The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: jordanp123 on August 05, 2017, 08:16:43 PM
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Was just wondering what the age of everyones primary computer is. I just had to say goodbye to my machine, a older dell laptop I'd nursed it alone for over 7 years before the cpu actually went, I'd replaced the hard drive and screen in that time. My new machine is a 2015 model MacBook Air (Bought it from a coworker who just "Had to have" the 2017 model MacBook Pro).
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I've got an 8 year old IMac that is still going strong but I mostly just use my phone
for everything now. I've always had good luck with Apple products so I bite the bullet
with the upfront costs.
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Which one? I've got a few...
Generally between 2 and 5 years old. I've got a 2008 Macbook Pro that still runs, though I don't use it for that much (it's the "house Mac" for when I want to do some photo editing and don't feel like walking out to my office).
I don't like keeping things beyond the end of OS support for security reasons.
My main personal computers are from 2015 - a Haswell iMac in my office that does pretty much everything, and a 2015 Pixel LS (Chromebook of Awesome), since I loved my previous Chromebook but wanted more RAM. Yes, it's in Developer Mode, though it turns out I don't use that as much as I'd expected since most of my work is web based.
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The one on my other desk is about 11+ years old. It's a lap top by Compaq. It's still going strong. The one I use daily is an IMac and is about 5-7 years old I think. I'm not really a big computer guy so I don't know that much about them. We usually get my wife's old one from work when they auction it off to the employees. She just got a brand new one so they should auction it off soon. We have a couple of others here in the house but I don't know how old they are... pretty old. Plus we have 1 iPads. The ipads are probably 4 and 2 years old. I am not an iPad user. I like a keyboard, and no, I am not hooking a keyboard up to an iPad. :)
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13yr old MacG5 - No MicroSoft code -religious thingy
IPad 1 -- current typing platform
IPad 2
iPhone 3GS as iPod for biking-cheaper than contemporary nanos
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Current main computer of the household is five months old, and it set us back about two grand in parts at the end of the day. Core i7 7700K, Z270 board, 32GB of RAM, Samsung 960 Pro SSD boot drive, etc. Only kept the monitor (two year old 4K 24" Dell) and video card (GTX 750) from the machine it replaced. All housed in an ncase M1 mini ITX case. It's kind of a beast. My girlfriend is a professional photographer, and this thing serves her well. Literally the fastest Photoshop machine money can buy. Way faster than her old machine (2011 era Sandy Bridge system with a few upgrades along the way) for her work. An outrageous computer like this is a very bad deal for anyone not fully utilizing it.
My laptop is a work-issued (and used for both work and personal stuff) Dell Latitude E5530. Five years old and still doing pretty OK. I had to upgrade it to Windows 10 and I don't think this laptop likes it. It'll be fine for at least another two years.
GF's laptop is a Dell XPS 15 bought last year from the Dell Outlet. Skylake i7 quad-core, 16GB RAM, 4K display, SSD, etc. Was $1099 refurbed on the outlet when that build new would have been fucking $1849. Does 70% of what her desktop does, but on the road for when she's traveling for work (and almost never even opened at home). This replaced an old Thinkpad T510 (i7 Westmere) that was still a fine machine, but garbage for photo editing (and she's been traveling more for work).
So that's 0-1, 5-7, and 0-1. But if you asked me this time last year, it would have been 5-7, 3-5, and 5-7.
No tablets or other tablet-like bullshittery in our house. We do both have smartphones, about a year old.
That all being said:
For 90% of what 90% of people want to do on a computer, the $300 desktop Walmart special that you bought in 2009 (I'll draw the line at Windows 7) probably still does the job and is chugging along happily, as long as the OS is cleaned out every once in a while, and you don't fill it up with garbage.
And laptops being barfed on or hit with sledgehammers aside, computers essentially don't ever wear out. You might have a hard drive or a power supply fail during a computer's usable lifespan, but the main guts of a computer will last essentially forever, long past their usefulness.
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I use an early 2006 iMac desktop. The harddrive has been replaced 2 (the second time was under warranty from the first time). It has an old OS and cant be upgraded any more, and is kind of fussy.
My son has a desktop PC we built last year and my daughter has a 2014 iMac, which is overkill for her needs. I should have gotten her a PC.
We also have 2 ipads that are 2 and 4 years old.
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Mine is seven this fall and isn't even mine; it's a work machine.
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I have a MacBook Pro which is 8 years old (late 2008 model purchased in April 2009). I've bumped the RAM up to 8GB and added an SSD in that time.
It's been a good workhorse but it's starting to show it's age. Didn't help when I spilt coffee on it last year (replaced the keyboard but it's still not 100%).
I'm nursing it along until I move next, as what I replace it with depends on how much space my next place has.
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My desktop PC is a four-year-old Dell. Just checked the old mail and it was $531.24, including tax, on 3 April 2013. So that seems pretty good at $10.22 per month. I'm still using the monitor from the previous PC. Eventually I'd like a bigger, fancier monitor or multiple monitors or something, but I don't want them badly enough to do anything about it. The mouse function got strange with Windows 10, and I'd get a new mouse if I were sure that'd fix it. Basically it's all going along fine except for the mouse; no plans to change soon.
My laptop PC is a two-year-old-to-me Dell Latitude E6240. I got it refurbished from Walmart.com; I imagine it was probably someone's work computer. It was $298.46 with tax on 13 May 2015, so that's about $11.05 per month at this point. It's getting a little slow now, and I'm not sure exactly how to address it. I don't think it likes Windows 10, but I also haven't done anything specific to maintain it.
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I use a 2011 iMac that is just perfect for me. I have upgraded the harddrive to an SSD over the years and maxed out the ram.
I expect to use this machine for another 3-4 years at least.
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No longer use a computer. I only use a Samsung tablet now.
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Built one from parts 6.5 years ago.
i5 2500k Sandybridge, 8GB DDR3, SSDs, GTX 460 video, quad boots Arch Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Win 10, and Win8.1.
Still a very fast machine even today.
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My laptop is 4.5 years old but I was just thinking of doing some bank account churning to buy a new one. I try to curb my tech spending by forcing myself to pay for those purchases with non-paycheck money. I'm on the fence about it. It is painfully slow to boot up but aside from using it as a thin client to connect to work 3 days a week, I don't use it much. Technically work gave me a nice setup to work from home but I prefer to work on the laptop in the living room than in the dungeon office. My inner cheap and my inner geek are having a very heated argument right now.
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My PC is 3 months old and my last pre-MMM moustache purchase. I7 7700k, 1080Ti graphics etc and a Asus PG348Q 34 inch monitor to go with it. It's brilliant but total overkill. What was I thinking.
Also have a 4 month old iPad Pro, extra punch in the face.
The above has set me back at least 3 months of saving.
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Mine's about 13 years old.
Although... in that time, it's had 3 new motherboards, 5 CPU upgrades, 5 new graphics cards, 2 new power supplies, 4 new optical drives, 5 new hard drives, 2 sound cards, and 4 memory upgrades. But it's still in the same case!
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Oh my god.. .just realised my Mac Pro laptop is 6 & a half years old. I keep thinking it's new... but it's obviously not.
Core i7 7700K, Z270 board, 32GB of RAM, Samsung 960 Pro SSD boot drive, etc.
I lost track of how "fast" or good computers are when they stopped quoting microprocessor speed in MHz.
I am embarrassed that I do not know what any of the above means, though that amount of RAM is 250 times what my dad's computer had back in 2003(?) I forget.
Can we therefore expect computers to have 8TB of RAM sometime around 2030?
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2 laptops, one is coming up for 10 years old but I have upgraded it along the way with SSD and more RAM etc so it still runs pretty good. My other laptop is for browsing, taking camping etc and is much smaller and lighter and is about 5 years old I think. (XPS17 and Aspire S3)
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I built my computer 6 years ago, copied all the components that a friend used when he built his.
I don't know if it is the build or Windows 7, but this has been the most trouble free computer I have had.
My first computer was the Timex/Sinclair 1000, I bought around 1983, it came with a massive 4k of memory.
I upgraded to an astounding 16k of memory! It used an audio cassette recorder to save programs.
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We've got three desktop computers at home:
- One in the basement that's dedicated to recording music only. (5 years old, but just recently got a RAM and OS update - Windows 10).
- One in the living room hooked up to the TV which we occasionally watch youtube/DVDs/British ITV coverage of the Tour de France on. (7 years old - Windows 7)
- One in the spare bedroom that gets used rarely. (14 years old - Ubuntu 16.04)
I used to build and fix computers for people as a side gig, and was very into always having a very fast system. Now I tend to use shit until it breaks and then buy the bare minimum possible to keep things working for another few years.
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My first computer was the Timex/Sinclair 1000, I bought around 1983, it came with a massive 4k of memory.
I upgraded to an astounding 16k of memory! It used an audio cassette recorder to save programs.
Mine too! Things are so much better now.
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I have a 2009 MacBook Pro that I put $750 into six months ago. First money I'd put into it other than a $100 trackpad tweak five years ago. Now runs better than new (I like having the DVD drive). Prior to buying it in 2009, I was a PC guy, going through PC laptops at the rate of one every three years and by the end of that three years they were useless.
My only regret is that I didn't switch to Apple earlier -- and recognize the brilliance of the company and bought stock earlier -- like after watching Forrest Gump talk about Lt. Dan putting his money in "some kind of fruit company" back in 1994. My wife never used a PC until going to work for the school system in 2011. Until then, she only used Mac, worked for a Mac-related magazine, milking a Mac desktop from the mid-90s until 2003 and then a laptop from 2003 until 2010. If only I had put some chips on AAPL at any point up until 2004. Stock up 100x since then, of course.
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I generally buy a very fast desktop that I work from home on and use it for 4-5 years before replacing. That is really not a price/value based decision as my computer is my lifeline to work, it just seems to be around the point that getting a new system set up like I like it and getting used to it is worth the better performance.
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I'm a simple guy. I have an Asus Chromebox that I bought last year after my previous computer died. Celeron cpu. $200. I upped the ram to 8gb, and have it attached to the VESA mount on my monitor.
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I've worked in IT for about 30 years, so it's no surprise, I build my own desktops - heck, about anyone could do it with a little effort.
From most recent to oldest that I still currently use at home or on the road (excluding at work):
HTPC is Devil's Canyon i5 4690K, ASROCK Z97, Hauppauge PCIe and PCI tuner cards. SSD & HDD, I built in April 2014.
HP Envy Ivy Bridge i5-3210M, 15.6" laptop, 8 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, Window 8.1, bought November 2012
Desktop Sandy Bridge 2500K, ASUS P8Z68, 8 GB RAM, overclocked to 4 Ghz, SSD and HDD, I built in Sept 2011
Gateway Celeron dual core SU2300, 11.6" laptop, model EC1436U, 4 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD, Windows 10, bought November 2009
None of these started life with an SSD, but I eventually moved them all to SSD.
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6+ year old HP desktop with intel core i3 CPU, 3.07 GHz processor , 4GB RAM, Win7 still.....
GOING STRONG with no obvious weak points. No desire to replace or upgrade at this time.
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My daily driver is a Asus Chromebook Flip laptop, got in November 2015- fantastic device! I highly recommend Chromebooks. I have an Acer netbook from 2010 for when Windows is needed.
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I do have to say, the OS X Operating system is really growing on me.
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This spring I replaced my 10-year-old Macbook Pro with a Chromebook, as I was primarily using it for Internet anyway, and I can use Google docs if I need something spreadsheet-like or Word-like and couldn't justify the cost of a new Mac.
I've also got a Mac desktop that I bought off of an old boss for 50 bucks when she was moving cross-country. No idea how old it is. 6 or 7 years, maybe? It's the huge metal tower. I have all my Adobe design software on that (version 5.5) and that runs fine, so I'm happy with it.
The Macbook still runs, albeit slowly, but it's unable to take any more OS upgrades; therefore, some websites don't work since I also can't upgrade the browser given its current OS. I haven't totally ditched it, as I've also got Adobe software on that one, that still works and I don't want to pay for Creative Cloud should the desktop Mac ever die.
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6+ year old HP desktop with intel core i3 CPU, 3.07 GHz processor , 4GB RAM, Win7 still.....
GOING STRONG with no obvious weak points. No desire to replace or upgrade at this time.
What will you do in 2020 when Win7 support ends?
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Dell Latitude D830 gotten for college back in 2007. Still going, although I do wonder sometimes about how much it may have left in it. Battery will hold 0 charge so it is basically a desktop, but I keep it plugged in and it works just fine.
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Can we therefore expect computers to have 8TB of RAM sometime around 2030?
Probably before then.
If you look at the high end computing video cards, they're starting to hit the 13 Tflop/sec range for single precision floating point. At double precision (the scientific computing 'standard'), that's ~7 Tflop/sec. I used to manage a supercomputer in my younger days (circa 2005) which when new was only ~7 Tflop a second. It was also 800 dual-processor machines. It cost a few million dollars, used a decent sized town's worth of power, and was ~50th in the world (top500.org) when built. Today you buy that for ~$1,000 and stuff it in a standard desktop.
On the question, I usually don't sit on a box longer than 2 years, but I'm also a computer nerd/sysadmin/programmer/gamer, so being on 4 year old hardware often doesn't work. Given its my hobby and six-figure salary, that cost is okay by me. I tend to build my own, although the last one I tried a TB3 laptop + video card docking station. I'm not sure I'd do it again. It works, but not quite as smoothly as I'd like.
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I don't think 1TB of RAM will be a thing in consumer systems even by 2030. SSDs make swapping quite fast and the benefits taper off long before even 32GB for most uses today.
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I bought a high-end "desktop replacement" laptop computer in 2013 for about $2500, intending to use it for 5-10 years. Currently meeting my needs perfectly well. I use Ubuntu Linux as my operating system (free updates).
I also have a Chromebook and a couple old Macs that I rarely use. My oldest is an Apple iBook made in 2001.
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I don't think 1TB of RAM will be a thing in consumer systems even by 2030. SSDs make swapping quite fast and the benefits taper off long before even 32GB for most uses today.
640K ought to be enough for anybody . . .
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My gaming rig is about 5 years old, however it had a new GPU installed around 2014.
That being said, looking into building a new one in a Micro ITX form factor (think PS4/Xbox sized) with some of the latest tech.
Will probably cost $1500 or so.
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6+ year old HP desktop with intel core i3 CPU, 3.07 GHz processor , 4GB RAM, Win7 still.....
GOING STRONG with no obvious weak points. No desire to replace or upgrade at this time.
What will you do in 2020 when Win7 support ends?
Ask me in 2.5 years. A lot can happen over that time frame.
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8 new computers in last couple months for crytpo mining, plus one super beef new 8 core intel for side business which brings a 2 hour compile down to 20 minutes from my old rig.
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Custom built pc that cost $404 at the end of it all!
i3 6100
8GB 2133 DDR4
240 GB SSD
750Ti
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Dell Latitude D830 gotten for college back in 2007. Still going, although I do wonder sometimes about how much it may have left in it. Battery will hold 0 charge so it is basically a desktop, but I keep it plugged in and it works just fine.
Amazon and a bunch of other places sell laptop batteries. If you still like your laptop otherwise, a new battery could help put off buying a new machine for a year or two.
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I put 3-5 but only because I have two. My personal one is 7 years old (MacBook), while my work one is a younger (1.5 years) Macbook as well. My work one has become my personal one, since my other is having problems, but I still use both on a semi-regular basis.
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Haven't had a desktop PC since 2013. Switched to laptop+external monitor at that point, mainly because I wanted a quieter machine that would live in bedroom. Also as no longer playing PC games there was no need to have a desktop machine, and upgrading it to play the newer games made no sense. In 2013 the laptop was a used ThinkPad T410, earlier this year I switched that to a used ThinkPad X220 which cost me -£20 (as I sold of parts) for the laptop without RAM and disk. I have a second X220 laptop for travel, two others for RAM testing (for eBay-for-charity RAM trading little side business), a spare at parents' house and one I don't use so should sell. So all 5 years old or more. The lack of big improvement in single threaded CPU performance in the last 5 years or so, that I already have SSDs installed, and that I have laptops that can take 16 GB RAM (only have 10 at the mo), means I see no driver to upgrade them for the moment.
I also now only use SSDs, just have one laptop HDD as one of my backups.
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Desktop computer HP Envy and a new monitor ASUS - about two months ago. Love !:) has all the bells and whistles I wanted.
Had a five year old Dell laptop that I gave to my son to use. Still have a ten year old Toshiba laptop, upgraded three years ago. Works fine, but I hardly ever use it, replaced the battery about 3 yrs ago.
No more laptops for me, I like my LG Flex phone for surfing on the go, e-mail, reading books and gps function. It's three years old now and was last years model when I bought it. I may upgrade after Sep of next year.
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Bought my current HP Laptop in Sept 2009. Still kicking strong.
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I don't think 1TB of RAM will be a thing in consumer systems even by 2030. SSDs make swapping quite fast and the benefits taper off long before even 32GB for most uses today.
640K ought to be enough for anybody . . .
Adobe will be sure to add even more memory leaks to Photoshop so that by 2030, 1TB of RAM is the minimum. Even now if my GF opens and closes a bunch of photos throughout the day while editing, at the end even with no files open and doing absolutely nothing, Photoshop will sometimes be using 10-12GB of RAM on its own. <_<
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Current home desktop is a Dell Inspiron 530 running Debian (I got free it second hand sans hard disk about 3-4 years ago; I do have the system restore disk that can install Vista on this computer). It has an intermittent issue with shutting down suddenly (not solved by changing power supply or OS - initial reason for trying Debian - so I'm pretty sure the issue is on the motherboard) so I am considering replacing it.
Previous desktop was a similar age HP Pavillion. I purchased it from a thrift store almost 6 years ago. Vista was eventually replaced with Debian. TV card that came with this computer is now in the Dell and this computer had been on loan to my brother. After discovering the shut down issue with the Dell, I intended to switch back to the HP when I got it back from my brother, but this box has developled a problem where it does not move past the BIOS splash screen, so I probably need to get a new (to me computer).
I don't use my laptop much any more, but it is a PowerBook G4 that I bought new in August 2004 that still works fine (except the latch doesn't work - on it's 3rd battery and power supply). The only thing that is still keeping me from running Debian on this machine is that I dislike trackpad driver for it under Linux (I use iScroll2 on OS X 10.5.8).
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2010 Macbook Pro purchased in December of 2010......so I'm right at the 7 year mark =D
Used daily since then. Still holds a ~90-120 minute charge web browsing or ~60 minutes watching youtube etc.
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Had an anti-mustachian splurge moment, and bought a new laptop. Before that, it was maybe 5 years or so since my last one (a home-built compact desktop/HTPC). The old beast was humming along fairly smoothly, so I really have no excuse other than wanting to play newer PC games.
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Last year I rescued a 2013 custom Core i5 machine from work (free). It came with Win7 Pro, 16bg ram, and 128mb SSD. Fast, simple.
I added 2 2tb hdds and hope to keep it 5+yrs
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5 or 6 year old MacBook Pro. I got it before nursing school. My last mac (power book or something? I forget, small black laptop) lasted me 6 years, and it still works now running a laser at a relative's shop- it just wouldn't work anymore for online classes and stuff.
Current computer is a bit iffy on non-web based things. Can't really do word processing or spreadsheets anymore, I've switched that all to google. Struggles with pictures even. Won't open PDFs at ALL, haha.
Since macs are so expensive relative to other things now, and there isn't the same quality gap, I'm tempted to go non-mac next. But that would be a first in my lifetime thing for me, so I'm hesitant. I've obviously gotten great life out of the ones I've had!
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Bracken_Joy, that MB Pro of yours shouldn't have trouble with PDFs or pictures, is it still on the original hard drive? Could be an impending failure. An SSD and a fresh install should get you a couple more years out of it, easy.
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Current desktop is 5 years old and is starting to show its age. It was your standard Dell computer that was good not great, but functioned well. I'm getting more into gaming and would like a decent gaming computer but will not pay a stupid amount. So later this year I'm going to work with my boyfriend and his roommate - I'll set a budget and have them build it for me.
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Bracken_Joy, that MB Pro of yours shouldn't have trouble with PDFs or pictures, is it still on the original hard drive? Could be an impending failure. An SSD and a fresh install should get you a couple more years out of it, easy.
Original everything. Other than updates, I haven't touched it. (Cue angels singing). Can you replace the SSD on a unibody like this? Thanks for the info! I know just enough about computers to not murder it, and do little enough to nurse them along for a long time ;) Not savvy though. Luckily my partner is, so I'll just make him fix it, haha. (I say, about the man who can't get 3 years out of a computer to save his life... he's really hard on them for work though!)
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Can you replace the SSD on a unibody like this?
https://www.ifixit.com/ (https://www.ifixit.com/) has instructions for virtually every Apple product (and many other popular consumer brands).
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Can you replace the SSD on a unibody like this?
https://www.ifixit.com/ (https://www.ifixit.com/) has instructions for virtually every Apple product (and many other popular consumer brands).
Very helpful! Thank you!
This also made me go check the actual date of the computer based on serial number. Early to mid 2012, so 5 years old. =)
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2009 Macbook bought off eBay a couple years ago for $250 (in hindsight, paid way too much). Now running Sierra.
Upgrades when purchased: 128GB SSD, 2 -> 4GB RAM, MS Office
My Upgrades: new $25 battery
Considering: replacing the DVD drive with a $8 hard drive tray and extra hard drive for media (when one comes along for free of course)
Still works like a charm even though it looks beat up. With an SSD, these things boot and load programs as fast as a modern MacBook Pro. Plus, refurbs like mine now go for $150-200 on eBay. Plus, it's less likely to get stolen. Plus, if I spill something on it or drop it down the stairs - oh well! It won't cost me $1000 to replace. And yes, I can see all the details my eyes are capable of seeing on the non-Retina display.
No plans to "upgrade". Drive it till it dies.
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I have an entry-level Lenovo laptop (IdeaPad 100S). It's 10 months old, still works fine, suits my needs (super portable laptop for light document editing and web browsing) and already paid for itself with the income I earned from using it for side gigs (PHP 9,290.00 or about USD 185).
I'm satisfied and will probably replace it with another entry level laptop when it gives up the ghost. Hopefully it won't do that in the next 5 years!
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Last year I rescued a 2013 custom Core i5 machine from work (free). It came with Win7 Pro, 16bg ram, and 128mb SSD. Fast, simple.
I added 2 2tb hdds and hope to keep it 5+yrs
That's a fast enough PC that it's probably worth upgrading from win7 to win10 while the upgrade path is still free.
(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)) That machine should last well past the windows 7 2020 expiry date.
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I checked the 5-7 years old box. But I don't use my pc for much beyond emails and the MMM Forum.
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7 year old Samsung all-in-one. Was starting to show its age but I cleaned it up and installed Windows 10 last year and now it runs nearly like new.
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My laptop is over 5 years old. My desktop...hard to say. The graphics card will be 3 years old in December (holy crap), the primary SSD is a couple of months old, the hard drives were used/refurb purchased maybe a year ago, the case is almost 2 years old, motherboard/cpu/RAM about a year.
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Dell Laptop is a little over 5 years old. I will need to change the keyboard on it soon (too many video games when I first bought it and now I have a few keys that are difficult to use). This is the main computer used by all members of the family. I'm also considering swapping to a SDD for a performance boost.
Wife has a Mac laptop that is about 6-7yrs old. Horribly slow in all things to the point of being unusable at this point. Battery works great on it though. She hasn't cracked it open in about 4 months now because the last time she tried to open a streaming video website she opened the page and set the computer down with no response for 10 minutes or so.
With that situation, it might make sense to buy a new but low end desktop PC. You get more space and speed for less if you don't need portability, and it is much easier to switch the keyboard, etc. Then you can clean up the laptops for backup / portable use.
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7 year old HP Pavilion laptop. Gonna be sad to see that thing go when it does. Can't find a new one where I like the feel of the keyboard and you get a full number pad. This is mainly because the trend is now floating keys and I dislike that.
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I honestly don't even know, my mom got my laptop at the dump like 6-7 years ago now? It was just missing a harddrive. Now it lives on Linux.
To be fair though, I take my work laptop home which is new.
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7 year old HP Pavilion laptop. Gonna be sad to see that thing go when it does. Can't find a new one where I like the feel of the keyboard and you get a full number pad. This is mainly because the trend is now floating keys and I dislike that.
I've noticed that while those are pretty pervasive, the higher-end laptops tend to have versions of them that aren't nearly as bad. So maybe when you go for a replacement, look into a last-year's-fancy-model vs the new entry-level (price will be similar).
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About 4 years for my main desktop i7-4770, 16gb, 480GB SSD, ATI 290X, Ubuntu 16.04. Although I just recently replaced the 290X with GTX 1060. Only slightly faster, but way quieter, way less power draw and the drivers are way better.
A third generation(2013 I think) NUC running 16.04 hooked up to the TV.
An old HP pavillion(2009ish) laptop in my shop, horribly slow even on linux, probably needs replacing.
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Last year I rescued a 2013 custom Core i5 machine from work (free). It came with Win7 Pro, 16bg ram, and 128mb SSD. Fast, simple.
I added 2 2tb hdds and hope to keep it 5+yrs
That's a fast enough PC that it's probably worth upgrading from win7 to win10 while the upgrade path is still free.
(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)) That machine should last well past the windows 7 2020 expiry date.
Hmmm, I'd not thought of that, thanks!
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Last year I rescued a 2013 custom Core i5 machine from work (free). It came with Win7 Pro, 16bg ram, and 128mb SSD. Fast, simple.
I added 2 2tb hdds and hope to keep it 5+yrs
That's a fast enough PC that it's probably worth upgrading from win7 to win10 while the upgrade path is still free.
(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)) That machine should last well past the windows 7 2020 expiry date.
Hmmm, I'd not thought of that, thanks!
Last time I checked, months ago, the upgrade period had passed except for users who have one if Windows' accessibility services turned on and who attest online to being disabled.
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Last year I rescued a 2013 custom Core i5 machine from work (free). It came with Win7 Pro, 16bg ram, and 128mb SSD. Fast, simple.
I added 2 2tb hdds and hope to keep it 5+yrs
That's a fast enough PC that it's probably worth upgrading from win7 to win10 while the upgrade path is still free.
(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)) That machine should last well past the windows 7 2020 expiry date.
Hmmm, I'd not thought of that, thanks!
Last time I checked, months ago, the upgrade period had passed except for users who have one if Windows' accessibility services turned on and who attest online to being disabled.
"If you use assistive technology on Windows, you are eligible for the upgrade offer."
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Our home computer is a 6-7 year old Dell, but I have a MacBook Pro through work that I use for most of the stuff I do with comps, which is mostly Machine Learning and Deep Learning stuff and Kaggle competition type stuff.
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My dell laptop is just over 7 years old. It's time for a new one, but really hard to figure out what is good. It seems the specs haven't changed much in 7 years, or they've made it harder to understand (and I'm pretty tech savvy).
The tricky thing is that some of the names for things are the same, even though stuff as evolved.
Comparing my GF's old 2010 laptop to her new-as-of-last-year laptop, her old laptop had an Intel Core i7 620M (2.67Ghz), and her new one has an Intel Core i7 6700HQ (2.6Ghz). They're both i7s, which are Intel's upper-tier CPUs. They're even basically the same clock speed (with close to the same turbo speeds too). So what the hell is the difference? For starters, the 620M is a dual-core, and the 6700HQ is quad-core (that's what the Q stands for; M just means mobile; H stands for H). The 620M is from Intel's first generation i7, and the 6700HQ is from Intel's sixth generation (that's what the 6xxx means), so there's five incremental updates between the two. For a laptop this means the power consumption and heat are much improved (this also means the laptop can be thinner and lighter with longer battery life). It also means that clock-for-clock it's about 50% faster (three architectures' worth of updates: Sandy Bridge, Haswell, and Skylake). So clock-for-clock roughly 60% faster, plus in addition it has double the core count. So substantially faster (and so is the rest of the machine).
It's not intuitive.
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Last time I checked, months ago, the upgrade period had passed except for users who have one if Windows' accessibility services turned on and who attest online to being disabled.
"If you use assistive technology on Windows, you are eligible for the upgrade offer."
My brother likes to use high contrast mode and many people occassionally like to use text-to-speech. Both are usage of assistive technology that technically qualify. I agree that the intention of the policy is to provide for users who need assistive technology, but were reluctant to upgrade until the assistive technology on Windows 10 had an opportunity to mature.
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Built my desktop 4 years ago.
Laptop is a 4 year old Asus with new SSD.
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4 or 5 year old Toshiba laptop, bought when I was in school and now starting to slow down but still works well enough. 3 year warranty and SSD has saved my life, it has gone through a lot. Hopefully it keeps on ticking, I don't want to have to buy a new one anytime soon.
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2011 Asus laptop. Only minor issues are that it sometimes goes to sleep when I adjust the angle of the monitor, which is moderately annoying, and the right click touchpad button is hard to push. Otherwise, it's still going strong and no plans to replace it anytime soon.
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My computer is a mix, but i selected 0-1 year given my spending habits. The motherboard, case, memory, SSDs and power supply are all 5-6 years old. The CPU was just upgraded to a used extreme edition processor I got on ebay, and the GPU is brand spankin' new. I donated the used parts I upgraded to a friend in need.
My final upgrade will be doubling the RAM (which will need to be purchased new, unfortunately) and replacing the monitor which is 15 years old and making me squint as I get older to see on its small screen size. That upgrade may come sometime next year.
I expect to get another 7-8 years out of everything I've got in there today if I'm lucky. Eventually I'll retire it and set it up as a media PC attached to a television somewhere when it becomes obsolete for gaming. This is probably the least mustachian thing I own, but we'll see about that retrospectively after I've used it several years to mine for cryptocurrency while its idle. Maybe its a relatively low-cost high-risk speculative gamble that will fail. Either way I get to play my favorite games and enjoy my free time using it!
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Last 2.5 years I used this computer.
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Just bought my mom an IPad. Told her to junk her old desktop. Non technical people no longer need a computer.
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Not entirely sure; I am now in the habit of buying off-lease Dell Latitudes. I put 5-7, but my current one might be just under that.
Huh, actually I got this almost a year ago. So probably a three year lease, maybe 4, I guess I should've put 3-5.
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My laptop computer is ~6 years old and it works perfectly fine so I will keep using it as long as I can. It is running Windows 7 which in my opinion is the best operating system that Microsoft ever made and it was pretty much the last OS they developed before they decided to start spying on everybody all the time. It also has lots of great features that they now make you pay extra for (like Windows Media Center.)
In general, I will not buy a new tech product unless A.) It significantly improves my quality of life/access to information and entertainment or B.) My old tech product is damaged beyond repair. Otherwise, thanks to the internet, it's easy to fix absolutely any problem you have with an old tech product, so I will keep it for all eternity.
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I have an approx 3 year old chromebook; awesome, cheap piece of kit. My main "desk" computer is an approx 2 year old cheap Toshiba satellite laptop. I may look at apple when I'm due for the next computer.
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I bought my laptop refurbished in 2009. It has 4GB ram, so it is still somewhat relevant. It actually has two hard drive bays (17" screen), so I added a 128GB SSD hard drive for $30 from ebay this year and made that the boot drive. I copied all my files over to that drive since I don't have boot/install disks for the original setup. It boots much faster now.
I've tried to price out upgrading the ram to 8GB but it's not worth it for the cost.
I did upgrade to Windows 10 this year (for free) because Windows 7 will eventually reach EOL and not be updated by Microsoft. It took a little bit to get used to it, but I'm fine with it now.
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Not entirely sure; I am now in the habit of buying off-lease Dell Latitudes. I put 5-7, but my current one might be just under that.
Huh, actually I got this almost a year ago. So probably a three year lease, maybe 4, I guess I should've put 3-5.
Oh . . . I was counting my own refurbished Dell Latitude from the time I got it rather than its actual age, but you're right. Mine is probably 5-7 altogether.
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I put 5-7. My computer is right at 7 yrs old, but I've only had it two years.
I kinda bought it from work - I paid a few bucks for two broken PCs. Dell Vostro. Win 7 Pro. The boss would have given them to me for free, but accounting needed some money to register the loss of the assets (and not be a gift).
Years ago, I use to build my own PCs. Researching and deciding what to buy took to long, so I switched to buying used PCs. Only had problems with one of em.
I keep my data on a separate harddrive, which makes transitioning to a new PC (and back ups) a lot easier.
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I just bought a new one this last Christmas, but before that, I had my computer for 8 years.
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I'd forgot to mention this earlier, as its slightly OT but, we have a computer at work that is offline (not network connected) and just monitors the building security, keycard access etc... Last time I looked at that thing, about a year ago, it was running Windows 95, and had a old Pentium CPU running at 66Mhz. As long as it works, their definitely getting they're money out of the thing, I just dread when it finally dies, as knowing our company we have no backup....
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I'd forgot to mention this earlier, as its slightly OT but, we have a computer at work that is offline (not network connected) and just monitors the building security, keycard access etc... Last time I looked at that thing, about a year ago, it was running Windows 95, and had a old Pentium CPU running at 66Mhz. As long as it works, their definitely getting they're money out of the thing, I just dread when it finally dies, as knowing our company we have no backup....
jordanp123: Dang, I thought I was at least in the running.
But.... this could be considered an embedded system, or instrument, not your computer, per thead title definition.
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I'd forgot to mention this earlier, as its slightly OT but, we have a computer at work that is offline (not network connected) and just monitors the building security, keycard access etc... Last time I looked at that thing, about a year ago, it was running Windows 95, and had a old Pentium CPU running at 66Mhz. As long as it works, their definitely getting they're money out of the thing, I just dread when it finally dies, as knowing our company we have no backup....
jordanp123: Dang, I thought I was at least in the running.
But.... this could be considered an embedded system, or instrument, not your computer, per thead title definition.
Exactly. It was just such a oddity that couldn't help but mention it. I hope I'm already FIRE when that thing goes.
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I'd forgot to mention this earlier, as its slightly OT but, we have a computer at work that is offline (not network connected) and just monitors the building security, keycard access etc... Last time I looked at that thing, about a year ago, it was running Windows 95, and had a old Pentium CPU running at 66Mhz. As long as it works, their definitely getting they're money out of the thing, I just dread when it finally dies, as knowing our company we have no backup....
jordanp123: Dang, I thought I was at least in the running.
But.... this could be considered an embedded system, or instrument, not your computer, per thead title definition.
Exactly. It was just such a oddity that couldn't help but mention it. I hope I'm already FIRE when that thing goes.
Not as much of an oddity as you think.
I did testing 2014 on a new,not yet deployed system that used 680x0 Motorola chips. Running some unix variant.
the last Mac (IIfx) I had that used that series chip, I gave to my little sister in 1994.