How many people are using really old PCs on a daily?

[bowlofturtle]

I dont know where i place my computer but its definitely a dinosaur it seems to work for everything I need it. I only do video streaming, excels with macros and VBA stuff at home and just mainly web browsing.

I have an I5-2400 with 12gb of RAM, 250GB SSD for boot and 2TB for storage all paired with up to 8600GT. It's been dead solid for the past 8 years I've owned it. But i think it's a 10-15-year-old system.

I'm asking this because work has given me 2 really nice 1440p monitors that have Displayport and my video card can only put out 2 DVI. Yes i can get an adapter for $20 x2 or i can look into grabbing a video card or getting a newer PC.

The 2 monitors are powered by a ThinkPad with a dock they issued me but when I'm done with work I wouldn't mind using the nicer newer monitors.

 

[Hermann]

Your about 3 levels higher than I am. A lot of the hype around super fast computer is marketing. It will get clogged up soon enough.

 

[Escape08]

A favorite of mine Dell Dimension 4600; Intel 4; 3.00 Gz; 4 GB RAM; Win 7 for internet use only. I had it for 18 years and never let me down

 

[hemioiler]

If it ain't broke.....

 

[ekrampitzjr]

I have a circa 2004 computer with Windows XP Pro. It was the one I used at home with a dialup modem to access BITOG after I first joined. It still works (knock on wood) and still is used for Word and Excel work and storage.

 

[eljefino]

Computer prices are dropping rapidly now that coin mining isn't a thing. This could be a good year to pull the trigger.

 

[macarose]

I have laptops that are over a decade old that I can use if I need to. I intentionally did not equip my desktop with a dashcam. So if I ever need to attend a meeting, I always use the older laptop. As someone else already mentioned I prefer to use an older laptop if I ever need to write or do financial work.

Excluding one computer for my daughter who is studying Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech, the last laptop that I bought was way back during Black Friday in 2014. It cost $177. The biggest surprise of all was that I got the loaded version of that laptop, Dell Latitude 15 (maybe?), instead of the bare-bones version they were selling at Best Buy.

I do have a friend who has given my family computers at a minimal cost over the years since he's in the IT world. I help him with cars. It all works out in the long-run.

 

[ripcord]

My oldest pc is out in the stop and is an 2008 iMac running a stripped down Linux distro. It works fine for streaming music or ordering parts online.

A similar vintage Mini ITX AMD mother board powers the household file server.

No reason to upgrade either that I can think of.

 

[LazyDog]

My current computer is a refurbish bought in 2011 for 150 dollars. Yes, my first computer was like 3000 back in 95.

 

[k1xv]

You can get some great refurbs with loads of RAM and SSD drives and fast processors. If you want more storage, plug in an outboard portable hard drive to a SD port. Tiger Direct and similar sites sell them. Have three desk top stations, each with 16 or 32 GB of ram, and two laptops with 32GB, all with Intel i7 processors, all refurbs.

 

[92saturnsl2]

My oldest computers I bought as refurbs in 2018-ish.

One is a HP Z400 workstation (kid computer these days) which has a Xeon W3680 3.3ghz 6-core CPU w/ 32GB DDR3 RAM. Originally came with a Xeon CPU a little further down the ladder (4-core 2.6ghz or so) and 12GB RAM, but I upgraded it down the road somewhere. Has a Ti-750 for GPU. Original price was around $200.

The other is a Z600 workstation w/ dual Xeon X5680 3.3ghz 6-core CPUs and 48gb ECC DDR3 RAM. Cost $300 when I bought it but originally came with a slower processor (dual Xeon 2.4ghz) and 24GB RAM IIRC. Now sports a Radeon RX480 8gb GPU, basically does double duty as a living room gaming computer and media center, plus hosts all the files we use on the network (MP3 library, videos, downloads, etc.)

I think both date to the 2010-ish era, but they're still plenty capable machines after I installed SSDs. My only gripe is they don't have native USB 3.0 but nothing installing a PCI-E USB adapter wouldn't fix.

 

[Bud_One]

I still have a 10-12 yr old desktop running Windows XP Professional

 

[y_p_w]

I use a variety of computers. I like Apple but I can't use my company issued Mac for storing lots of personal files.

My main personal computer is a "mid-2012" MacBook Pro 13" with a 2.5 GHz Core i5-3210M. It's the last of the "Unibody" models and was in production from 2012 until late 2016. It's also the last Apple notebook computer that uses a SATA drive and that has user replaceable memory. I've since maxed out the memory and installed a 1 TB SSD. Even without the memory upgrade, a previous 512 GB SSD upgrade vastly improved the performance. It used to stall a lot with the newest versions of MacOS, but that's probably because they were designed with SSDs in mind where random data grabs don't require a hard drive head moving everywhere. The battery was always kind of weird - I was getting about 94% battery health when I got it new out of the box (in 2015, but it was made about 8 months before I got it) and more recently the battery went below the magic 80% health where Apple is willing to replace it. I wasn't sure if I could get a replacement, but Apple did have them in stock last May and was willing to replace it. But what happened for me was that the battery went completely kaput and it wouldn't start at all without a working battery. There are various claims about whether or not a Mac notebook computer can start without a working battery and just on external power. But it was weird because I brought my dead Mac to an Apple Store hoping that a new battery would solve my problem, and it just powered on. But then they replaced the battery since it was pretty depleted.

It's not perfect, but I keep all my iOS backups and a lot of photos on it. And then those backups are backed up to an external drive. But it works pretty well even considering the design is over 10 years old and has been out of production for more than 6 years. I do have an adblocker installed which helps with some websites that are power hungry.

If something really goes bad (like discontinued banking website support), I actually have my Chromebook that I bought for $99. Or a newer PC laptop.

 

[bullwinkle]

My wife still uses my old eMachines laptop running Win 7, it's outlived several of my newer laptops. Just refuses to die!

 

[Rmay635703]

I used various Windows 98 machines as my daily through 2016 until basic things I did online (like webmail) hard broke even with patched semi modern browsers.

I still keep a Celeron 733 for proprietary business software I like to use occasionally

My most modern Pc is a HP core2duo but sadly I think the PSU is dead and very expensive to replace.

So when I need a Pc it’s either my iPhone or a golden oldie to do offline activities.

 

[y_p_w]

I used various Windows 98 machines as my daily through 2016 until basic things I did online (like webmail) hard broke even with patched semi modern browsers.

I still keep a Celeron 733 for proprietary business software I like to use occasionally

My most modern Pc is a HP core2duo but sadly I think the PSU is dead and very expensive to replace.

So when I need a Pc it’s either my iPhone or a golden oldie to do offline activities.

My parents don't even have any kind of keyboard based computer they use on a regular basis. They stashed away any general purpose computers. They never had anything that was terribly high performance, but mostly it's all the malware that causes them to give up. I did warn them not to install this or that claiming to provide some sort of benefit, but they never listen.

Almost everything they need can be done on an iPad. Even older models (everything they have includes a Lightning port). It all works reasonably well because apps are optimized and there's not the kind of bloat we see accessing the internet with general purpose computers.

 

[jhellwig]

I use a refurbed in 2004 IBM with XP and a Server 2003 machine for HMIs. Can’t upgrade them either without buying new HMI software since the license will not work on newer computers. Luckily I have spare parts and they have the early version of SATA so I could replace the IDE drives.

TSA is making this older business stuff go away.

 

[paulo57509]

I'm using an old HP Windows 7 PC in 32 bit mode. I don't feel like having to upgrade all my software to 64 bit. The only thing I don't like about HP PC's is the power supplies are proprietary. I'd like to upgrade it but nothing interfaces with the existing plugs.

 

[JustinH]

I have a thing for old tower dell precisions. Have a dual xeon T7910 loaded to the gills.

 

[92saturnsl2]

My main personal computer is a "mid-2012" MacBook Pro 13" with a 2.5 GHz Core i5-3210M. It's the last of the "Unibody" models and was in production from 2012 until late 2016. It's also the last Apple notebook computer that uses a SATA drive and that has user replaceable memory. I've since maxed out the memory and installed a 1 TB SSD.

Are you sure about that? I just got gifted a Macbook Pro someone was going to throw away and asked me if I wanted it for my kids. Knowing nothing about Macs, I had to do a deep Google dive to see if what I was receiving was trash-worthy or worth keeping. It's a 2013 Retina model, I5 CPU, 8GB RAM, SSD from factory, has a gorgeous high-res display, but almost nothing is user-replaceable. I read that the unibody models were discontinued in 2011 or so.

Either Wikipedia and countless forums are wrong, or you have your Macbook productions years off, or my Google-fu skills need improving No big deal either way, I decided to keep the laptop and play with it; formatted SSD, it updated to Maverick OS, but still even Google Maps won't run in Safari because it's too old and Apple support has been discontinued for the model.