Not if the hardware still works and still does the job.

hparadiz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My Macbook Air 2021 M1 flies circles around my 2014 MBP. I got a new battery for the 2014 but the rubber bezel is disintegrating. I'm thinking of turning the 2014 into a TV driver but that's about it.

	▲	wiether 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seems to be the idea to me: don't use a no longer supported +10yo laptop as a daily driver, but convert it to something useful for free. Being a laptop, the power draw is almost negligible and it doesn't take much space.

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charcircuit 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People want computers to take on new jobs and the hardware is a limiting factor on that. And even if it can take on a job, that doesn't mean it does it as well as a newer machine.

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jraph 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Depends. I'm surrounded by people who just need light web browsing and emails. They don't really like computers, they want to use them only when absolutely necessary. A Mac from 2012 with a 256-512 GiB SSD and 8 GiB of RAM is plenty.

Hell, last week I was on holidays without my computer, and I have borrowed such a machine. The battery has been replaced so it still has a long battery time. It was as fast as I could hope (and I'm quite sensitive to this stuff!), the only thing slowing me down was the keyboard layout, the window management of the OS, and the touchpad gestures not responding as well as what I have on Linux (notably swipe for back in Firefox, I was quite surprised).

This thing can't be updated anymore though and even Firefox gave up, so I advised switching to Linux to keep things safe.

Aside from the OS, this thing does 100% the job it needs to do. Recent hardware won't do better because that's not the limiting factor.

Even if money is not an issue, replacing hardware has environmental costs, and that's in this spirit that I answered no, not necessarily better.

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charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent [-]

People like computers to work fast. They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer.

If it already does the job it needs to, does it really need a bleeding edge version of Java?

The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue.

	▲	jraph 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> People like computers to work fast. People don't like to wait for their computer. The nuance is quite important. > They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer. But the 2012 Mac I'm talking about does all that for what it's used for: completely silent (and trust me, I'm quite sensitive to that), lasts on battery long enough, as fast as possible (of course a new machine would be faster, but it would not be meaningful for the use case). > The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue. That's completely wrong. I'm not sure why you are pushing here.