Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

geoff.greer.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 295 posts

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#151

Post by erik »

teekert wrote: post #91
markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

Up until last month I used a MBP from early 2011 daily. I did get (over time) 16 GB ram, an SSD, new battery, GPU replace (by Apple for free due to an issue) and a new charger. Lost month it really died though, no idea what it is (not the ssd, not the ram).

Apple's replacement program for the 2011 MBPs with bad GPUs just swapped in another motherboard with the exact same faulty GPU. All the 15" 2011s eventually die of the same problem. The clock is ticking on mine.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#152

Post by coverband »

htk wrote: post #136
markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

T420 here for the nostalgia. Apart from the ssd and ram upgrades, the FHD IPS upgrade made it an excellent cheaper alternative to the thinkpad 25th anniversary edition. My only problem with it is the battery, I bought a new one but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours. If anyone here is planning to do the FHD upgrade, be very careful with power, you need to remove the battery/power cable and press the power button a cou…

T500 owner here with (what at the time was quite expensive) on-board plus discrete graphic cards and 1600x1050 screen. After replacing the drive with SSD and upgrading to 6GB, it's working as good as when I bought it in 2009, even with Win10Pro on it.

I wish the multiple replacement batteries I got for it over the years were as performant ;o)

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#153

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

markvdb wrote: post #9

2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220 daily user here. Really nice machine really for my needs, running the latest Debian smoothly. I do have a spare ready to take over if needed. Old hardware could always die very suddenly. It's a frugal solution, both cheaper and more ecological than buying new.

I like this approach. Sudden demise of older hardware is the always saddening when it occurs. The thing is, if you went old enough to be able to afford spares with the money you saved versus buying new, it is still the better and more frugal solution.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#154

Post by duado »

anonu wrote: post #149

My 5 year old MBP is still awesome .... So much so that I feel bad I bought the latest MBP. It's not "much" better. I often recommend people buy a ten year old full-frame dSLR. Quality photos are more dependant on the photographer and maybe the glass... Megapixels aren't that important with a full frame sensor made in the last 15 years...

A $300 Canon 5D with a fast lens like a 28/1.8 or 35/2, in good light, outperforms most of what you can get today in any similar price range.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#155

Post by 0815test »

alkonaut wrote: post #63

Most 8-10 year old laptops are perfectly fine if you put an SSD in them. I just upgraded a 2011 mbp from 4GB and spinning disk to 8GB and SSD. The difference is remarkable. It wasn’t usable at all (as in trivial things like logging in could take minutes) and now it’s snappy. Old laptops without such upgrades aren’t really viable these days unless you work all day in a terminal.

> ...Old laptops without [RAM+SSD] upgrades aren’t really viable these days unless you work all day in a terminal.

Huh, I don't think this is correct. A lightweight Linux distribution such as Debian can make very good use of even a spinning-rust HDD, as long as it has enough available RAM that it's not hitting disk all the time. As I've mentioned in a different comment, even 512MB RAM can be more than enough _if_ you have no need for a web browser.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#156

Post by wvenable »

cr0sh wrote: post #141

I bet if somebody held a gun to my head, and I was at least allowed to dial in via modem to a *nix server with node.js on it - I could probably do my current job, to a certain bare-bones level... ...using my TRS-80 Model 100. Don't get me wrong - it would be a nightmare and no fun, and some things just wouldn't be possible. Though that's definitely not what the author had in mind...

I think it's the difference between possible and viable. I mean I have plenty of devices that are possible to work on but not really very viable. But, like the author, it's surprising how well you can get by. I've done useful work on my 8.4" tablet with a keyboard and remoted into a server.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#157

Post by dfox »

danans wrote: post #111

A related question that is also interesting: What is the oldest laptop that can run an up-to-date, internet connected OS (i.e a museum device with the same OS from 1991 doesn't count). It doesn't have to have a fancy desktop, but it does have to support connectivity to the internet, and run all the latest security patches and updates. This is different than the article because optimizing productivity isn't an objecti…

I used ThinkPad X32 (2004) with 768MB RAM as primary laptop until around 2015 (I switched to X200s because I got one for essentially free, not because the X32 could not keep up) and it was certainly usable for both development work and web browsing including youtube and social media (today it is not).

On a similar note our Logistics Manager had used T42 with Windows 7 on daily basis as his only work computer well into second half of 2018. Coincidentally just today I had repurposed that particular T42 to serve as host for various industrial automation related configuration tools.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#158

Post by wlesieutre »

stcredzero wrote: post #147
cr0sh wrote: post #141

I bet if somebody held a gun to my head, and I was at least allowed to dial in via modem to a *nix server with node.js on it - I could probably do my current job, to a certain bare-bones level... ...using my TRS-80 Model 100. Don't get me wrong - it would be a nightmare and no fun, and some things just wouldn't be possible. Though that's definitely not what the author had in mind...

Someone needs to make a modern day equivalent of a Model 100. By that, I mean a highly portable instant-on computer one can do remote terminal work on with seemingly endless battery life. The first programming job I was ever paid for, I did a large part of dialed in through a modem over landlines. Emacs was fantastic for that! (Because it's an OS masquerading as an editor.)

iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard?

https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/12/brydge-pro-keyboard/

The OS has a lot of limitations on doing local development work, but if you're connecting to a remote server you get a great quality screen and remarkably long battery life. Apple lists "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music."

Keyboard has its own battery (default connection is bluetooth, you can use a USB-C cable if that's not reliable enough). It's not clear to me if it can use its battery to charge the iPad or not. Either way, you can always carry a USB-C battery pack to extend the iPad's life even further.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#159

Post by alkonaut »

0815test wrote: post #155
alkonaut wrote: post #63

Most 8-10 year old laptops are perfectly fine if you put an SSD in them. I just upgraded a 2011 mbp from 4GB and spinning disk to 8GB and SSD. The difference is remarkable. It wasn’t usable at all (as in trivial things like logging in could take minutes) and now it’s snappy. Old laptops without such upgrades aren’t really viable these days unless you work all day in a terminal.

> ...Old laptops without [RAM+SSD] upgrades aren’t really viable these days unless you work all day in a terminal. Huh, I don't think this is correct. A lightweight Linux distribution such as Debian can make very good use of even a spinning-rust HDD, as long as it has enough available RAM that it's not hitting disk all the time. As I've mentioned in a different comment, even 512MB RAM can be more than enough _if_ you…

Yeah hence my caveat “unless you work in a terminal all day”.

Could be rephrased as “I’m assuming you are using a fat IDE or equivalent such as any big commercial content creation software”.

But let’s call at least a modern browser par for the course for professionals.

For using 10 year old apps, or apps that haven’t been made a lot heavier in the past 10 years, obviously you won’t need more than a 10 year old computer.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#160

Post by akhilcacharya »

JBorrow wrote: post #142
akhilcacharya wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you're basically causing more problems than you're solving if you're stingy with hardware to that degree. My company is smart about it, IMO - cheapest new MBP 13 variant (no touchbar from 2017), but maxes out SSD and RAM. It's light, thin, and has great battery life for office work and plugs into a provided thunderbolt dock at a desk.

For the price of the 2017, 13 inch, non-touchbar with 16GB ram and 1TB SSD you can get the base model 15 inch, with 3x as many cores and DDR4, not LPDDR3 ram. Doesn't really make sense.

Well we have 512gb SSD not 1TB (forgot the base model offered that) and our workloads aren’t core heavy - we have AWS instances for that.
Post reply on HN