Comment Re:IBM ThinkPad (Score 1) 702
Is that "long lasting" or is it sad that 9-10 years out of a laptop is considered long?
I think it's more a function of "your machine is no longer out-of-date 18 months after it shipped". Used to be that laptops had to be replaced every 2-3 years, because the newer models were sporting larger screens, faster CPUs, more RAM, bigger HDs. A 3 year old laptop was *really* slow compared to a brand new model, or it had a sub-par screen, or was just extremely limited in other ways.
Ever since multi-core CPUs hit the market, combined with the plateau in per-core performance, a 3-5yr old machine is still a very viable machine. Newer systems are maybe only 20-30% faster per core. Gone are the days where CPU performance doubled every 12 months (now only true if you keep adding cores and your workload is easy to run in parallel).
For instance, I'm still using a Thinkpad T61p from mid-2007. it has 8GB RAM, Win7, pair of SSDs and still performs well enough that I'm not ready to replace it yet. It lives in a docking station, so the screen/keyboard don't see much wear and tear. I made sure to take it in for service (new keyboard / mouse / system board) before the 4yr warranty ran out.
The only downside is that it doesn't have enough CPU power (2.2GHz Core2 Duo) to meet all of my needs, but I have an octo-core AMD chip on the desktop for those needs. But the Thinkpad is still the machine I use 95% of the time for work.
I think it's more a function of "your machine is no longer out-of-date 18 months after it shipped". Used to be that laptops had to be replaced every 2-3 years, because the newer models were sporting larger screens, faster CPUs, more RAM, bigger HDs. A 3 year old laptop was *really* slow compared to a brand new model, or it had a sub-par screen, or was just extremely limited in other ways.
Ever since multi-core CPUs hit the market, combined with the plateau in per-core performance, a 3-5yr old machine is still a very viable machine. Newer systems are maybe only 20-30% faster per core. Gone are the days where CPU performance doubled every 12 months (now only true if you keep adding cores and your workload is easy to run in parallel).
For instance, I'm still using a Thinkpad T61p from mid-2007. it has 8GB RAM, Win7, pair of SSDs and still performs well enough that I'm not ready to replace it yet. It lives in a docking station, so the screen/keyboard don't see much wear and tear. I made sure to take it in for service (new keyboard / mouse / system board) before the 4yr warranty ran out.
The only downside is that it doesn't have enough CPU power (2.2GHz Core2 Duo) to meet all of my needs, but I have an octo-core AMD chip on the desktop for those needs. But the Thinkpad is still the machine I use 95% of the time for work.