I got an eMachines e728 laptop for Christmas in 2009. It has served me very well over the years, and I've done a lot to it:
Replaced the battery after last year Replaced HDD with 240GB SSD Cleaned it of dust multiple times (I'm listing this because I think it's important for a 7-year old laptop) replaced Win7 with Win10 and then ended up with Kali linux.
All these upgrades cost me approx. 150$ (currency exchange is a fucking mess, I can't count it precisely).
All in all, this laptop is still in good shape for what it has gone through. It's my daily driver (translating and coding for fun). Lately, it has been becoming a little on the hot side, but nowhere near uncomfortable. I called Acer and they said they could do general maintenance for my laptop with cleaning/replacing thermal paste and all that good stuff I'm not comfy doing by myself for about 30$.
Should I do it? How much more time can I squeeze out of a 7 year old laptop? I never had a laptop I maintained from start to finish and it seems this bad boy is still in good shape, but I'm not sure.
Anyone else have a laptop like this? What have you done to it?
I have a* Lenovo T400 that is about 9 years old this year. Core 2 Duo P8400 and support for DDR3-1066. Runs Linux Mint like greased lightning under an SSD - Really pleased with how it works considering its age. It's built better than most modern consumer grade laptops I've come across, with a sturdy magnesium frame and a full-copper heatsink that is whisper-quiet under load. And it has much better expandability - Expresscard and PC Card.
Older laptops can last quite a while. Especially with some extra RAM, an SSD and without having to deal with the bloat of modern Windows on it (Windows really doesn't like less then 2 GB of RAM on anything after 7 and 4 GB personally is preferred).
Slower CPUs can be another reason why Windows really doesn't like older machines after a while.
That said Linux on a older laptop that has an SSD, 2 or more GBs of RAM is usually a pretty good experience.
The main thing I'd be weary of is the RAM limitations on that model (6 GB Max) and CPU is only a Pentium Dual Core according to the Specs I can see online. You can usually pickup an old HP Elitebook for not much more then £150 with an i5/i7, 4GB RAM minimum and then after the cost of an SSD you can have a pretty nice machine. I did :-)
Replacing the thermal paste is probably worth doing if you plan on keeping the machine for much longer. That and dust can be the main thermal killer on laptops and if it starts getting too hot it will start throttling and slowing down what little it has to give.
Maintaining, absolutely. Putting a bunch of money in, no. I have fixed some older laptops for folks in the past. My recommendation to most people used to be, if it had an OS before windows 7, it is not worth putting much money into. Keep in mind, these people are not enthusiasts or knowledgable in computers at all, so that takes Linux off the table, for the most part.
Right now I write this on a macbook 1,1 with a core duo that I bought for 10 dollars and rebuilt. To my left is a powerbook, ibook, a dell inspiron 1000 that acts as my amiga, an HP NW8000, IBM Transnote, IBM 600X, Acer Kav10 D150, and a lenovo Y40-70 which while not old, much superglue was used to "create a new hinge".A large part of what I do is experiment with what I have and see what I can make it do.Because I know the hardware I have its invaluable to me to not get rid of it until I absolutely have to and until then I will rewrite BIOS, update asap, dedust, redo thermals, clean, maintain, get new parts, and upgrade them all.
This is worth my time honestly because I have nothing better to do. Now if you want to kepp that unit and use it, then that is what you need to do. Personally I think BIOS laptops are superior as you can write over the BIOS or repair it however is needed. If you don't want to do it anymore, don't bother.
I tend to agree with the folks here. Maintaining is one thing, putting money in is another. $30, okay, pretty cheap. However, I'd do it myself if it was mine. Also, you might want to change the CMOS battery while you're at it, but you could also wait until it throws a fit at boot-up. As @FaunCB points out, you do not have to retire it even if you find it too slow down the line, there are many other things one can do with a laptop than browse the web and such. I have a bunch of older laptops that I use for various purposes, and they fit their purpose perfectly.
I suspect that with the 30$ maintenance, it'll hold out at least 5 more years. After that, it'll go to my nephew as a low-end desktop.
I just want to squeeze as much mileage as possible. If I didn't have to use WPS and Okular to do my job, I'd probably go without i3wm and just stayed in the terminal.
Also, how can I rewrite the bios? What can I get out of it? Where to start?
Lol, I have an old Dell I've been using for 11 years now, and it was built in the late 90s... Caught fire, survived, still is a great computer (runs a custom 98 install, original HDD, thinking of putting a crappy SSD in it lol, Drauga1 style). Oh and did I mention it's a laptop? (caught fire on my lap lol)
Hopefully your nephew will understand the value in old tech and not just discard it in a few months.
Lol, I don't think you need to worry too much about that... While it's a fun learning experience it's a pain.
Hah! An old MacBook is always better than a new one, and I'm not even joking. The specs get upgraded, things get thinner, but in terms of engineering and build quality, it got only worse since 2008. The latest one, I don't even know what to say about it. Replacing function keys with an oled strip, really original... And gimmicky. Just how long is that machine meant to last when they put OLED strips in it? 2 years? 2 and a half maybe? It might be the part of their marketing strategy, get it while you can, as the next one is going to be even worse. Old Macs will soon be valuable like gold and diamonds.
Diamonds have no value other than the one provided by market control and gold is good for nothing. Silver is where it's at. Not as valuable, but if the mood takes you, you can use it to make stuff!
Diamonds are a very interesting and useful material with very unique and extreme properties. It certainly has a shit ton of potential but is rarely experimented with... exactly because of its price...
BTW
Writing this from a Thinkpad T510 from 2010. Every keystroke is bliss, compared to my previous laptop.
Thinkpads seem to be the Olympus of laptops (not cameras, I don't know anything about those). I'll definitely want a Thinkpad if this eMachines ever dies. However, one of my friends has a thinkpad with SATA2 connections, I'd need sata3 for my SSD. M.2 would be great as well. Any thinkpads like that?
I agree with you about market control. But that's for another topic... What I suggested was a comical illustration of today's laptop build quality, and that a well-built ones are getting increasingly rare to find. Which is why I think that if you have a good old laptop, especially if it's a mac, it is better to do everything you can to extend its life.
Btw, I've read somewhere that they made an experimental quantum processor that works on the room temperature using an artificial diamond. But that was with an artificial diamond. Wish I could find that article now. And modern space suits are covered with a thin layer of gold that protects cosmonauts from the sun's harmful rays. Unlike copper and silver that can also filter these rays, gold resists corrosion. Apologies for going off-topic, but I felt that it was important to underline that diamonds and gold are not all that useless.
@m4iler Mine is upgraded with an SSD, ExpressCard to USB adapter (combined with esata, thats 6 USB ports in total) and I have a secondary 1600x1200 monitor on the side. Also, since it doesn't have a numpad I bought a USB numpad at a flea market for 1$. Everything was bought used except the ExpressCard adapter which came from Aliexpress.
Satisfied so far, we'll see how it stands the test of time.
I have a 6 year old 13" 2011 MacBook pro that I've upgraded to 8Gb of ram, removed the broken DVD drive and put in a HD adapter in the DVD bay, moved the HD there and installed an SSD in the HD slot.
This computer runs great and runs Sierra MacOS and newest software without issues. At this point I see no need to replace it.
That is unless I see the right deal on a gaming laptop so I could game on the road...
I have an old Atom 270 netbook that I keep alive. Its limited to 2gb of ram, can't playback HD media, its got a 10 inch glossy 1024x600 resolution screen, its mini PCI WiFi came out of a scrapped Cisco cable modem (bet you didn't know some older modems have perfectly useable mini PCI WiFi chipsets) and its battery is on its way out, the SATA controller is artifically crippled to run at about half what it should and its GPU is of those Intel "its DX9 compatible" but lacks hardware to make it compatible with DX7 and 8.
Its a living fossil but sits quite happly in the corner wired directly into my modem running a dual boot XP and Porteus (lightweight linux distro) and now spends its days being a rarely used torrent box. I keep meaning to do something a bit more with it like turn it into a poor mans shitty NAS but just can't justify putting something like a 1tb drive into it.
Plus I have an AMD laptop thats not old old (A4-5000) but its getting past its prime and I've replaced with something a lot more mobile, its case is fucked after falling down the stairs so I can't sell it on but I think will replace the Atom and offer me a lot more options but because it needs a short 9.5mm height drive I've never really bothered putting any effort into making that happen.
I use my 6 yeah old laptop as an htpc. For something like that, then I would say go for it (doesn't really need a ssd in that situation, and could get away with a linux distro instead of windows which would reduce cost and resource overhead). But for other, more intensive uses, I don't think it is much worth it.