Oldest daily use computer?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Just retired my E-Machines junk computer I purchased in March of 2007. Waiting to go over to my friends house on 55 acres and plan on shooting the tower with my 30-06 Remington pump ASAP.
 
Originally Posted by anderson
[Linked Image]


use it almost everyday for my daily reports and paperwork , otherwise its my ibm ps/2 8580 with my epsom printer.
[Linked Image]




shocked2.gif
 
I use a Lenovo t500 from around 2008 and my desktop built around 2011 daily. Both work great. I put an SSD in the Lenovo and it's quite fast. Can play up to 720p YouTube videos on it.
 
Originally Posted by hallstevenson
Originally Posted by maxdustington
Mac's don't count. A ten year old PC would be a lot worse.

Was going to post the same thing. Well, their life doesn't "age" the same as Windows-based PCs at least.

No, but when Apple decides you're not getting any more support or updates, which I believe they do with a shorter lifespan than Microsoft does with Windows, you're largely out of luck.
 
My desktop I built in 2012.

AMD FX 6 core CPU 3.4ghz
8 gigs of RAM
2TB WD hard drive
Thermaltake 850watt power supply
Gforce GTX970 video card. I upgraded that 3 years ago.
I also added 1 120GB and 1 480GB Corsair SSD's a couple years ago.
Running Windows 7 Home Premium
 
The oldest working computer I have is an an Osborne 1 although I have to admit that I haven't fired it up for several years. Besides that, I have a ThinkPad 380Z that I use regularly (ie, the odd time when I get a CEL) as an OBDII reader.

My everyday computer is a Windows 10 Pro desktop I built many years ago. It uses a ASUS M4A88T-M/USB3 motherboard and a Athlon II X2 260 - 3.20 GHz CPU. It seems to keep up with most everything I need to do (Office 2016) but the onboard video has a hard time displaying 1080P video so I normally watch YouTube with 720P satisfactorily.
 
Originally Posted by OilReport99
My daily PC. I built it in 2011 I think... OLD!

[Linked Image]


That's funny, very similar to my desktop:
Phenom II 830 x4 (overclocked from 2.8 to 3.5).
Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H
12 gigs Corsair DDR3 1600
MSI GTX 460 Hawk
Antec Neo_eco 620 W
Crucial M4 128 gig SSD
2 TB WD Greed HDD
Windows 10 x64

I have been wanting to build something newer because this old tech sucks a video encoding and such.
Even the cheap Athlon 200GE build I just did for my wife is better than my "really good" at the time gaming rig. But then again, it is almost 10 years old.
 
Originally Posted by uc50ic4more
Originally Posted by hallstevenson
Originally Posted by maxdustington
Mac's don't count. A ten year old PC would be a lot worse.

Was going to post the same thing. Well, their life doesn't "age" the same as Windows-based PCs at least.

No, but when Apple decides you're not getting any more support or updates, which I believe they do with a shorter lifespan than Microsoft does with Windows, you're largely out of luck.


Not really that true-

Apple does sometimes seem to arbitrarily roll computers off support for a new OS. I have, for a while, been classifying OS X requirements into what I call "hard" and "soft" requirements.

As an example, while OS X 10.5(Leopard) came it, it supported all Intel models made, all G5s, and all G4s faster than 867mhz. The 867 mhz requirement is a "soft' requirement-it can run on any G4 powered computer, and in fact for most G4 systems it only requires using one of several tricks to bypass the installer check(some are a big more involved and require you to piece together platform support drivers, but it can still be done).

In most cases, a system will support an OS a few releases past where it it officially cuts them off.

One of the biggest hits recently was a OS X 10.12(2016), which requires a CPU that supports SSE4. Apple officially cut off stuff older than ~2010 or so, but it also made it impossible to install on computers released before ~2008 or so. The MacBook Pro 3,1(early 2007) and 4,1(late 2007/early 2008) rolled off the supported list with that version-the 3,1 is off completely, while the 4,1 and later can be made to run it.

The only computers that-to me-have really been shafted were the last PowerPC systems, some of which shipped as late as 2006(and could have been bought as refurbs into 2007). Those shipped with OS X 10.4, and were able to be upgraded to 10.5(2007). 10.6, released in 2009, didn't support any PowerPC systems. That meant that you may have only received 3 years of OS support on a new computer bought in 2006.
 
My "daily driver" computer is a 2005 gaming rig. It's having trouble with youtube videos and will only play them at 360p. However, when new, it was used to display streaming HD shows on my TV. Weird that it's degraded like that.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
My "daily driver" computer is a 2005 gaming rig. It's having trouble with youtube videos and will only play them at 360p. However, when new, it was used to display streaming HD shows on my TV. Weird that it's degraded like that.


There are a lot of possible causes. If it's worth your time I'd first open it up and clean the insides with some compressed air and maybe some isopropyl alcohol + Q-tips and then re-install the OS.

Having said that, some of the codecs used to stream HD videos have become more CPU-intensive to decode and may be stressing the limits of the video card. I'd make sure I have a good codec pack installed and have your browsers set to use video acceleration is possible.
 
Originally Posted by uc50ic4more
Originally Posted by Cujet
My "daily driver" computer is a 2005 gaming rig. It's having trouble with youtube videos and will only play them at 360p. However, when new, it was used to display streaming HD shows on my TV. Weird that it's degraded like that.


There are a lot of possible causes. If it's worth your time I'd first open it up and clean the insides with some compressed air and maybe some isopropyl alcohol + Q-tips and then re-install the OS.

Having said that, some of the codecs used to stream HD videos have become more CPU-intensive


Agree on the above.


I had a higher end core2 duo with XP, lightning fast video

7 still not bad

10 video was slow as molasses


Throw XP back on everything is as fast as it ever was if you can live with some scripting errors.


Odd thing as well are some NON-GAMING video devices are designed for video decoding, now days these things are pretty cheap so there are "other ways" to speed up YouTube and video playback in general just by installing another PCIE card and going through some driver he'll.
 
I'm writing this on a 2004-vintage Centrino-based laptop given a new lease on life running Linux. (I installed some used memory to upgrade to its 2GB maximum.) So it's obsolete hardware running a current operating system. Battery is long dead so it needs to be plugged in. This is my living room easy chair computer and is used daily.

I have some older stuff around, like a Commodore 64 and an even older TRS-80 clone, but those are not in regular use.
 
Originally Posted by Saabist
I'm writing this on a 2004-vintage Centrino-based laptop given a new lease on life running Linux.


Awesome! There are lots of us here doing the same thing. Which distribution are you using?
 
Originally Posted by uc50ic4more
There are lots of us here doing the same thing. Which distribution are you using?

I'm running Lubuntu 18.04, 32 bit. It actually works quite well though can sometimes lag a bit on HD youtube videos. (SD youtube plays fine as does local HD played with VLC.) In addition to the memory upgrade I installed a small SSD I had laying around which also helps performance quite a bit even though this thing only has SATA 1.
 
A White box which I created around 2003. Pentium 3 1GHZ. processor, Asus M.B.,512M SD RAM, two 160 GB hard drives, running XP Pro. Mostly is used for some legacy programs and a very nice sounding legacy Sound Blaster Live sound card. Long ago, I uploaded a lot of my old LP's and use it mostly for playing my old tunes. Amazingly I can still surf the net with it and stream most youtube videos with it but a little jerky but usable.
 
Last edited:
2009 HP laptop. Came with Windows Vista. Am using it with Linux and a replacement hard drive upgraded to an SSD.
 
Originally Posted by bunnspecial

Not really that true-

Apple does sometimes seem to arbitrarily roll computers off support for a new OS. I have, for a while, been classifying OS X requirements into what I call "hard" and "soft" requirements.

As an example, while OS X 10.5(Leopard) came it, it supported all Intel models made, all G5s, and all G4s faster than 867mhz. The 867 mhz requirement is a "soft' requirement-it can run on any G4 powered computer, and in fact for most G4 systems it only requires using one of several tricks to bypass the installer check(some are a big more involved and require you to piece together platform support drivers, but it can still be done).

In most cases, a system will support an OS a few releases past where it it officially cuts them off.

One of the biggest hits recently was a OS X 10.12(2016), which requires a CPU that supports SSE4. Apple officially cut off stuff older than ~2010 or so, but it also made it impossible to install on computers released before ~2008 or so. The MacBook Pro 3,1(early 2007) and 4,1(late 2007/early 2008) rolled off the supported list with that version-the 3,1 is off completely, while the 4,1 and later can be made to run it.

The only computers that-to me-have really been shafted were the last PowerPC systems, some of which shipped as late as 2006(and could have been bought as refurbs into 2007). Those shipped with OS X 10.4, and were able to be upgraded to 10.5(2007). 10.6, released in 2009, didn't support any PowerPC systems. That meant that you may have only received 3 years of OS support on a new computer bought in 2006.


This has been my experience as well, since my company supports mostly school districts, who will use antique computers if they can get away with it due to budget limitations. Windows 10 has been a huge problem for many districts with very old machines due to driver issues and updates breaking things, while their old Macs have remained pretty reliable.
 
We've got an Athlon X2 from 2008, running Linux. I had to stick a $20 Nvidia card in there a few years ago when AMD stopped supporting the on-board GPU, otherwise it still works fine.
 
I have an 11 year old rig at the parent's - it's a Core 2 Duo 3.4GHz, 8GB RAM, Asus mobo and PCIe graphics, I think it's an Nvidia GeForce 9600GS. If I slap an SSD into it, it probably can run Windows 10 swimmingly well but Ubuntu or ChromeOS(via Neverware Cloudready) might be better pick for it.

I loaded ChromeOS onto a 10 year old HP EliteBook with a 1st gen Core i5. It seems to work good.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top