51–60 of 298 posts
So I absolutely agree and applaud your effort and think that we should all generally endeavor to use our hardware until it breaks or is completely impossible to work with anymore. However. If you replaced the motherboard, the CPU, the graphics card, and the hard drive, how exactly are you calling this the same computer? Forget "minor upgrades", that's a proper Ship of Theseus - I guess you've got the same case and...…
In general, I do my best to do that, but when it comes to computers, unfortunately, not so much. My current laptop is barely 3 years old, and I'm replacing it this summer. Fortunately, I'll be replacing it with a Framework laptop, and I hope that my experience with it will involve incremental upgrades for many years to come.
When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, my dad used to bring home computers for work, those destined for the dumpster, even though they were mostly in good working order (but were presumably a few generations out of date for the business). I remember replacing RAM, hard drives, graphics cards, sound cards (remember when those weren't built-in, and were a big deal to even have at all?), ethernet cards, anything that was replaceable. I remember getting my first CD-ROM drive, after begging my parents to help me pay for it.
When I went to college, my dad and I put together a computer from new parts, the first time I'd ever done that. It was a big splurge for us, even with my dad getting the parts at a discount from a friend's company. I upgraded that computer for many years as components wore out.
The 2010s probably brought the beginning of shorter-lived computers for me. Many of them were Apple laptops, which are designed to be user-upgrade-hostile, though I can't single out Apple too much; laptops are just harder to upgrade than desktops.
So I'm hoping that Framework will change this, at least to some extent.
That's a very nice lifetime for a build; you should be proud. Though I can't imagine using a 5400 RPM HDD today. 7200 RPM or bust, I'm spoiled… > When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away? Ugh, unfortunately I'm at "throw it away", basically. My current build, built in 2011, won't stay powered up. It gets anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours (and sometimes days) and then i…
My guess is the washing machine, which was down the same line as my office (in addition to our main supply line being extremely undersized), was causing some spikes on the supply voltage.
So I absolutely agree and applaud your effort and think that we should all generally endeavor to use our hardware until it breaks or is completely impossible to work with anymore. However. If you replaced the motherboard, the CPU, the graphics card, and the hard drive, how exactly are you calling this the same computer? Forget "minor upgrades", that's a proper Ship of Theseus - I guess you've got the same case and...…
Although, they still work and have been assembled into an empty case I scavenged, for use by another family member.
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…
My first iPad, I believe it was the third generation: I would have never used it if it were as slow as it has become today. It also lost some synchronization options, though I don’t recall what it was. That being said: I kept my 2013 MacBook Pro retina until a few months ago, one year after a battery replacement which ended up breaking other parts and becoming to expensive to fix. Otherwise it ran perfectly fine and…
Of course, there are situations where you may need a better hardware. But in most cases, people buy under psychological pathologies such as narcissism and insecurity impulsions
i've been through a number of laptops in that timeframe though.
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…
Did the Alpine mail reader stop working with Gmail? I switched to self hosting after Google kicked me out of my account with a broken password reset so I haven't had to switch to a different mail reader.