Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

[andrecarini]

With all the news about the Apple M2 and the people excited to sunset their couple years old computers, I feel compelled to share my reality (and that of many others outside the HN bubble).

I'm a 27 years old software developer from Brazil. The computer in question was assembled in 2007 from parts that were mostly bought abroad (and then gifted to me) by a wealthier relative that was visiting. That's a key point: the currency exchange rates and the import taxes make electronics out of reach for the common folks.

That was an AMD2+ motherboard, 4GB of DDR2, a 5400 RPM rust spinner, and a Phenom X4 coupled with an ATI 4870.

Although the household was never in a dire situation financially, I had always been taught by example to fix things and keep using them for as long as possible. Even back in elementary school times I would troubleshoot computer issues myself and brush off dust from the components.

Yes, there have been hardware failures since 2007: two HDDs died (about 6 years lifespan for each), the 4870 died (but I extended its life for one more year with the bake-it-in-the-oven trick), one DIMM failure, a PSU blowout and a CPU cooler bracket mechanical failure.

All replacements that had to be purchased would cost me a significant amount of money. HDDs and PSUs were not that expensive, but GPUs were out of reach. When that DIMM died in 2018, I purchased an used and dusty DDR2 replacement kit off AliExpress.

After the pandemic hit and I got my first proper (remote) job in 2020, I splurged and replaced some components: a hand-me-down GPU from a wealthier friend (I had been using the onboard graphics since the 4870 died), an AMD3 motherboard, a Phenom II X4 and some DDR3, all used and from AliExpress.

The monitor, a 22" TFT panel from Samsung, is still kicking since 2007 with a couple of dead pixels. Same goes for the mouse, manufactured by an unknown Chinese brand, and a membrane keyboard that I completely disassembled and scrubbed clean under a running faucet.

Even with my career finally taking off (I'm due to complete undergraduate Computer Science this year) I don't see myself doing major upgrades/purchases any soon.

When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

[w10-1]

Give yourself extra life. Buy the best tools you can.

Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime. You'll never get the time back that you spend working on unimportant projects, sustaining old builds, placating unhappy people, working on slow computers, etc. Unless it's the fastest way for you to deliver whatever good you have to the world, put it aside, especially if you've invested time to get good at tending it. There's no deeper hole to lose your irreplaceable lifetime.

[jamal-kumar]

Have you ever lived south of the USA before?

Shit gets EXPENSIVE out this way for electronics. I mean I can get my groceries extremely cheap and rent hasn't ever been more than 200$/mo, but electronics are all manufactured out of Asia and the supply lines and/or taxes on specifically that just add all this extra cost that's hard to justify in certain cases. We're talking like 50%+ of the cost you'll find in the USA.

I learned programming specifically because my shitty computer from 1999 wasn't good enough to waste all my time playing world of warcraft like my peers, who were too busy playing video games in high school and being well-off to get into programming or getting their dicks sucked. Now they ask me how to get girls or what they need to do to learn programming. It's extremely different here.

If you live in more humid areas you're forced to replace your electronics a lot faster just because they rust like that. There's computers in plywood boxes with an incandescent lightbulb in there just to prevent the humidity from wrecking it kind of level.

[jjav]

Agreed, in that it's not a benefit to hobble yourself with bad tools that hold you back.

But... the worthwhile upgrade cycle has become ever longer. Back in the early 90s it always felt that last years CPU was unimaginably slow. But over the last decade and more, there's hardly a convincing reason to upgrade very often other than marketing or perhaps cutting-edge gaming (don't know much about gaming).

My primary server at home I built in 2010. It runs my zfs file server, many VMs for assorted things and all odds and ends to run the house. I've upgraded a few drives and added some RAM, but still the same hardware mostly. I get the urge to upgrade every now and then, but objectively I can't justify it. It works great and does everything it needs still fast enough.

My personal laptop is a Toshiba I bought also in 2010 but it was used, so I think it might be 2008 or 2009. Dual boot Linux (primary use) and Windows (for some exercise and astrophotography tools). Still runs perfectly fine, zero urge to ugprade it.

My desktop is my newest machine, a 2014 Mac Mini. No urge to upgrade either, it works perfectly.

And in comparison, my work 2020 MacBookPro is a far inferior machine. Fan runs constantly, always overheating. I'm glad that junk machine is not mine, just have to tolerate it for work. I'd feel sick if I'd bought it with my money, so I'm glad I keep my trusty 2014 Mac.

[vladvasiliu]

While I agree with the general sentiment, I think this can be nuanced.

By that I mean that always keeping up with the latest and greatest can be overrated, [0] and actually be quite a huge time sink to keep looking for a new computer and / or new parts, compare them, etc. Sure, if you only buy the latest MBP that's easy, since there's not much to choose from. But it is expensive, and it's not always worth it.

I'd been working all through the pandemic lockdowns on an i5-6500 I had saved from the bin at work. Old SATA SSD from ~2012, 16 then 32 GB RAM. Integrated HD graphics (not the newer UHD).

I never felt held back by it, it would chug along nicely through pretty much everything I threw at it. The only thing for which I had to wait around a bit was Rust compilation.

Then at the end of last year, my work laptop was up for renewal. So I spent around a week comparing models, looking up on intel vs amd, etc. In the end, I ended up with a zen 3 model. While the CPU is fast, in my day-to-day I see no difference compared to the old one. It compiles some of my Rust projects almost twice as fast, but it's still not instant, and I don't wait around for full compiles anyway. [1]

Aside from that, Teams, web pages, etc, there's absolutely no difference in perceived performance.

I get that this is less extreme than OP's situation, but I guess the point is that they maybe shouldn't go to the other extreme and upgrade with each new CPU that comes out. I also realize that up until last year or so Intel CPU upgrades didn't bump performance all that much.

---

[0] Yes, some people absolutely need the last drop of performance they can squeeze, by even among HN readers, I think those people are not the majority.

[1] Incremental Rust compiles were still somewhat slow on the AMD, but in the meantime I've found out about mold, which speeds things up nicely even on the old machine.

[zippity-zappity]

Sorry for disagreeing, but you clearly talk this from a privileged point of view.

For some people, buying the best tools is out of question; if they need to choose between feed the family or buy the latest Apple M2 processor, they're choosing to feed the family. For some, the allegedly saved lifetime does not pay the bills.

Of course, you said "buy the best tools you can". It is not wrong, because for some folks the best tool they can buy is none.

I am also brazilian, and we are living a hell of time. Economy is ruined, inflation is getting high, food cost is sky rocketting, and a lot of people are starving (for real). Getting the best tools is clearly way down in the list of priorities in this country.

Remember not everybody have the same conditions than yourself.

[forty]

It's interesting and very sad how all the comments seem to ignore completely the positive impact of repairing on the environment :(

No wonder why we are in such a bad situation now.

[PostOnce]

This is predicated on the idea that new computers are meaningfully better, when they generally aren't for most of us.

I want a new computer, but I go shopping and here's what I see:

They don't have any more RAM than they did... 10 years ago. Maybe it's marginally faster RAM on paper.

They run software that used to run in 0.9ms in 0.72ms and no one cares. It's all instant to me.

The graphics got better, but not hugely so. 2015 GPUs still run... everything, unless you have some particular need for VR or something.

I could buy a new computer tonight, but why? To do the same stuff at the same speed?

I'll buy a new computer when they do something new, or something substantially better. I keep thinking that's a few months away, but it never happens.

[trhoad]

Sadly, this attitude is endemic; the only goal in life is to make things as easy as possible for yourself, rather than leave things in a better state than you found them. You might be giving yourself "extra life" (the massive assumption being that repairing and reusing tools is a net negative timesink rather than a positive pleasure) but you're taking life from the people at the other end of your supply chain.

[wtk]

"Don't let virtues learned by necessity become the vices that suck up your lifetime."

I really like this line. It resonates with me as this quote from Henri Bergson (from memory, can't find exact quote) ~ "tools we use become a burden when the environment that we used them within, no longer exists"

[seba_dos1]

I wish software developers wouldn't commonly take this advice. There's so many inefficient software out there which appears to be done this way just because the developers are always using the latest and greatest hardware that allows them to be unreasonable about resource usage.

[HenriTEL]

I completely disagree with you. First it's really not that hard to replace components in a desktop and second the virtues of reusing components are some of the most valued one in today's world. I mean, global warming is not going to solve by itself right?

Apart from specific needs like gaming and video editing you don't need newer components. What may slow your computer is crappy corporate software, dozens of greedy tabs open, fancy animations on your 4k screen.

But you know what? All this is gone when you use an OS that's does not make high-end components assumptions (i.e. linux). Yeah, you don't need macOS or windows to be a productive programmer.

Edit: added some punctuation

[11235813213455]

I've a different view on this, which comes more and more relevant with pollution and climate changes. It's to consume for things you really need and minimize your environmental footprint

[fho]

Some time ago I got the advice to buy twice ... first, get the cheapest option that is available (within reason). This allows you to get familiar with whatever you are getting into (be it new tools, new hobby equipment, cars ... basically everything). Then, once the cheapest option breaks or just is not good enough anymore, spend the money and get the best thing you can afford.

Often times I found that the cheap option is perfectly reasonable (e.g. a 500€ cordless screwdriver is not 5x as good as a 100€ one), saving me money in the long run. Other times I quickly outgrow the cheap option, but the experience on the cheap model makes me appreciate the expensive option more (e.g. going from a 150€ Ender 3 to a 2000€ Voron 2.1).

Buy twice, once cheap, then good ... I'll just repeat this advice here :-)

[tremon]

I tend to look for yesteryear's best tools, not today's. Proven track record, initial flaws have been documented or corrected, and usually only half the price of this year's new thing.

[MetroWind]

I agree in principle. However in many situations "buy the best tools you can" is meaningless because one just cannot. Other comments have argued about this better than I'd ever could.

On the other hand, have you consider that maybe it's not the hardware is slow; it's just that the software you are using is just plain bad? Before I had my current desktop which I assembled ~2 years ago, my desktop was a 4790K with 16GB DDR3, which was cutting edge at its time. However it booted up Windows really slowly. After I uninstall the Adobe suite, the boot up time improved by 5 minutes. I haven't been using any Adobe software ever since.

In a similar fashion, when I had my 2011 MBP 15 inch, I once tried PyCharm on it. Guess what, after I fired it up (and waited for the UI to be stable), it needed 30 seconds to react to my first key press.

Of course now most 1st world people have SSDs, but bad software is still a waste of energy (ahem nodejs).

[tpoacher]

This may be good advice under very, very specific circumstances, but it's making a lot of specific assumptions that were not stated by the submitter.

For all we know the attachment this has created for this machine may well have enriched its user's life instead, with no practical hindrance for their work and enjoyment of the machine.

If anything, this person felt proud enough of this little triumph that they felt the need to share on HN. (it didn't sound like an "I hate me shitty 15-yo machine" rant to me ... quite the opposite)

[f1shy]

Pretty good piece of advice. Not that you should never repair anything, but thinking about cost/benefit is worth it.

[troyvit]

There are more ways to deliver whatever good you have to the world than what's in your day job. Embracing frugality, understanding one's tools by digging in and repairing them? That actually sounds rewarding, teachable, memorable. I laud it.

[Bancakes]

Seriously? You're such a hustler that you can't afford maybe 2 hours per month maintaining your house/car/electronics? You can't afford to be self reliant and self sufficient?

People used to write their own Haskell compilers, now they buy stagnant/slow computers as an upgrade.

[lbschenkel]

As a Brazilian who later emigrated, I believe you may be underestimating how expensive things can be in a developing country. A nice desktop may cost a year of wages. When I lived in Brazil I could do way more with less, out of necessity.

[mpcannabrava]

A very honest answer. However each person's reality will dictate what they can do.

[dijit]

I would have kept the same hardware forever too, but for some reason my tools seem to take more and more resources every year.

Silly example is gmail, which loaded in 1s on my 2011 MacBook Pro when new, if it load it again today (I just tried) it takes 35 seconds before I can click anything.

Another might be everyone’s favourite software to hate on: Teams.

On my 2011 MacBook Pro: fans squealing, UI of the OS becomes unresponsive, beachballs. But chat/video software of the era was not so heavy.

What annoys me is that this machine is supposedly faster than yours, (i7, 8GB, SATA SSD) but the capability of the machine has been whittled away over time.

[Tade0]

> Silly example is gmail, which loaded in 1s on my 2011 MacBook Pro when new, if it load it again today (I just tried) it takes 35 seconds before I can click anything.

Gmail currently does easily over 50 HTTP requests when loading, and browsers limit the number of connections:

https://docs.pushtechnology.com/cloud/latest/manual/html/des...

The net effect is that you wait at least 8x (but probably much more) your ping to the server for the page to load.

It's sort of a plague in enterprise web apps and stems from the fact that nowadays you have small teams working on independent modules, which do their own requests. Banking apps are the worst offender here.

Also some people are simply unaware of/ignore the issue. The other day I inspected an e-store my friend paid decent money to set up and the first thing that I noticed was that it was firing 200+ requests, because the devs neither bundled nor minified their code.

I thought this was because it was still in development - nope - another store by the same company had the same issues, causing the site to load 12s+ on a good connection, and 30s+ on a 4G simulator.

[Nition]

I know this isn't your main point, but for GMail there's always "Basic HTML view": https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1pq68r75kzvdr/?v%3Dlui

[herbst]

This is going to sound like fanboy talk. But both Mac and Windows tend to feel slower and slower over time, each upgrade somehow pushing your 'old hardware' to new limits.

On Linux it's often the opposite and a new update may even makes your old machine faster than it ever was.

[jxramos]

yah this is it; software doesn't stand still unless you use old applications. I've read about folks keeping old systems around to use their old licensed software or some other application they know the ins-and-outs of and can get stuff done on it without having to break their mental model of the application behavior each upgrade with all the UI scramble and revamping. I'm starting to get a dose of that myself with some applications I keep running.

[harha]

My first iPad, I believe it was the third generation: I would have never used it if it were as slow as it has become today. It also lost some synchronization options, though I don’t recall what it was.

That being said: I kept my 2013 MacBook Pro retina until a few months ago, one year after a battery replacement which ended up breaking other parts and becoming to expensive to fix. Otherwise it ran perfectly fine and the high quality screen was almost on par to current screens.

[ricg]

About your MacBook fans squealing: I had the same problem with my 2012 MacBook Pro. It turned out that the grilles through which the fans blow out the hot air were completely clogged up with dust and the Macbook would overheat.

I cleaned both and now the fans rarely spin up to full speed, because the hot air can actually leave the case again.

See this guide (the guide does not show cleaning the grille, but that is the important part).

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+clean+your+MacBooks+fan+...

[usrn]

Did the Alpine mail reader stop working with Gmail? I switched to self hosting after Google kicked me out of my account with a broken password reset so I haven't had to switch to a different mail reader.

[alophawen]

FYI, I am running Arch on a Macbook Air 2011 and it handles Teams OK ;-)

[michaelbrave]

I still use my 2011 macbook air, not as a main driver but still quite a bit. I had to put linux using xfce on it for it to actually work in a non painful way, MacOS not being able to update properly was part of it, I did find a way to force the updates since I thought I may use it for iphone dev and still use xcode on it, but it wasn't viable. It's mostly used for web surfing via firefox, and if I run something like gnome or cinnamon it struggles quite a lot more than xfce.

[hattmall]

That seems strange. I run multiple older computers, Core 2 Duo CPUS, 4GB RAM, cheapest possible SSD. They load gmail fine in about 5-7 seconds. And I have 67,000+ unread messages and multiple gmail addons installed too. 35 Seconds before you can click on anything seems crazy.

[NikolaNovak]

Admirable and well worth sharing. I'm originally from eastern Europe and understand and empathize with the perspective. We get quite the mixture here on HN, from SV perspective on salary and minimum acceptable HW, to more world wide stories :).

That being said, there are many reasons to stick with repairable old equipment, including "it still works".

So while I am not currently computing on anything from 2007 :), I have t420s laptops used on daily basis (February 2011),and my primary main desktop is chugging the amd fx8350 (2012). I use it for gaming, light room and Photoshop no problems! I live in Canada and have good income - but there's genuinely no reason for me to replace these. Like yourself, I've changed and fixed parts - particularly hard drives. But their hearts are still beating strong :).

[ckz]

Never lose that spirit. Buy, run, and maintain what works for you.

I also have a machine from 2007 in regular service, though in a secondary role (file server, etc.), but my daily driver isn't that much newer (2013, still a rust drive). Both machines have generated and continue to generate plenty of productivity and revenue.

I find that a little overbuilding in the right areas, like choosing a first-gen quad core in 2007 (often considered overkill on forums at the time), will greatly help the chances of you creating something that will last.

It's important not to hoard, but there's tremendous value in finding and maintaining quality. The advantage of old things is that you can point survivorship bias in your favor. Buying new, but very selectively with an eye towards 20-100y duty cycles (and maintaining them, like you're doing!) greatly helps in the same way.

[rpgbr]

I'm a likeminded fellow Brazilian, and I would love to keep my gear forever and never have to deal with choosing and spending on new shit, but software keeps getting worse (slower) and you really feel the difference after a major upgrade.

Last week I got a new iPhone SE 3rd gen to replace my almost-five years old iPhone 8 due to its battery gone wild (76% of original capacity, randomly dropping to 1% from 70~80%). The old one was fine, but it was only when I got the newer that I realized what I was missing — basically, speed. I got used to iPhone 8's sluggishness to the point of not noticing nor caring about it, but when I put my hands onto the newer version, it was like I removed a giant stone from my shoulders — in that context, I mean.

Today Apple announced a newer macOS that I won't be able to install on my 2015 MacBook Pro. A few minutes earlier, they announced a beast of a new computer. So… yeah, I still firmly believe that someone should keep a computer as long as possible, but if it's your tool to get work done, maybe update it once in a while — and, obviously, resell or repurpose the old, still capable one.

[dusted]

In every other aspect of my life, I take some pride, and go to some effort, in not spending. I wear clothes till they fall of my back, then they are replaced with hand-me-downs from friends, family or as a last resort, the second hand store. I do this not because I cannot afford it, but out of principle, I don't care about clothes, they are necessary, nothing more.

Cars are the same, driven to death.

We have few cups, plates, knives and forks of the same style, they are all from somewhere else.. never bought.

I have a large collection of old computers that I enjoy playing around with for various reasons, and I have just never been able to throw out a computer that works (or that does not, my wife would interject).

But for my whole computing-life, one thing where I will spend whatever money is available, has been computers, if I can get an improvement in speed, capacity or stability, I will take it. I've spent my days waiting for computers, to watch them while they pick up bytes from tape, while they grind at floppies, and clunk away at harddrives and spin plastic discs, and for nostalgic reasons, I don't hate it entirely, but I don't want that in my daily life anymore, I don't want to waste my hours waiting for computers, unless it's pure retro-recreation (has anyone ever sat down to watch an RS/6000 boot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7bN1hYqD7Y)

[throw457]

Used a i7 3930k with 32GB Ram since 2012 with only upgrading to a 2080 TI from a 750. Did everything it needed to do and more (heavy vfx, editing, nibbling into machine learning) and still was usable for most of the things you threw at it. The board finally gave in after 10 years so I upgraded and the CPU is now framed and hanging above my new workstation. My computing devices all have the names of quake weapons but nothing will ever top - railgun.

For repurposing I often hunt for old broken radios to put a raspi in it and use it as smart speakers with mycroft, spotify connect and airplay connectify. If you get ones from quality brands the speakers are usually still in really good shape and you need nothing more than a small amp to use them. Add some yellow leds for lighting and you have a nice looking smart speaker for 30-40 bucks. I just love the aesthetic https://imgur.com/fZDEEyL

[carbonguy]

I can't recall the last time I threw away a computer. Either I've repurposed or fixed my devices over the years, as you have. A few examples:

- When my partner replaced their desktop, I rebuilt the old one into a NAS. I had to get new hard drives and a SATA port card to make that one work.

- Current main computer is a desktop that I helped my friend build, which I bought back from him in 2013 or 2014 after he upgraded. I've had to replace the power supply and the graphics card; currently it has an RX 580 from 2017.

- Picked up most of my networking gear from my previous job as an IT consultant, including an HP JE008A switch and an old Sonicwall TZ210.

I've also got the IT pack-rat shelf full of equipment that I "might use someday" - a stack of Chromebooks, network switches, graphics cards, various bits and pieces.

The last piece of kit I actually spent real money on was an refurbished Dell R720, which I'm currently using as my VM server. I've added more RAM and drive space to it as I've needed.

[grupthink]

I grew up poor. I was raised to use things until they break. Even then, I'll fix them if I can.

I'm still rocking a 2007 custom built desktop w/ an overclocked Intel E8500 Core2Duo. In 2012, I upgraded the hd to an SSD and the GPU with an Nvidia GT640, and converted it into a rock solid Hackintosh.

My other computer is a 2013 15" Macbook Pro with maxed-out specs that was purchased for me by my company.

Both systems are stable and fast to me. My main applications are Firefox, Sublime Text, Xcode, and Iterm2. I don't do gaming or video editing. I dabble with ML via Colab Pro. The only thing I'm unpleased about is the Macbook is about 64°C when it's connected to my Apple Thunderbolt monitor and 2 other monitors, so a laptop cooler is a necessary part of my set up. I wouldn't get rid of this notebook unless I had to, which I will be forced to real soon because Apple won't update the OS (stuck on Big Sur), so Xcode is forever stuck on 13.2.

I'm in California, btw. I haven't used the M1. Besides running cooler, I can't imagine an M1/M2 feeling very much different.

[forty]

Congrats on not contributing to making out planet a giant electronic dumpster!

My first laptop is from 2009 (ouch). It's a Samsung 17"3, with an Intel core duo, something like 4GB RAM and some ATI Radeon GPU. Though I'm not the primary user anymore, it still works well enough (main annoyance in that I broke the W key and never bothered fixing it). The only upgrade I have ever done is replacing the disk with a SSD after it broke (the computer felt from a table). The battery is completely dead now, so it mostly has become a desktop computer (which is fine, it's pretty big anyway, and an external keyboard/mouse are nice too, given the touchpad is shit and the keyboard is a bit broken).

It costed my parents 700€ (I'm in France), so even at the time it was not a very high end computer. It has served me well, and now my wife. I'm thinking of retiring it, maybe transform it into a server by removing the screen and the keyboard.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

So I absolutely agree and applaud your effort and think that we should all generally endeavor to use our hardware until it breaks or is completely impossible to work with anymore. However. If you replaced the motherboard, the CPU, the graphics card, and the hard drive, how exactly are you calling this the same computer? Forget "minor upgrades", that's a proper Ship of Theseus - I guess you've got the same case and... some of the RAM? but what else is even left from the original?

[owyn]

I still have a 2008 Mac Pro (tower). At the time it was possible to order the bottom of the line system and add your own memory, video and drives, just like a "normal" PC. I think it cost about $3000 new which was still the most I'd ever paid for a computer. Picked it up from an Apple store. I used it as a home workstation for work and music and a gaming rig by dual booting to windows -- which no longer works. Did a few upgrades, video card, SSD, more memory. It's a dual quad core Xeon, 32gb of ram and 2tb of storage. It's almost 15 years old now and it still runs fine.

Except!

I feel like there's been a lot of forced obsolescence for sure. Things really went downhill like 2-3 years ago. Gradual lack of OS and driver support made it harder to use as a music machine. Boot camp was no longer supported without some crazy firmware hacks that I didn't bother with. I just got an xbox/ps instead. After some combination of OS and driver updates, my firewire audio devices no longer worked. The USB Audio devices I tried were always terrible (keeping the machine from sleeping properly).

It can still mostly log in to iCloud and iMessage, but there are weirdnesses. I did pick up a used firewire interface that does work with this OS (El Capitan).

But I really think the hardware could be made to work on the latest OS with very little effort.

[Panzer04]

While this is an admirable perspective, keep things in context. Make sure you aren’t keeping a computer that takes a couple extra seconds on things you do 100s of times a day (eg opening browser tabs, compiling, etc).

If you waste an extra 15 min a day on loading times because you have a 10y old PC, the wasted productive time can add up surprisingly quickly. At the very least, ensure you get those high-value upgrades in (in particular SSD, but also other stuff like semi-modern 4-8 core processor, enough RAM for your tasks)

[gregmac]

I realize different context, but I'm curious how many other HNers do the same as me: I haven't had a fully new personal desktop computer since ~2001.

Since I originally built it, it's undergone dozens of upgrades: close to a half dozen motherboards, a few more CPUs, several GPUs, lots of RAM, drives, etc. I think 3 cases, and at least that many power supplies. But it was never all at one time. I definitely did a couple generational upgrades that were nearly everything, but stopped short. There's literally nothing left from the original build.

The parts were always then passed down to other uses: builds for other people, or a server in my basement.

This year, due to a failing motherboard, I did probably the biggest upgrade I've ever done at once; including AMD over to Intel, new case, SATA SSD to NVMe, but still but full: I kept the power supply (I hust bought it a couple months earlier, thinking it was the thing causing me trouble) and GPU (impossible to buy something reasonable).

[birdfood]

My personal machine is the first and only new computer I ever bought: a 2012 Mac book air. I wanted to get a pro but couldn't justify the price. I took it in to get the battery replaced a couple of years ago instead of upgrading, again, I couldn't justify the price. I think I'll probably get the battery replaced again soon as it's started to falter. For the stuff I do in my spare time this machine is totally adequate. I also have the original iPhone SE as my phone which I will probably get refurbished soon instead of getting a new one - all the new phones are too big.

I have a machine given (lent) to me by work though.

[LeoPanthera]

The recent Raspberry Pi models (4/400) have the potential to really expand computing globally. They're the first ones that have enough CPU power and RAM to do virtually everything you'd ever want to do with a desktop computer, with the exception of playing the latest games (and perhaps ML? I don't know much about it), but they cost $45 and run from a USB power supply.

It's amazing how much you can do with them.

[georgia_peach]

Thank you for your service fellow e-waste reduction brother.

I've been getting my equipment 2nd-hand off of ebay. Recently "upgraded" to an HP fanless mini-pc (Core i5, 16GB) to make more room on my desk. Since Moore's law is practically dead, I didn't see the point in paying ~$800 for a new one when the 5-yr-old scratch-and-dent model was only $135, and any performance difference has been imperceptible under my use cases. I work mostly in the terminal anyway. The previous computer was also more than fast enough, and so was the one before it.

Only "game changer" for me has been the SSD. I will never go back to platters for an interactive machine.

I also have a really outstanding clicky-keys keyboard I picked up on alibaba a long time ago, and it disassembles easily enough for an occasional run through the dishwasher.

[deathanatos]

That's a very nice lifetime for a build; you should be proud. Though I can't imagine using a 5400 RPM HDD today. 7200 RPM or bust, I'm spoiled…

> When was the last time you gave something extra life instead of throwing it away?

Ugh, unfortunately I'm at "throw it away", basically.

My current build, built in 2011, won't stay powered up. It gets anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours (and sometimes days) and then inexplicably power-cycles.

A tech thought it was bad RAM, but the DIMM he pulled checked out under memtest, and removing it doesn't change the symptom.

Given the behavior, it's probably one of the PSU or mobo, the problem is just which. I lack a competent tech or the parts to hot-swap with. The problem with replacing the mobo is that it then causes the replacement of the CPU and RAM, as the sockets for both have since changed. (Unless I find an older mobo, but it's 11 y/o, so probably not.) What with the chip shortage, it's going to be fun to find parts. I'll probably jump to AMD, too.)

The mobo (an ASRock) is not a high quality board for what it should have been, and in addition to the power cycling problem had other flaws since day 1. The PSU impacts the case fans. Newegg regened on the GPU so it never got that. And now it doesn't turn on. I will probably salvage the HDD in it (its on its second), and … I don't really know what else I can take. The DVD drive, I suppose.

[Termitiono]

I update my system when needed but I always have reasonable good hardware.

SSD/nvm are same defaults for me.

Memory I currently have 48gb in my desktop for running a VM properly.

My last CPU upgrade was necessary when I got a new camera and the raw files grinded Lightroom to a snail.

My keyboards are either full metal base with real cherry MX keys or a expensive ergonomic keyboard also with cherry MX keys.

I sit too long on my device every day to cheap out.

My displays always are at least IPS panels but my current display is already 6 years old. Still IPS with 27" and 1440 resolution.

I think it's good that you can work with your setup and your situation is a little bit harder I guess but make sure that you don't need to wait unreasonably long for your PC doing it's tasks.

And never use a HDD as your main hard disk!

[lasfter]

Awesome! My main laptop is still a 2011 Thinkpad X201. It's a beast, been all over the world and dropped countless times but it still works perfectly fine.

It's missing a couple function keys (which I never use) and I finally replaced its battery this year after growing annoyed of having only 30 minutes to an hour of battery life.

I love my little Thinkpad. Keeping up with shiny tech can be fun, but there's also pleasure in using and maintaining your timeworn tools.