How old is your computer?

[Lars Noodén]

On 12/04/2014 05:26 PM, Barry Titterton wrote:
>...
> How old is the oldest computer that you have in regular use?
>...

My main one is only a year old.  But in the home lab, my secondary which
I use a lot is 7 years and my tertiary, which I still use weekly, is 11
years.  That last is a 1GHz titanium PowerBook G4 with only 1 GB of RAM.

Despite the limitations, the titanium G4 is by far the best quality
hardware I have seen before or since, at least in a notebook.  The
keyboard is far nicer than anything else I've used except for maybe the
old heavy ones that came with the old IBM XT desktops.  The trackpad
lacks multi-touch but otherwise feels far nicer and smoother than any of
the others.   If the battery were any good I would probably have kept
using it as a main computer.  The new ones in contrast have IMHO very
shoddy keyboards that break/stick easily, not to mention glued batteries
and soldered RAM and short-lived graphics hardware, so I won't be even
considering that brand again for the forseeable future.

I also have a netbook which is MIPS based and only 5 years old, but not
so relevant for Lubuntu, though useful for other things occasionally.
Up until a few years ago I had a PII with 512MB RAM from 1999 (or 1998)
but it stopped even turning on, so it had to go.  But up until then it
still ran one app at a time just fine and was usable even for some forms
of real work.

Wintel wanted people to buy new hardware every other year or something
like that.  Even magazines were telling people that when (MS) bitrot and
viruses set in, it is time to buy new hardware.  However, for every year
you can extend the life of the computer beyond that you save not only
your bank account but also the environment.  Given the load in producing
the machines in the first place, the latter is not insignificant.  The
longer they can stay in use the better.

Regards,
/Lars