Reminiscing the past

[pika2000]

In a recent spring cleaning, I stumbled upon my old Dell XPS 17 laptop. It’s an old clunker, but it did come with a top spec at that time, a core i7 sandy bridge and 8GB of RAM. The battery is dead, and when I booted it up, the hard drive is dead.

Here comes the reminiscing part.
The battery is easily removable as it’s externally connected. Found a cheap OEM replacement part.
Flipped the laptop around, and I can open up the bottom part to easily replace the hard drives with SSDs.
Installed Windows 10 on it, and it is alive again (SSD sure helps any old PC to run like new). Sure, battery life is only about 2 hours, but the fact that I can easily revive it and how Windows is such backward compatible really made me reminiscing about how PCs were.

Today’s PCs (and Macs of course) are much faster, sleeker, more user friendly, etc. But once they’re dead, that’s about it. Even modern Windows laptops and All in Ones followed the trend of making things harder for customers to access just so they can sell higher tier options. But that’s the new world we live in now.

 

[Queen6]

Well depends what you opt for my primary;
RAM - user upgradable
SSD's - user upgradable, both of them
WiFi/BT - user upgradable
Battery - takes more disassembly, but entirely possible for the user to replace

Mac's today are just money pits, even my grab and go W10 tablet focused 2in1 has greater upgradeability (M.2 SSD). I find Apple's actions to be mostly hostile towards the customer. Apple has removed all possible upgrades paths to serve itself, forcing inhouse upgrades with excessive margins. Apple looks to block any 3rd party avenue for repair so that Apple and Apple alone controls the environment, offering only expensive modular repairs, effectively a monopoly.

Today Apple designs lifestyle appliances, simple as that so much promise lost. Apple removing "computer" from the name sadly now makes ever more sense...

Q-6

 

[Suture]

There's quite a few systems I wish I had held onto. Lately I've been considering putting together a 486 as a summer project with my son. Let him feel the pain of spinning hard drives and boot disks. But really to replay some old games and tinker around with old tech.

 

[Queen6]

There's quite a few systems I wish I had held onto. Lately I've been considering putting together a 486 as a summer project with my son. Let him feel the pain of spinning hard drives and boot disks. But really to replay some old games and tinker around with old tech.

I remember being pleased as punch as I was able to OC a i486 DX4, it was a salty old dog more cards than a pack of

Old games recommend GOG for modern hardware, don't game a lot, equally I still like Quake & Quake 2 only 23 years young, but you've got to have the original soundtrack, it's a must Swapped out the game engines, 1440p on my W10 tablet orientated 2in1. My youngest loves theses old FPS as they play so fast. Alien versus Predator classic 2000 with the Redux Mod and the king of irreverence Postal 2 (sense of humour required)...

Q-6

 

[MBAir2010]

great story! with everything being disposable nowadays im wondering if these new computing products are good for the environment when the conk out?
i just cant see a bunch of people recycling their defected devises when they wont recycle a plastic waterbottle.
I have this igloo imac i might place on a corner this weekend so someone might use or tinker with. the imac needs the graphics card/motherboard replaced.

 

[Queen6]

great story! with everything being disposable nowadays im wondering if these new computing products are good for the environment when the conk out?
i just cant see a bunch of people recycling their defected devises when they wont recycle a plastic waterbottle.
I have this igloo imac i might place on a corner this weekend so someone might use or tinker with. the imac needs the graphics card/motherboard replaced.

I always gift my old systems, as I figure they have more than paid for themselves and another can benefit. More often than not they go as is once cleaned, sometimes I'll bump up RAN etc. Apple today only produces disposable appliances with rather humorous price points...

Apple is only about the $$$$ nothing else, it's line up and actions irrevocably validate this precept. Likely same as Google, Apple solely views it's customers now as a function of profitability, mostly to me Apple is "full of it"...

Q-6

 

[GoldfishRT]

Well depends what you opt for my primary;
RAM - user upgradable
SSD's - user upgradable, both of them
WiFi/BT - user upgradable
Battery - takes more disassembly, but entirely possible for the user to replace

Mac's today are just money pits, even my grab and go W10 tablet focused 2in1 has greater upgradeability (M.2 SSD). I find Apple's actions to be mostly hostile towards the customer. Apple has removed all possible upgrades paths to serve itself, forcing inhouse upgrades with excessive margins. Apple looks to block any 3rd party avenue for repair so that Apple and Apple alone controls the environment, offering only expensive modular repairs, effectively a monopoly.

Today Apple designs lifestyle appliances, simple as that so much promise lost. Apple removing "computer" from the name sadly now makes ever more sense...

Q-6

I think it would be acceptable if the machines without upgradability were built well enough, fast enough, cool enough that you could reasonably expect a solid 5 years of trouble free use and upgrades at the point of sale were reasonably priced. Of course, that's not the case.

 

[maflynn]

I have an old dell lattitude 15" laptop in my closet. I fired it up some time ago, and it booted fine. It doesn't have wifi or an ethernet port so I'd need a USB dongle for wifi, I may dust it off and fire it back up. Its got windows 2000 but I wonder how it will work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[pika2000]

I have an old dell lattitude 15" laptop in my closet. I fired it up some time ago, and it booted fine. It doesn't have wifi or an ethernet port so I'd need a USB dongle for wifi, I may dust it off and fire it back up. Its got windows 2000 but I wonder how it will work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just dusted off another oldy, a Core 2 Duo Dell Lattitude. It definitely runs a lot slower than the Sandy bridge i7, even with SSD, but it still runs.
[doublepost=1559368387][/doublepost]

I think it would be acceptable if the machines without upgradability were built well enough, fast enough, cool enough that you could reasonably expect a solid 5 years of trouble free use and upgrades at the point of sale were reasonably priced. Of course, that's not the case.

Thanks to SSD, imo plenty of laptops can survive that 5-year lifespan just fine. I had a 2012 13" Macbook Air that has been delegated to a relative, and it still works fine. Battery age is the only limiting factor for most.

 

[CPL593H]

I have a 2013 HP ProBook. Replaced battery, keyboard, RAM and HD->SSD, and wireless card with nothing more than a small Phillips screwdriver. Felt brand new and blazing quick with a fresh OS install.

 

[idonthatethemac]

I still have my 2011 hp g7 17 inch running. I bought it for $579. Ofcourse i extended its life by replacing HDD with Samsung 850 and made it 8 GB ram in 2015. Its cracked from left bottom side, an 'x' key is missing but still runs great