• M137@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • JackOfAllTraits@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      My man, I am glad you have such a dependable machine and I hope that, in the future, it will be by choice and not need rhat you use old devices. Hold in there!

      • M137@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • dot20@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          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

      • M137@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

      • Jay@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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          9 months ago

          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.

          • Jay@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            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.

            • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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              9 months ago

              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.

        • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          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.

        • Trincapinones@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          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

    • SeekPie@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Idk if invidious would be lighter that normal youtube, but maybe that would work?

      • CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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?

      • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
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        9 months ago

        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.

      • M137@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

    • heero_youi@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I hope you get to get a fancy new one soon and your old laptop friend keeps chugging along as before! 🙏

  • LanternEverywhere@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    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.

    • Davel23@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      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.

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      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.

  • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    This is the weird, sentimental attitude that has me buried in clutter

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      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.

    • omnomed@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

  • swag_money@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    i daily an 11 year old ThinkPad. it’s fast and does everything i need it to do. buying new is for suckers

      • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        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.

    • itsJoelle@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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?

    • SeekPie@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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…

  • Jumi@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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?).

    • flicker@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          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!

    • PatMustard@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      All the other replies sound very American, it’s “doing the washing up” or just “washing up”

  • radiosimian@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

    • 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.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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.

  • Gruntyfish@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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

    • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      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

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        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…

      • voxel@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        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)

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        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.

        • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          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.