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Primal Skill

George

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Switching to used laptops instead of buying new ones can save money and reduce environmental impact. The production of new laptops consumes significant energy and materials, and most laptops are replaced every 3 to 5 years. A viable alternative is to purchase older models and upgrade them with solid-state drives and lightweight Linux operating systems, which can revive their performance. This approach promotes sustainability and challenges the trend of quick obsolescence driven by new hardware and software updates.

How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops

Who would have thought that a journalist doesn’t need the latest computing power… duhh

Kind of disappointed this article is almost five years old as things have changed. After purchasing a laptop with a sufficient GPU two years ago, only to have it fail and told it cant be repaired I kind of agree that older is better in many cases. However older computers are pre GPU and as such become useless running software that depends on a GPU being present. Yes cloud computing has taken over a lot processing that one used require inside their personal device. Although one can’t avoid a laptop in some cases my preference these days are mini computers hooked up to a large TV. The search for me is a portable GPU card that can plug into computers both new and old.

For studying, reading, coding and watching videos, pretty much any laptop will do, most older laptops don’t run windows, but that’s microsoft problem for losing market share.
You can get very good deals on facebook marketplace, clean it, change the battery, change thermal paste, maybe invest on a SSD for upgrade, and you get a working machine that you keep going for more ten years.
The only justifiable reason to change laptops I think is if you work with images and video editing on the run, like a content creator or something.

I stopped buying new laptops (went through several thinkpads, each with their own linux driver issue) when I bought the first M1 Macbook Pro. This thing has lasted me now over 4 years and its the first laptop I own which still feels as fast as new. And, in comparison to my linux laptops, I sacrificed alot of customization for “everything just works”. I open my laptop, do my work, and am done with it.
No deciding if I wanna try to update packages and fix stuff OR work :D

Where I am they still sell 64 bit windows with 5400rpm hdd and 2gb RAM. Whey below spec. Minimum required RAM for 64bit Windows is 4GB RAM and the hdd is way to slow. My recommendation to people who bought these laptops is to upgrade to at least 8GB RAM and buy a SSD in order to run Windows properly or the more cost effective and better way is to just install Linux. Linux still works great on these machines for users that only want to do basic things