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Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

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Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#241

Post by uberduper »

owyn wrote: post #39
uberduper wrote: post #24

My 2006 Mac Pro is still perfectly usable, regardless of what Apple claims. It's just loud. :(

Ha yes, 2008 Mac Pro here. Would be perfectly usable if it wasn't deprecated.

They deprecated the 2006 WAY too soon. They blamed it on the 32bit EFI (same reason they didn't support gpu upgrades 2 years after release). It was pretty easy for a handful of major OSX releases to replace one or two files and boot it like normal. Everything worked fine. Was able to upgrade the gpu in a round about way as well. At one point I re-wired the sata bays to connect back to an areca raid controller. Then there was ssd and that kind of changed everything for "old computers."

I'd have it running linux today, possibly as my work machine, if it wasn't so loud and power hungry.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#242

Post by rowanajmarshall »

Jonanin wrote: post #210
jamal-kumar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever lived south of the USA before? Shit gets EXPENSIVE out this way for electronics. I mean I can get my groceries extremely cheap and rent hasn't ever been more than 200$/mo, but electronics are all manufactured out of Asia and the supply lines and/or taxes on specifically that just add all this extra cost that's hard to justify in certain cases. We're talking like 50%+ of the cost you'll find in the USA.…

Why are the import taxes so high?

Lots of Latin America (especially Brazil) still have remnants of import-substitution policies [1], where tariffs on manufactured goods are high to encourage domestic industry. It's one reason Lua was created (in Brazil), because importing customised software from abroad was too expensive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial...

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#243

Post by jquery »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #86
jquery wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still using my 2013 MPro Retina as a nice backup computer (when I need to do MacOS things), I refuse to sell it. It had the last good keyboard before the butterfly came along.

> It had the last good keyboard before the butterfly came along. Wasn't the last of those the 2015 Macbook Pro?

Oh my bad then! Still. The retina screen and it still being supported natively is just chefs kiss.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#244

Post by hothead334 »

Very very cool. I'm writing this on a second-hand MacBook that was given to me by the very wealthy family I used to work for- it had stopped working completely and they said I should take it and see if I could get it fixed. I did, and I hope to have it for as long as I possibly can- I could never have afforded one otherwise.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#245

Post by guywithahat »

Jonanin wrote: post #210
jamal-kumar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever lived south of the USA before? Shit gets EXPENSIVE out this way for electronics. I mean I can get my groceries extremely cheap and rent hasn't ever been more than 200$/mo, but electronics are all manufactured out of Asia and the supply lines and/or taxes on specifically that just add all this extra cost that's hard to justify in certain cases. We're talking like 50%+ of the cost you'll find in the USA.…

Why are the import taxes so high?

They tend to have very left-wing/socialist friendly governments, and instead of just building better products locally the governments have decided to just keep you from buying foreign things. Electronics are particularly hard to make and a desirable market, so they tend to have high tariffs or other limitations.

Famously in Brazil they had a very inward facing economy (propped up mainly by the socialist candidate Lula, who was later arrested on fraud charges). But one of the things they did was build a Blackberry factory which was a big deal at the time, however the phones were always years out of date and generally terrible

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#246

Post by troyvit »

w10-1 wrote: post #119

Give yourself extra life. Buy the best tools you can. Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime. You'll never get the time back that you spend working on unimportant projects, sustaining old builds, placating unhappy people, working on slow computers, etc. Unless it's the fastest way for you to deliver whatever good you have to the world, put it aside, especially if you've inv…

There are more ways to deliver whatever good you have to the world than what's in your day job. Embracing frugality, understanding one's tools by digging in and repairing them? That actually sounds rewarding, teachable, memorable. I laud it.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#248

Post by ephbit »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #238
w10-1 wrote: post #119

Give yourself extra life. Buy the best tools you can. Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime. You'll never get the time back that you spend working on unimportant projects, sustaining old builds, placating unhappy people, working on slow computers, etc. Unless it's the fastest way for you to deliver whatever good you have to the world, put it aside, especially if you've inv…

I wish software developers wouldn't commonly take this advice. There's so many inefficient software out there which appears to be done this way just because the developers are always using the latest and greatest hardware that allows them to be unreasonable about resource usage.

This.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#249

Post by justin66 »

grupthink wrote: post #105

I grew up poor. I was raised to use things until they break. Even then, I'll fix them if I can. I'm still rocking a 2007 custom built desktop w/ an overclocked Intel E8500 Core2Duo. In 2012, I upgraded the hd to an SSD and the GPU with an Nvidia GT640, and converted it into a rock solid Hackintosh. My other computer is a 2013 15" Macbook Pro with maxed-out specs that was purchased for me by my company. Both systems a…

> I'm still rocking a 2007 custom built desktop w/ an overclocked Intel E8500 Core2Duo.

I applaud keeping an old machine going, my main desktop is still a ten year old i7-3770. Still, if we're being honest about it, with an E8500 and the concomitant 8GB memory limit, you're engaged in easy listening at best, not rocking.

Re: Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

#250

Post by seba_dos1 »

Nition wrote: post #67
dijit wrote: post #8

I would have kept the same hardware forever too, but for some reason my tools seem to take more and more resources every year. Silly example is gmail, which loaded in 1s on my 2011 MacBook Pro when new, if it load it again today (I just tried) it takes 35 seconds before I can click anything. Another might be everyone’s favourite software to hate on: Teams. On my 2011 MacBook Pro: fans squealing, UI of the OS becomes…

I know this isn't your main point, but for GMail there's always "Basic HTML view": https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui

In my experience, that's the only sane way to use it even on modern hardware.
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