They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

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MangoToupe 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years

Every plastic laptop I've bought has busted within two years, whether it's mechanical stress or poor heat design. They feel less like reliable tools and more like toys. Looking specifically at you, thinkpads.

Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro I bought for myself for college 17 years ago still boots. The battery is dead, but that's an incredibly long life for any hardware of that complexity.

	▲	LtWorf 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Booting once a year isn't "life" for a computer.

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kiliancs 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In my experience and my family's you are lucky if they last 3 years. If they last 5 years there's usually a subpar experience, e.g. they overheat significantly at 2 years. OTOH, we have a few macbooks > 10 years still working.

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goyagoji 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's the need to dust fans and then there's the possibility that OS computing requirements have risen which isn't often a Linux thing on old hardware.. OsX had exactly the same problem and had to make a minimizing release IIRC.

Computing kind of stagnated since 2010 and plenty of hardware since then still works fine today and is usable enough for many tasks. Apple was nice for needing not all that many different drivers but its statnge integrations like drive fans to bios are obnoxious.

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LtWorf 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And macbooks aren't overheating?

I've owned old macbooks… I got scalded by the metal screws on the bottom in the summer because apple thought looking sleek was more important than proper cooling.

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kiliancs 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The other laptops overheat soon after purchasing, often with just the bare OS running. There is a 3 yo laptop that my parents still use, but it has to always be plugged in, and the fans will spin loudly even in suspension.

My >10 yo macbooks also have bad batteries. One of them won't last one minute, and will also overheat with minor workloads. They were not immune to overheating when new, but unreasonable overhearing (for the time) definitely didn't become an issue at within 3 years of purchase.

And that's with Intel macbooks. My M1 from Dec 2020 works like new (I'm sure the battery life has shortened, but not in a way that I notice). It overheated a couple times running LLMs—that's it. That's how I know the fans work.

	▲	LtWorf 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Put KDE and see the overheating disappear.

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JustExAWS 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ARM MacBooks aren’t overheating.

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piskov 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, it was intel piece of shit that promised new nodes for years and never delivered.

Macs were designed up to the thermal specs that should have been but never came.

Hence the m1: enough is enough