The laptop that won't die • Hacker News Board

Re: The laptop that won't die

#241

Post by srvmshr » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

wiredfool wrote: post #154

baz00 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the same is true of Apple stuff. I mean the current line of soldered SSDs, RAM and pain in the ass to remove batteries is quite frankly annoying as hell. And Apple service isn't much better (it has been 2 weeks and I'm waiting for them to refund AppleCare on something but they have a bug in their system that is preventing it that no one knows how to fix). As for Lenovo, at that price, I can usually just buy a…

The 2016+ era MBPs were awful. The previous 2 generations were good, but had their occasional issues. Like the drive cable on the unibody MBP. I got 7 years out of a 2012 Air. The jury is still out on the m1 era, but it's looking better. We'll know for sure in about 5 years.

I still use two fully specced out 15" MacBook Pro Mid-2015. Battery lasts me close to 3 hours still on a regular work day.

My previous 2010 MacBook pro similarly lasted 6 years (until about 2016 when I got two of these machines).

Apple used to have a different league of build quality back then. It all started going down in late 2016.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#242

Post by regularfry » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #210

regularfry wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with the zero 2w is that building anything on it seems to knock out the wifi. I've got a couple on the local network as terminals and if I try to build (e.g.) a recent python interpreter, the ssh connection dies to the extent that I have to power-cycle them. I presume they're just going into swap, but they never come back. Now that's not your use-case if you've got a remote server and all you're us…

It might be that your power supply can't keep up with the demands of wifi on top of heavy cpu use. What's your power supply rated?

12.75W, max 2.5A.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#243

Post by ryzvonusef » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

dataworm wrote: post #237

ryzvonusef wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me sir, you are interrupting our Thinkpad circletrek, begone with your Dell heresy. I absolutely love my cute little Thinkpad X230T, but finding a battery for that fits the T variant is a pain in the butt in my country, I tried like a 6-7 in the shop but they were all old and dead, very little market for them so they stayed unused and died out, I am limping along on my 15-minute battery for now. I believe Leno…

The TPM requirement can be easily bypassed with a registry key.

True, but I believe it's just a harbinger of other such changes. Today it's TPM, tomorrow it's pixel shaders.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#244

Post by wrzuteczka » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

My Bose QC 35 headphones are like that. I just replace the ear pads every few years and they are like new.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#245

Post by osigurdson » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

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…

I have had 2 Dell XPS 13s that died due to the power connector getting worn out (but otherwise work completely fine).

Re: The laptop that won't die

#246

Post by vinc » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

boricj wrote: post #187

rollcat wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 12-year-old laptop still kicking isn't that big of a deal. I have a 20yro TiBook. Both the RTC and the main battery are dead, and there's a tiny screen defect, but the machine is otherwise perfectly usable (if relatively slow). And by usable, I mean the desktop experience of Mac OS X 10.5 often feels more polished than that of some of the modern OS's... The big bummer is that the modern web keeps raising a wall t…

If modern encryption is that big of a performance drag, would using a proxy that deals with the encryption sidestep that issue? With hardware that old and power-hungry, I'd expect a proxy hosted on a modern single-board computer in the local network to be essentially a rounding error on the electricity bill in comparison.

The proxy can also be hosted on a cheap virtual machine somewhere.

Personally I have a small proxy that convert HTTPS and Gemini to HTTP/0.9 with an option to use a readability library to keep only the content of the articles I'm browsing and not show anything else.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#247

Post by k3liutZu » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

I just booted up my 2009 MacBook Pro since it's the only machine I still have with a CD/DVD drive. Some keys are not working (eg R, T, P, probably others) so I had to use the accessibility on screen keyboard.

I was surprised it still booted up and I was able to use the optical drive.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#248

Post by inparen » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

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…

My Dell studio 1535 still allows me to browse web.

MacBook Pro bought 5 years ago, failed three times. It refused to boot now.

I have used HP, Thinkbook, Dell, Mac laptops.

I trust Dell laptop most.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#249

Post by sdflhasjd » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

I was thinking about this the other day when I was using my 11 year old X1 Carbon. It was used an abused for most of those years and aside from the battery which doesn't have the life it used to, everything else works just as well as it did when it came out of the box (oh, and the 3G modem that will stop working soon)

My 2017 MacBook Pro on the other hand was comparatively coddled, yet in spite of Apple's quality engineering... one of the keys doesn't work, the coating of the screen has worn in places, the USB ports don't hold cables without them falling out, the touchbar occasionally flickers, it can overheat with worse performance than the X1.

Some of these are just luck (but the 2017 MBP was probably Apple's worst product in recent memory for me), but what can't be attributed to luck is the support. Okay, neither Apple nor Lenovo really supports either of those machines any more, but the Macbook will not receive the Sonoma update, and as a consequence at some point will no longer work with the latest XCode. The X1 on the other hand is still running the latest Windows 10 and probably will do for another 5 years.

Re: The laptop that won't die

#250

Post by ta1243 » Tue, Nov 14, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

GolfPopper wrote: post #98

shallichange wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the trackpad skip? That’s the only thing that is not perfect about my x220. The only app that kills it is the dammed Zoom

I dislike trackpads, and use pointing sticks (or external mice, or trackballs) instead. (I know, I'm extremely picky on my input devices.) The first thing I do with a new Thinkpad is disable the trackpad, and then I never think about it again. FWIW, I've noticed knock-off replacement keyboards consistently have awful pointing sticks.

trackpad is useful as a scrollbar. Main mouse is the nipple, or an external mouse when I'm at my desk, but for scrolling I do find the trackpad useful. My window manager has "disable while typing" set, and scrolling set to edge scrolling, so I can use my right thumb to scroll without moving my hands.