How long does a laptop usually last?

Discussion in 'Tech Discussion' started by CyberCypher, Jul 16, 2018.

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  1. N1gh7R4v3n

    N1gh7R4v3n Bounty Hunter for skittles

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    mine lasted 9 years before the screen snapped off. Dont ask
     
  2. TiggerBane

    TiggerBane Always asleep yep yep yep| Canidae lover

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    Mines lasted 6 years and at least 150 drops... Further it's a macbook air.
     
  3. phoenom

    phoenom Well-Known Member

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    depends on what you use it for . if just for normal browsing (youtube etc) and light office work (making document etc) , it will last long time .
    generally speaking as long as you don't do gaming on it , it will have good life expectancy.

    edit: mine is at least 4 years old , i use for normal browsing , office work and light programming (although most of the time, i do the compiling on my pc). It still goes strong . if your old laptop seems slow or sluggish changing into ssd or using lightweight linux distribution will help alot.
     
  4. ReadOrDie

    ReadOrDie already dead

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    Use it as long as you can... If you have money and want to replace it every year then go for it. No one stopping you.
     
  5. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    mine have last for ten years and still serve me well
    change lcd once cuz an idiot broke it
    change battery twice
    change fan twice
    change HDD once cuz another idiot drop it to water
    from XP system to win 7 (I never like win 10 19667.png )
    used for typing, browsing, watch anime+movie and play light games such as simcity 2000, GBA rooms, Age of Empire II ect
    19656.png
     
  6. mithikx

    mithikx Active Member

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    Depends on what the laptop is used for, if it's for gaming or something that requires it to have a workstation GPU like a Quadro probably not more than a few years as requirements increase and better hardware is released and costs decrease for performance. A laptop for that sort of thing will of course still work when it's outdated, but they won't keep pace with the latest games/applications.

    As for me I don't play games or anything particularly resource intensive on my laptop, I have my desktop for that and don't need to do that sort of thing on-the-go. So for me my needs are rather tame and so my current devices are just fine.

    I got a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon from 2014 and it works just fine for web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, streaming videos and that sort of thing.
    It was reasonably spec'd out but not amazingly so, it has a 1600x900 display, i5-4300U, 8GB of RAM and a 180GB SSD, it's holding on and does everything I need just fine.

    Many laptops are becoming more and more non-upgradable as-in the RAM and CPU are soldered on and in some cases the storage, so for those sorts of situations a laptop may not last as long if it was configured to be as cheap as possible. Which is why it may be a good option to invest a bit more to future proof a laptop/desktop in some situations so it lasts a bit longer.

    My particular laptop is a "business laptop" and for me it's the only route I'll ever go on getting a laptop, they're just better than the consumer ones. Usually they have better build quality and they're more durable with a simple design language, easier to service but a bit more expensive.
     
  7. TooLazyToThink

    TooLazyToThink Well-Known Member

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    My 2011 laptop is still alive and sometimes I use it. I bought a gaming laptop thou but ended up retiring on games.
     
  8. Truerror

    Truerror Well-Known Member

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    Mine usually lasts about 5 years.

    Well, TBH, it's not like I replaced my laptop because it's no longer usable or anything. I simply wanted newer tech.
     
  9. sidtz

    sidtz Well-Known Member

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    i'm gonna say anywhere from 5-10 years. it really depends how much you use it, the amount of work your willing to put into maintaining it, and what you're using it for. If you're using it for work or browsing and it works as long as it not something like video editing or something else heavy on the computer it'll last a long time. If your using it for gaming, even if it's not braking down at some point it's just not going to be good enough to run some things well enough that you want to play.
     
  10. bob3002

    bob3002 Well-Known Member

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    If you take good care of your laptop (don't drop it, don't expose it to temperature extremes, etc) it can fairly easily last 5+ years these days. The battery will likely have lost most of its capacity around that time, though, and you can't easily replace them in most laptops these days, but you can treat it like a mobile desktop with a tiny UPS. Also, like you noted, tiny plastic bits start working themselves loose by then.

    Since 2011 or so, improvements in CPU speeds has stagnated. A CPU from today is maybe 50-70% faster than one from then at the same clock speed, and might have more cores and use less power. Previous generations used to double CPU speeds every 3-4 years. It means that you can use your laptop longer now without it being unable to run modern software, which is great for longevity.

    I just replaced my laptop from 2011 early this year. The CPU is actually not that much faster, but the screen is much higher resolution and the laptop is lighter and thinner, so it's more pleasant to carry around and use. Also the SSD means installing and loading programs is MUCH faster.
     
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  11. doomeye1337

    doomeye1337 /人◕ ‿‿ ◕人\ Incubator, the messenger of magic~

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