>I grumpily ordered a replacement key for 15 euros.
A single key for 15€?! I remember ordering one from an online shop specialized in replacement laptop keys at some point in the 2010s and it was like 2€ total. Browsing through similar shops now, it seems like the minimum is 5€ per key nowadays, but still a far cry from 15€.
>After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros.
Someone who breaks keys this often could just buy the whole keyboard assembly FRU for ~30-50€ and take spare keys out of that, assuming it's not always the same ones that break.
mikepurvis 5 days ago [-]
Even if it is, most of the keys are interchangeable. Your fingers don’t care that the M key has an N on it.
mbreese 5 days ago [-]
With my mechanical keyboard, I have had a tendency to break a few (specific) keys. I got around it by 3D printing a few blank keys.
So long as I know where the N and M keys are, that's all that matters :)
idiotsecant 4 days ago [-]
How are you people breaking so many keys?!
jessekv 4 days ago [-]
Maybe they learned to type on a mechanical typewriter...
mbreese 4 days ago [-]
For me, you’re not far off… it was an electric typewriter. So, the force I applied wasn’t directly linked to the force of hitting the paper, but it was … ahem … robust. Between that, the IBM Model M clone we had on the PC, or the membrane keyboard in our Atari 400, my early muscle memory might be skewed.
Now though, we’re talking mainly laptop keyboards. My desk keyboard is a low profile keyboard with pretty thin keys (Keytron K2). If you hit them at the right angle, there’s not much plastic there to absorb the shock.
marssaxman 4 days ago [-]
As a lifelong Dvorak user, for whom the keys I press have never produced the letters printed on them, it amuses me that the "M" key is one of only two exceptions (the other is "A").
linsomniac 5 days ago [-]
I used to be a Thinkpad die-hard (including both IBM and Lenovo), and as you say the full replacement keyboard was like $30US. And after replacing the keyboard, which I seemed to need to do every 3-ish years, it felt like a new laptop! Plus, the replacement would only take ~5-15 minutes.
Unlike my daughter's friend's Dell, where basically everything had to come out of the laptop to get at the keyboard (battery, speakers, motherboard, etc), AND it was plastic-riveted down. I must have spent 2-4 hours replacing it, because I had to do it twice (for reasons I don't remember).
drillsteps5 3 days ago [-]
I love Thinkpads and have a few, but this depends on a model.
Some Thinkpads, more specifically x2xx series (ie x250 - x290) require removing all internals to get to the keyboard to replace it (batteries, storage, wifi, motherboard, speakers, CMOS battery, and a few others). Dell Latitude E5470 on the other hand allows replacing its keyboard by pulling out a small plastic panel and removing one screw.
jll29 5 days ago [-]
Great article.
I have had a similarly positive experience with older laptops, in particular ThinkPads (x230) and Latitudes (e7460). The older machines often also have much better keyboards than more recent laptops, IMHO.
As the OP writes, swapping out HDD for SSD (1 usually prefer at least 1 TB) and maxing out RAM are affordable things that you won't regret.
jerome-jh 5 days ago [-]
On my side I prefer Dell Latitudes and Fujitsu Siemens, which only makes "professional" laptops. I agree with the keyboards, however really good keyboards have totally disappeared now.
That said a used laptop is perfect for web browsing, office stuff, casual development and light gaming. When it dies you have no regrets. It is almost 20 years I have not bought a new laptop. Of course my kids have used laptops too. At some point they had Fujitsu Siemens with a Wacom stylus/digitizer. I do not think they still make those. They were rock solid and quite fun to use.
I only buy new laptops for my wife. She is very careful with her stuff, they last ages. I bought her a new one recently only to offer her a better screen.
latentpot 4 days ago [-]
Dell makes devices with mpp compatible touch screens. Cheap stylii, good pressure response
herbst 4 days ago [-]
This. Used my T420 for years, got a T460 and was so disappointed about it's build quality that I now have a X1 of some generation which isn't much better but at least lighter for travel.
All bought used, never spent more than maybe $250 and $200 for max RAM and nice SSD.
Jgrubb 5 days ago [-]
Unless it's a Mac ofc
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
That's all fine when you use the laptop as a typewriter. I keep around a 2010 laptop that only has some text editing software on it for that exact reason.
Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
thegrim33 5 days ago [-]
You can just be an informed consumer and not buy laptops with non-replaceable components. Don't give bad products money and incentive to keep making more like them.
jryle70 3 days ago [-]
It's possible that some informed consumers choose longer battery life over replaceable parts. Your choice is not always the right choice.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
I don't think there is any middle ground left between thin and portable and all soldered and replaceable components and "transportable" instead of "portable".
Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but with upgradeable components.
cconcannon 5 days ago [-]
Have you considered a Framework laptop? They have 13-inch and 16-inch models and are designed to be upgraded.
I have the 16” Framework model and I bought it as a replacement for my personal 2019 Macbook Pro 16 after the Macbook screen died last year. Apple wanted more than $700 for a replacement screen. After 17 years of owning Powerbooks and Macbooks, I decided to ditch Apple and instead buy a laptop that I could repair and upgrade easily. I’d compare Framework models to the Macbook Pro in terms of battery life and performance. The battery life and performance of new Framework builds don’t quite match the stats for new Macbook Pro models but the tradeoff is that the Framework models are less expensive, upgradeable, and very closely resemble the portability of a Macbook Pro.
They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
You realize that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement right? Everything you are stating as a negative has been a solved problem for four years.
Portability in terms of weight it might be close. But according to the reviews I’ve seen they run hot and loud.
Because of timing and layovers, I spent an entire day going from ATL-LAX-SJC. Not having to worry about battery life and actually being able to use it on my lap without having to worry about infertility from the heat was a godsend.
yellowapple 3 days ago [-]
There are always going to be tradeoffs. For me, on both my 13 (11th Gen Intel) and 16 (AMD), the battery lasts long enough ("a few hours", depending on workload), and they run cool and quiet enough (again, depending on workload). Still performant, still portable, more flexible than any other laptop I've ever owned.
Assuming Framework remains solvent and doesn't change the physical layout of their motherboards, I don't anticipate ever needing to buy another laptop.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
> Other than an incredibly annoying habit of failing to sleep when its discrete GPU is awake,
I don't think we can blame Framework for that on their own, Microsoft must surely have a contribution to this.
But still, after getting used to apple's offerings I don't think I'd like a laptop where you need to check if it actually went to sleep instead of just closing the lid and moving along.
> They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.
Bigger is fine to a point. Less battery life, same. But the heat and noise when you have alternatives that don't have the problem...
zepolen 5 days ago [-]
Sure, when it's switched off, which is the only way you're getting 15 hours of battery life from a Macbook air.
> The fact that the battery lasted over 14 hours on a single charge in our battery life tests again shows just how good the 13-inch MacBook Air is for people who want a compact laptop they can use almost anywhere.
rfwhyte 4 days ago [-]
I really, really, really wanted to like Framework, but for the type of work I do with a laptop (GPU / CPU / RAM intensive video editing) I can literally get a laptop with twice the performance of a Framework laptop for half the price. Not to mention Framework laptops only display option is a (admittedly decent) IPS panel, when miniled and OLED panels are becoming increasingly commonplace on devices that cost less and offer better performance. They have also not come out with a new GPU module since launch, and their current GPU offering is woefully under powered, especially given it's absolutely ludicrous $550 USD price tag and there are seemingly no plans for any more powerful GPU modules in the future. I love the idea of a repairable / upgradeable laptop, but I really can't justify spending twice as much for half the power just for the thus far unrealized promise of future potential.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
Hah, I was going to say they're an US only thing but I opened their web site and they gave me localized pricing this time.
Ofc, it's easy to run prices through a converter so I wonder where they ship from and where the warranty is located...
daveoc64 3 days ago [-]
They've been offering their products in an ever expanding number of countries:
In terms of shipping, they have multiple warehouses around the world.
5 days ago [-]
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
sadly, i'd prefer a size in the middle, a bit larger than 13.5 inch. also, i really need a trackpoint and dedicated mouse buttons, as i keep triggering the touchpad accidentally, so i have to disable at least the tap options, if not the whole touchpad alltogether. if framework would add some options there i'd consider it.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
> as i keep triggering the touchpad accidentally
That's the miracle with apple's OS. And I say OS because I'm sure it filters out accidental input in software. The trackpad is made by whoever makes them for the x86 laptops too, but I really can't remember when it registered a touch when I didn't want it.
(I'm sure it happens occasionally, but not enough to be worth keeping track of.)
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
In 2025, I expect my laptop to be lightweight, fast, 14 hours+ on a single charge, silent and run cool.
I care more about all of those features than the replaceable parts.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
the difference between a thinkpad T14 with replaceable RAM and SSD and a T14s with soldered RAM and SSD are minimal. depending on the specific generation and features, the T14s can be heavier than the T14.
i'd accept soldered RAM if it is at least 16GB, (though 32GB would be better) because i'd rarely need more than that. but a soldered SSD never. that holds my precious data, and even if i have a full backup, i do want to be able to take out the SSD when the laptop dies, or replace a broken or worn out SSD (as i had once). the risk of not being able to recover data from a soldered SSD is just not worth the few grams saved in weight.
ja27 3 days ago [-]
The nice thing about picking up older laptops is that the upgraded models don't really hold as much extra value compared to what they cost new so if you keep looking you can get a pretty maxed out machine for not a lot more than the more common low-end ones.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
If you had a full backup, why would you worry about your data?
My important documents are synced with cloud storage, my photos and videos are synced with iCloud, Google Photos and OneDrive.
My code is pushed to a remote git repository.
I can add more external storage. I would be more concerned about RAM.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
a cloud backup for a 2TB disk is too expensive or to slow. an offline backup is not automatic and only current the moment i run it. a combination of both is more complex. an always synced full backup is difficult to achieve. it is possible when the only places where i use the laptop are at home and at the office. as soon as i add traveling and using expensive mobile data my backup becomes unreliable or to expensive to maintain or restore. in other words, even if i have a full backup, i can't always rely on it.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
BackBlaze at $7/month is too expensive?
And when you are traveling you don’t keep your important documents backed up? What happens if your SSD goes bad?
And if a restore would be inconvenient when you are traveling, getting a new laptop and hypothetically connecting your SAD wouldn’t be?
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
the data storage alone is not the issue. the cost of accessing that data is. not every place has unlimited fast internet that would allow you to download that much data without problems.
with a replaceable SSD i can (and in fact just did a few weeks ago) take the SSD from the old laptop and put it into the new one. took me 5 minutes.
restoring all that data from the cloud would have cost me a few hundred dollars in mobile data fees. or several weeks of visiting a restaurant which has free data, but would also have racked up a restaurant bill not to mention the time that would have been taken away from working.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
With BackBlaze you can have them ship you your data on a hard drive. They charge you for the hard drive. But if you send the hard drive, they refund your money.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
backblaze doesn't support linux or any kind of unix at all, which makes that a non-starter. and i could not find which countries they can ship to, but i am pretty sure they won't be able to ship to china without me having to pay import tax on the disk and cost of shipping back. and i wonder if they can even ship worldwide. i also have to install their proprietary software on my computer which means that despite encryption i have to trust them with my data. i'd rather not.
so sure, there are ways to get around the limitations of a soldered SSD, but so far i have not seen any that are worth the benefit of a few grams saved in the weight of my laptop. because that is what we are arguing about here.
backups are good, and everyone should have one, and they are certainly covering several failure modes regardless of whether the SSD is soldered or not. but an unsoldered SSD also covers a few failure modes that a backup doesn't cover. at the cost of a few grams of extra weight. my goal is to maximize the recovery options. so i have backups and a replaceable SSD.
the ultimate solution would be a laptop that supports two SSDs so i can run a raid mirror like my desktop. one of those SSDs could even be soldered in that case.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
That’s fair.
But soldered versus non-soldered is a secondary issue to you not having up to date backups somewhere that are easily accessible.
But even then there are backup solutions for Linux that backup to S3 and S3 Glacier is cheap. I have 3TB and my AWS bill is $4 a month.
And “RAID is not backup”
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
i do have a cloud backup. as i said the cost of that itself is not the issue. the cost of accessing it is. the raid protects against the "dead SSD" failure mode.
cowboylowrez 5 days ago [-]
if you have a backup but can't rely on it, is it really a backup?
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
it's reliable in the sense that the data is there and won't get lost, and i can always access it to download bits and pieces if i need them. it is not reliable in the sense that i could always do a full restore from it without cost. having an unsoldered SSD reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the risk of me having to do a costly full restore from that backup.
kbelder 4 days ago [-]
I would so gladly sacrifice lightweight for power, battery, reparability, or price.
Same with my phone.
nuancebydefault 5 days ago [-]
Do you work 14 hours in a row?
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
I travel for work not as much as I use to. But a full day on and off planes with layovers can turn into 14 hour days.
And that 14 hours turns into 8 going back and forth between conference rooms with it powering a USB C portable monitor which is getting power and video from one USB C cord.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
not the same person, but i don't. however my laptop for sure does because even when i am not working it is used as a communication and entertainment device. and when traveling those hours go by fast. unfortunately battery run time is one of the issues that linux hasn't cracked yet. i wish i could get 14 hours of battery time out of my laptop
BadHumans 5 days ago [-]
Before Framework there wasn't a good option if you did anything more than office work. Even Framework's offerings aren't powerful enough in many ways.
''The accessibility of this website depends on the weather in Barcelona, Spain''
Joeboy 5 days ago [-]
I presume, with Windows 10 support ending this year, there's going to be a glut of used laptops.
drillsteps5 3 days ago [-]
I thought so too, but it turns out there's a variety of ways to circumvent MS's hardware gatekeeping, such as CPU requirement (see: Tyny11 see: Rufus).
At least at this time, Windows 11 is not that much heavier/resource-needy than Windows 10. There's a small but non-negligible number of people running Win11 on things like Thinkpad x250 or T450 (Inter 5th gen CPU), for example.
The regular Joe Schmoe prob won't be able to do that, but he's not likely to use 2015 laptop in 2024 to begin with...
mikepurvis 5 days ago [-]
This will be an interesting one to observe; will Canonical and others be able to capitalize on the Microsoft FUD around secure boot to convert users?
Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting uses for all the machines?
binkHN 5 days ago [-]
> Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting uses for all the machines?
Google has targeted this model with ChromeOS Flex.
pjmlp 3 days ago [-]
No, this has become a meme of the Year of Desktop Linux.
Everytime Microsoft does something that apparently pisses off people, we get tons of suggestions that now everyone is finally going to migrate in droves into GNU/Linux, and then nothing happens.
Meanwhile the only Linux based devices that are actually successful among normies, are those that hide the fact there is the Linux kernel running underneath, expose no CLI, and have everything done in basic graphical workflows without any FOSS religion.
Chromebooks, Android, DVD and BluRay players, TV setup boxes, SmartTVs,....
mossTechnician 5 days ago [-]
One common suggestion I've seen: convert your old laptop into a server.
LittleTimothy 4 days ago [-]
I was surprised at how little the author mentioned their actual experience using the laptop. Some things haven't changed and that's fine. I'm sure you can do word processing on that machine, but there are areas where you can't control the fact the rest of the world has moved on. How does the average website appear? Can you browse youtube? Can you actually log on to internet banking? Do you have to disable scripting on websites in general? How bad is the screen? What's the wifi speed like?
Also, given that this is the author's work laptop, what's the economic justification for not investing in the primary tool you use for work?
karteum 4 days ago [-]
> Also, given that this is the author's work laptop, what's the economic justification for not investing in the primary tool you use for work?
The author explains that there are motivations not related to money (we live on a finite earth, the manufacturing of a laptop encompass a considerable amount of energy and raw materials for mining, etc).
sangnoir 4 days ago [-]
> Also, given that this is the author's work laptop, what's the economic justification for not investing in the primary tool you use for work?
Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the obverse - Why should one buy a new laptop when an old one will do? Your framing sounds to me like a post-hoc justification for consumerism. Why not "invest" in getting the absolute best in the primary means of transportation, or couch, TV or random product category?
LittleTimothy 4 days ago [-]
Come on now, even the author is pretty clear they're making compromises. Whether that's slower internet speed, lower quality display, worse battery or inability to run modern apps/web apps. There are a lot of ways in which this is making a trade off to priortize cost vs productivity. Sure, you can say all the ways in which the old laptop is inferior are unimportant, but I would atleast like to see some serious consideration of it.
sangnoir 4 days ago [-]
I have my doubts you'd take any such arguments seriously, if you are set on the idea that productivity universally requires a 14-hour battery and a 2.5k screen.
I was traveling recently and got a lot done on an 8-year old tablet. I was very productive, I suspect the combination of being offline (no 5G modem), no random notifications, just me, the terminal and a Bluetooth keyboard. The compact size & weight, and not having to worry about losing or having an expensive iLaptop stolen made for a worthwhile trade-off. Any productivity gains would have been marginal at best, and not worth the cost.
johnea 5 days ago [-]
> On the contrary, the only thing a consumer can do to improve their laptop’s ecological and economic sustainability is to use it for as long as possible.
This is true for everything, not just laptops.
Any purchasing that occurrs on a fashion cycle is largly a rip off...
jll29 5 days ago [-]
I believe most people do not WANT a new device, as getting used to new ways and new quirks is a unproductive distraction.
For instance, I would pay a lot to get my BlackBerry back, screw all that app bloarware nonsense. Fast email, phone, a good keyboard and long battery life, that is a winning combination, from a user's perspective. (And I actually prefer devices with no camera or microphone in it, for security reasons.)
bluGill 5 days ago [-]
That depends on what you do. a newer cpu is often enough more efficent per unit of work as to pay for itself. I first calculated this when we were arguing if the price of a 80486 was worth it over the cheaper 80386 and if you kept it busy 24x7 you would pay for the new computer in a year from your electric bill (more in summer when you need ac)
Jolter 5 days ago [-]
The idea of the article is to not run the newer, more demanding software which drives the replacement cycle. Instead install a lightweight Linux or similar and don’t use all those extra CPU cycles.
bluGill 5 days ago [-]
But even then wht if you ran the lite linux on the newest. Would the increased efficiency pay for it?
josephcsible 5 days ago [-]
I'd have four concerns with such an old laptop:
1. Lack of USB-C ports means I wouldn't be able to safely use any USB-C only peripherals (since the USB spec explicitly bans adapters in that direction)
2. Lack of security updates for firmware, microcode, etc.
3. Hard to find replacement batteries from reputable sources
4. The CPU and memory requirements of software are steadily increasing
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
1. which devices are those? USB-C is a type of plug. it does not define the USB standard that runs on it. so if i understand that correctly, there can't be a USB-C only device. USB4 is defined to run only on USB-C, but it is also defined to be backwards compatible to at least USB3.x. the spec forbids certain legacy adapters, but only because it would allow for to many invalid and potentially unsafe cable connections. the same connection can be made to work with a direct cable that allows the connection of a USB-C device to a legacy port. and even a 10 year old laptop should at least support USB3.0.
2+3. depends on the specific devices.
4. 10-15 years ago maybe that was still true. but the power and speed of devices no longer increases at the same rate. it has slowed down to the point that a 6 year old laptop performs just as well for my daily tasks as a 2 year old one and i run the same OS on both. the difference is only noticeable for modern games and some CPU/GPU intensive tasks. i also remember the same experience with even older laptops (i don't have one here right now, so i can't compare directly). what made the older laptops slower/less powerful was less RAM.
josephcsible 4 days ago [-]
For point 1, consider a flash drive with only a USB-C connector on it. The kind of adapter that you'd need to plug that into a laptop with only USB-A ports is exactly the kind that the spec forbids.
WhyNotHugo 4 days ago [-]
I have a couple of these adapters (that came with different products), and have never had issues. Is there some _practical_ issue with them?
josephcsible 4 days ago [-]
My understanding is that they're "fine" if you only use them "correctly", and that the reason they're forbidden is that it's so easy to plug things into them in ways that will create a short circuit (e.g., plugging the C end of an A-to-C cable into one).
em-bee 4 days ago [-]
you don't need any adapter. all my USB-C drives come with a cable that has C on one end and A on the other. again, those cables are allowed. only adapters that would allow you to use a C-C cable may not be. so connecting a USB-C drive to an old laptop that only has USB-A plugs is fine, and is supported.
josephcsible 4 days ago [-]
I mean flash drives that plug directly into the computer with no cable.
em-bee 4 days ago [-]
oh, ok, those seem to be rare though, and personally i find them impractical because the C connector makes them less stable. with an A connector the flash drive can be so small that it almost fits inside the connector entirely. in other words, buying a device that can't handle these flash drives would be a tradeoff that doesn't have much of a downside unless i already have such a drive that i really want to use.
but if i have a tendency to buy older devices, then i likely also have a tendency to avoid getting such modern drives. they will be coming though, thanks to USB4, and there will be a day where i can't avoid needing a laptop with at least two USB-C ports (because one of them will be used for charging), or get a USB4 rated USB-C only hub. and hopefully by then even older laptops will already have at least one USB-C port too (even if it doesn't support USB4 yet).
herbst 4 days ago [-]
3. I am always doing a little research before I replace a battery but so far every replacement for a old ThinkPad had way better results as expected, very likely better than a good 'original' is at this point.
4. Not sure if I can agree. Most software I use just got more efficient over the years. Only exception being the IDE or code editor. #justlinuxthings
vouaobrasil 5 days ago [-]
I gladly buy lots of used things but laptops aren't one of them. The reason is that, at least from my experience, laptops only last between 5-8 years before they become more trouble than they are worth (either they become too slow as was the case with my previous Macbook or they stop working for some unknown reason, or the battery life sucks). I've also noticed laptops get beat up easily -- the vast majority of used Macbooks have dings.
What I do instead is buy a moderately powerful new one and just use it until it dies -- I don't upgrade before the laptop is truly dead.
hagbard_c 5 days ago [-]
Hm, odd that, the newest laptop I have here is from 2016 and with that just past your threshold. It works just fine, performance is no problem, the battery holds for around 5-6 hours. Maybe it helps to say I a) don't buy Apple products and b) only use Linux? Nearly all my laptops are Thinkpads, all of them run Debian in some form or other. From the ancient (T23) through the old (T42p) to the relatively modern (P50), all of them work for their intended purposes. They are built to last, if something breaks it is easy to fix but things rarely break. The batteries are easily replaceable, the same goes for the keyboards.
In other words it is more than possible to use laptops beyond those 8 years as long as you buy the right ones. Performance is fine as long as you run the right software, i.e. not software made by a hardware vendor who depends on a regular replacement cycle.
vouaobrasil 5 days ago [-]
Well, I haven't always bought Apple Products. My first laptop was a Toshiba and it lasted five years. Then I bought a used Thinkpad, I can't remember the model now but it only lasted about three years. My next computer was a thinkpad, I think a T203 or something like that, and it died after five years also (just stopped booting).
I also installed Linux on them too and the battery life was not great either. I could be an outlier but I've not had good experience with Thinkpads even though I liked them. My older Macbook actually lasted the longest.
hagbard_c 5 days ago [-]
I never bought any Apple products but did get two items gifted over the years due to seemingly standard defects which render them inoperable: a 'late 2009' 27" iMac with an inoperable video card (a standard defect in these things) which I made operable again by toasting it for 5 minutes and a 2011 Macbook Air with a broken keyboard (qwertyuio keys dead, again a standard defect in these things). To fix the latter I'll have to get an new keyboard, rip out the old one - which Apple in all its financial wisdom riveted down with some 30-odd tiny rivets so as to make it more difficult to economically replace the thing - and screw in a new one. I'm not yet clear on whether I'll go so far to revive the thing but the level of planned obsolescence in Apple products is quite disgusting to me, seasoned user of previously owned hardware.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
it depends on how you use them. for my kids which are not as careful, i get more mileage out of a used laptop, because they would break a new one just as fast as a used one. (current x270 which i got used for $150 lasted about 2 years. a new one would have cost 2-3 times as much but in the hands of the kids it would not have lasted 2-3 times as long)
buying used hardware is also hit or miss. i got another used laptop for $250 which is decent, but it has some strange hardware issues that i can't pinpoint. unfortunately the choices for used hardware are limited and i could not find any comparable devices in the same price range. (any alternatives would have cost more than twice as much)
so generally, when i can afford it, i do the same as you. get something new with a good price/performance ratio and use that as long as i can.
rustcleaner 5 days ago [-]
Maybe for OpenBSD. These days I am parano... savvy and prudent enough to not trust security swiss-cheese software bare metal, and so I box it all up into qubes with Qubes OS. For Qubes, it's always best to max out RAM, core count, and GPU count (AI). Libreboot laptops don't cut it if you want to run seven isolated chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor connections while also running LM Studio in an offline GPU-passed qube, to obfuscate cross-profile lexical correlations.
SoftTalker 5 days ago [-]
> seven isolated chat/social profiles on seven separate VPN/Tor connections
Bravo for you, but surely you realize that almost nobody does this? Hardly relevant to an article about getting some more useful life out of an old laptop.
devops99 5 days ago [-]
You actually don't have to dig too hard to find places where hundreds if not thousands of people are doing exactly this.
red-iron-pine 4 days ago [-]
download tor, run tor, go to darknet forums of any kind.
that's about the only use case I can think of for this approach, as well as where to find the few hundred people doing it.
that said, wearing walmart pants and hoodies, a face mask, and using a $200 laptop you got off of gumtree or kijiji or craigslist or FB marketplace at coffeeshop probably works just as well. bragging and laziness gets you busted, not a lack of local LLMs to check lexicon.
devops99 4 days ago [-]
Common use cases, are, "as a Developer / DevOps practitioner, I want for":
- a client (company I do contract work for) sees a different source address that is different than the source address I use for casual browsing+posting.
- two SaaS used for purposes of servicing agreement with "client" don't see the same source IP address as used for other clients.
- a bank I use, and PayPal, always sees the same source IP address dedicated to my VPN account only and for this purpose.
- the tunnel (VPN) provider I use for casual browsing+posting does not see the destination IP address of my client's VPN.
- whatever first-hop ISP I use sees one single Wireguard tunnel and nothing else ever.
- the first-hop Wireguard tunnel is paid for with a pre-paid debit card, but any outbound TOR traffic is encapsulated by a secondary tunnel paid for with crypto.
- the TOR circuit used for browsing purpose A is not also shared by browsing purpose B.
- any arbitrary outbound tunnel is specific to the container or VM I intended to use but doesn't carry, nor has any risk of carrying, any of my other traffic.
Tor is important to me because I have a right to read.
There is no crime within Common Law for any of the above. Nor is there any violation of any statute for which any of the above is, per doctrine of minimum contact (such as with a pre-paid debit card), within jurisdiction of statute.
Perhaps some users do operate with some concern of being "busted", but most users that do outbound network path management do not operate with this concern.
terramoto 5 days ago [-]
Still, hardly relevant to an article about getting some more useful life out of an old laptop.
Its like saying, not good enough for video editing 8k.
devops99 5 days ago [-]
In response to the comment further above (so not just the article), outbound network path management is not uncommon. However we often see it presumed to be uncommon by those who haven't thought of it, or have thought of it but the ability to do it is out of their reach.
Qubes makes outbound network path management easy enough but it's not too hard to do on Linux and FreeBSD, so it can also be done on machines with modest compute resources (which may or may not be subject to the machine being an older machine) as well.
jmclnx 5 days ago [-]
My newest laptop is a Thinkpad W541 with Linux purchased used a few of years ago. That is just as good as any new laptop made today.
The Old T430 I got from a relative who went to a MAC is also quite adequate for daily use. I have NetBSD on it and just finished upgrading to 10.1, so this was typed on that T430.
So unless you are a heavy duty gamer or work on complex 3d graphics professionally, any recently used laptop will work just as well.
pixelpoet 4 days ago [-]
As someone who works on complex 3D graphics, I'm utterly bewildered by people who buy overpriced, overheating laptops for this purpose (more recently for AI stuff), leave them plugged in 24/7, and then complain about performance, heat, bad keyboard layouts, noisy fans and poor value for money.
Aaaaaanything but a nice efficient PC!
strls 5 days ago [-]
I had to replace a perfectly good T450s because of terrible performance when using external 4k monitors. I had it for 6 years, upgrading everything I could, and it could probably last for at least another 4 hears if not for the outdated CPU. Replaced with a ryzen elitebook because RAM is expandable to 64Gb, hoping it will last for up to 10 years. The difference in performance is staggering compared to the old core i5, well worth the cost of a base model.
grecy 3 days ago [-]
> That is just as good as any new laptop made today.
How’s the battery life? Going days without thinking about where my charger is can be really nice.
What resolution does the screen run?
jmclnx 3 days ago [-]
I accidentally tested the battery today, I forgot to plug it in :)
So, just shy of 2 hours the level was at 5%, I usually run at Frequency 2200, the range is 1200 -- 2601. The lower the frequency, the longer the battery life. You can set on NetBSD freq. using:
For resolution via the laptop screen is 1366x768, that is the highest on the Laptop monitor. As you can see it is a bit odd for some reason. On my external monitor I can go to 1920x1080 at about 60Hz. I think there were various models of the T430 and some had higher resolutions.
Note: The battery is original and is the larger Thinkpad battery. You can find new batteries on the WEB. I always use the T430 plugged in.
grecy 2 days ago [-]
Thanks for the info.
> just shy of 2 hours the level was at 5%
Ouch. That is unworkable for me, and would be very hard to deal with.
> For resolution via the laptop screen is 1366x768
Oh wow, that is a very low resolution, and wouldn't be good enough for editing photos and video.
> I always use the T430 plugged in.
I'm always shocked to see this. What is the point of a laptop you just use plugged in? Lower quality (and res) screen, bad thermals, lack of cheap expansion, and you're just tied to a desk anyway. It seems a basic desktop would run rings around it.
cleverpatrick 1 days ago [-]
Maybe it's just me, but I find that older hardware will sometimes get "sticky" after just sitting around for awhile. I've had it happen to mice, and to the palm rests on my old Dell laptop.
The best explanation I've had for this is that the rubber components degrade over time. But it makes me leery of buying older hardware because of that.
CT4u8798 5 days ago [-]
I never buy new laptops, and I always put linux on the ones I do buy. My only issues have been running the more resource intensive applications I needed to run as a student, and the fact that the university expects you to be running windows. But as an everyday machine a used/refurbished laptop is the way to go.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
Aren’t you kind of burying the lede?
You had a laptop that didn’t meet your needs?
CT4u8798 5 days ago [-]
No the laptops met my needs perfectly. They were cheap, and they ran fully up to date operating systems and the latest software. The issues with the university are issues with the university.
scarface_74 5 days ago [-]
[flagged]
jancsika 5 days ago [-]
If it's someone local or friend-of-a-friend, fine.
But for rando ebay/web: is there some part of the supply chain where thousands or tens of thousands of machines hit a single point where it's scalable for, say, a software rootkit to efficiently be put on them?
E.g., I know universities typically buy a shit-ton of the same model. Where do they eventually unload them if they don't end up selling through their official used channel? Same for police/govt/etc.
I don't think the economics of, say, rooting a bunch of machines in the hopes of hacking a big Bitcoin wallet need to even make sense. There just needs to be an easy point of access to many machines, so that a confidence man can sell some poor schmuck on the idea that if they buy a rootkit and install it on all of them they'll make millions in Bitcoins (or whatever).
asdfasdf1 5 days ago [-]
doubt a bitcoin millionaire is going to bother buying second hand hw. For anyone else, just format hdd & reinstall os
geek_at 5 days ago [-]
Use refurbed when possible. But obviously the "don't buy new" incentive only scales to a hard limit
RajT88 5 days ago [-]
I picked up a few years ago a refurb Dell for a little over 200 USD (with shipping 215).
It is one of those big beasts with a number pad and decent GPU. I use it as a gaming PC. I was just last night playing Dead Island Riptide with default settings. It is probably the best computer purchase I have ever made.
My advice: keep an eye out for Dell refurb deals on slickdeals.com. They occasionally have half-off deals, which is what I scored.
qingcharles 5 days ago [-]
You can get some really great laptop bargains on eBay if you dig around.
In 2023 I managed to get a barely used 2017 17" HP for $80 that runs Windows 11 fantastically and even happily runs some smaller LLMs.
A crappy laptop can be totally transformed by swapping out their spinning HDD for a super cheap SSD and adding another 8GB of cheap RAM.
Every new laptop I've touched in the last few years just makes me more sure of my decision to ride out this thinkpad from 2013 until the poor quad core can't keep up with the web.
It's had no failures at all in its life apart from the battery. My two year old work laptop went in the trash after its USB ports all died.
This thing has been around the planet twice and it just keeps going.
Havoc 4 days ago [-]
Does kinda feel like laptops and desktops are experiencing the same effect as the phones.
The specs are improving, but the experience is not improving in lockstep with it. Browsing & similar normal usage cases just doesn't need it.
econ 5 days ago [-]
My imagination produced a product with the worse possible build quality but with various tiers of replacement parts.
Say you buy the laptop with a crude 3d printed case and when new money comes in you buy the titanium case. Spending the weekend swapping the parts over is a bonus.
It should be modular but extra crappy. 2 GB memory is a lot.
>I am still on my MacBook Pro 2015 because of the Keyboard and Trackpad. So in about 2 years time this will be 10 years of usage. I dont intend to replace it any time soon. For browsing it is fast enough. And if you look at the Louis Rossman Channels it seems newer MBP just aren't built the same. It may be worth looking at it again I 2025. How little ( or big ) the past 10 years of Laptop has changed.
May be time to look for a new MacBook especially when all of them now has 16GB memory by default.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
Jumping from x86 to arm may be worth it just because of how little power it needs. Perhaps you'd like a laptop where the fan never [*] turns on enough to be audible and with 20 hours battery life?
They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good even in the emoji keyboard models.
Do get one with 32 Gb ram if you can. You never know what you'll want to use it for next year.
[*] Of course, if you compile/run renders etc you may get to hear the fan and it won't last 20 hours.
ksec 5 days ago [-]
>They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good even in the emoji keyboard models.
I actually have one with my previous company and they are still not as good. New Scissors has a key travel distance of 1mm instead of 1.5mm, and trackpad is too large that causes false positive compare to zero on my MacBook 2015. Was rather hoping Apple to walk back these two thing by the time I get a new MacBook for myself. But looks like not.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
Hmm that's probably because you do a direct comparison to the 2015.
I made the mistake of getting an emoji keyboard model in like 2019 and this new M3 Pro felt like I could breathe again :)
layer8 5 days ago [-]
The Lunar Lake laptops have reduced the power efficiency gap by a lot.
nottorp 5 days ago [-]
CPU wise or whole system wise?
You can play some pretty taxing x86 3d games on my M3 pro laptops, in spite of the two layers of emulation. Those Lunar Lake laptops would need a GPU for that wouldn't they?
Have they in the Wintel world figured out why Apple trackpads can actually act like a mouse replacement yet?
layer8 5 days ago [-]
Whole-system wise (they roughly doubled the battery life over the previous generation [0]), and the Intel SoCs have reasonably powerful integrated GPUs.
I’m not a laptop user myself and don’t consider even Apple trackpads (I actually own one of their desktop trackpads) anywhere close to a viable mouse replacement, so no further comment on that.
Well you clearly can't play first person shooters even on Apple's trackpads, but every time I switch to an x86 one the control is more ... approximate.
On my apple laptops i've succesfully played stuff like Minecraft or Path of Exile without a physical mouse. And never missed a mouse while doing software development.
> reasonably powerful integrated GPUs.
Path of Exile is anything but reasonable to the GPU. And on an older M2 mac mini I was lucky to get 20-25 fps. However, the M3 pro on my laptop can mostly run it at 60, to my complete astonishment. Especially considering it's a windows application that is ran by x86 wine that is translated to arm by rosetta 2...
7speter 5 days ago [-]
The Lunar Lake SoC has a few (4 iirc) Battlemage GPU cores.
tom_ 5 days ago [-]
I'm still using my 2015 13" Macbook Pro. I bought it in April 2015, and I think I'll actually get ten years' use out of it. The form factor is still decent, and it generally runs cool and quiet, but the performance is nothing to write home about (shall we say). It's still useable, for now, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that nobody is optimising their software for this tier of system any more.
You do have to be pretty determined to squeeze 10 years out of this sort of laptop. macOS gave up on my laptop a while ago (it runs macOS Monterey), and the app store moans at me occasionally about not being able to upgrade this or that because I don't have a recent enough macOS. It seems Apple gave up on selling replacement batteries for it at some point last year, too.
heelix 4 days ago [-]
I replaced my kid's 2017 mac she used through university last year. I expected it to be trashed - and turns out it is in reasonable shape. While it looks like this might be the last OS refresh for it, it felt usable. 16G of RAM probably went a long way. Cleaning it up for a second life.
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sourraspberry 5 days ago [-]
Spent like $2000 NZD on a new XPS 13 to replace my old XPS 13 from ~2017 - a device I loved. The new one was a piece of hot garbage. Overheat and throttled playing League of Legends - a game that has ran adequately on every other piece of hardware I've owned since 2011?
I couldn't understand how a 2022 device would run so much worse than 2017 device and assumed it was faulty. Returned, given a replacement, same issue. It is quite literally not built to hand the heat from the Intel chip doing very minimal stuff. I refuse to use a laptop that sounds like a jet engine when Microsoft is doing basic background stuff.
Returned and ended up buying a used 15 inch T-type Thinkpad with an AMD chip recommended by Reddit for $500 NZD. Runs great, cool, and quiet. It's much bigger and bulkier that the Dell but I don't mind.
Note: Not a Thinkpad fanboy, work has given me an X1 Carbon that I dislike for the same reasons I didn't like the new XPS 13 - it's useable, but it's still much hotter and louder than I would like.
Daniel_sk 5 days ago [-]
That brings back memories of me using an XPS 13. In theory it was a great notebook, but in real world it has lots of annoying issues. I then bough a Macbook and never looked back.
jjkaczor 5 days ago [-]
... well... this is all good except... if you use Windows and want to upgrade to Windows 11... am currently fighting with a Lenovo W530 from 2013 - and nothing is working "well", even the recent 2024 Win 11 IoT Enterprise release build that can make TPM/etc optional via a Rufus-created USB stick.
And then testing newer Linux distros is also not working with the nVidia K2000M discrete graphics system.
Am thinking it may be time to give-up, harvest the RAM, the SSD's and the screen and recycle the rest of this one...
Jolter 5 days ago [-]
I can’t tell if you read the article. The idea is to not use resource demanding operating systems but stay on some lightweight alternative like a particular Linux distribution.
So how to get Windows 11 running seems entirely off topic.
jjkaczor 4 days ago [-]
Yes, I read the article - just venting - I would love to get a Linux or Haiku OS installed on this machine that is able to use the nVidia Quadro K2000M hardware and drive an external monitor configuration - but so far, nothing has worked. This is an older machine sure - and should run just about anything well - i7, 32gb RAM, 1TB SSD. Seems a shame to just junk it because nothing can handle the discrete graphics card except Windows.
devops99 5 days ago [-]
Flipping the HAP bit on the Intel ME/AMT on older laptops is less difficult, generally (not always). However, with more recent UEFI releases containing newer Intel ME/AMT payloads, the HAP bit is benign on these newer releases of Intel ME for all we know.
There is a very dire need to have those with hardware hacking skills assist the larger freedom software community in "liberating" newer machines.
Someone recently got Libreboot running on a ThinkPad T480
> the author is quoting prices in Euros, which is pretty much synonymous with "extreme poverty" I mentioned before :)
Care to elaborate?
> Especially ironic this article is from 2020 when M1 was launched and now laptops, both Qualcomm and Apple ones, are leaps and bounds better than before.
Something tells me you haven't quite grasped the blog post or what LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is about. https://permacomputing.net
tgma 5 days ago [-]
> Care to elaborate?
Europe is increasingly a basket case.
> what LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is about
Yea, I did sense some hints of political ideals, but did not know that it is explicitly part of some movement. Thanks for elaborating.
herbst 4 days ago [-]
Have you been to Europe?
cowboylowrez 5 days ago [-]
Yeah, the guy griped about replacing keys at 15(?) eu whatever so I get where he's coming from. If you can't afford 2 keyboards worth of replacement keys then it places you in certain economic tiers. If your laptop use is personally very profitable for you then it absolutely makes sense to go first class.
hyperliner 5 days ago [-]
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Uw5ssYPc 5 days ago [-]
This idiot first buys several laptops for 5000 Euro, then he switches to garbage 15-years old 50 Euro ones. From one extreme to another.
And his website promotes anti-humanism propaganda, like turning off running water in people's homes for "sustainability". What a joke.
bhouston 5 days ago [-]
Hmm... okay...
Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS?
Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands. That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast. Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
zamadatix 5 days ago [-]
Not that I concur with the author's choices but they discuss why they don't use cloud halfway through the SD card section.
I'd be willing to bet your use cases and goals don't align with the author's. Which is fine, but remember the article is about why they did not why you must also be the same.
cf100clunk 5 days ago [-]
Old article... 2020. Maybe cloud syncing wasn't suitable for that person back then, I'm guessing.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
cloud syncing a large disk (which today is at least 1TB or 2TB, but will grow in the future) won't ever be suitable.
bhouston 5 days ago [-]
Why not? Here in Canada true fiber to the home is available in most urban centers at up to 8Gbps speeds. You only make small changes usually if you are a normal person so not problems at all.
The only issue is cloud costs which are high for 2tbs in the cloud at this point.
em-bee 5 days ago [-]
ok, true. let me rephase that. there will always be places and situations for which cloud syncing is not a feasible solution. as a frequent traveler and digital nomad i am quite frequently in such places and situations and therefore i prefer to maximize my recovery options by not relying on cloud sync. (i do have a self-hosted cloud backup, but it is not a replacement for other recovery options)
Rendered at 14:45:59 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
A single key for 15€?! I remember ordering one from an online shop specialized in replacement laptop keys at some point in the 2010s and it was like 2€ total. Browsing through similar shops now, it seems like the minimum is 5€ per key nowadays, but still a far cry from 15€.
>After spending more than 100 euros on plastic keys, which would soon break again, I calculated that my keyboard had 90 keys and that replacing them all just once would cost me 1,350 euros.
Someone who breaks keys this often could just buy the whole keyboard assembly FRU for ~30-50€ and take spare keys out of that, assuming it's not always the same ones that break.
So long as I know where the N and M keys are, that's all that matters :)
Now though, we’re talking mainly laptop keyboards. My desk keyboard is a low profile keyboard with pretty thin keys (Keytron K2). If you hit them at the right angle, there’s not much plastic there to absorb the shock.
Unlike my daughter's friend's Dell, where basically everything had to come out of the laptop to get at the keyboard (battery, speakers, motherboard, etc), AND it was plastic-riveted down. I must have spent 2-4 hours replacing it, because I had to do it twice (for reasons I don't remember).
Some Thinkpads, more specifically x2xx series (ie x250 - x290) require removing all internals to get to the keyboard to replace it (batteries, storage, wifi, motherboard, speakers, CMOS battery, and a few others). Dell Latitude E5470 on the other hand allows replacing its keyboard by pulling out a small plastic panel and removing one screw.
I have had a similarly positive experience with older laptops, in particular ThinkPads (x230) and Latitudes (e7460). The older machines often also have much better keyboards than more recent laptops, IMHO.
As the OP writes, swapping out HDD for SSD (1 usually prefer at least 1 TB) and maxing out RAM are affordable things that you won't regret.
That said a used laptop is perfect for web browsing, office stuff, casual development and light gaming. When it dies you have no regrets. It is almost 20 years I have not bought a new laptop. Of course my kids have used laptops too. At some point they had Fujitsu Siemens with a Wacom stylus/digitizer. I do not think they still make those. They were rock solid and quite fun to use.
I only buy new laptops for my wife. She is very careful with her stuff, they last ages. I bought her a new one recently only to offer her a better screen.
All bought used, never spent more than maybe $250 and $200 for max RAM and nice SSD.
Unfortunately, with the advent of soldered ram and storage, this isn't feasible any more for more taxing uses. Most of the used devices will have the default ram and storage and you'll have to buy new so you can order the thing with enough resources.
Gaming like laptops are a no no for me, sorry. And I doubt there's anything just slightly larger than a macbook pro but with upgradeable components.
https://frame.work/
The Framework laptop has way too many compromises
https://www.theverge.com/24185827/framework-laptop-16-six-mo...
They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.
Portability in terms of weight it might be close. But according to the reviews I’ve seen they run hot and loud.
Because of timing and layovers, I spent an entire day going from ATL-LAX-SJC. Not having to worry about battery life and actually being able to use it on my lap without having to worry about infertility from the heat was a godsend.
Assuming Framework remains solvent and doesn't change the physical layout of their motherboards, I don't anticipate ever needing to buy another laptop.
I don't think we can blame Framework for that on their own, Microsoft must surely have a contribution to this.
But still, after getting used to apple's offerings I don't think I'd like a laptop where you need to check if it actually went to sleep instead of just closing the lid and moving along.
> They’re noticeably bigger and run warmer with less battery life than a Macbook Air.
Bigger is fine to a point. Less battery life, same. But the heat and noise when you have alternatives that don't have the problem...
> The fact that the battery lasted over 14 hours on a single charge in our battery life tests again shows just how good the 13-inch MacBook Air is for people who want a compact laptop they can use almost anywhere.
Ofc, it's easy to run prices through a converter so I wonder where they ship from and where the warranty is located...
https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...
In terms of shipping, they have multiple warehouses around the world.
That's the miracle with apple's OS. And I say OS because I'm sure it filters out accidental input in software. The trackpad is made by whoever makes them for the x86 laptops too, but I really can't remember when it registered a touch when I didn't want it.
(I'm sure it happens occasionally, but not enough to be worth keeping track of.)
I care more about all of those features than the replaceable parts.
i'd accept soldered RAM if it is at least 16GB, (though 32GB would be better) because i'd rarely need more than that. but a soldered SSD never. that holds my precious data, and even if i have a full backup, i do want to be able to take out the SSD when the laptop dies, or replace a broken or worn out SSD (as i had once). the risk of not being able to recover data from a soldered SSD is just not worth the few grams saved in weight.
My important documents are synced with cloud storage, my photos and videos are synced with iCloud, Google Photos and OneDrive.
My code is pushed to a remote git repository.
I can add more external storage. I would be more concerned about RAM.
And when you are traveling you don’t keep your important documents backed up? What happens if your SSD goes bad?
And if a restore would be inconvenient when you are traveling, getting a new laptop and hypothetically connecting your SAD wouldn’t be?
with a replaceable SSD i can (and in fact just did a few weeks ago) take the SSD from the old laptop and put it into the new one. took me 5 minutes.
restoring all that data from the cloud would have cost me a few hundred dollars in mobile data fees. or several weeks of visiting a restaurant which has free data, but would also have racked up a restaurant bill not to mention the time that would have been taken away from working.
so sure, there are ways to get around the limitations of a soldered SSD, but so far i have not seen any that are worth the benefit of a few grams saved in the weight of my laptop. because that is what we are arguing about here.
backups are good, and everyone should have one, and they are certainly covering several failure modes regardless of whether the SSD is soldered or not. but an unsoldered SSD also covers a few failure modes that a backup doesn't cover. at the cost of a few grams of extra weight. my goal is to maximize the recovery options. so i have backups and a replaceable SSD.
the ultimate solution would be a laptop that supports two SSDs so i can run a raid mirror like my desktop. one of those SSDs could even be soldered in that case.
But soldered versus non-soldered is a secondary issue to you not having up to date backups somewhere that are easily accessible.
But even then there are backup solutions for Linux that backup to S3 and S3 Glacier is cheap. I have 3TB and my AWS bill is $4 a month.
And “RAID is not backup”
Same with my phone.
And that 14 hours turns into 8 going back and forth between conference rooms with it powering a USB C portable monitor which is getting power and video from one USB C cord.
''The accessibility of this website depends on the weather in Barcelona, Spain''
At least at this time, Windows 11 is not that much heavier/resource-needy than Windows 10. There's a small but non-negligible number of people running Win11 on things like Thinkpad x250 or T450 (Inter 5th gen CPU), for example.
The regular Joe Schmoe prob won't be able to do that, but he's not likely to use 2015 laptop in 2024 to begin with...
Alternatively, can the community come up with some interesting uses for all the machines?
Google has targeted this model with ChromeOS Flex.
Everytime Microsoft does something that apparently pisses off people, we get tons of suggestions that now everyone is finally going to migrate in droves into GNU/Linux, and then nothing happens.
Meanwhile the only Linux based devices that are actually successful among normies, are those that hide the fact there is the Linux kernel running underneath, expose no CLI, and have everything done in basic graphical workflows without any FOSS religion.
Chromebooks, Android, DVD and BluRay players, TV setup boxes, SmartTVs,....
Also, given that this is the author's work laptop, what's the economic justification for not investing in the primary tool you use for work?
The author explains that there are motivations not related to money (we live on a finite earth, the manufacturing of a laptop encompass a considerable amount of energy and raw materials for mining, etc).
Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the obverse - Why should one buy a new laptop when an old one will do? Your framing sounds to me like a post-hoc justification for consumerism. Why not "invest" in getting the absolute best in the primary means of transportation, or couch, TV or random product category?
I was traveling recently and got a lot done on an 8-year old tablet. I was very productive, I suspect the combination of being offline (no 5G modem), no random notifications, just me, the terminal and a Bluetooth keyboard. The compact size & weight, and not having to worry about losing or having an expensive iLaptop stolen made for a worthwhile trade-off. Any productivity gains would have been marginal at best, and not worth the cost.
This is true for everything, not just laptops.
Any purchasing that occurrs on a fashion cycle is largly a rip off...
For instance, I would pay a lot to get my BlackBerry back, screw all that app bloarware nonsense. Fast email, phone, a good keyboard and long battery life, that is a winning combination, from a user's perspective. (And I actually prefer devices with no camera or microphone in it, for security reasons.)
1. Lack of USB-C ports means I wouldn't be able to safely use any USB-C only peripherals (since the USB spec explicitly bans adapters in that direction)
2. Lack of security updates for firmware, microcode, etc.
3. Hard to find replacement batteries from reputable sources
4. The CPU and memory requirements of software are steadily increasing
2+3. depends on the specific devices.
4. 10-15 years ago maybe that was still true. but the power and speed of devices no longer increases at the same rate. it has slowed down to the point that a 6 year old laptop performs just as well for my daily tasks as a 2 year old one and i run the same OS on both. the difference is only noticeable for modern games and some CPU/GPU intensive tasks. i also remember the same experience with even older laptops (i don't have one here right now, so i can't compare directly). what made the older laptops slower/less powerful was less RAM.
but if i have a tendency to buy older devices, then i likely also have a tendency to avoid getting such modern drives. they will be coming though, thanks to USB4, and there will be a day where i can't avoid needing a laptop with at least two USB-C ports (because one of them will be used for charging), or get a USB4 rated USB-C only hub. and hopefully by then even older laptops will already have at least one USB-C port too (even if it doesn't support USB4 yet).
4. Not sure if I can agree. Most software I use just got more efficient over the years. Only exception being the IDE or code editor. #justlinuxthings
What I do instead is buy a moderately powerful new one and just use it until it dies -- I don't upgrade before the laptop is truly dead.
In other words it is more than possible to use laptops beyond those 8 years as long as you buy the right ones. Performance is fine as long as you run the right software, i.e. not software made by a hardware vendor who depends on a regular replacement cycle.
I also installed Linux on them too and the battery life was not great either. I could be an outlier but I've not had good experience with Thinkpads even though I liked them. My older Macbook actually lasted the longest.
buying used hardware is also hit or miss. i got another used laptop for $250 which is decent, but it has some strange hardware issues that i can't pinpoint. unfortunately the choices for used hardware are limited and i could not find any comparable devices in the same price range. (any alternatives would have cost more than twice as much)
so generally, when i can afford it, i do the same as you. get something new with a good price/performance ratio and use that as long as i can.
Bravo for you, but surely you realize that almost nobody does this? Hardly relevant to an article about getting some more useful life out of an old laptop.
that's about the only use case I can think of for this approach, as well as where to find the few hundred people doing it.
that said, wearing walmart pants and hoodies, a face mask, and using a $200 laptop you got off of gumtree or kijiji or craigslist or FB marketplace at coffeeshop probably works just as well. bragging and laziness gets you busted, not a lack of local LLMs to check lexicon.
There is no crime within Common Law for any of the above. Nor is there any violation of any statute for which any of the above is, per doctrine of minimum contact (such as with a pre-paid debit card), within jurisdiction of statute.
Perhaps some users do operate with some concern of being "busted", but most users that do outbound network path management do not operate with this concern.
Its like saying, not good enough for video editing 8k.
Qubes makes outbound network path management easy enough but it's not too hard to do on Linux and FreeBSD, so it can also be done on machines with modest compute resources (which may or may not be subject to the machine being an older machine) as well.
The Old T430 I got from a relative who went to a MAC is also quite adequate for daily use. I have NetBSD on it and just finished upgrading to 10.1, so this was typed on that T430.
So unless you are a heavy duty gamer or work on complex 3d graphics professionally, any recently used laptop will work just as well.
Aaaaaanything but a nice efficient PC!
How’s the battery life? Going days without thinking about where my charger is can be really nice.
What resolution does the screen run?
So, just shy of 2 hours the level was at 5%, I usually run at Frequency 2200, the range is 1200 -- 2601. The lower the frequency, the longer the battery life. You can set on NetBSD freq. using:
sudo /sbin/sysctl -w machdep.cpu.frequency.target=2200
I set it via an entry in root's cron on reboot.
For resolution via the laptop screen is 1366x768, that is the highest on the Laptop monitor. As you can see it is a bit odd for some reason. On my external monitor I can go to 1920x1080 at about 60Hz. I think there were various models of the T430 and some had higher resolutions.
Note: The battery is original and is the larger Thinkpad battery. You can find new batteries on the WEB. I always use the T430 plugged in.
> just shy of 2 hours the level was at 5%
Ouch. That is unworkable for me, and would be very hard to deal with.
> For resolution via the laptop screen is 1366x768
Oh wow, that is a very low resolution, and wouldn't be good enough for editing photos and video.
> I always use the T430 plugged in.
I'm always shocked to see this. What is the point of a laptop you just use plugged in? Lower quality (and res) screen, bad thermals, lack of cheap expansion, and you're just tied to a desk anyway. It seems a basic desktop would run rings around it.
The best explanation I've had for this is that the rubber components degrade over time. But it makes me leery of buying older hardware because of that.
You had a laptop that didn’t meet your needs?
But for rando ebay/web: is there some part of the supply chain where thousands or tens of thousands of machines hit a single point where it's scalable for, say, a software rootkit to efficiently be put on them?
E.g., I know universities typically buy a shit-ton of the same model. Where do they eventually unload them if they don't end up selling through their official used channel? Same for police/govt/etc.
I don't think the economics of, say, rooting a bunch of machines in the hopes of hacking a big Bitcoin wallet need to even make sense. There just needs to be an easy point of access to many machines, so that a confidence man can sell some poor schmuck on the idea that if they buy a rootkit and install it on all of them they'll make millions in Bitcoins (or whatever).
It is one of those big beasts with a number pad and decent GPU. I use it as a gaming PC. I was just last night playing Dead Island Riptide with default settings. It is probably the best computer purchase I have ever made.
My advice: keep an eye out for Dell refurb deals on slickdeals.com. They occasionally have half-off deals, which is what I scored.
In 2023 I managed to get a barely used 2017 17" HP for $80 that runs Windows 11 fantastically and even happily runs some smaller LLMs.
A crappy laptop can be totally transformed by swapping out their spinning HDD for a super cheap SSD and adding another 8GB of cheap RAM.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25486191, 279 comments
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32674830, 111 comments
It's had no failures at all in its life apart from the battery. My two year old work laptop went in the trash after its USB ports all died.
This thing has been around the planet twice and it just keeps going.
The specs are improving, but the experience is not improving in lockstep with it. Browsing & similar normal usage cases just doesn't need it.
Say you buy the laptop with a crude 3d printed case and when new money comes in you buy the titanium case. Spending the weekend swapping the parts over is a bonus.
It should be modular but extra crappy. 2 GB memory is a lot.
Ideally go full ship of theseus.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36646791
374 points, 530 comments
>I am still on my MacBook Pro 2015 because of the Keyboard and Trackpad. So in about 2 years time this will be 10 years of usage. I dont intend to replace it any time soon. For browsing it is fast enough. And if you look at the Louis Rossman Channels it seems newer MBP just aren't built the same. It may be worth looking at it again I 2025. How little ( or big ) the past 10 years of Laptop has changed.
May be time to look for a new MacBook especially when all of them now has 16GB memory by default.
They fixed the keyboard and the trackpad has been good even in the emoji keyboard models.
Do get one with 32 Gb ram if you can. You never know what you'll want to use it for next year.
[*] Of course, if you compile/run renders etc you may get to hear the fan and it won't last 20 hours.
I actually have one with my previous company and they are still not as good. New Scissors has a key travel distance of 1mm instead of 1.5mm, and trackpad is too large that causes false positive compare to zero on my MacBook 2015. Was rather hoping Apple to walk back these two thing by the time I get a new MacBook for myself. But looks like not.
I made the mistake of getting an emoji keyboard model in like 2019 and this new M3 Pro felt like I could breathe again :)
You can play some pretty taxing x86 3d games on my M3 pro laptops, in spite of the two layers of emulation. Those Lunar Lake laptops would need a GPU for that wouldn't they?
Have they in the Wintel world figured out why Apple trackpads can actually act like a mouse replacement yet?
I’m not a laptop user myself and don’t consider even Apple trackpads (I actually own one of their desktop trackpads) anywhere close to a viable mouse replacement, so no further comment on that.
[0] e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/first-intel-lunar-lake...
On my apple laptops i've succesfully played stuff like Minecraft or Path of Exile without a physical mouse. And never missed a mouse while doing software development.
> reasonably powerful integrated GPUs.
Path of Exile is anything but reasonable to the GPU. And on an older M2 mac mini I was lucky to get 20-25 fps. However, the M3 pro on my laptop can mostly run it at 60, to my complete astonishment. Especially considering it's a windows application that is ran by x86 wine that is translated to arm by rosetta 2...
You do have to be pretty determined to squeeze 10 years out of this sort of laptop. macOS gave up on my laptop a while ago (it runs macOS Monterey), and the app store moans at me occasionally about not being able to upgrade this or that because I don't have a recent enough macOS. It seems Apple gave up on selling replacement batteries for it at some point last year, too.
I couldn't understand how a 2022 device would run so much worse than 2017 device and assumed it was faulty. Returned, given a replacement, same issue. It is quite literally not built to hand the heat from the Intel chip doing very minimal stuff. I refuse to use a laptop that sounds like a jet engine when Microsoft is doing basic background stuff.
Returned and ended up buying a used 15 inch T-type Thinkpad with an AMD chip recommended by Reddit for $500 NZD. Runs great, cool, and quiet. It's much bigger and bulkier that the Dell but I don't mind.
Note: Not a Thinkpad fanboy, work has given me an X1 Carbon that I dislike for the same reasons I didn't like the new XPS 13 - it's useable, but it's still much hotter and louder than I would like.
And then testing newer Linux distros is also not working with the nVidia K2000M discrete graphics system.
Am thinking it may be time to give-up, harvest the RAM, the SSD's and the screen and recycle the rest of this one...
So how to get Windows 11 running seems entirely off topic.
There is a very dire need to have those with hardware hacking skills assist the larger freedom software community in "liberating" newer machines.
Someone recently got Libreboot running on a ThinkPad T480
Care to elaborate?
> Especially ironic this article is from 2020 when M1 was launched and now laptops, both Qualcomm and Apple ones, are leaps and bounds better than before.
Something tells me you haven't quite grasped the blog post or what LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is about. https://permacomputing.net
Europe is increasingly a basket case.
> what LOW←TECH MAGAZINE is about
Yea, I did sense some hints of political ideals, but did not know that it is explicitly part of some movement. Thanks for elaborating.
Why the SD Card thing when you can just use the built-in OS cloud syncing capabilities in Windows or MacOS?
Also you can take my M3 MacBook Air 15" from my cold dead hands. That laptop is ultra-lite, perfectly quiet, and ultra-fast. Wouldn't trade it for a 10 year old laptop.
I'd be willing to bet your use cases and goals don't align with the author's. Which is fine, but remember the article is about why they did not why you must also be the same.
The only issue is cloud costs which are high for 2tbs in the cloud at this point.