StuckInYYZ

Not sure how you're using your Windows laptops, but I have older Windows boxes (including one laptop) that go back to ~2008 or so that are still running fine. Granted the older ones are not doing anything processor intensive any more, but for just plain surfing and office productivity they're running just fine (with a RAM upgrade). The two (work) laptops I've had die on me, both of them had swollen batteries and those lasted me quite a few years when they were in service (and if the batteries weren't soldered on, I might have been able to rescue them).

I think it really depends on your use case. I've had business and consumer boxes... it all depends on how you treated them. About the only "abuse" I've ever put my boxes through was either a lack of cleaning or in the case of laptops, keeping them plugged in at home). They've all lasted closer to 5-7 years if not longer. I have a closet of computers I have retired due to job requirements but are fully functional (occasionally I donate the overflow to schools/charities... When I get more and have some time to scrub them, I will give to more charities for kids who can't afford a computer in the current climate...).

WestCoastPDX

Owned Apple laptops for a while.
Got a 2020 MBA , maxed out, that I will be shocked if it survives 2 years.

Hit 50+ countries in the last two years.
Keys don't work properly, screen flickers between true-tone and blue in the morning/evening.
Battery gets two video calls in before dying.
Gets so hot you can't put it on your lap.
Restarts in the middle of the night randomly (I assume installing updates?)
Doesn't connect to wifi effectively.


I tolerate it, as my entire bag is 10kg for an entire year on the road.
It's the lightest laptop I could find.
But, yeah, never again.

Easily the worst laptop experience I've had.
Hopefully a 'fluke', but could not be more disappointed with a laptop. Just a dreadful user experience.

WilcoRoger

You definitely seem to have hw issues - mobo, maybe? Also, check the battery visually - if it's bloated, replace it immediately (not only in MBA, but any battery operated device)

My 2017MBA developed early on a mobo issue, the mobo was quickly replaced and hasn't had any problems since.

StuckInYYZ

If this is an M1 MBA, it shouldn't get that hot. But if it's an Intel, then most of those symptoms could be related to heat. Either way, it should be looked at as suggested above.

KRSW

I'd hold off. It's working. There's a major shortage of silicon & chips, which means high prices and limited availability. When I went to order new servers this month, my Lenovo rep told me there are 50-70 WEEK delays and he advised me to buy some used stuff on eBay until things get back to normal and prices become more reasonable.

As far as Apple longevity, It's kind of a crap shoot. Some Apple laptops are bulletproof, others are terrible from the start. Mostly design flaws with them rather than quality control issues, but when they do have design flaws, they are often the dumbest mistakes ever, as in mistakes you'd expect a first-year EE 101 student to make. See Louis Rossman on YouTube for plenty of commentary on this topic. The older stuff is generally more sustainable as they used individual, replaceable parts. Their new products are made to be intentionally difficult to repair. Apple really wants you to toss your machine and buy new instead.

Currently using a 2009 MBP 15" as my daily driver. Not bulletproof and I've done quite a few repairs on it over the years, but it's served me well. Performance these days is...miserable. Replacing it with a new Thinkpad soon.

We have a fleet of older Lenovo Thinkpads in my office. Everything from T510 to T540p laptops. Oldest ones are from ~2010, newest are 2014. All are used daily. Even the 2010 ones are turning out respectable performance (they were top-spec'd back in the day). The T540p's we have will easily best the low-end stuff being sold new at Best Buy today. All are physically in good shape, despite some spills and falls.

John Isaac

Thank you for that advice, KRSW. I will definitely follow it.

tmiw

I have a 2011 MBA as a secondary machine and it seems to be doing better than I thought it would. I think it helps that it's using an SSD rather than a spinning hard drive. Note that I'm not even bothering using macOS with it, just Windows 10 (which I did have to jump through hoops to install but does work okay now).

Something to keep in mind if you go this route is that I'm not fully sure Windows 11 will support older Apple laptops due to the need for TPM, etc. If Microsoft ultimately doesn't, then that'll be it once Windows 10 goes EOL.

dbuckho

I had a 2007 MacBook Pro (maxed out specs for the time) that made it to 2016 with an SSD swapped in and a replacement battery (battery blew up around 2014). I actually booted it up last week to see if my 5 year old could run a Steam game on it? Steam worked fine but the game needed a more recent OS version. Web and internet seemed to work just fine/fast enough. For an almost 15 year old machine was pretty impressed.

Luckily we have a 2017 MacBook Air as a flex machine and that played the game just fine. That machine is 4 years old and showing no signs of falling behind for casual application use.

Not laptops - but when remote school started last year I swapped in an SSD for my wife's 2014 Mac Mini and that machine runs great. Handles everything my 11 year old needs to do with the exception of trying to use it for Windows/Bootcamp to play PC games (had to get him a virtual gaming machine from ShadowPC for that - and that runs great on his Mac Mini).

My personal home machine is (was) a 2011 Mac Mini and until a couple months ago it was working great -- mainly because it had a fusion drive (SSD boot) and lots of RAM. Unfortunately the main hard drive crashed. I was able to recover on to the 2nd drive, but that is not an SSD and really slow. Using the MacBook Air for now and waiting to see if a MX1 Mini is coming soon. But a decade is a pretty good run and when I buy my next Mac, I am spec'ing it out with the hope it lasts the next 10 years.

I moved to Macs after getting fed up with a Windows BSOD and having to rebuild/reinstall my PCs every few years. Do not miss those days ever.

KRSW

For anyone looking at this and thinking about picking up a Lenovo T or X series Thinkpad... buy used! Corporate IT departments love these, and usually lease them, which means there's tons of them available on the resale market. For the same $300 you spend on a crap Black Friday special, you can get a used enterprise-grade laptop which will run circles around it.

...and yes, if you have an older system with a replaceable parts, by all means, go SSD and max out the RAM! That's the only way my 2009 MBP is usable. It would have been tossed off the roof if I had to put up with its performance using its original spinning hard drive & 4GB RAM.

javabytes

For decades I would have agreed with this advice. I too have 10 year old ThinkPads that are still going strong. However starting with Windows 11, TPM 2.0 is required. This renders most laptops older than 8th gen Intel Core CPUs (approx. Fall 2017) unable to update to Windows 11. While Windows 10 support will continue for another 4 years, Microsoft has started a ticking clock on old hardware that buyers of used/refurbished equipment should be aware of especially as Windows 10 draws closer to its end-of-support date.

StuckInYYZ

I'm curious though. Will Microsoft leave the final patch files online? Many people, especially older folk will be happy with their existing computers. I know some elderly who have Core2 and Quad computers which I upgraded to W10 and it runs fine for them (mostly Youtube and the occasional email).... if I have to wipe the computers for any reason, will MS leave the patches so I can restore them... It shouldn't take up too many resources. They won't want Windows 11 and they won't want to have to learn a new operating system (eg, Linux). Certainly hope they leave something final state online (with the disclaimer that it won't be supported further).

javabytes

I'm sure they will, just as they have done with prior versions... even though they stop developing more updates you can update to whatever has already been published. Certainly the risk to systems no longer receiving updates increases over time though.

StuckInYYZ

Actually that's not entirely true. There are Microsoft products that have been taken offline, even in their final form. IE is the best known of these (at least for me). A long while back, I had to restore some really old industrial systems where the hardware was no longer supported and required IE (and XP/2000) to operate. I could download the installer, but it wouldn't work. That took a lot of creativity to get them to work again. Luckily we rarely see these anymore, but they do happen.

javabytes

Apps, sure. That’s a bit different than entire OS. Even Windows 2000 updates remain available.

KRSW

StuckInYYZ : I still stand by my recommendation. If someone buys a used enterprise laptop today at ~1/2 what new prices are going for and gets 4 years out of it, I'd call that a win.

There's still hundreds of thousands (probably more) of Windows 7 systems chugging along out there faithfully. About half the laptops at my office are still running Win7 or OSX 10.11. No updates? No problem. I keep all of the PCI-compliance crap on a dedicated updated system. The most dangerous users also get the newer stuff. I'm still supporting Win 3.11 and MS-DOS 5.x systems for clients.

I have a suspicious feeling that Microsoft's 4-year deadline will be extended. The chip shortage is real. My Lenovo rep told me some configurations won't be available for *70* weeks. Yes, more than a year delay. Given China's recent power shortages and it's not even winter yet, production is going to get a lot worse.

Also, manufacturers are starting to release TPM patches to update older TPM chips. I see Dell has one available for some systems. TPM was recently defeated, so it's eventually going to be as useless as DVD's CSS system.