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Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

geoff.greer.fm

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Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#241

Post by ajacksified »

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.

I just replaced my wife's failing 2013 MBP; meanwhile, my 2009 MBP with "real" parts (I upgraded the RAM, swapped out the battery, and replaced the HDD with an SSD), is chugging along quite happily, validating my hatred of the move from replaceable, common components to integrated parts for the argument of "thinness."

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#242

Post by wwweston »

coredog64 wrote: post #209
wwweston wrote: post #88

My daily driver is mid-2012 pre-retina MBP. It's entirely adequate. I fear the day it dies because there are no more non-glossy MBPs, and I'm either going to have to make the choice to give up a matte display or give up macOS. It did recently go down and I pulled out a 2008 MBP. Mostly adequate, lag does start to show, though. My guess is that it's an issue of constrained memory (max 4GB?) as much as processor. Tops…

There’s a guy that has built a patching tool to “Hackintosh” an older, unsupported Mac with the newest OS: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Thank you! I'd wondered about that. I'm on the fence about whether it's worth sticking with old Apple hardware if going that route -- if you're going to hackintosh, maybe current spec'd hardware is a better target? -- but there's a case that it's less likely to have problems (and perhaps an ethical case regarding respect for Apple's licensing rights).

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#243

Post by fsagx »

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.)

The OLPC gizmo from the mid 2000s was pretty close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO

A kind neighbor gave one to my kids. It had no games, so they were not really interested. I thought it was great! Super long battery life, great wifi reception with the external antennae, very ruggedized. It had some fork of Fedora iirc. I kept it in the van. There was a lot of free wifi in those days. Plenty good to ssh to a screen session while out-and-about.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#244

Post by scottlocklin »

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 have a stack of X220s and parts which should last me the rest of my career, or at least until someone makes another laptop with an actual keyboard and a non crippled CPU.

Main thing that worries me is the bios, but coreboot seems to work.

It's funny the one I bought new direct from Lenovo in 2011 is still fine, but I was able to upgrade doubling the core count and getting USB3 by assembling out of I7 parts.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#246

Post by isostatic »

JonathonW wrote: post #100
wwweston wrote: post #88

My daily driver is mid-2012 pre-retina MBP. It's entirely adequate. I fear the day it dies because there are no more non-glossy MBPs, and I'm either going to have to make the choice to give up a matte display or give up macOS. It did recently go down and I pulled out a 2008 MBP. Mostly adequate, lag does start to show, though. My guess is that it's an issue of constrained memory (max 4GB?) as much as processor. Tops…

Recent-ish (10.7 and later) versions of macOS tend to fall apart under memory pressure with traditional hard disks-- more so than previous versions did or than Windows does on similar hardware. My hunch is that they changed something in their virtual memory subsystem to takes advantage of characteristics of SSDs that isn't quite so friendly when your drive has significant seek times. A consequence of this is that an…

> Recent-ish (10.7 and later) versions

10.7 (Lion) came out nearly 8 years ago. That's the sort of difference in time between windows 3.1 and windows XP

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#247

Post by isostatic »

0815test wrote: post #202
ams6110 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They do. They are called Chromebooks.

Chromebooks suck. Just buy a cheap Windows laptop (and most recent models are going for the Chromebook-like "ultrabook" form factor anyway, even at the low end) and put lightweight Linux on it. You don't really get better specs for the price if you go the Chromebook route, and the whole way they're setup makes them pointless toys. (...No, I'm not going to look for the correct custom firmware for whatever my model of…

I got my mother-in-law a chromebook 2+ years ago. Haven't had a single support call since then, until she came round to stay and wanted to connect to our wifi to watch netflix.

This didn't happen with a cheap windows laptop, and likely wouldn't have happened with a roll-your-own linux laptop.

A chromebook isn't for me, or you, but it's great for parents/inlaws.

Re: Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

#249

Post by brett40324 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #55
seiferteric wrote: post #14

I have my ~2008 T61 as my pfsense router now. I was using it until about 2-3 years ago, but I felt it was barely usable anymore. I think anything with a Core 2 duo is past its useful life. Anything just slightly newer with Nehalem? I think would still be usable today.

I have a Core 2 Duo machine running Elementary I break out once a month or so since it has some cool synth software on it. It's totally usable for me, and that's with a pretty bloated OS compared to alternatives.

> synth software I use a 2008 MBP 17" because I have legacy versions of music production software that costs a lot, that I can no longer upgrade. It runs great, but it has an occasional memory buffer overload when trying to record and playback too many tracks at once.
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