While moving from one nest to another (we’re lemmings here; RP it a bit) I realized I still have all computers I ever bought or assembled, except for those that literally broke beyond any hope of repair.
Some are no longer used daily but all work and being on a point in life where everything and anything in the nest needs to have a purpose or a function, led me think what actually renders a computer useless or truly obsolete.
I was made even more aware of this, as I’m in the market to assemble a new machine and I’m seeing used ones - 3 or 4 years old - being sold at what can be considered store price, with specs capable of running newly released games.
Meanwhile, I’m looking at two LGA 775 motherboards I have and considering how hard can I push it before it spontaneously combusts to make any use of it, even if only a type writer.
So, per the title, what makes a computer obsolete or simply unusable to you?
Addition
So I felt necessary to update the post and list the main reasons surfacing for rendering a machine obsolete/unusable
- energy consumption
overall and consumption vs computational power
- no practical use
Linux rule!
- space take up
IMO a computer is obsolete when it can no longer run any desired programs. My laptop for example has outlived my much beefier desktop since the laptop is basically just used for web stuff while my desktop is used for gaming, development, and the like. Especially gaming has had a significant increase over the years and a gaming PC might be rendered obsolete much faster than something used for the web. My old gaming PC that was rendered obsolete I repurposed to be a server and it works well for its new purpose and will probably live for a couple of years still.
So there isn’t any concrete limit on which you can say a computer has become obsolete. It is more of a subjective assessment of whether the computer can fulfill its tasks to a satisfactory degree.