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How long did your computer last?

About to give away my 2010 13'' macbook pro to my dad to get an early 2013 15'' rMPB. I upgraded it through out the years and is currently 2.66 intel core 2 duo/256 SSD/4GB RAM/Nvidia 320M w/ 256MB.
It was slowing down significantly before I installed the SSD, but its working like a charm now. I would say it can easily last my dad another 2 years to be 6 years old. They grow up so fast :')
 
Lots of computers of various vintages. My oldest Mac is one I just bought, a 2008 Mac Pro. Also have a 2010 Mac Mini, a 2011 iMac and MBP. All running flawlessly. Before the 2011 MBP I had a 2007 MBP that I sold. It was in perfect when sold in early 2012. In the PC arena, I have some 10+ year old ThinkPads that are used for autocross timing & scoring. They serve hazardous duty in a trailer in inclement weather and still run great. Also have a 2008 Samsung netbook that's used in a motorhome as a GPS and engine monitor.

Last computers we've had die were my son's Dell laptop which had a fried motherboard and a Toshiba that fell down a flight of stairs. It still worked with an external monitor.
 
I still have my old LC3 in the basement. That would be circa 1992 I think. Still runs. Utterly useless, but it runs.

My last MBP lasted 2 years before the screen started going bad and I sold it for my RMBP. I've only ever had one PC die on me to the point that I couldn't repair it myself. An old custom build Shuttle box. Not 100% sure, but I think the power supply went out. Won't start now. Tried replacing some capacitors on the power supply with only minimal luck. Didn't want to waste the money replacing the PS because it's an old AMD Athlon chip and too slow to be useful these days.
 
I get something new when the thing I want to do is out of reach or not possible.

For example:
I want a 4k display but my mac doesn't support 4k. So ya I'm going to get the haswell refresh so I can do that 4k thing.

4k would be amazing for everything I do.

Another example:
My PC is 4 years old now and it does not have the M2 slot or Sata Express ports so when I want to upgrade to M2 or Sata Express SSD I will have to upgrade to do that.

I think upgrading when you don't need to is more of a gadget obsession than a need lol. I've been there though where I use to upgrade every year regardless. As I got older I started making up rules "well if it doubles the performance I'll upgrade". Now my rule is if it blocks me from doing something I'll upgrade.

I'm a systems engineer so I deal with this all day 24/7 upgrading servers and dealing with vmware. It gets old after you do it for several years.
taelan28 said:
I loved my Samsung 11 inch notebook I bought years ago, but the breaking hinges and subsequent freezing from paying someone to open it up and fix the hinges twice cause me to hulk out and smash it... spent too much time on the internet anyways and I didnt want to go back and fix it a 3rd time immediately after spending $80 to fix hinges a second time.

MOVING ON NOW!

How long have your computers (mac, PC, laptop, desktop) lasted and what cause you to get something new?
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I should note I spent some decent coin on my Samsung. It was about $1200. I spent another $150 on repairs, so $1350 in the 3 years I owned it. From not having it the 4th year I proably spent another $200-500 in the PC bang over the months playing starcraft and League of Legends, so those costs were figured in for me buying my $1600* rmbp

*Im in korea so its $1600 here, its actually a good deal compared to similarly spec'd PCs here.
 
I also haven't ever had a machine die on me, and I've built a lot of them. Even my compaq presario 2286 from I want to say 1999? Still works beautifully. Runs windows 98 and still has the original 4GB hard drive in it. Every computer that I've owned hasn't broken, I may have cannibalized a few parts from one and put together a new one but no individual pieces are broken.
 
Dell Inspiron 1545, Purchased September 2010. Lasted until May this year when I foolishly dropped it off my desk and screwed the hard drive and the screen.
Now own a late 2013 rMBP which im currently treating like a new born child.
 
My 2004 PowerMac g4 was still running when I retired it after 9 years' usage.

I have a 2007 (actually, late-2006 but bought new in '07) iMac still running fine on the other table.

My first (and only) MacBook is a 13" MacBook Pro bought new in April 2010, actually runs faster than when new after I put an SSD into it...

And I still have some PowerMacs up in the attic that should boot up, as well as a 1992-vintage Mac IIci...
 
The power supply fan in my Quicksilver G4 literally just started playing up over the weekend after either being my main system or a backup server for the past decade.
 
All of my computers tend to last me a while.

2006 Desktop still up and running with the latest software and maxed out RAM

2009 Laptop still up and running with an SSD, and latest software

2009 Desktop still up and running and is a daily workhorse.

2010 Laptop still up and running

And all of my newer machines are of course...still up and running.
 
My line-up...

I don't remember what it was, but my family had an old grey box and grey monitor running Windows ME.

We then upgraded to a HP Pavillion desktop running Vista. Still works now.

I got a Dell Inspiron 1545 that came with Vista for graduation of middle school, now running 8.1. It sucks pretty bad, but it's also 6 years old. I'm going to get a new computer soon. Hopefully a 13" rMBP 8/256!

I also have a Surface RT 32GB that I like very much and have used for casual video watching and note taking at school. I still plan to use it for a few years to come 🙂

But EEEK I can't wait to get a mac! I even registered to this forum in anticipation.
 
joshlalonde said:
I don't remember what it was, but my family had an old grey box and grey monitor running Windows ME.

We then upgraded to a HP Pavillion desktop running Vista. Still works now.

I got a Dell Inspiron 1545 that came with Vista for graduation of middle school, now running 8.1. It sucks pretty bad, but it's also 6 years old. I'm going to get a new computer soon. Hopefully a 13" rMBP 8/256!

I also have a Surface RT 32GB that I like very much and have used for casual video watching and note taking at school. I still plan to use it for a few years to come 🙂

But EEEK I can't wait to get a mac! I even registered to this forum in anticipation.
Click to expand...
You'll love the 13 inch RMBP. I got the 4/128 and I wish I got the 8/256 for storage reasons, not speed reasons. I too have a Surface 2. It was sweet and I was pleased with how much I was using it over my macbook, but the thing is just slower than the macbook at loading pages so I put it to the side. Its good for work though when I need to look at powerpoint presentations and its about as portable as a computing device with a KB can get.
 
I've had a white MacBook and a MacBook Pro 13''. I've kept each for 2.5 years and sold them with 6 months of Apple Care left.
My current MacBook Pro 15'' is 2 years old, but I intend to keep this one longer.
 
SE/30 bought in mid 1990 - HDD dead and had some bad ram modules which gave me the simasimac (removing them solved the problem). A hassle to open up . Still unbeatable as a word processor (Apple Extended Keyboard).

eMac 1.42 - Works really well with Tiger but I haven't used it in a couple of years.

Macbook Pro 15'' Early 2008 - So far the best Mac I've owned. 6GB ram, Expresscard SSD, runs Mavericks perfectly. Had the Logic Board replaced by Apple for free 2 years ago. Opened it up and checked that they put in the G84-603-A2 revision of the Nvidia GPU, which apparently is not defective like the others. Smooth sailing so far...
 
In '95, I bought a Packard Hell Pentium 75 mhz with some tiny amount of ram and a Powerbook 5300 with 8MB ram. The Packard I over clocked to 90 mhz, and maxed out the ram. As I recall, I also ran into problems upgrading some of the components because of the daughter card used for cards.

The Powerbook was upgraded to 16 MB ram for over $300. It still ran a few years ago, but has system 7.5.5, so there's not much it can do currently if it still starts.

The Packard was given to my wife in 2000, and the Powerbook I just stopped using in 2000.

In 2000, I bought a Toshiba Pentium 4 laptop with 256mb ram upgraded to 512mb. I stopped using it as my main computer in 2005. It still runs but only gets used for Diablo II LAN parties.

I have a 2007 Mac Mini bought re-furbed running Leopard maxed out at 3.3 GB RAM. It's got a strange shutdown problem and I stopped using it about a year and a half ago in 2012.

My wife is running a 2010 13" stock Macbook pro with 4 GB RAM and the 250 GB hard drive.

My current computer is a 2011 13" Macbook pro upgraded to 16 GB ram running 10.9.4.

In April 2013, I got my sons matching HP laptops with 4 GB RAM running Windows 8.0. The two problems I have are that they keep ruining their power cables, and I finally got tired of viruses, adware and malware, so I've put them on locked accounts, and they have to have me or my wife okay new software.

Finally, I have a store-bought PC with 16 GB RAM and Windows 8.0 which is basically a file and print server, and is the only desktop in use in the house.

I've got about 3 PCs I built myself and a laptop in there for family use, which were usually run for 5 or 6 years each. I tend to upgrade for performance improvements, and then hand working machines to family and friends if I know I'm giving them an upgrade too. With many of the PCs, I've had to replace motherboards, cases and power supplies, sometimes more than once. Even avoiding the cheapest components is no guarantee of longevity.
 
1999 Compaq Presario 1272 laptop with K6II processor went mostly OK for 5 years but hardware was a little delicate. Windows 98 was OK to use once I got it fine tuned and maintained it like a British car. 😉

At the same time, I got an iBook and it still works but rj11 jack is shot but that's no biggie these days. Both OS9 and OSX on it worked pretty well without having to do much to it. When I got that iBook, Bill Clinton was president. Apple has always had great builds and great operating systems even though it took them too long to jump onto the Intel bandwagon. My '06 Mac mini went to friend and that thing works perfectly for what it is.
 
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I still use my 2009 MBP daily, and it's running just fine.
My iMac has just been sold, and I'll be putting the money towards a spec'd out 15" MBPr as soon as they release an update
 
Still rocking with a 2007 IBM ThinkPad T60. It's running Windows 7, no issues whatsoever. I recently had a 2007 Dell Vostro until the motherboard and screen had separate issues.
 
Rodster said:
Still rocking with a 2007 IBM ThinkPad T60. It's running Windows 7, no issues whatsoever. I recently had a 2007 Dell Vostro until the motherboard and screen had separate issues.
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Those ThinkPads as well as Toshibas are both PCs that are built like tanks but neither is heavy like one either and they are solid machines. Sometimes some Sony laptops are super durable also but there are some really delicate ones, too. The short lived eMachine laptops were too easy to break.

With a little money the Alienware laptops are excellent for their durability but you still have the same issues most have with Windows but they don't throw a lot of awful bundled software in so they run smoother. But still for that price you are much better off with Macbooks since so many Alien laptop users don't use their stuff for high end gaming anyway. In a perfect world I would have both an Apple product and an Alien.
 
I had a 2004 G5 tower and that thing worked fine till the day I sold it (like 2 months ago). Once they stopped supporting PPC my software was very limited.

I also have a 2004 HP laptop that runs 8.1 just fine for simple tasks.

It really depends what you're doing to know how long a computer will "last" If you buy a good system for simple tasks (web, email, MP3s...) then it will easily last 10+ years.

My 2008 Mac pro even does heavy tasks very well still. (editing photos, video, VMs) Ive made upgrades over the years but I'm not buying a new machine every 2 years.
 
joshlalonde said:
I don't remember what it was, but my family had an old grey box and grey monitor running Windows ME.

We then upgraded to a HP Pavillion desktop running Vista. Still works now.

I got a Dell Inspiron 1545 that came with Vista for graduation of middle school, now running 8.1. It sucks pretty bad, but it's also 6 years old. I'm going to get a new computer soon. Hopefully a 13" rMBP 8/256!

I also have a Surface RT 32GB that I like very much and have used for casual video watching and note taking at school. I still plan to use it for a few years to come 🙂

But EEEK I can't wait to get a mac! I even registered to this forum in anticipation.
Click to expand...
Wipe and do a clean install of Windows 8.1. It should run much better than Vista
 
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