Do PCs last longer than they used to?

Factual Questions
1

I am presently typing this on a laptop I bought almost five years ago. This computer is used daily, and it remains a fast, reliable computer for my job, gaming, and general needs. The battery doesn’t last like it used to but otherwise it’s tip top.

I’m 53 and my recollection is that this never used to happen; I’ve had computers in my family basically since PCs became a thing and my recollection is that back in the day, home computers would be badly out of date LONG before five years.

Or am I wrong?

2

If you mean do components last longer I don’t know. But if you mean has the pace of improvement slowed, very much so. We are getting close to as good as it can get. There isn’t much room left for transistors to get smaller or to get faster.

3

Old computers don’t get any slower. What happens is just that the demands on them increase. You get new programs that require more resources, or the old programs you have get updated with new features. But if you don’t have the need to install new programs, or to update the ones you have, then it’ll continue working just fine until some point, probably far along in its life, when something just fails completely.

4

I have only personal experience to go on, but I agree that they both last longer physically and can be useful longer. At present, I have 8 laptops and 7 desktops in my house. They are all used on a regular basis. Non of them is less than 5 years old. Most are at least 9 years old. The laptop I’m typing on now is 7 years old and the identical model being used by my wife sitting on the couch across from me is 8 years old.

If I think back 20 years, I can confirm that I thought a laptop that was three years old at the time should probably be replaced with a higher-performing model. And I’ve had to replace quite a few cooling fans in my day, as well as putting up with malfunctioning screens. Not so much now in the last ten years.

Finally, I have no plans at all to replace any of my machines in the near future, in spite of Win11 looming over me like in Independence Day.

5

The key, as mentioned, is software. There’s a limit to how complex a program like Word or Paint can be, since any new features would appeal to maybe 0.5% of the users (although with something like Excel it seems they can add more and more complex features).

Even with 4K monitors, there’s a limit to how complex a video playback program can be.

My wife still uses a 14-year-old Mac Mini running VMware Fusion, that I had set up many years ago with Windows 10. The version of Office is just as old. Ditto for the Macbook from as far back - we recently bought a new laptop with more capabilities.

What will happen is as newer versions of software are released, they will not install on atiquated hardware or operating systems. My original iPad is almost useless, there are no new programs I can download for it. My newer ones, including one that’s 5 or more years old, still run fine. My iPhone 3 is likely useless, I haven’t tried using it as a phone for more than a decade.

What were are seeing is incremental improvements, particularly in the processor capabilities, that newer operating systems and programs take advantage of; hence the warning for some older computers, that they are incapable of running Windows 11. Usually these improvementts relate to new modes or microcode that enhance things like security, program isolation, and virtualization. There’s also things like new interfaces, disk formats, etc. Or plugs - most new monitors tend to come with HDMI and Displayport. (I haven’t looked to see how often they have VGA socket, for example)

One of the more insidious things that will happen is when turning off program key verification happens - you may not be able to install your favourite program on a new computer because the server that verifies the product key no longer is running - either the company goes out of business, or is bought and the program is no longer supported, or the company simply decides “time for you to upgrade(for a fee)”

(I recently powered up my Windows XP machine, but I won’t use it on the internet.)

6

As @Chronos said, old computers don’t get slower. But I’ll add that the users do. :wink:

Back when I was working, in the 2000s and 2010s I remember my company’s replacement timeline for a desktop or laptop was to replace yours every 3 years. I wonder what it is today? Probably longer?

I need to replace my laptop. It is getting old. In December of this year it will be 10 years since I bought it. It’s a Dell and it barely hobbles along.

7

You could still have a pretty good experience today with an i7-4790k processor and RX 480 8GB video card[1]. That’s a ten year old system which has the main limitation that Microsoft will discontinue Windows support on it this fall when they stop supporting Win10 and won’t allow Win11 to install on a processor before 8th gen (without workarounds). While I wouldn’t recommend that someone buy this computer today unless they only have a $175 budget to get into PC gaming, it would play most new games today. You certainly can’t say that about a PC in 2005 using c.1995 hardware or even 2015 using c.2005 hardware.

When you get into PCs that are just utility machines for email, web browsing and watching Youtube, you could stretch that ten years even further and be doing fine. Biggest thing you’d want for user experience is probably an SSD over the hard drives many people were still using.

In terms of hardware, you eventually run into things like capacitors failing on motherboards and problems with old mechanical drives, fans/pumps and power supplies before the actual CPU, RAM or GPU fails. Out of those, the GPU tends to fail first. But getting 10+ years out of them isn’t unusual at all. On the other hand, my old Commodore 64 lasted me about ten years before it died. Old PC hardware from the 90s probably also had a similar operational life, it was just functionally obsolete well before that.

  1. The RX 480 and “newer” RX 580 are basically the same card, in fact you could flash an RX 580 BIOS onto a 480 and it just works ↩︎

8

My laptop is 15 years old. It came with windows 7. I have “up graded” to
windows 10, doubled the RAM to 4 GB and replaced the hhd with ssd.
It works fine for everything i need, including running Cakewalk with
numerous VST/VSTis.
The only issue I have is the keyboard has recently started to miss letters.
It won’t run windows 11 though, so I’m going to have to replace it :cry:

9

Yeah, as a lifelong PC gamer I feel like GPUs (for me) were always the gating factor, at least in the late 90s/early 00s. I’m guessing a lot of that has to do with the maturity of GPU APIs etc. In the past, game developers had to write for specific cards–so older cards would end up dropped/deprecated and you’d find that the new game you wanted just wouldn’t run.

I swear back then I was buying new cards every 2 years or so…

Today, the worst that really happens is you drop so many frames that you have to drop the quality down to a level you no longer find acceptable and only then are you forced to open your wallet.

10

At my old job I had access to systems reliability data (not PCs but big servers) and I can testify that this is true. Anything with mechanical parts failed way more often than the processor unless there was some bug or test escape.

I replaces my old laptop, bought at the very beginning of the Win10 cycle with a new one last year, and the problem wasn’t anything failing, it was inadequate memory so the thing was swapping itself to death. For most applications these days multiple cores on the CPU are a lot more useful than higher clock speeds.

I think the same thing goes for phones. I just upgraded from an S8 to a cheap, used, S21. The only problem with the S8 was that some apps no longer supported it. Nothing ever broke on it.

11

Beyond that, a lot of the improvements in GPUs are more centered around absurdly high frame rates at absurdly high resolutions. Like 180 fps @ 4k resolutions.

If you’ve got a 1440p monitor, you’re probably not needing a top of the line GPU.

12

That seems excessive.

13

We used to depreciate laptops over 30 months in the late 1990s-early 2000s. Now it’s 42 months where I work. I think that’s pretty close to the actual time in use. Legally speaking we lease laptops for 48 months, but for accounting purposes we treat it as a capital lease because the lease length approximates the useful life.

Just a data point.

14

I have had my laptop since 2017 and I use it daily. Critically, it’s been sitting on a fan platform for nearly its entire existence, and I think that has greatly extended its life.

15

Coincidentally, I asked our IT guy at our federal government office last week how old our laptops were and when they would be replaced. He said they were 5 years old and were going to be replaced either this or next FY.

Such replacement generally takes place across our entire office nationwide.

I’m completely computer ignorant, tho pretty adept at using all of our. required applications. They seem to have recurring “glitches” since day 1. I haven’t noticed any significant change/increase. They do keep periodically changing/updating various software which, from my ignorant perspective, continues to perform essentially the same functions with little noticeably change/improvement.

Just for kicks, I just tried to see how old my personal MacBook Air is, and couldn’t find it in Settings/General. I hate trying ot figure out where specific info such as this is hidden.

16

That may be, but they each have a purpose. As I noted in a separate thread recently, I do video forensics work and I have laptops and desktops with specific characteristics and hardware. Need a WIN2K machine for a task? Give me a buzz. Of course, I have my everyday laptop, my wife’s everyday laptop, and the desktop on our shared desk in the den.

And, of course, I have about 32TB in NAS storage in the house as well. The rotation of physical back-ups is complex, but not too difficult.

17

I recall there was a time about 2010 when capacitor failure was common. The story was that some capacitor manufacturer in some foreign country used industrial espionage to determine the correct mix of chemicals for electrolytic capacitors - but the company they targeted anticiated this and fed them an incorrect formula. So for a while, electrolytics from that era bulging and bursting and failing were a common problem. Since then, not really an issue.

My experience with any large bureaucracy is that if an expenditure is called for, someone higher up will anticipate an opportunity for savings to postpone it for a year (and then, two). Also, requesting significant expenditures seems to intimidate some managers, which is why leasing has benefits. However, if the lease allows you to keep the product at the end (“no residual value” or cheap buyout) then added incentive to delay replacement.

You can usually use the serial number to google the version and date of the device, for Apple products.

18

Thx.

I guess I was used to (on occasion in the past) having pulled up “date of issue” info on my phone and - I had thought - previous computers. No idea if I bought this 3, 5, or 7 years ago. Plenty sufficient for the minimal uses I have for a personal computer.

As with so much WRT tech, the stuff I think is simple and ought to be readily accessible always seems to require an additional step, while essentially infinite shit I have no interest in is constantly being thrown in my fave, udated, reminded, etc.

19

I have used laptops exclusively since 2006. The key to making them last is to NEVER CLOSE THEM. They are designed to fail at the hinge. The electronics are durable but the makers hope you see screen actors slam thier’s shut for privacy and hope we all do that too.

20

Interesting, and good to know. Fortunately in my many years of laptops I’ve never had a failure at the hinge. Maybe I need to slam mine harder.