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Ask HN: How long do you use your personal laptop before replacing it?
0. What's your profession?
1. Which laptop do you use as your personal laptop?
2. How long do you use yours before getting a new laptop?
- ColdStream 3mo agoIn a professional setting, about 5 years. Just various office work, nothing to intense. In personal life, currently 17 years. Lenovo T400 still rocking on. Beyond SOME web browsing there just isn't anything yet that heavy that demands anything more than this thing.
- thallavajhula 3mo ago17?! Holy cow that's a really long time. What OS do you run on it?
- ColdStream 3mo agoTrisquel Linux. As the laptop runs Libreboot, it makes that laptop a 100% free/open machine (outside of microcode/ROM firmwares). As that distro is built to be 100% free/libre software it sort of unofficially targets the T400 as the upper limit of the hardware. As such it is all kept fairly lean. Yes, other than my phone, I did go 'The Full Stallman'.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rails 3mo agoSoftware Engineer, use it partially for private and professional purposes. In historical Order: Thinkpad X201, Then a Thinkpad T450s, currently a Macbook Air M2, usually in the biggest configuration. Usually I use it about 7 years. Not because it doesn't work anymore, but because it gets too slow for what I am doing with it. In one case it was the switch from C++/C# to Rust and the compile times became unbearable. The next switch might be because of LLMs.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoThat's basically one of the main reasons I'm trying to switch my M1 Air.
- onion2k 3mo ago0. Engineering Manager, but I still write code. 1. I don't. I have a Mac Mini. I don't quite understand why people have laptops at home if they always use it in the same place. I spent years getting my office setup to be great so I don't need a computer I can move around. 2. Mostly dependent on what shiny new Mini is available. I had an 8GB M1 for 5 years, then moved to an 24GB M4 Pro last year because local AI looked fun. I'll probably upgrade to an M5 later this year because there are tangible improvements in the hardware.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoThanks! What do you carry when you travel?
- onion2k 3mo agoIf it's for work, my work laptop. If it's not for work I won't be using a computer, so my phone is enough.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoGot it, thanks!
- dcminter 3mo agoTaking your puzzlement at face value... > I don't quite understand why people have laptops at home if they always use it in the same place. A lot of people wil be using it from the sofa or generally in a shared space where it's not convenient to have a permanent computer setup. Those who usually use it in one place may want the flexibility of occasionally using it from the coffee shop or while on vacation.
- onion2k 3mo agoThose are people who don't use their computer in the same place. A laptop is great for them. I know plenty of people who only use their computer sat (or standing) at the desk in their home office. And yet they still insist on buying a laptop. It's odd.
- moomoo11 3mo ago0. founder 1. m1 max 32gb 2. i bought it used for $900, i'll use it until it no longer works for my needs (build speeds, running docker stuff locally) and then i'll get whatever future renewed macbook i can get on amazon for 900-1000 bucks
- thallavajhula 3mo agoThanks for the response. Do you run any LLMs locally?
- moomoo11 3mo agonope
- speedgoose 3mo agoI used to change more frequently but since I got a MacBook Pro M1, the original one, I am still waiting for something significant better.
- thallavajhula 3mo agogot it, thanks!
- dcminter 3mo ago0. Developer 1. Dell Latitude 7490 2. As long as I can. I think I've been on the Latutude for about 4 years now, but it's a second-hand device coming up on seven or eight years old. I generally don't need much oomph for the stuff I like to do at home (I don't game for example). I had a series of XPS laptops, but the battery life in use was poor and they tended to need the battery replacing quite quickly (puffy batteries - possibly because they run quite hot). Prior to that I'd been on second hand Thinkpads, with the X220s still kicking around somewhere in case the main device dies. I reckon the current Dell has at least a couple more years in it for my purposes. It has 64Gb ram so until website bloat gets out of control I'm good I think. I have a fairly fast mini-pc with oodles of ram on the network that I use as a sacrificial yolo machine for Claude, and an elderly desktop machine with a decent GPU for local running of LLMs. The latter is noisy and in practice it hasn't been turned on for months. I hate Macs, but envy you the battery life and spiffy Arm CPU (yes, I know about Asahi, but until one can safely entirely wipe MacOS from the Mac I'm not interested).
- thallavajhula 3mo ago8 years and still kicking? and with more life left? For a Dell, that's amazing.
- dcminter 3mo agoI was issued an equivalent Latitude 7490 at a gig in 2019 and enjoyed using it (under Linux). It's robust and easily upgraded, but a little heavier than I would like. I replaced the battery a year or two ago. I generally haven't had much trouble with second hand Dell and Thinkpad machines; perhaps buying second hand means that the real lemons are already ewaste? Though the XPS machines bought new were fine aside from the annoyingly brief battery life. Currently using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 under Linux for work stuff and I like that (much lighter) so if I can get one second hand with enough memory I might choose that when/if the Dell eventually feels too slow.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hollerboy 3mo ago0. Developer 1. Lenovo L340 2. I often find that ~5 years is about the right time to change so i can stay somewhat in touch with the current tech. I often get lower-spec devices as i mostly work via remote machines though
- thallavajhula 3mo agoGot it. Yeah, 5-7 seems like the common timeframe among devs.
- huncyrus 3mo ago0. Founder 1. MacBook Pro 2019; Asus G56rj; Asus F15 2. Still using them, MacBook is old~ish, but still working, the heavy lift for containers, etc running on a separate home-lab machine, but still good. Battery is not decent anymore (~2-4h). The Old g56rj is my homelab (16gb mem). The F15 is for local LLM & stuffs that requires a dedicated 4xxx GPU (image processing, compiling, local ai tests)
- thallavajhula 3mo agoWould you mind sharing which LLM you're running locally on your F15?
- hmahonen 3mo agoAs long as possible. 0. Software developer 1. Current laptop is HP EliteBook 835 G7 (16 GB/256 GB SSD). 2. I bought the current laptop secondhand for few hundred a year ago. I expect to get 5+ years out of this one. Previous laptop was MacBook Pro (15", mid 2015) that I would probably still be using, but I need to change it's keyboard and haven't bothered to do that yet. That lasted for 8 years on my use.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoThanks. Also, 5-7 years seems like a common timeframe from what I've noticed in this comment section.
- sdevonoes 3mo agoSoftware. I typically use Macs. Previous one lasted 8-9 years (still working but bad battery). Current one (apple silicon) probably gonna last me the same time
- thallavajhula 3mo agoI've always upgraded mostly due to battery issues. Since the silicon era of macs, IDK if they replace the battery.
- al_borland 3mo ago0. Software engineer 1. 14” MacBook Pro - M1 Pro 2. My current laptop is about 4 years old. Historical, I’ve updated more frequently, but every time I think of doing it I don’t see a point. The M1 has held up amazingly well, a new one would give a minor speed update for some stuff. I don’t use my personal laptop a ton these days, and don’t push it very hard. My work laptop is the same chip, just a large screen. It’s off lease at this point, so I’m due for a new one, but I’m not feeling it as an issue where I’m reaching out about it. My past justification was that Macs held their value well, so I could sell my old one, get a new one, and always be pretty up to date, for a more modest price. With the M1 Pro, I think I may have skipped an entire upgrade cycle already, and will likely skip another one. It is also possible that it feels more like that because Apple is finally shipping regular updates again. For many years during the Intel period, the update cycle seemed random, which I did not like and it made the upgrades less predictable.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoThanks!
- JohnFen 3mo agoSoftware engineer, last laptop was Dell Inspiron, I use it until it breaks in a way I can't fix. Laptops typically last me 7-10 years. However, I decided to switch away from laptops entirely when my last one broke. Towers fit my situation much better.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoYou seem to be in the farther right side of the spectrum in terms of your laptop longevity. 10 years is solid.
- slipwalker 3mo ago0. SWE turned manager against my better judgment 1. MacBookPro M4 base model. 2. roughly 10 years ( my last one was a MCP retina 2015, and before that linux notebooks lasting about the same time ).
- thallavajhula 3mo agogot it, thanks!
- abstractspoon 3mo agoRecently retired software developer. Still using a crappy 2015 Acer laptop for hobby projects since I figure that whatever performance I'm getting it will be heaps better for most other people using my software
- thallavajhula 3mo agoAre you able to run any of the LLM apps (not the OSS ones) like codex or claude on your machine?
- rasikjain 3mo ago0 - Software Engg 1 - Thinkpad 2 - Minimum 3 years. anything above that is bonus. (My 2015 MBP is still running fine)
- thallavajhula 3mo agoI had a MBP 2015, which I upgraded in 2020 to the MBA M1. Now, I'm thinking whether or not to upgrade to a more newer MBA.
- gojkoa 3mo ago0. product developer/consultant 1. macbook pro, generally maxed out spec at time of purchase 2. 5-6 years
- thallavajhula 3mo agogot it, thanks!
- Asmod4n 3mo agoSysadmin who likes to code in his free time. I’ve bought my last MacBook Pro in 2015 and replaced it with a framework 12 this year.
- thallavajhula 3mo agoHow's the Framework laptop? I've heard good things about it, mostly from DHH.
- Asmod4n 3mo agoThe 12 is their convertible, it’s a good couch surfing device but the 13th gen intel i3 really struggles. But that’s what i wanted, I was looking for a native device to test my apps and libs on to see how they perform on a constrained device. I got a Ryzen 9 in a desktop when I need speed.