All I have is a 13 year old laptop, and I use it basically all day most days. It’s plays music and movies etc with no issues. Cloud pc for gaming, which also works perfectly. It really doesn’t like youtube, though, and it sounds like a jet engine every time system and app updates start to download. Can’t afford to get anything better anyway. A friend gave it to me after it died on him and he got a new one, wasn’t hard to fix. I cried when I got it because it improved my life a lot, just being able to do basic things.
Have a hug!
Thank you, I needed that!
My man, I am glad you have such a dependable machine and I hope that, in the future, it will be by choice and not need rhat you use old devices. Hold in there!
Have you tried blowing out the fan? After 13 years it might be all gunked up
Yeah, I try to keep it clean. I’m pretty sure the fan has been warped, so one of the blades drags against the housing a bit, and I don’t have the tools to open it up that much to try to fix it. It only happens at high fan speeds, though, and that doesn’t happen often enough to be truly annoying.
You really just need, like, a screwdriver set to get into most laptops. Maybe you can search online (e.g. on YouTube) for tutorials for your model. Then you can buy a replacement fan and also replace the thermal paste, because 13-year-old thermal paste surely isn’t doing you any favors in the performance department. Altogether it shouldn’t cost more than €50 (if you’re careful not to break any internals).
BTW, if you want to watch YouTube videos with less resources, you can also copy the video URL into VLC
Idk if invidious would be lighter that normal youtube, but maybe that would work?
cloud pc for gaming
can you say more about that pls?
I use GeForce Now. It fits my needs and the games I like to play. Why pay for my own gaming rig when I can rent it and let others cover the upgrading cost?
I use Shadow, you literally get a high-end PC you stream to any device in real time and can do whatever you want with. Other cloud gaming services only streams the games, so you can’t use mods, emulators, etc. Currently playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on max settings, and it’s buttery smooth. I also use it for anything else that my laptop can’t handle like image and video editing, 3d modelling and rendering.
I hope you get to get a fancy new one soon and your old laptop friend keeps chugging along as before! 🙏
Everybody with a Thinkpad
My 12 year old thinkpad is still my daily driver.
Speakers stopped working 5 years ago tho. Only BT audio out, now.
You could probably open that up pretty easy and fix that I bet
First thing that always went in every Thinkpad I’ve owned is the wireless card lol. Opposite issue for me.
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This is the weird, sentimental attitude that has me buried in clutter
Buried in clutter yes but it also got me into electronic repair and frugality so I can’t say it doesn’t have its merits, wish it were easier to keep clean though.
Yes. Kill sentimentality, it’s the only way to break free.
I love watching videos about plane crashes on my old tablet when I’m cooking or rinsing (non-native here, is that right for doing a dishwasher’s job by hand?).
Rinsing would just be running water on them without any soap.
You rinse before you pit in the dush washer (only if it’s really bad though)
I’ll join with Technology Connections in being that guy who says (in a friendly way, not condescending):
If you have to rinse your dishes ever then you’re using the wrong soap, have a reeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaally crappy dishwasher (like a multi decade old cheapo model that’s breaking), or are loading your washer wrong. I think TCs video showing literally cooked on cheese coming off of dishes is pretty good proof that no dish out there needs rinsing.
I used to think my dishwasher couldn’t handle most things without rinsing, then I realized one of my sprayers had been blocked up and i also switched to a powder soap and suddenly everything is clean as fuck without any other changes to my loading habits. This was on a model slightly cheaper than the one TC uses in his video, and was about 7 years old when I saw improvement.
This is not criticism or anything, but simply trying to spread awareness of a simple thing I know a lot of people are surprised by when I tell them. Many of us are wasting time and effort on rinsing shit that doesn’t need to be, free yourselves!
Heard, thanks!
True.
I see, thanks
Native speakers refer to it as “washing the dishes” (the full phrase). “Dishwashing” is technically correct but it’s also awkward and clunky.
This was spoken from an America-centric POV. Hopefully some other countries will weigh in.
Thank you
I use the term “hand-washing dishes”.
i daily an 11 year old ThinkPad. it’s fast and does everything i need it to do. buying new is for suckers
I dailied on my 2012 self-built gaming PC. Was good but expensive. Got a used MacBook Air, its cheap now.
Yeah, once my Zephyrus dies I’ve decided that it’s my last “new” laptop that I buy. Sure, it can play games, but my usage has been drifting more “casual” over the years. For the top end of my computing: I really don’t need much to compile stuff and run chitubox.
How easy is it to get replacement parts for a ThinkPad?
Likely the easiest
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a new PC/Laptop. It’s always been used. Had only one problem with a phone I got for half the proce of all the others so it’s kind of my fault…
My Zune still playing
cough hack wheeze
“Is that all you got?”
I miss my Zune. Do you seriously still have one?
Yep. Mounted on the wall in my dad’s barn, playing an endless shuffle of my music from 15? Years ago.
A heads-up to anyone running old laptops; buy genuine replacement batteries while they’re available!
I have an aging XPS 13 and of course, Dell have discontinued the battery line. Opened it up one day and every cell had puffed out. It took buying a couple of fakes before finally finding a decent reseller on eBay who stocked what I needed. The fake batteries were not recognised by Dell’s hardware detection system thing, I imagine lots of other manufacturers might implement the same feature.
Or don’t buy from manufacturers that do this
It’s often too late to realize it’s non repairable. When reviews first come out, no one reviews the drm on components. Even those teardown sites only cover how hard it is to open up a device but don’t cover if a part is drm’d until moths or years later. Because there is no way to know until 3rd party parts come out and they don’t work.
I’m buying framework which explicitly has repair as a goal
My ten year old laptop has 4 gigs of RAM and can barely boot windows. It can run Linux pretty well but it still only has 4 gigs of RAM
So you’ve got half a 2023 Macbook Pro?
I’m rocking an ancient i7 Elitebook from 2011 or so that I maxed out to 32 GB of RAM. I bought it from a business surplus place on eBay for like $100 7-8 years ago. The screen resolution sucks and it has no biometric features but I slapped an SSD in there, removed the battery, and now it’s my Linux staging desktop.
You count lack of biometrics as a drawback?
Old laptops will still run pretty good if you run lightweight Linux distribution and give it some RAM upgrade and maybe SSD as well. I still wouldn’t use them as my main computer, as I’d rather have a lot better specs and ability to run Win10/Win11 flawlessly, but it’s still a good option.
Ability to run windows? Why?
Familiarity mostly
Adobe Audition.
Video games with invasive anticheats obviously
Revit
I let my brother use mine to play Minecraft.
Here, bro. Here’s your laptop
Pay me back some other time.
— Could you skip to the next song?
— no. I cannot.
oddly wholesome
I’ve never had any issues playing music on a 10 year old laptop
Yeah I was about to say I can play music on a single core Atom in an Acer Aspire One from 2008.
17 year old Dell here. Threw a SSD and Linux on it and that damn thing boots faster than most brand new Desktops. Absolutely enough to surf the web, listen to music, watch videos or do the usual Linux stuff (ssh, etc.). You can even somewhat game on it via sunshine/moonlight.
I love this, so wholesome. I have a 2009 Mac mini I’m still using sometimes
