ignore the fact that most of the machines from this era that are laptops won’t have anything remotely approaching a 4K display. So it’s a moot point. My personal desktop is an i9-13900k and it’s awesome. My laptop is currently a 3rd gen i5 powered dell that works beautifully for everything I need or want on the go. Up till literally 2 years ago my daily driver laptop was a p 2-300 with 192mb of ram, 64gb ide ssd, and a 10” 800x600 lcd. You know why? Because it did everything I needed for a portable system and the rare instances I needed more I could RDP into a stronger rig. So, yeah, artificially limiting yourself on every rig to something old I don’t see the value of. But continuing to use, even as your primary portable, an older system is 100% fine. “But they can’t edit iPhone videos!” … smh

deleted 4y ago

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apricot13 4y ago

I try to be as simple as possible with my setups and use the defaults wherever possible but I have always bought the highest spec I can afford when purchasing a new machine to make sure they last. I had the perfect machine 3 machines ago until i upgraded and I've never managed to replicate that level of perfection since so I stopped trying! I've also been using a lot of services like gitpod and GitHub's codespaces recently they make the need for newer hardware unnecessary! I'm also increasingly multi platform so I can't commit to setting up all these things! My next mission is to look into remote desktop offerings or just get better at the command line.