Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is pretty good at long service life. I recently had to upgrade the OS on my moms Air and it was a pain in the butt because she ignored updates for so long that all the SSL authority certs expired and the internet didn’t work. Plus Apple’s upgrade software was no longer supported by the servers – server wanted 2fa, moms laptop was too old to know what that is. After a few manual hops, she is now smoothly running…
They do Sonoma on 9 year old laptops? On the Apple site, they are saying only 2018+ laptops get the latest version.
The laptop that won't die
121–130 of 344 posts
Re: The laptop that won't die
#122There's no doubt about it.
> To be fair, I’m not using this machine as my main, daily laptop. If I did, it’s more likely something might have busted a while ago.
Exactly!
The thing that so many people misunderstand is the choice of machine for your work essentially represents a B2B business between you and the company selling these devices.
When someone who truly needs a MacBook, that means they're usually making so much that the price of the machine they're spending on is little in comparison to the profit they're making from it.
On the other hand yes, I do believe companies like Apple are really taking this too far.
Side note: Don't get me wrong here, I also have an old Dell Precision, but not as my main, daily machine. It's just ironic how some people really try so hard to integrate these machines for their work environment.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#123Re: The laptop that won't die
#124Re: The laptop that won't die
#125I feel like this story is also relevant to the 2012 MacBook Pro and Air. My partner kept her air going for more than 10 years, and I saw people who for whatever reason (maybe keyboard or Touch Bar) hold on to those pros long past normal. So consider that another anecdote. Real data would be great here.
Still using MacBooks from that era - a big differentiator might be whether it has integrated graphics or is using a discrete GPU. The discrete GPU ones (i.e MacBook pro) can eventually fail due to the video ram chips getting loose.
Replaced it with a Thinkpad T480.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#126I feel like this story is also relevant to the 2012 MacBook Pro and Air. My partner kept her air going for more than 10 years, and I saw people who for whatever reason (maybe keyboard or Touch Bar) hold on to those pros long past normal. So consider that another anecdote. Real data would be great here.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#127* Excellent power usage. Pi uses ~0.7 W and the screen is listed at 3.6W, though I believe it's actually ~7W.
* Each part upgradable and replaceable in a whim. Can change your motherboard or RAM, or add an extra GPU or an entirely different machine, as all of them are up in the clouds!
* Extremely lightweight, 0.75 kg.
* Incredibly thin, 9 mm. Its stand is also its cover, requires no extra bag, except for the HDMI and USB cables. Powerbank? I carry it everywhere anyway. Keyboard? It has only a slightly larger surface area than an iPhone 15 when folded, can carry in my pocket, a cheap Chinese bluetooth one I had lying around (couldn't be bothered to troubleshoot the USB on the Pi.).
* Unmatched connectivity, I have unthrottled datacenter internet, and I can use my phone's LTE connection to connect to the server without skyrocketing my cellular bill, as the only thing transmitted is the screen. School dormitory Wi-Fi is not the best, it introduces extra latency.
OTOH, It lags while scrolling a web page. Bottleneck must be the CPU, because there is no lag when connecting via my iPhone 7. I used NoMachine with the same setup in the past and it had no such lag, could even play YouTube videos from what I remember. I also didn't overclock the Pi to the max and am not using a heatsink nor a fan, and didn't do any sort of performance tuning for the RDP at all. Because I can't be bothered, it works bearably for my school work, and gonna get my new iPhone next week anyway.
Now don't ask me how I managed to re-pair the keyboard with the Pi when it got unpaired and the Pi's local IP got reassigned randomly, from Alpine Linux running in iSH on my current iPhone 7...
Re: The laptop that won't die
#128Macbooks also went through a period of poor quality. I hope Thinkpad improves again in the future.
Re: The laptop that won't die
#129I bought the R60 cheap at a time where i was unemployed and - to put it mildly - dirt poor. My previous desktop system (a quiet powerful gaming rig) was fried by an overcurrent due to lightning strike and this left me without a usable computer. Which is bad if you are looking for work and need to write applications and CVs.
At that time it had an spinning 40 GB HDD, a cracked case, loose and wobbly display hinges, a battery life of about 15 minutes and an not very powerful Core Duo CPU. It was slow, looked like trash but it helped me getting back on track.
After landing a new job i started to fix the R60 and make it a bit more usable. The first thing i did was to order a new battery. Thankfully, the Thinkpad has an easy changeable battery: Just turn it over, push the quick release and put in the new battery (a feature that is utterly missing on todays laptops).
The next thing that i swapped out was the hard disk: At the time i had landed a new job but my financial situation was still very edgy, so i rummaged through local private ads until i found a very cheap (about 10 Euros) 120 GB HDD. This gave me a bit more "breathing room" and got me to a really usable - albeit slow - system i could run OpenBSD on. This was the setup i worked with for the next couple of years. At some point i had again the financial means to easily replace the system with something more up to date... but for what? I could code on this system and do everything i needed it for.
A couple of years later (at this time the Thinkpad had already got an SSD and an major optical overhaul), on one morning the display was broken. On one half it displayed everything ok, on the other half it was more or less pixel mush.
Thankfully, even that was no problem. I bought an replacement display of ebay for about 30 Euros (which came from an better model and had a better resolution), spend a few hours looking at a couple of repair videos on YouTube and read a bit i could easily change the display.
Now, a major problem was the Core Duo CPU (being 32 Bit), a couple of months ago i looked into the matter if i could future proof the R60 a bit more... and yes, no problem! I found out that i could easily switch out the CPU for an Core 2 Duo, so i again looked into ebay and bought a brand new (ok, NOS) CPU for about 10 Euros, spend an lazy afternoon taking the R60 apart (and as i had it open already cleaningit) and switched out the CPU. The Core 2 Duo may be still an outdated design, but it was a major power boost and made especially surfing the modern web (a thing i try to avoid but is sometimes nescessary) much more palatable.
So... with the story of the Thinkpad written down, will i at some time replace it? Yeah, very likely, but this is a day in the far future and even then i will perhaps go for something like the MNT Reform (in my mind a spiritual successor of the Thinkpads of the olden days). But as i said: Not now or in the foreseeable future
Re: The laptop that won't die
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Win 7 SP1 was peak desktop computing for sure. Actual desktop-first design without security kindergarten cancer that is every windows OS after.
What are you claiming was improved compared to Win2K? As far as I can remember everything after that was dumbed-down UI and pointless security clickthroughs.