this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
588 points (97.3% liked)

Technology

59428 readers
3547 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

IDK, it's a far cry from "dropping support for stuff 14+ years old" to "we're going to coerce you into buying new hardware every other year".

I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2010 and used it until spring of 2021. It was long overdue for replacement by then, so even that wouldn't have been affected by this.

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What made it long overdue for replacement, though?

Because I bet a mom or pops who only browse facebook could (technically) still use it for five more years*.

*Though facebook is not the best example because they are constantly bloating their own product.

[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

For me: I like to play games. It was still fine for games like Dwarf Fortress or Civilization, and it could handle Factorio decently well (enough to launch a rocket, not enough for a megabase, heh).

For my mom? IDK, I was already pushing it with how long I stayed on Windows 7. I'm not sure that this particular laptop would have been a good hand-me-down in 2021.

Finally...I have to repeat: I bought the laptop in 2010. I got eleven years out of it for a type of device that most people replace every 2-3 years. Why isn't that good enough for you?

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're right. 11 years is a good run.

[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Thank you!

I was pretty thrilled at how much use I got out of that laptop. I originally picked it up as a companion machine to a desktop, but about a year later, I switched over to using the laptop almost exclusively. I got a docking station and hooked it up to my desktop monitors, and all was well. It did limit the games I could play, but hey, I guess you could call me a "patient gamer".

I did have to repair it a couple of times -- I replaced both the cooling fan and the hard drive around 2015-2017.

It was funny, what finally spurred me to start looking for a new machine was a free giveaway of Total War: Shogun 2 on Steam back in 2020. Free game? New computer!