this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 158 points 9 months ago (12 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Thank you, I needed that!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried blowing out the fan? After 13 years it might be all gunked up

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Looks like your problem is Windows. Linux works much better on old hardware.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I've been meaning to get rid of Windows for a while now. Haven't really used Linux since like 2010, so it feels like a lot to get into. Already saved some websites, articles, and lemmy posts with good info, though.
One reason I haven't done it yet is because I did manage to save up a bit of money (only like $300) after about a decade of never being able to feed myself at the end of each month. The plan was to get a steam deck, something I've deeply wished for ever since I heard about it, and keep the laptop only as a backup. But I got robbed... forgot my card at a grocery store self checkout, and someone took it and somehow managed to use it. Had just gotten money for that month, so no bills had been paid yet. Not only did I lose the saved money, but I had to take out a loan to pay my rent, etc. So any dream of a steam deck or anything else is dead, it will take years to pay off that loan.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Idk if invidious would be lighter that normal youtube, but maybe that would work?

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 9 months ago (6 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (4 children)

My 12 year old thinkpad is still my daily driver.

Speakers stopped working 5 years ago tho. Only BT audio out, now.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Of course, God bless his kind soul, may the eternal peace lay on his lands

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I use a 12 year old laptop as my daily driver, and use it to do high res video editing. A decade old computer these days is still highly capable.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Up until about a year ago my main gaming rig was a laptop from 2012. Toward the end I had to turn settings down (sometimes WAY down) but it still performed like a champ.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This is the weird, sentimental attitude that has me buried in clutter

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My Zune still playing

cough hack wheeze

"Is that all you got?"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I miss my Zune. Do you seriously still have one?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yep. Mounted on the wall in my dad's barn, playing an endless shuffle of my music from 15? Years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago

Wholesome-ness on the internet? In this economy?!

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

i daily an 11 year old ThinkPad. it's fast and does everything i need it to do. buying new is for suckers

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (11 children)

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?).

[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"Washing dishes" or "doing the dishes". 👍

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Or don't buy from manufacturers that do this

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Yea, but what if you already have a laptop from such a manufacturer?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

oddly wholesome

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (8 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (9 children)

I let my brother use mine to play Minecraft.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Here, bro. Here's your laptop

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

— Could you skip to the next song?

— no. I cannot.

[–] astraeus 19 points 9 months ago

Looking over at my old Thinkpad X131e with those “I’m going to start a new project with you” eyes

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I've never had any issues playing music on a 10 year old laptop

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Pretty sure anything capable from the Windows XP era onwards could play an MP3.

Whether it run the bloated Chromium mess that the Spotify client is, is another matter.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (4 children)

My Surface Pro 3 refuses to die despite the fans giving out, and YouTube plays like shit now thanks to the potato GPU.

Still use it everyday.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

haha, reminds me of when I'd compile Firefox on my 12yo computer.
never felt its old age because Debian rocks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

There's something oddly wholesome about this comic.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Meanwhile, my two-year old Celeron not being able to reliably play a FLAC file without stuttering...

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[–] Zink 14 points 9 months ago

This is very well timed for me. I just acquired myself a convenient ancient laptop by installing Linux on a circa 2014 chrome book. It can chug when playing videos, but great for general use.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

I love this, so wholesome. I have a 2009 Mac mini I’m still using sometimes

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Man I feel that in my bones.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Old laptops also make for great servers and hobby computers. If you don't need the form factor of a pi or mini pc, throw Debian or whatever on an old laptop and play away! I've got jellyfin, my DNS, reverse proxy and an octoprint server running on mine. It's the little heart of our network.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I've got a 13 year old probook 5330m. It's running Lubuntu, with no working battery these days, but it's fine other than that.

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