I remember when a ten year old laptop was just trash, unable to even boot a modern OS. Current hardware capacity exceeds our actual demand by so much that a ten year old computer is still adequate for most users (assuming you aren’t on Windows).
My 8 year old 1080ti graphics card can run most games perfectly fine on a 1080p/60 screen (still the most common spec budget monitor). I would not be surprised if it that PC hits 10+ years of gaming without a real need for upgrade.
I had a 2011 MacBook Pro sitting around some years ago I had upgraded from and I offered it to my brother for his kids to use because of the built in child controls they could setup. He just told me a few weeks ago they were done with it and asked me if I could wipe it or tell him how to do it could be recycled.
I took it back, put Mint XFCE on it but I can’t give it away to anyone I know because it has Linux on it. I’ll probably get a display cable for it and run it as my torrent box.
Maybe, but I don’t really need it. I’ve got a 2U box mounted in the basement with a Synology DS920+ w/ 48Tb in SHR2 and a mini Asus running Ubuntu doing my heavy lifting.
I just upgraded my seven-year-old Ryzen 1700x/Vega 56 system to Ryzen 5700x3D/RX 9070 XT. It wasn’t because my old system was actually inadequate already, though. It was mainly because I have no idea how long the market is going to be fucked up from the tariffs and wanted to get the upgrade done before the shit hit the fan, just in case.
100% agree. The computer I have now, I only bought because I needed more cores and ram for my docker dev environment. But I had a Yoga 2 Pro. It worked great and was fast for most of what I needed. I gave the machine to my cousin so he could learn to program on it. Still a fast machine. Doesn’t play video games, but it didn’t play video games when I bought it either.
The one place I see a huge leap is in MacBooks. The capabilities of a 2015 Intel based MBP are laughable when compared to an M4 based 2025 MBP. I use an MBP for my music production and I just cannot make it choke, no matter what I throw at it.
I remember when a ten year old laptop was just trash, unable to even boot a modern OS. Current hardware capacity exceeds our actual demand by so much that a ten year old computer is still adequate for most users (assuming you aren’t on Windows).
My 8 year old 1080ti graphics card can run most games perfectly fine on a 1080p/60 screen (still the most common spec budget monitor). I would not be surprised if it that PC hits 10+ years of gaming without a real need for upgrade.
This is the tough part.
I had a 2011 MacBook Pro sitting around some years ago I had upgraded from and I offered it to my brother for his kids to use because of the built in child controls they could setup. He just told me a few weeks ago they were done with it and asked me if I could wipe it or tell him how to do it could be recycled.
I took it back, put Mint XFCE on it but I can’t give it away to anyone I know because it has Linux on it. I’ll probably get a display cable for it and run it as my torrent box.
You can self host a lot on something like that.
Maybe, but I don’t really need it. I’ve got a 2U box mounted in the basement with a Synology DS920+ w/ 48Tb in SHR2 and a mini Asus running Ubuntu doing my heavy lifting.
I just upgraded my seven-year-old Ryzen 1700x/Vega 56 system to Ryzen 5700x3D/RX 9070 XT. It wasn’t because my old system was actually inadequate already, though. It was mainly because I have no idea how long the market is going to be fucked up from the tariffs and wanted to get the upgrade done before the shit hit the fan, just in case.
I thought about getting an M4 MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles for that same reason but I just don’t need it.
100% agree. The computer I have now, I only bought because I needed more cores and ram for my docker dev environment. But I had a Yoga 2 Pro. It worked great and was fast for most of what I needed. I gave the machine to my cousin so he could learn to program on it. Still a fast machine. Doesn’t play video games, but it didn’t play video games when I bought it either.
My ten year old laptop is an i7 with 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and a dedicated graphics chip.
My current laptop has 24 GB RAM and also a 1 TB SSD.
Feels like not much progress.
The one place I see a huge leap is in MacBooks. The capabilities of a 2015 Intel based MBP are laughable when compared to an M4 based 2025 MBP. I use an MBP for my music production and I just cannot make it choke, no matter what I throw at it.