7 ms·

I use a 7 year old 2 GB / 32 GB Intel Atom for random surfing and travelling. Running Linux of course. Probably ARM would be even better. It's not fully as sna

I use a 7 year old 2 GB / 32 GB Intel Atom for random surfing and travelling. Running Linux of course. Probably ARM would be even better. It's not fully as snappy as a big machine and you would not be able to run a couple of containers / Electron apps / a modern IDE on it. But it's fully usable for 99% of users / use cases. This planet cannot support many GBs for every human. So called modern computing is an incredible waste of resources, Android being amongst the worst. Edit: Sorry for claiming 1 GB RAM first. Didn't remember correctly, fixed after turning it on and checking.

jbm 3y ago
> This planet cannot support many GBs for every human Interesting perspective, do you have evidence to support this? Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing.
- usr1106 3y ago
  No exact calculation about GBs, just a general gut feeling that current resource consumption in the industrialized world is completely unsustainable. With smarter usage only a fraction of resources is needed for still decent user experience.
- amatecha 3y ago
  In terms of reduction of usage of resources, using an already-existing computer is considered better than manufacturing new hardware. OECD suggests[0] embracing a circular economy to reduce production of waste and consumption of resources. Notably, in the province I reside, 98% of electricity is provided by renewable resources[1]. The electrical grid is already there, and the computer I already have is also already there. Generally speaking, no more resource extraction or pollution of the planet is necessary for me to continue on my computing activities with my existing hardware. All I have time to write right now, but check out the concept of permacomputing and frugal computing... [2][3] [0] https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/OECD-G20-Towards-a-more-Resource-Efficient-and-Circular-Economy.pdf https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/OECD-G20-Towards-a-mo... (p.24) [1] https://choose.bchydro.com/why-choose-bc/clean-energy https://choose.bchydro.com/why-choose-bc/clean-energy [2] http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html / https://permacomputing.net https://permacomputing.net [3] https://limited.systems/articles/frugal-computing/ https://limited.systems/articles/frugal-computing/
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery. That's what makes it a circle (-: But it's nice that you live near hydro, and you don't need a more powerful computer.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      >Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery. In theory it can, in practice todays computers will be unrecyclable e-waste.
- usr1106 3y ago
  > Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing. This computer is not on 24/7, but only very limited hours. So manufacturing a new one would a relatively high share. Energy is the reason why I wrote ARM would probably be even better. But the Atom is pretty good too. The machine is fanless and when it was new the battery lasted nearly 7 hours (not for watching videos of course). Now that it's pretty old and still on it's first battery it still lasts several hours. Enough to read some news and do some trip planning.
- arp242 3y ago
  > Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones The differences are marginal; my 7 year old i5 really doesn't use that much more power than a modern i5, if it even uses more power in the first place (I don't have a good way to measure this, and with sleep states and whatnot you really need to measure this to be sure). A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would be if everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7; I originally started doing that because someone said that "everyone should just self-host these things at their home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a horrible environmental impact. And turned out my initial thoughts were wrong, and impact was so small that actually, it didn't matter, and I didn't even both posting my comment. And even if there would be a difference, energy of manufacture tends to outweigh energy usage of usage. There's a long chain of mining, transport, etc. etc. behind all of that I didn't calculate this, but usually the energy differences really do need to be quite substantial to justify the energy usage of manufacture. Maybe I was horribly wrong and made a mistake; I didn't re-do the calculations for this comment out of laziness. But I do strongly encourage anyone to actually calculate or look up what the impact is, because initial "it's bad for the environment"-feelings could very well be wrong, and no one is served if attention, money, and effort is spent in the wrong places.
  - znpy 3y ago
    > A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would be if everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7; I originally started doing that because someone said that "everyone should just self-host these things at their home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a horrible environmental impact. This is non-sensical. Up to ten years ago most lightbulbs consumed 40-60 watts EACH and no one bat an eye. Heck, the cristmas lights on my Christmas tree absorb ~60 watts with the default pattern (i know because i measured it). I had to manually set a light pattern that consumed only 20W. And no one is crying about Christmas lighting. Consuming 30W 24/7 for home is absolutely feasible, all modern homes can do that just by replacing a single old tungsten-based lightbulb with a led one.
    - amatecha 3y ago
      Yup, seriously, people think an old 35w laptop is inefficient (???) meanwhile burning 60-100w light bulbs all over their home. Yeah, these days LED light bulbs are becoming more commonplace (8-13w or whatever), but even then, if your laptop consumed the equivalent of a few LED light bulbs I think that's pretty darn acceptable. The AC adapter for this X230 I'm using maxes out at 65w output, which I doubt it often hits due to my light usage and power-efficient configuration. A single light bulb.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing. The vast majority of energy needed for computers is in the manufacturing. As [1] shows, the embodied energy in laptops has stayed largely constant over the last decade. The best thing you can do for the environment is to keep using an old laptop instead of throwing it out and replacing it, even if the new laptop draws fewer watts from the wall. [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stoppe...
schemescape 3y ago
Mind sharing more details on your setup? (Distribution, window manager, and, most importantly, browser) I have something similar (but an even older netbook). I'm using Alpine, i3, and mostly w3m (or Midori if JavaScript is needed). Given that Windows 10 on the netbook was completely unusable, it's impressive how functional it is with Linux. It cannot handle modern bloat, however. Firefox just eats up memory until the machine freezes and I can't run a single Electron app for too long. Sadly, those make up far more than 1% of my use cases. Overall, it's nice for distraction-free computing. I learned Common Lisp and Emacs exclusively on that little netbook. I probably would have gotten distracted by some shiny web page partway through if I'd been using my more capable desktop. Edit to clarify: I'm curious what all you're able to accomplish with your similarly spec'd machine.
- usr1106 3y ago
  It's mostly a standard Xubuntu with full disk encryption (just in case the machine gets stolen while travelling) i3 might be even better. I use that at work, but was too lazy to configure it on this machine. I have desnapped it though and download Firefox directly from Mozilla. There is no Chromium on it. Edit: I know that it would choke on opening an ever growing number of Firefox tabs. I just close them. And I don't run the machine for more than a couple of hours before shutting it down. Don't use suspend at all. Edit2: It uses swap. Don't remember whether that was the standard setup or whether I added it myself. Of course you cannot rely on swap for responsive operation, but it helps parking some unused data because the desktop/distro is not optimized at all. And it helps you to get over a tight situation when you forget to close something. When it slows down it's a nice reminder to do so.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    i3 is great, can def recommend for a lightweight computing experience. I run it on my Thinkpad X230 with OpenBSD. perfect setup IMO!
  - schemescape 3y ago
    Thanks! Good to know that Firefox is working for you, even with only 1 GB of memory. I'll need to ponder why my experience was so much worse... Edit to add, in case anyone's curious: suspend works for me (but not hibernate).
winrid 3y ago
You can also just get a used laptop that's 3-4 years old with 8-16gb of ram, and SSD, and some i7 or equivalent CPU for $300. They're insanely fast. Used laptops are dirt cheap. You can then just sell it after a few years and get another 3-year-old used one. Still great use of resources.
- d3w4s9 3y ago
  "insanely fast" Benchmark please. You know what? You can get a new laptop with the latest i3 that is way faster than a 4 year old i7 for a little more than that, and it comes with a warranty. Yes, warranty is actually useful for many people. And most Windows laptops are worth little after 3 years, so this $300 laptop probably is only good for donations after a few more years. (If you have any questions, check out reviews, benchmarks and eBay. I speak from my own experience.)
  - winrid 3y ago
    I'd have to check benchmarks, but my 2018 $300 X1 Carbon with an I7 can play ten YouTube videos at once while having Webstorm, Pycharm, and Clion be responsive.
  - winrid 3y ago
    Going by benchmarks, this seems to be true [0], which isn't too suprising, however once you select 16gb of ram and a 1TB SSD the prices get closer to $500... [0] https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8850H-vs-Intel-Core-i3-13100F/m485626vs4143 https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8850H-vs...
  - rjsw 3y ago
    A refurbished Lenovo T495 is well within the price stated and feels fast enough to me.
DeathArrow 3y ago
You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the user experience? I am used to everything loading in an instant. I rather waste money than waste time. Money I can make, time I can't.
- usr1106 3y ago
  It's not about money. It's about using the planet in a responsible way. Unfortunately ruining the planet and harming many of its inhabitants is very cheap for many in industrialized countries.
  - d3w4s9 3y ago
    Answer the question, please. I am never going to waste time on things like compilation when the laptop next to it can do it faster, yet convince myself "oh but it is better for the planet". I don't know what kind of idiot does that. (Which is why I did not hesitate to replace my laptop when I found that a new laptop would be 1.5x-2x faster in everyday tasks.)
    - usr1106 3y ago
      The question has already been used in my first post: Fully usable for 99% of the users. > 99% of the users never use a compiler. Fully usable also means that you might have to adapt your your habits: Keeping many tabs open is just being unorganized for many users. For a programmer having to checking the documentation of many classes regularly, each of them on a different page it might be slightly different. But 99% are not developers. I am developer. When I build Yocto I am glad to have 32 or 64 GB available. When I travel (for fun) I am glad to be able to use 2 GB efficiently, without really suffering from ultra slow reponse times. A couple of seconds here and there have not spoiled my leisure time.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the user experience? It depends on the software. When the developers are targeting the "average user", then everyone who uses hardware that's significantly older than average will be punished accordingly. This doesn't mean it's actually hard to support that old hardware, it just means that performance isn't a priority. If everyone used old hardware for longer, then the software would support old hardware better. Also, latency has been going up over time rather than down: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/ This is more of a social problem than a technical one.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> But it's fully usable for 99% of users / use cases I doubt that’s true at all. For starters 2GB ram is unusable if you want to have multiple tabs with resource heavy sites like YT open > This planet cannot support many GBs for every human Why? I’m pretty sure it can
- usr1106 3y ago
  Google is a major lead for destroying the planet. Ads waste incredible resources at the edge and in the cloud. 99% completely useless because people just hate them. And the remaining less than 1% even more harmful, manipulating people to buy nonsense products nobody needs. So yes I occasionally watch a Youtube video if it seems really useful. But that's not a tab I would keep open a second longer than absolutely needed.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    Perhaps. You’re certainly not describing the behavior of 99% of internet users who don’t really care that much about these things > Google is a major lead for destroying the planet. Depends on how you define “major”. It’s still relatively insignificant
  - anthk 3y ago
    UBlock Origin does magic. Also, Libredirect it's good once it's properly setup for some broken redirects.
- anthk 3y ago
  2GB of RAM are perfectly usable with ZRAM and UBlock Origin.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    I have an aging 1.3GB smartphone running a modern Lineage OS, and it does many things surprisingly well - even runs a VPN in the background whilst surfing with Mull/Firefox. One limitation I often encounter is that a site with lots of HD XL images, or JS demos with 3D libraries force a lot of background apps to be killed. In most cases this is also fine, but keeping a VPN alive whilst browsing media heavy sites is becoming a factor that I'm thinking of retiring this beloved phone
dfgfek 3y ago
>This planet cannot support many GBs for every human. It can and it does.
- GTP 3y ago
  The issue is more about people changing their devices too often: I remember from years ago (so possibly outdated) that the average person changes smartphone every two years and laptop every 3/4 years. What OP is saying is that most people could totally work with an older laptop that doesn't have 16GB+ of RAM. Especially since most people are using cloud services anyway.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Most people also have zero say. A few people complain that Teams locks up their machine? Time for a batch of 500 new laptops! It happens a lot. And I can't blame people for complaining. I blame the bad Electron apps.
throwaway167 3y ago
I get some Electron hate, but... my 9 year old laptop, a 2nd gen i5 running, albeit with 4G RAM, can handle quite a few Electron apps. At the same time as Gnome, Postgres, the Java hunk that is Jabref, some python apps, Thunderbird and Firefox. Electron's really the minnow.
hengheng 3y ago
I don't know, I could say the same about my two-generations-old smartphone with a Bluetooth keyboard. Except that it has 12 GB / 256 GB. Works a treat for 99% of users and use cases.

jbm 3y ago

> This planet cannot support many GBs for every human Interesting perspective, do you have evidence to support this? Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing.

usr1106 3y ago
No exact calculation about GBs, just a general gut feeling that current resource consumption in the industrialized world is completely unsustainable. With smarter usage only a fraction of resources is needed for still decent user experience.
amatecha 3y ago
In terms of reduction of usage of resources, using an already-existing computer is considered better than manufacturing new hardware. OECD suggests[0] embracing a circular economy to reduce production of waste and consumption of resources. Notably, in the province I reside, 98% of electricity is provided by renewable resources[1]. The electrical grid is already there, and the computer I already have is also already there. Generally speaking, no more resource extraction or pollution of the planet is necessary for me to continue on my computing activities with my existing hardware. All I have time to write right now, but check out the concept of permacomputing and frugal computing... [2][3] [0] https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/OECD-G20-Towards-a-more-Resource-Efficient-and-Circular-Economy.pdf https://www.oecd.org/environment/waste/OECD-G20-Towards-a-mo... (p.24) [1] https://choose.bchydro.com/why-choose-bc/clean-energy https://choose.bchydro.com/why-choose-bc/clean-energy [2] http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html / https://permacomputing.net https://permacomputing.net [3] https://limited.systems/articles/frugal-computing/ https://limited.systems/articles/frugal-computing/
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery. That's what makes it a circle (-: But it's nice that you live near hydro, and you don't need a more powerful computer.
  - Qwertious 3y ago
    >Circular can also mean recycling and resource recovery. In theory it can, in practice todays computers will be unrecyclable e-waste.
usr1106 3y ago
> Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing. This computer is not on 24/7, but only very limited hours. So manufacturing a new one would a relatively high share. Energy is the reason why I wrote ARM would probably be even better. But the Atom is pretty good too. The machine is fanless and when it was new the battery lasted nearly 7 hours (not for watching videos of course). Now that it's pretty old and still on it's first battery it still lasts several hours. Enough to read some news and do some trip planning.
arp242 3y ago
> Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones The differences are marginal; my 7 year old i5 really doesn't use that much more power than a modern i5, if it even uses more power in the first place (I don't have a good way to measure this, and with sleep states and whatnot you really need to measure this to be sure). A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would be if everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7; I originally started doing that because someone said that "everyone should just self-host these things at their home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a horrible environmental impact. And turned out my initial thoughts were wrong, and impact was so small that actually, it didn't matter, and I didn't even both posting my comment. And even if there would be a difference, energy of manufacture tends to outweigh energy usage of usage. There's a long chain of mining, transport, etc. etc. behind all of that I didn't calculate this, but usually the energy differences really do need to be quite substantial to justify the energy usage of manufacture. Maybe I was horribly wrong and made a mistake; I didn't re-do the calculations for this comment out of laziness. But I do strongly encourage anyone to actually calculate or look up what the impact is, because initial "it's bad for the environment"-feelings could very well be wrong, and no one is served if attention, money, and effort is spent in the wrong places.
- znpy 3y ago
  > A few years ago I calculated how much impact it would be if everyone would run a 30W server at their home 24/7; I originally started doing that because someone said that "everyone should just self-host these things at their home", and I wanted to demonstrate that this would have a horrible environmental impact. This is non-sensical. Up to ten years ago most lightbulbs consumed 40-60 watts EACH and no one bat an eye. Heck, the cristmas lights on my Christmas tree absorb ~60 watts with the default pattern (i know because i measured it). I had to manually set a light pattern that consumed only 20W. And no one is crying about Christmas lighting. Consuming 30W 24/7 for home is absolutely feasible, all modern homes can do that just by replacing a single old tungsten-based lightbulb with a led one.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    Yup, seriously, people think an old 35w laptop is inefficient (???) meanwhile burning 60-100w light bulbs all over their home. Yeah, these days LED light bulbs are becoming more commonplace (8-13w or whatever), but even then, if your laptop consumed the equivalent of a few LED light bulbs I think that's pretty darn acceptable. The AC adapter for this X230 I'm using maxes out at 65w output, which I doubt it often hits due to my light usage and power-efficient configuration. A single light bulb.
Qwertious 3y ago
>Older computers almost always use more electricity than newer ones, I don't see how this is a real thing. The vast majority of energy needed for computers is in the manufacturing. As [1] shows, the embodied energy in laptops has stayed largely constant over the last decade. The best thing you can do for the environment is to keep using an old laptop instead of throwing it out and replacing it, even if the new laptop draws fewer watts from the wall. [1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stoppe...

schemescape 3y ago

Mind sharing more details on your setup? (Distribution, window manager, and, most importantly, browser) I have something similar (but an even older netbook). I'm using Alpine, i3, and mostly w3m (or Midori if JavaScript is needed). Given that Windows 10 on the netbook was completely unusable, it's impressive how functional it is with Linux. It cannot handle modern bloat, however. Firefox just eats up memory until the machine freezes and I can't run a single Electron app for too long. Sadly, those make up far more than 1% of my use cases. Overall, it's nice for distraction-free computing. I learned Common Lisp and Emacs exclusively on that little netbook. I probably would have gotten distracted by some shiny web page partway through if I'd been using my more capable desktop. Edit to clarify: I'm curious what all you're able to accomplish with your similarly spec'd machine.

usr1106 3y ago
It's mostly a standard Xubuntu with full disk encryption (just in case the machine gets stolen while travelling) i3 might be even better. I use that at work, but was too lazy to configure it on this machine. I have desnapped it though and download Firefox directly from Mozilla. There is no Chromium on it. Edit: I know that it would choke on opening an ever growing number of Firefox tabs. I just close them. And I don't run the machine for more than a couple of hours before shutting it down. Don't use suspend at all. Edit2: It uses swap. Don't remember whether that was the standard setup or whether I added it myself. Of course you cannot rely on swap for responsive operation, but it helps parking some unused data because the desktop/distro is not optimized at all. And it helps you to get over a tight situation when you forget to close something. When it slows down it's a nice reminder to do so.
- amatecha 3y ago
  i3 is great, can def recommend for a lightweight computing experience. I run it on my Thinkpad X230 with OpenBSD. perfect setup IMO!
- schemescape 3y ago
  Thanks! Good to know that Firefox is working for you, even with only 1 GB of memory. I'll need to ponder why my experience was so much worse... Edit to add, in case anyone's curious: suspend works for me (but not hibernate).

winrid 3y ago

You can also just get a used laptop that's 3-4 years old with 8-16gb of ram, and SSD, and some i7 or equivalent CPU for $300. They're insanely fast. Used laptops are dirt cheap. You can then just sell it after a few years and get another 3-year-old used one. Still great use of resources.

d3w4s9 3y ago
"insanely fast" Benchmark please. You know what? You can get a new laptop with the latest i3 that is way faster than a 4 year old i7 for a little more than that, and it comes with a warranty. Yes, warranty is actually useful for many people. And most Windows laptops are worth little after 3 years, so this $300 laptop probably is only good for donations after a few more years. (If you have any questions, check out reviews, benchmarks and eBay. I speak from my own experience.)
- winrid 3y ago
  I'd have to check benchmarks, but my 2018 $300 X1 Carbon with an I7 can play ten YouTube videos at once while having Webstorm, Pycharm, and Clion be responsive.
- winrid 3y ago
  Going by benchmarks, this seems to be true [0], which isn't too suprising, however once you select 16gb of ram and a 1TB SSD the prices get closer to $500... [0] https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8850H-vs-Intel-Core-i3-13100F/m485626vs4143 https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8850H-vs...
- rjsw 3y ago
  A refurbished Lenovo T495 is well within the price stated and feels fast enough to me.

DeathArrow 3y ago

You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the user experience? I am used to everything loading in an instant. I rather waste money than waste time. Money I can make, time I can't.

usr1106 3y ago
It's not about money. It's about using the planet in a responsible way. Unfortunately ruining the planet and harming many of its inhabitants is very cheap for many in industrialized countries.
- d3w4s9 3y ago
  Answer the question, please. I am never going to waste time on things like compilation when the laptop next to it can do it faster, yet convince myself "oh but it is better for the planet". I don't know what kind of idiot does that. (Which is why I did not hesitate to replace my laptop when I found that a new laptop would be 1.5x-2x faster in everyday tasks.)
  - usr1106 3y ago
    The question has already been used in my first post: Fully usable for 99% of the users. > 99% of the users never use a compiler. Fully usable also means that you might have to adapt your your habits: Keeping many tabs open is just being unorganized for many users. For a programmer having to checking the documentation of many classes regularly, each of them on a different page it might be slightly different. But 99% are not developers. I am developer. When I build Yocto I am glad to have 32 or 64 GB available. When I travel (for fun) I am glad to be able to use 2 GB efficiently, without really suffering from ultra slow reponse times. A couple of seconds here and there have not spoiled my leisure time.
Qwertious 3y ago
>You can use lower grade hardware than that. But how is the user experience? It depends on the software. When the developers are targeting the "average user", then everyone who uses hardware that's significantly older than average will be punished accordingly. This doesn't mean it's actually hard to support that old hardware, it just means that performance isn't a priority. If everyone used old hardware for longer, then the software would support old hardware better. Also, latency has been going up over time rather than down: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/ This is more of a social problem than a technical one.

ffgjgf1 3y ago

> But it's fully usable for 99% of users / use cases I doubt that’s true at all. For starters 2GB ram is unusable if you want to have multiple tabs with resource heavy sites like YT open > This planet cannot support many GBs for every human Why? I’m pretty sure it can

usr1106 3y ago
Google is a major lead for destroying the planet. Ads waste incredible resources at the edge and in the cloud. 99% completely useless because people just hate them. And the remaining less than 1% even more harmful, manipulating people to buy nonsense products nobody needs. So yes I occasionally watch a Youtube video if it seems really useful. But that's not a tab I would keep open a second longer than absolutely needed.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  Perhaps. You’re certainly not describing the behavior of 99% of internet users who don’t really care that much about these things > Google is a major lead for destroying the planet. Depends on how you define “major”. It’s still relatively insignificant
- anthk 3y ago
  UBlock Origin does magic. Also, Libredirect it's good once it's properly setup for some broken redirects.
anthk 3y ago
2GB of RAM are perfectly usable with ZRAM and UBlock Origin.
- tetris11 3y ago
  I have an aging 1.3GB smartphone running a modern Lineage OS, and it does many things surprisingly well - even runs a VPN in the background whilst surfing with Mull/Firefox. One limitation I often encounter is that a site with lots of HD XL images, or JS demos with 3D libraries force a lot of background apps to be killed. In most cases this is also fine, but keeping a VPN alive whilst browsing media heavy sites is becoming a factor that I'm thinking of retiring this beloved phone

dfgfek 3y ago

>This planet cannot support many GBs for every human. It can and it does.

GTP 3y ago
The issue is more about people changing their devices too often: I remember from years ago (so possibly outdated) that the average person changes smartphone every two years and laptop every 3/4 years. What OP is saying is that most people could totally work with an older laptop that doesn't have 16GB+ of RAM. Especially since most people are using cloud services anyway.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Most people also have zero say. A few people complain that Teams locks up their machine? Time for a batch of 500 new laptops! It happens a lot. And I can't blame people for complaining. I blame the bad Electron apps.

throwaway167 3y ago

I get some Electron hate, but... my 9 year old laptop, a 2nd gen i5 running, albeit with 4G RAM, can handle quite a few Electron apps. At the same time as Gnome, Postgres, the Java hunk that is Jabref, some python apps, Thunderbird and Firefox. Electron's really the minnow.

hengheng 3y ago

I don't know, I could say the same about my two-generations-old smartphone with a Bluetooth keyboard. Except that it has 12 GB / 256 GB. Works a treat for 99% of users and use cases.