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The laptop that won't die

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Re: The laptop that won't die

#131

Post by mcv »

zwaps wrote: post #87
ShikhaM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a similar experience but with water and the laptop stopped working

The spill has to remain in the keyboard area. Friend of mine in college spilled.. I think beer?.. on this Thinkpad. He instinctively grabbed it (me, across the room, yelling to keep it stable) and turned it to the side. The fluid got into the fan intake and boom, dead it was.

I spilled an entire mug of tea on my X1E when it was just new. That would have killed any Macbook, but the Thinkpad was fine. Turned it off, unplugged the power, let it drain through the bottom. Next morning, open it up, clean it out, turn it on, and it's fine.

Even had time to make a photo: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/h0663l/good_thing...

Don't count on this too strongly though; not every Thinkpad is spill-resistant, unfortunately.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#132

Post by wazoox »

My 2009 Macbook still works fine, thanks. The battery is a spicy pillow and the Superdrive is dead, but it works, albeit slowly. It's mostly running Debian nowadays (the last supported MacOS release, 10.12, doesn't even run a modern browser nowadays).

I also have a 2007 Sony VAIO in a cupboard running Ubuntu 20.04 just fine, as a backup. Its battery is only good as a UPS nowadays, but the computer works fine.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#133

Post by agumonkey »

nirui wrote: post #104

This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that…

ah well funny, the only dell studio i saw couldn't operate more than 6 months without requiring surgery (motherboard, dvd drive, keyboard)

Re: The laptop that won't die

#134

Post by marginalia_nu »

felixhammerl wrote: post #114
nirui wrote: post #104

This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that…

Wife uses a mid-2013 Macbook Air as a daily driver still after >10 years, works in academia. What happened is simply that CPU stopped being the thing that made stuff slow, so a mid-2010s upper midrange can still hold its own today, ssd was already good then, and memory plateaued around 8gb for entry level machines some 5 years ago. So as long as your thermals don't suck, your ssd doesn't smoke out, and your keyboard…

Atleast for PC hardware, CPU development was severely stifled by lack of competition most of the 2010s.

Intel had no credible competition until AMD got their shit together with Zen, and wasted no opportunity to rest on their laurels. This is also why both newer Zen and also Apple's new silicon is seemingly making such fantastic advances. It's essentially catching up to where we could have been all along if we had a healthier market.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#135

Post by imrehg »

I have a back-in-the-day (2011) maxed out Thinkpad X201, that was somewhere around $1.5k (whooping max 8GB RAM, etc... :)

In the intervening 12 years:

- I've replaced the disk at least 2x (going to SSD, and replacing a failed one with a current 1TB this year)

- Replaced the cooling fan (1x? 2x? I don't remember)

- Replaced the motherboard (that was fun: https://gergely.imreh.net/blog/2022/07/an-open-heart-motherb...)

- Tried to upgrade the wifi card for newer standards (that's a fail, as it seems to be locked down in the BIOS what cards the machine can use)

- Managed to set a max frequency to the CPU so now I don't have a thermal shutdown, it works rock solid and still reasonable performance.

It sounds like a lot of pain, but it's still my favourite device to work on ever since, ArchLinux humming away with XFCE. Not sure what my next machine will be, but this current one will give a run for its money...

Re: The laptop that won't die

#136

Post by Unfrozen0688 »

felixhammerl wrote: post #114
nirui wrote: post #104

This is another Thinkpad festival post? Let me just cold you down a bit by telling you that a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have this DELL Studio laptop released back in September, 2009, and it can still kick very well too if I decide to recruit it back to my "workforce". I retired it just 3~4 years ago because I got a T480. Heck, some of my code (old versions) for the same project that…

Wife uses a mid-2013 Macbook Air as a daily driver still after >10 years, works in academia. What happened is simply that CPU stopped being the thing that made stuff slow, so a mid-2010s upper midrange can still hold its own today, ssd was already good then, and memory plateaued around 8gb for entry level machines some 5 years ago. So as long as your thermals don't suck, your ssd doesn't smoke out, and your keyboard…

Even more so with desktops.

I am running a 2014 CPU i7 4790k with 32GB RAM and a 1070ti.

Due to it being a desktop w noctua cooler the temps never get high. Keyboard and mouse you just replace when worn out.

This year I am thinking about upgrading.

But my 2019 Thinkpad already feels slow... so I never got laptops for long use. They suck.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#137

Post by prmoustache »

RedShift1 wrote: post #74

I'm still rocking a 2012 built HP EliteBook 8540w which I bought second hand in 2015. The weight of the thing is a little bit annoying and the battery is dead. It has never failed me, running Windows 10 now. It has always come back from standby and hibernate without fail. By far the most reliable computer I own. But it is showing its age though, not because of the hardware but because of software. Windows 11 doesn't…

HP Elitebook 8460P of similar vintage owner here. I also bought it second hand, it came with an SSD and a bigger HDD (that died), I replaced the battery a few years ago, bumped the ram to 12GB (I should bump it to 16GB while memory sticks are still available) and it has been running on Fedora Linux for years. It is kind of a heaby brick brick but it works well, everything is still fairly smooth on Gnome with wayland.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#138

Post by diffeomorphism »

shanghaikid wrote: post #32

macbook air m1 16gb 512, fast, quiet, long battery life. I don't think I will replace it in 10 years.

Nice machine but 1400€ while the laptop in the article is $200. So you could replace it 6 times and still come out ahead... and drive more than 1 external display.

Also, I am not sure that the ram or storage won't become limiting within these 10 years, e.g. media is only getting larger (120GB+ for baldur's gate 3), LLMs,... . On a non-mac you can simply grab a 2TB ssd for like $100 and in 8 years can probably replace it with like 8 or 16TB for about the same price.

Again, perfectly nice, quiet, fast machine with a decent display, but soldered stuff sucks. If that were not the case, I would consider upgrading to it from my current 5 year old machine (also 14" 2k HDR ips screen, 16GB ram and above mentioned 2TB ssd upgrade). However, paying 2000€ just to match the ram and storage of my 5 year old laptop is definitely off-putting and you also don't get OS upgrades for the full 10 years, right?

Re: The laptop that won't die

#139

Post by vinc »

My personal laptop is a Thinkpad T440p from 2013 with a modern SSD. I use mostly the command line and a web browser on ArchLinux. For my usage it is just as fast as my modern work laptop!

I also have a Thinkpad X200 from 2008 and this one feel its age a bit so I use it to run my hobby operating system that only have a command line interface and no web browser.

I like that both of them are compatible with Libreboot+SeaBIOS and I'm sad that this isn't the case for new models anymore. This together with the ability to disassemble them so easily make them perfect for me.

I'm a bit worried about 10 years from now when I'll have to find a new computing platform.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#140

Post by dilliwal »

My thinkpad around 11 years old and another Acer Laptop 14 years old (my dad still uses it regularly) are still working but they are too slow for modern video calling softwares.

If I have to do just regular coding and no video calling, they are still the best.

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