All I have is a 13 year old laptop, and I use it basically all day most days. It’s plays music and movies etc with no issues. Cloud pc for gaming, which also works perfectly. It really doesn’t like youtube, though, and it sounds like a jet engine every time system and app updates start to download. Can’t afford to get anything better anyway. A friend gave it to me after it died on him and he got a new one, wasn’t hard to fix. I cried when I got it because it improved my life a lot, just being able to do basic things.
Have a hug!
Thank you, I needed that!
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Have you tried blowing out the fan? After 13 years it might be all gunked up
Yeah, I try to keep it clean. I’m pretty sure the fan has been warped, so one of the blades drags against the housing a bit, and I don’t have the tools to open it up that much to try to fix it. It only happens at high fan speeds, though, and that doesn’t happen often enough to be truly annoying.
You really just need, like, a screwdriver set to get into most laptops. Maybe you can search online (e.g. on YouTube) for tutorials for your model. Then you can buy a replacement fan and also replace the thermal paste, because 13-year-old thermal paste surely isn’t doing you any favors in the performance department. Altogether it shouldn’t cost more than €50 (if you’re careful not to break any internals).
BTW, if you want to watch YouTube videos with less resources, you can also copy the video URL into VLC
Looks like your problem is Windows. Linux works much better on old hardware.
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get rid of Windows for a while now. Haven’t really used Linux since like 2010, so it feels like a lot to get into. Already saved some websites, articles, and lemmy posts with good info, though.
One reason I haven’t done it yet is because I did manage to save up a bit of money (only like $300) after about a decade of never being able to feed myself at the end of each month. The plan was to get a steam deck, something I’ve deeply wished for ever since I heard about it, and keep the laptop only as a backup. But I got robbed… forgot my card at a grocery store self checkout, and someone took it and somehow managed to use it. Had just gotten money for that month, so no bills had been paid yet. Not only did I lose the saved money, but I had to take out a loan to pay my rent, etc. So any dream of a steam deck or anything else is dead, it will take years to pay off that loan.Does Nvidia play better now with linux? I run a 14 yr old laptop (Asus k40in) but it’s got Nvidia graphics, and it didn’t work well last time I tried Linux on it. (several years ago now)
It’s on 24/7, running win10 now and does ok, but I mainly use it for my yard cameras and light surfing when my main pc is busy doing other things.
Its a lot better than a couple years back afaik. But as the sysadmin always preaches: dont fix if not broken! If you‘re okay with maybe having to reinstall w10 then you could try. Lubuntu was my savior btw.
Ya it’s not a huge concern as it runs rock solid for months at a time without even needing a reboot, but I would like to eventually toss windows in the virtual recyle bin at some point.
I have a few old hard drives kicking around, so I may swap one out one of these days and give it a shot just to try it and see how it goes.
Thats the most sane answer! I didnt even think of this. Give lubuntu a try. Its super light weights and lxqt even revived my presumed dead granddad laptop.
The current official Nvidia drivers seem to be pretty solid. AFAIK, they’re not great at supporting older product generations, though. The open source drivers might work better, but that’s definitely something you should find out before doing the installation.
I think that if you use the open source NVIDIA (Nouveau) drivers it works out of the box with no performance drawbacks in the context of old GPUs
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Idk if invidious would be lighter that normal youtube, but maybe that would work?
cloud pc for gaming
can you say more about that pls?
I use GeForce Now. It fits my needs and the games I like to play. Why pay for my own gaming rig when I can rent it and let others cover the upgrading cost?
There are a few services that allow you to play with the actual game being rendered on remote computers, while your pc only shows the image and sends the input commands. I think the more popular ones are xcloud and geforce now. There are also a few smaller services that allow you to run anything you’d like, without limitations.
I use Shadow, you literally get a high-end PC you stream to any device in real time and can do whatever you want with. Other cloud gaming services only streams the games, so you can’t use mods, emulators, etc. Currently playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on max settings, and it’s buttery smooth. I also use it for anything else that my laptop can’t handle like image and video editing, 3d modelling and rendering.
I hope you get to get a fancy new one soon and your old laptop friend keeps chugging along as before! 🙏
There are multiple clients to browse and play Youtube without jet engine tho.
Incredible that a laptop as old as me is still usable
Everybody with a Thinkpad
My 12 year old thinkpad is still my daily driver.
Speakers stopped working 5 years ago tho. Only BT audio out, now.
You could probably open that up pretty easy and fix that I bet
This sort of thing is heavily dependent on how often they get away with pushing their luck.
With my luck, the moment I’d start fishing around inside the case, something would happen to make it refuse to boot or lose one or more of the RGB channels to the screen or something.
And the sound still wouldn’t work.
Meanwhile I’ll open my t420 for kicks, boots again every time
First thing that always went in every Thinkpad I’ve owned is the wireless card lol. Opposite issue for me.
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T42 was instructable
X230 gang!
X220 too.
Just corebooted my X230T daily driver. I’ve had the x220 keyboard for years and just upgraded the WiFi card, too. I want to keep this thing running as long as possible!
Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?
Of course, God bless his kind soul, may the eternal peace lay on his lands
Rumor has it he isn’t actually a kind soul, just a nerd with a dream.
Verbally slaying the sinner is a form of kindness. Letting people break user space willy-nilly is not kind
I use a 12 year old laptop as my daily driver, and use it to do high res video editing. A decade old computer these days is still highly capable.
Up until about a year ago my main gaming rig was a laptop from 2012. Toward the end I had to turn settings down (sometimes WAY down) but it still performed like a champ.
Last year I still used to use a 16 year old laptop. It could even run Windows 11 just fine. I only tried Asphalt 9 and 8 on it as I don’t play games, but it ran well.
I still miss that laptop. I really wish it still worked.
What happened: I finally wanted to learn using 4NEC2. It doesn’t want to run on my new laptop, neither in VM nor WINE. But suddenly, the laptop kept shutting down randomly. Probably issue with the aftermarket battery. It still showed 80% of charge. At one point I said “That’s it. You shut down one more time, I am done and plugging you in.” (The adapter wasn’t with me, so I used it on battery.) It shut down.
I then plugged in the adapter, but it never turned on again. R.I.P.Asphalt 9 is from 2018. And it’s a mobile game ported to Windows.
Is it a Thinkpad?
Nope, MacBook Pro
This is the weird, sentimental attitude that has me buried in clutter
Praise sentimentality … I’ve done my best to maintain and keep running almost every laptop, tablet, phone and PC I’ve ever owned. A few just died because of dead main boards, short circuits or mechanical failure. The ones that work are all gathering dust in the closet, basement or storage space but they all work. I use one as a reader, one is parked next to the couch so I have access to a laptop while watching TV, one’s in the basement workshop, one gets moved to the garage in the springtime and the rest just sit on the ready for whenever I think of using them.
Buried in clutter yes but it also got me into electronic repair and frugality so I can’t say it doesn’t have its merits, wish it were easier to keep clean though.
Yes. Kill sentimentality, it’s the only way to break free.
I’m tired, boss.
Shut up! I bought you to obey, not to mouth off.
My Zune still playing
cough hack wheeze
“Is that all you got?”
I miss my Zune. Do you seriously still have one?
Yep. Mounted on the wall in my dad’s barn, playing an endless shuffle of my music from 15? Years ago.
I tied him up in my dad’s barn and it sings constantly
That what it sounds like.
i daily an 11 year old ThinkPad. it’s fast and does everything i need it to do. buying new is for suckers
I dailied on my 2012 self-built gaming PC. Was good but expensive. Got a used MacBook Air, its cheap now.
That’s what I’m still doing now. I upgraded the RAM a couple years ago and the GPU last year, both with cheap older parts that were about $100.
The main problem I’ve run into so far is that Blender no longer runs since they only support CPUs ten years old or newer. But I don’t do that stuff anymore really anyway.
Suckers and anyone who wants/needs a warranty… Like businesses.
…a.k.a. suckers. 🙃
Yeah, once my Zephyrus dies I’ve decided that it’s my last “new” laptop that I buy. Sure, it can play games, but my usage has been drifting more “casual” over the years. For the top end of my computing: I really don’t need much to compile stuff and run chitubox.
How easy is it to get replacement parts for a ThinkPad?
Likely the easiest
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a new PC/Laptop. It’s always been used. Had only one problem with a phone I got for half the proce of all the others so it’s kind of my fault…
Wholesome-ness on the internet? In this economy?!
I love watching videos about plane crashes on my old tablet when I’m cooking or rinsing (non-native here, is that right for doing a dishwasher’s job by hand?).
“Washing dishes” or “doing the dishes”. 👍
Thank you
Native speakers refer to it as “washing the dishes” (the full phrase). “Dishwashing” is technically correct but it’s also awkward and clunky.
This was spoken from an America-centric POV. Hopefully some other countries will weigh in.
Thank you
Rinsing would just be running water on them without any soap.
You rinse before you pit in the dush washer (only if it’s really bad though)
I’ll join with Technology Connections in being that guy who says (in a friendly way, not condescending):
If you have to rinse your dishes ever then you’re using the wrong soap, have a reeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaally crappy dishwasher (like a multi decade old cheapo model that’s breaking), or are loading your washer wrong. I think TCs video showing literally cooked on cheese coming off of dishes is pretty good proof that no dish out there needs rinsing.
I used to think my dishwasher couldn’t handle most things without rinsing, then I realized one of my sprayers had been blocked up and i also switched to a powder soap and suddenly everything is clean as fuck without any other changes to my loading habits. This was on a model slightly cheaper than the one TC uses in his video, and was about 7 years old when I saw improvement.
This is not criticism or anything, but simply trying to spread awareness of a simple thing I know a lot of people are surprised by when I tell them. Many of us are wasting time and effort on rinsing shit that doesn’t need to be, free yourselves!
Heard, thanks!
True.
I see, thanks
I use the term “hand-washing dishes”.
All the other replies sound very American, it’s “doing the washing up” or just “washing up”
A heads-up to anyone running old laptops; buy genuine replacement batteries while they’re available!
I have an aging XPS 13 and of course, Dell have discontinued the battery line. Opened it up one day and every cell had puffed out. It took buying a couple of fakes before finally finding a decent reseller on eBay who stocked what I needed. The fake batteries were not recognised by Dell’s hardware detection system thing, I imagine lots of other manufacturers might implement the same feature.
Or don’t buy from manufacturers that do this
It’s often too late to realize it’s non repairable. When reviews first come out, no one reviews the drm on components. Even those teardown sites only cover how hard it is to open up a device but don’t cover if a part is drm’d until moths or years later. Because there is no way to know until 3rd party parts come out and they don’t work.
I’m buying framework which explicitly has repair as a goal
Yea, but what if you already have a laptop from such a manufacturer?
Good luck soldier!
You will eventually have to replace it when there are no replacement batteries. Get one that’s focused on repairability. Then you can basically keep it forever
Yes that’s a good tip, but the OP comment was focused on people who already have a laptop
Given how dell AC adapters are the only ones that I know of with an extra wire that functionally just acts as drm, it’s not surprising they do the same with batteries.
Even HP’s elitebook I got (6th Gen Intel CPUs) work no problem with third party batteries and HP has all of the drm printer nonsense. Curiously if their modern elitebook have battery drm yet.
oddly wholesome
Old laptops will still run pretty good if you run lightweight Linux distribution and give it some RAM upgrade and maybe SSD as well. I still wouldn’t use them as my main computer, as I’d rather have a lot better specs and ability to run Win10/Win11 flawlessly, but it’s still a good option.
Ability to run windows? Why?
Why not? Let people run whatever they like.
Familiarity mostly
Cinnamon and kde look really similar
Video games with invasive anticheats obviously
Adobe Audition.
Revit
My ten year old laptop has 4 gigs of RAM and can barely boot windows. It can run Linux pretty well but it still only has 4 gigs of RAM
My 12 years old netbook has 1 gig of RAM.
Still has its use for simple media.
Netbook Gang. Bring back netbooks, best computers that ever were.
Agreed!
Only netbook kids will get this.
Best times in portable computing
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I’m rocking an ancient i7 Elitebook from 2011 or so that I maxed out to 32 GB of RAM. I bought it from a business surplus place on eBay for like $100 7-8 years ago. The screen resolution sucks and it has no biometric features but I slapped an SSD in there, removed the battery, and now it’s my Linux staging desktop.
You count lack of biometrics as a drawback?
I let my brother use mine to play Minecraft.
Here, bro. Here’s your laptop
Pay me back some other time.
Tf when your 10-year old laptop can still handle Minecraft. Mine freezes from just looking at it funny.
Got a little better once I wiped it completely and installed Kubuntu, but it’s still not really in a great shape
You might be able to play Minetest. It’s an open-source engine/launcher for games similar to Minecraft, but it’s better optimized.
If you want a very Minecraft-like experience, you can install the MineClone2 game (from within Minetest).
Of course, if you’re attached to specific game worlds or friends on Minecraft, those may be more difficult to migrate…
minetest is good and addicting!
yeah it stutters but i got it to playable framerate. (60-70 fps) (performance mods are pretty much REQUIRED, get sodium and like 50 other fabric performance mods, you’ll need all of 'em)
it has a 4 core 4 thread (no hyperthreading) 2ghz amd a6 and 6 gb of ddr3 ram, out of which ~4.5 is usable
also it has a terrible hdd which I don’t feel like replacing.
arch with gnome takes 2 minutes to boot, pop os with kde used to take around 5-6 minutes. (windows is painfully slow btw, around 10-30 minutes to cold boot, fast boot or hibernation is not that bad tho)The game is a little choppy without sodium, its an old Thinkpad from 2013 that refuses to die.
Little trooper still going strong
Dust it out? Or is it one of those that isn’t possible to open and maintain at all?
I’ve had old laptops perform almost like new when I remove the mat of hair on their heat sinks.
Might have to try that. I tried to open it up when I was thinking about getting an SSD for the laptop abd wanted to open it up to see if it has the needed slot, but I didn’t figure out how to.
