3 ms·
There are a lot of different factors at play. What you're seeing looks similar but has many different causes in different cases, like having a runny nose. Lots
by throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
There are a lot of different factors at play. What you're seeing looks similar but has many different causes in different cases, like having a runny nose. Lots of different things cause it, same symptom.
Software can decay, hardware can decay, both can exacerbate each other. The registry gets filled up, the filesystem gets fragmented, the software accumulates in memory, upgrades of the same software accumulate hacks and poor design leads to worse fixes to problems, and slowly buggier versions are shipped. The hard drive slowly fails, the SSD loses viable blocks, the fan and heatsink gets clogged with dust and less efficiently cools the system, the battery loses capacity which causes the system to throttle itself, the power supply components slowly degrade causing voltage inconsistency, tin whiskers develop.
The simplest explanation I can give is entropy. Everything in the universe is in a state of decay. Eventually the thing decays so much it breaks down.
- PaulHoule 3y agoI definitely had a desktop replacement laptop which got terribly clogged with dust in my dusty old house and revived it with a spray can of some F-gas that has terrible global warming potential. I was hoping we'd get a fluoroketone based replacement but now we know fluoroketones are dangerous PFAS (makes me wonder what to do with the expensive 3M contact cleaner I bought now that I think of it) I had two mac minis that operated in the same conditions and seemed well designed enough that dust got separated from the air that went through the computer so it never got clogged up.