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What determines a computer as obsolete?

While moving from one nest to another (we’re lemmings here; RP it a bit) I realized I still have all computers I ever bought or assembled, except for those that literally broke beyond any hope of repair.

Some are no longer used daily but all work and being on a point in life where everything and anything in the nest needs to have a purpose or a function, led me think what actually renders a computer useless or truly obsolete.

I was made even more aware of this, as I’m in the market to assemble a new machine and I’m seeing used ones - 3 or 4 years old - being sold at what can be considered store price, with specs capable of running newly released games.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at two LGA 775 motherboards I have and considering how hard can I push it before it spontaneously combusts to make any use of it, even if only a type writer.

So, per the title, what makes a computer obsolete or simply unusable to you?

Addition

So I felt necessary to update the post and list the main reasons surfacing for rendering a machine obsolete/unusable

  • energy consumption

overall and consumption vs computational power

  • no practical use

Linux rule!

  • space take up
HexesofVexes ,

When it no longer reliably functions - Older hardware still has a lot of uses, just dump lubuntu on it and you have a functional desktop that you can play older games on, and use open source productivity suites with. However, once parts start to fail that you can no longer replace (those old laptop HDDs for example), it becomes obsolete to you.

ShellMonkey , (edited )
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

I tend to follow a ‘cascade’ type of upgrade pattern, one gets a new part and the replaced piece gets put into another where possible. At some point though it ends up as to upgrade this one part I need to also swap several others to support it. So it kind of becomes a ‘Ship of Theseus’ situation in many cases.

The real question of when is something useless though, it comes to a combination of a security thing (can I run a modern supported OS in a reasonably performant fashion) and if the function it served can be done on some other existing system (via virtual machines/containers usually) making it entirely redundant.

taladar ,

I would say that it depends on a lot of different factors.

A computer can be obsolete because you require available spare parts to quickly repair it when something breaks and those are no longer available.

A computer can be obsolete because it is physically much larger, much heavier, much louder or less power-efficient than a more modern computer performing the same task for you.

A computer can be obsolete because of some external change, e.g. when Apple moved from x86_64 to ARM or when some new encryption algorithm or codec is not supported in hardware on that system and the software implementations are lacking in performance or power efficiency.

A computer can be obsolete when its hardware is no longer supported by drivers in modern operating systems with security updates.

legios ,
@legios@aussie.zone avatar

As someone with a dual Opteron 6386SE sitting in a closet somewhere with 512GB of RAM… It was fun for a few weeks until I saw my energy bill. Was great in winter though as I didn’t need a heater on… Ever.

The pros of working in a tech company where they decommission shit and just ask who wants it

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

There are a lot of good suggestions in the replies here, aren’t there?

I was going to say that I’ve been doing a lot of self-hosting and home automation recently, and it’s had me doing things like spending a lot of time finding out if I can run Linux on an old Apple TV, to make it yet another home server running containers. I went through a phase where I was considering disassembling old laptops to re-use their LCD panels as mounted control access points around the house.

However, the LCD thing never went anywhere, because I’m not handy with a soldering iron, but also because I’ve found that those laptops are usually newer than the ones people in my family tend to have (me being in software and having cycled through laptops frequently), and I’ve been re-installing friendlier Linuxes on them and giving them away to friends and family.

I wonder about the other devices, though. Many are certainly not low-power-use, and what’s the impact of me continuing to use them? Headless, most are certainly capable of running at least one containerized service, but a newer ARM or RISCV board will almost certainly sip less. What’s the environmental trade-off?

I have, though, only one tower. I built it in 1993, and have simply upgraded it with new MBs and components over time. It’s main feature turned out to be it’s usefulness as a RAID5 container, again upgraded with increasingly larger HD over the decades, until the point where I stated prodominantly using docked laptops. One move, I simply never set it up again. That one is a power-hungry monster, and I feel bad about having it powered on 24/7. But I still keep it because, sentiment.

Annecdotes aside, my answer to your question is: most computers can run Linux, and therefore, most computers could find a use in self-hosting. For me it’s become more a question if whether I have, or can find, a use for it. Often, a conversation with family results in finding a use; setting up a self-hosted media-server for mom, maybe. If not, it becomes e-waste, and I feel bad for a bit. But my devices have tended to be small form-factor, like Vera or AppleTV; it sounds like yours are larger, and maybe the form factor makes them less desirable to reuse.

carl_dungeon ,

Obsolete != Useless.

You could think of anything that’s not the newest as obsolete, or anything that’s no longer supported, but in either case, it doesn’t mean the machine can’t still be used for either it’s original intent or something else (Plex server or something).

scorpious ,

For me, inability to run a modern/secure OS. Yay Linux!

Plopp ,

I’d say that, for me, a computer gets moved down the chain. From a daily driver, to something I use more sporadic, and then on to become a server of some kind hosting light weight stuff on my LAN. And then eventually it becomes a question of if it’s worth the electricity bill having such inefficient old hardware running 24/7.

jet ,

At the physical level: capacitors age and blow up, batteries stop charging.

At the efficiency level: when the work you want to do uses more energy on an older platform than on a newer platform.

At the convenience level: when the newer device is so convenient you never use the old device, telephone versus desktop as an example for most people.

After reliability level: if you’re constantly replacing things on a unit, where it becomes your part-time job.

The longest used devices tend to be embedded industrial devices. They have a job they keep doing that job and until they break they’re going to do that job forever. And that’s application specific computing.

Most home users are general computer users, so they have a mix of different requirements, support and use cases. I for one still use a 10-year-old laptop. And it’s totally fine.

Etterra ,

If when you start up a brand new game you just got on Steam, the game on minimum settings grinds down to 10 FPS in the first 5 minutes or refuses to even start? That’s what you know it’s time to put the old girl to rest.

lol3droflxp ,
@lol3droflxp@kbin.social avatar

Sounds partly like a cooling issue

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