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Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

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Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#71

Post by dylan604 »

menybuvico wrote: post #70
dylan604 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not set a timer and disable wifi/network for the duration of the time you are setting aside to work without distraction. Or, maybe just close the tab/app with the distracting alerts? lots of way to achieve the same result without limiting yourself to such ancient hardware. Modern Macs have Do Not Disturb mode. I use this frequently

Why would using older hardware be limiting yourself any more than you just described? It just happens to do it by it's nature of being old instead of you deliberately limiting modern equipment. As long as it works, why not use the hardware if you have it and it's still operational? Older desktop PC's have a certain power usage issue compared to modern ones, but laptops usually tend to keep power consumption down.

I run photoshop, after effects, premiere. Those tools are absolutely not going to run on older hardware. Anything media related would just a joke. Even tools like FFMPEG, ImageMagick would run like a turtle processing the media I'm processing on a daily basis. Just because I'm coding something doesn't mean that code isn't doing some heavy lifting that older hardware would be suffice.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#72

Post by edude03 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #25
jeffbee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would such a computer meaningfully differ from either a Pixelbook Go or an iPad with a keyboard? They both have stupefying battery life and there's not many ways to extend it because at this point virtually all of the power goes into the screen.

One of the benefits touted by the linked article is the forced offline aspect. The other is the much more restricted scope of apps, which keeps the user focused. These are technically achievable with an iPad or Pixelbook, but require effort and discipline on the part of the user and on some level directly contradict the design and intended use of both products. I think there are still significant savings to be had in…

Arguably, these goals in terms of battery life / efficiency are already heavily incentivized for mobile developers - and by extension the iPad despite having "high end" processors.

For mobile devices, generally, the strategy is hurry back to sleep, IE ramp up the CPU to do a job quickly then put the processor back in the lowest power state, and for many applications this works great.

For the remaining applications, say mobile games, we might be limited more by the users desires (the best graphics, the lowest latency, the best colors, the most immersive sound) rather than this sort of hardware not being available.

All this to say, I agree with you that such a device could still exist, I'm just saying we might be that far from it.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#73

Post by aww_dang »

mkeeter wrote: post #32
linguae wrote: post #28

One of the things I miss about older laptops is the keyboards. I would love to buy a laptop that is built like a PowerBook G4 or a ThinkPad X61 but with modern displays and modern internals, and with extra bonus points if it has user-replaceable batteries and user-serviceable storage and RAM. I've found the Thinkpad X62 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/ ) and X210 ( https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/t…

Have you seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... It's not as powerful as most modern laptops (uses an iMX8 SOM, rather than an x86 CPU), but it's got a full keyboard, trackball (!), replaceable batteries, etc.

This deserves a discussion on the front page.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#74

Post by nordsieck »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #55

George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.

> George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels

A much better modern alternative is the Alphasmart Neo 2.

* It was designed for elementary school children so it's decently rugged. * It runs a long time (months) on 2 AA batteries. * To get the text off the device, it impersonates a USB keyboard, making it compatible with basically every computer.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#75

Post by menybuvico »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
menybuvico wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would using older hardware be limiting yourself any more than you just described? It just happens to do it by it's nature of being old instead of you deliberately limiting modern equipment. As long as it works, why not use the hardware if you have it and it's still operational? Older desktop PC's have a certain power usage issue compared to modern ones, but laptops usually tend to keep power consumption down.

I run photoshop, after effects, premiere. Those tools are absolutely not going to run on older hardware. Anything media related would just a joke. Even tools like FFMPEG, ImageMagick would run like a turtle processing the media I'm processing on a daily basis. Just because I'm coding something doesn't mean that code isn't doing some heavy lifting that older hardware would be suffice.

If you need to do some heavy work then an older system obviously won't do. Editing files with Vim, on the other hand, works just fine with something like a Core 2 or Pentium M.

Everyone's use case is different, but in many cases, older hardware simply isn't a limitation.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#76

Post by cwyers »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #55

George R.R. Martin uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS to write the Game of Thrones novels, he saves his work on floppy disks. Of course, he has a second computer for email and web browsing.

Can you imagine how long it would be taking him if he was distracted by modern computing?

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#77

Post by vladvasiliu »

saagarjha wrote: post #58
war1025 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.

> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?

I don't know about most, but it seems like many "not very high end" laptops from around 2015 didn't have 5 GHz.

My late 2013 mbp has it and I discovered the other day that it can actually negotiate up to around 1 Gb/s.

On the other hand, I have an HP ProBook 430 G2 lying around the office. I don't know when it was bought, but it has an i5-4210U which according to intel was launched in Q2 2014. So the laptop must be from late 2014. It has a Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe wifi card which doesn't know about 5 GHz. It works acceptably well otherwise.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#78

Post by jerzyt »

I'm on a Dell Precision M6400 - it's 12 years old. When it came out it was a $3,000 laptop. I bought mine for about half of that on a fire sale a year later. Still love it, although I do have a 10 year younger ThinkPad, I prefer the much older Dell.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#79

Post by dylan604 »

grugagag wrote: post #59
dylan604 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not set a timer and disable wifi/network for the duration of the time you are setting aside to work without distraction. Or, maybe just close the tab/app with the distracting alerts? lots of way to achieve the same result without limiting yourself to such ancient hardware. Modern Macs have Do Not Disturb mode. I use this frequently

Why not step back in time? That is an experience in itself, as the author points out the keyboard does make a difference. Why vehemently oppose that?

If it were a '69 Camaro, 'vette, or Mustang, sure, the older hardware would be exciting. However, they would not be very good daily drivers. Their fuel efficiency is crap, their safety features are non-existent, but they do look cool. If all I did was boring text based code work, then maybe an old hunk-o-junk could suffice, yet it's fuel efficiency (battery life) would also suck. I do get the fact that they might be dirt cheap, but you better buy 2 of them because anyone with an old car that runs has a junk car to get parts from to keep the other one running.

Re: Why I still use an old PowerPC Mac

#80

Post by nwallin »

saagarjha wrote: post #58
war1025 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a job interview a year and a half ago where part of the interview was to give a walkthrough of my solution to short "homework" problem. Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz and they had no 2.4ghz access points. Ended up having to use a cellular wifi hotspot they had lying around to get anything to work.

> Got there and tried to connect my laptop to their wifi network. No dice. My laptop (2014-15 era) doesn't do 5ghz Wow, that’s surprising…most laptops from like 2010 onwards have done 5 GHz. Did yours have a particularly old Wi-Fi card in it?

I bought a new laptop a few months ago that does not do 5GHz. It's a Dell Inspiron 3195, with a Qualcomm Atheros 9565 wireless card. The laptop is still available for purchase. When I purchased it it was on sale for $200. (not sure if the link is my exact model, but all the specs are the same, and this particular model does say 2.4GHz with no mention of 5GHz)

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/2-in-1-laptops/inspiron-11-3...

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