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

[OVERKILL]

My home/home office has an old 4-core i5 machine, 2 iMacs; one from 2010 and the other from 2011, a 2010 Dell laptop and a 2012 Lenovo ThinkPad W series. All run Ubuntu flawlessly.

Yup. I'm rockin' Monterey 12.6.3 on an ancient Mid-2010 Mac Pro 5,1 w/32GB of RAM, hex-core Xeon, 2x512GB SSD's and a Radeon RX580 GPU. I CAN apparently run Ventura, but I'm not at that point yet, there are a lot of adaptations made by the OCLP crew to get that OS working.

 

[AandPDan]

I still use a 2011 era AMD FX processor with 8gb of ram. It handles the latest Kubuntu just fine. It's dual boot with Win 10 but I seldom use Windows anymore. It won't support Win 11 but that's not a great loss. Most of it's use is encoding videos with Handbrake (Linux).

 

[tyman]

God no.

My home desktop is a 10600K with a 6800XT though. I was looking at upgrading into new 13600K with Z790 mobo with DDR5 ram and PCIe 4.0. It was going to be around $1200-1500 though, but that was with a new case, PSU...I could do just cpu, mobo, HSF, ram, and new SSD for around $800-1000.

 

[LDM]

Not a daily but I do still have my old 486SX 25Mhz PC that still works. Has a 25Mhz 487 chip in it with 32MB of RAM. Originally came with 4MB of RAM. DOS 6.22 and WIN 3.11 with a huge 129MB hard drive.

 

[Hermann]

My early 2010's Dell desktop with a early Core i3 is still running strong. It stays updated automatically. Once it digests the boot up sequence it is still a snappy computer. Still has 93% of the 1TB hard drive free. It has 8gb of RAM. Over the years I have learned Dell makes better desktops than they make laptops. IME

 

[joekingcorvette]

No PC here. I have a MacBook and my wife just bought a new MacBook pro a couple weeks ago and she uses a PC for her job. Her Apple MacBook pro was almost the exact same price as she paid 10 years ago for the same computer. Her old one wouldn't work with google chrome.

 

[Vil_Riker]

an 8 year old MacBook Air is our oldest regularly used computer.

 

[dishdude]

Anything with a Core i3/i5/i7 is a completely useable PC today for basic tasks like web browsing. Heck even the old Pentium Dual-Core processors will work if you can deal with a little lag.

 

[ARCOgraphite]

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.

Norton AV + unsupported Windows 7 stopped that problem at my desk.

Cheap minitower Gateway with Pentium Duo core. 4GB ram. Old Samsung SyncMaster712n display.
Works fantastic. Snappy as all getout. No Lag.

But now Chrome says they are sunsetting W7 support this month. Then My bank webpage banner said "your old version of chrome is not supported ... sorry for the inconvenience.

I am toast.

Loaded Mozilla FF in the meanwhile - for my online banking. No I don't do online banking on my phone.

 

[hemioiler]

Norton AV + unsupported Windows 7 stopped that problem at my desk.

Cheap minitower Gateway with Pentium Duo core. 4GB ram. Old Samsung SyncMaster712n display.
Works fantastic. Snappy as all getout. No Lag.

But now Chrome says they are sunsetting W7 support this month. Then My bank webpage banner said "your old version of chrome is not supported ... sorry for the inconvenience.

I am toast.

Loaded Mozilla FF in the meanwhile - for my online banking. No I don't do online banking on my phone.

You can install linux on it and run fully up to date versions of firefox. It'll feel faster too, no need for all that AV nonsense.

 

[Rmay635703]

Anything with a Core i3/i5/i7 is a completely useable PC today for basic tasks like web browsing. Heck even the old Pentium Dual-Core processors will work if you can deal with a little lag.

Even an old p4 with onboard video and enough ram can do basic web surfing if you can keep it under an os older than Win7.

The trouble is most web browsers broke and Windows xp is more vulnerable than any os Microsoft ever made.

Also my p4 historically could hand HD video playback but due to the codecs used now even has trouble with SD video.

With an SSD and a more modern video card the system might barely run Windows 7 which is more secure but the os itself will really slow things down.

 

[dishdude]

Even an old p4 with onboard video and enough ram can do basic web surfing if you can keep it under an os older than Win7.

The trouble is most web browsers broke and Windows xp is more vulnerable than any os Microsoft ever made.

Also my p4 historically could hand HD video playback but due to the codecs used now even has trouble with SD video.

With an SSD and a more modern video card the system might barely run Windows 7 which is more secure but the os itself will really slow things down.

XP came out in 2001...it's old enough to walk into a bar and order a beer without being carded. You'd need one of the many Linux distros out there to use such an old piece of hardware, but it will work.

 

[Lubener]

Man some of you guys are using dinosaurs, I really hope none of them are connected to the internet. To give you an idea of the possible vulnerabilities of XP, Win 7, Win 8, etc, our security department at the university will immediately disconnect these devices from our network as soon as they are detected due to the risk.

If that old dinosaur is used for basic web browsing, no personal stuff, what is the big deal? If it gets infected (it hasn't so far), just do a clean OS install. I use a dedicated Win 11 PC just for banking and investment stuff only and a dinosaur running Win7 for browsing.

 

[ARCOgraphite]

You can install linux on it and run fully up to date versions of firefox. It'll feel faster too, no need for all that AV nonsense.

I actually tried a W10 upgrade but the installer tool said "error". Tried it again same thing. IDK if the MB has the proper security chipset. I have a valid W7 license.

Other than that, installing and opensource OS is like learning a foreign language to me. Are there applications that allow me to open and edit xL and word files?

This is all a mystery, I would need an expert to do this. - Ken

 

[Rmay635703]

XP came out in 2001...it's old enough to walk into a bar and order a beer without being carded. You'd need one of the many Linux distros out there to use such an old piece of hardware, but it will work.

My point is that I did identical activities I do today (playback hd video) with antique hardware and software
Such that antique hardware under modern software now are much more limited in capabilities . AKA downgraded software runs video smoothly, modern software does not.

Also Windows 7 definitely Works on a p4, they were still selling new examples in 2009 with Windows 7, need 3gb of ram, a decent 3D accelerator and an ssd if you don’t want to brew coffee while you wait but it works.

No idea Why Intel was still pushing P4’s in that era but they still were ending up in business machines for some reason.

 

[ondarvr]

Desk top, I don't even have a laptop, my wife does have a tablet she occasionally uses.

I do everything on my phone. My work did send me a new iPad about 3 months ago, but I haven't opened the box yet. Hadn't used the old iPad for several years.

 

[hemioiler]

I actually tried a W10 upgrade but the installer tool said "error". Tried it again same thing. IDK if the MB has the proper security chipset. I have a valid W7 license.

Other than that, installing and opensource OS is like learning a foreign language to me. Are there applications that allow me to open and edit xL and word files?

This is all a mystery, I would need an expert to do this. - Ken

You can use google docs and probably office 365 (not sure about that one) online in any operating system, just with the browser.

Otherwise yes there are some apps that run on linux and can edit word and xls/x files but compatibility is not perfect.

 

[uc50ic4more]

If that old dinosaur is used for basic web browsing, no personal stuff, what is the big deal? If it gets infected (it hasn't so far), just do a clean OS install. I use a dedicated Win 11 PC just for banking and investment stuff only and a dinosaur running Win7 for browsing.

"Infected" usually means a malicious party is using your computer to spam, scam or DDOS **someone else**.

 

[ChrisMU]

I have a 2003 Power Macintosh G5 1.6 GHz running Mac OS X 10.4 and TenFourFox as a browser. 10.4 is the newest system that runs “classic mode,” so I can play all of my classic games. It’s hooked up to one of those huge 30 inch Apple monitors. I have Adobe Creative Suite 2 and use it for graphics and photo editing. It’s worth having that computer just to run graphics software, which is either extremely expensive or based on subscriptions.

 

[Fordiesel69]

I sport a custom rig from circa 2014:
Asus Z87pro
Xeon E3-1245 V3 (Basically a 4th gen i7-4770)
32GB DDR3
850EVO 512GB SSD
W10 Pro

It runs as fast if not faster than our 9th gen intels at work.

I also have i5 Dell E5430 that I tossed in a cheap $49 PNY CS1131 256GB SSD. It can run upwards of 9 hrs constant with both batteries loaded. Several days if you sleep it between uses. It has a low resolution LCD but I really like it and it never breaks.

It really is time to upgrade but I hate wasting money on junk disposable stuff today.