Assuming you get a very fast laptop now, say its a quad core i7 or an i7 nonquadcore how long do you plan to have it last for? Thus in 5 years, would an i7 laptop woudl be considered slow? The thign is i bought an i3 laptop many years ago and thought i never need to upgrade it anymore but now its very slow now. I also have an i5 quad core desktop however that seems to be very fast and its faster than many of the i7 laptops that aren’t quad core.
Moderator Note
This was moved to its own separate thread since it had nothing to do with the thread that it was posted in.
I guess it depends on the brand. My Toshiba’s have all lasted several years with daily use. If I bought some hign-end laptop like a Falcon Northwest, it darn well better last forever. Anyway 4 years out of a laptop isn’t out of the question.
5+ years at least for just “regular use”. I could see replacing it sooner if I were a gamer or using it for something that needed (or I wanted) better graphics/sound/more memory etc.
Also, that’s barring me doing something stupid and it physically breaking and I’ve replaced at least one laptop a bit early because the hinge stop working and I got tired of the screen flopping over.
I think my current one is about 4 years old and other than a piece of trip that snapped off, it’s doing just fine. I use this one for, literally, nothing more than surfing the internet. I don’t keep anything important on it, don’t save anything on it, I don’t type on it. I rarely do any kind of scans on it. It’s just the computer that sits next to me when I’m watching TV. As long as I’m careful when I’m browsing, it should hold up for at least another few years and even if it does get something on it that I can’t remove and I can just roll it back or reinstall Windows with no worries at all about losing anything.
If you don’t break it, a laptop should be good for about four years. Usually paying extra for a faster CPU is not worth it. (At least not with Apple where the base models are already pretty capable.)
5-ish years, here, too, for normal use. I’ve replaced mine on a somewhat faster schedule (3-4 years), but that’s because I use them for more intensive purposes, and the extra bit of speed makes a difference to me. My current one is a mid-2010 MacBook Pro i5, and I don’t see any reason to replace it anytime soon. This one will definitely make the 5+ years mark.
I love my Yoga 2 Pro but suspect that battery cycles might be the weakest link. Not sure how that translates in years or even if it is a valid concern but someone more knowledgeable will hopefully contribute.
Well if u get quad core i7 laptop with 8gb ram and an SSD… are you saying 5 years down the line, it would be no good? I mean isn’t an i7 laptop with 8gb ram and ssd probaby going to last a very long time? I mean would 5 years later… an i7 quad core be known as not that fast? What about in 10 years? Or 20 years?
You are to some extent second guessing what progress in hardware and software will be.
There is little doubt that in the last few years progress has slowed down. Straight line speed of an individual core is not increasing much, and overall speed needs more cores. More cores are not trivial to make use of.
I tend to run my laptops into the ground. My last Mac lasted seven years. It was usable the entire time, but eventually died. The change to x86 with Apple eventually meant it would have been left behind as software ceased to be available for the Power PC Macs.
The difference between i5 and i7 is almost entirely illusory. The i7 has a few tweaks that make it faster on a few codes, but for most day to day work it is no faster, and very poor value for money. Indeed a pile of cores only make a difference for a very few codes. (My current laptop does have a quad i7 in it - it is great for big installations from source, and little else. I really wasted the extra money.) Pressure on memory is not what it was. Mac OSX has actually make remarkable strides in making use of memory, and needs less memory, not more, in its later versions.
But computer software vendors are lazy. They add cruft and stupid bling simply because they can, and they feel the need to continue to be “advancing” the product. It remains a source of considerable anger and bewilderment that Office remains the same speed to the user (ie never quite fast enough for you not to notice the pauses) despite orders of magnitude improvements in hardware speed over the decades.
But what you expect from your machine in tens years time is hard to predict. Many people have topped out. Web browsing, a bit of text editing, maybe a simple spreadsheet. Add managing and simple editing of photos, and watching the odd movie. For most that is it. Gamers are a different problem, but where the gaming industry will be in the future is never clear.
My three year old Macbook Pro was bought with 8GB, I added an SSD about a year ago, and there is nothing about it that would make we wish for a new one at all right now. What I do like about it is the carved from a billet of aluminium solidness. A lot of cheap laptops die from simple physical abuse. The MacBooks take some killing.
It’s not that the computer itself slows down, but consumers use a laptop for browsing the Web and for playing games, and that’s where a computer becomes obsolete. Games in 2017 will need more resources and better GPUs than what’s available today. Web pages are enormously more complex today than in 2006, which means the browser needs more memory and more CPU than it did back then.
Also, keep in mind that i3, i5 and i7 are just cute ways of saying “low-end”, “mid-range” and “high-end”, but Intel does accelerate them year after year. My Core i5 650 from 2009 isn’t nearly as fast as a Core i5 purchased today, even with the same number of cores. I increased physical RAM from 6 to 12 GiB last year to keep mine acceptably fast.
So I would expect that a new laptop as you describe can remain usable for 4-5 years (unless something breaks), but in 10 years you will have replaced it with a newer one.
Really? You thought you could buy a laptop (or any computer for that matter) and think it would never need to be updated? I admire your optimism. 
Others have contributed good advice above. Personally I’d say after three years I really notice that a laptop is showing its age, but for everyday use I can stretch to five years if necessary. After that it’s too frustrating to persist, given how relatively affordable they are now.
I tend to buy Apple’s top-of-the-line laptop every three years for my software development business.
I agree with you about games, especially if you’re talking proper games that actually require a bunch of processing and graphics power, and not basic desktop flash games and such.
But it seems to me that, for general web browsing and the other sort of basic productivity stuff that typical users spend most time using (email, word processing, playing music, etc.) computer processors are, for the most part, more powerful than most people need. It is true that web pages are more complex than they were in 2006, but most modern processors keep up with them just fine, even if they’re more than a few years old.
My desktop runs a Q8300 quad-core processor, which is not really fast by the standards of modern processors. Its benchmark scores are less than half those of a mid-range modern i5. I have 6Gb of RAM. The computer is five years old. I’m not a gamer, and basically the only time that i notice the limitations of my hardware is when i’m encoding video, which is a very processor-intensive task. For web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, email, basic photo editing in Photoshop, listening to music, and all the other stuff i do every day, it’s just as good as it was when i got it.
I’m trying to get a grasp , from the above, whether a laptop (as opposed to a desktop) simply become obsolete, or whether it “wears out” in terms of some hardware components.
My very limited experience with laptops (other people’s and hand-me-downs) is that the hardware lacks the durability needed for long service. Like, when you spill something in the keyboard, you can’t just throw the KB away and plug in a $10 replacement. Or the flimsy hardware breaks in the contacts in the power plugin point. Or the inadequacy of the over-miniatured fan to properly cool the machine.
In the latter case, the lifetime of a laptop, like a car, would depend heavily on the care and usage pattern of the user. Whereas a desktop is more alalogous to a refrigerator.
Like others, about 5 years. If it has a tendency to run hot I’m thinking half that number. Also a laptop that is taken with a person everywhere has some lowered expectations on longevity compared to one that is mostly in a stable place.
When I am ready to buy I read a lot of reviews of models under consideration, both consumer and professional. If there is a preponderance of reviews saying a particular
model runs hot its struck from my list of candidates.
Exactly 3 years, because I get a new one every 3 years at work.
IMHO, it depends upon how much you spend, and the quality you get. Most laptops are built to a price, and do seem to die from stupid failures. Most can be fixed, but the costs quickly start to suggest that a new one is the better option. A big part of this is the time needed to fix them, rather than just the parts. But also, there are no generic parts. Kill the keyboard and you need the exact replacement part.
I wrote above how one of the reasons I like Macs is that they are significantly better built. This is true to a point. The case is milled from a solid billet of aluminium. Idiotic failures I see on so many plastic cased laptops just don’t happen. The case acts as a heatsink to some extent, and help keep things cool. The Apple Magsafe adaptor really is worth the hype.
However it is not all roses. The Magsafe adaptor design is not perfect, and most owners find themselves buying a new power supply during the life of their Mac. I am on my third. This isn’t good.
Worse, like any manufacturer the make design mistakes, and these can cause problems. My current laptop has fallen to a design error, and in common with most early 2011 Macbook Pros, the graphics chip has failed due to fracturing of the solder joints to the mother board. This failure is a mixture of the use of unleaded solder (something Apple can’t control as it is mandated in many markets) and a graphics chip that runs very hot - possibly partly due to some issues in manufacturing quality control when assembling the laptop. This problem has been ignored by Apple, and is current the subject of an impending class action. With many thousands of very unhappy customers.
So, would I buy a Mac laptop again? Yes. Apple are no different to any other manufacturer in making mistakes, and overall their product is better than the general run of the mill in build quality and design. Personally, like many geeks, I grew up with Apple, and love that it is a Unix box under the hood. And Windows makes my skin crawl every time I use it.
My machine is probably going to take a trip to a local SMD rework facility to have the graphics chip’s solder reflowed. I that doesn’t help, it will get reballed with leaded solder. Not cheap, but way way cheaper than a new motherboard, or new Mac.
While some software/websites get more bloated and require more processing power, this is almost never an issue for everyday users.
The reason most people’s computers get slower is that they keep adding on extra programs that run all the time and suck up cycles. Anti-virus software in particular is notorious for dragging a computer down, as well as the malware it’s supposed to block.
In the case of laptops, the hardware will detect overheating and slow down the processor. This happens more often with age due to a buildup of dust inside the computer or blocking the air vents.
You can easily use a laptop for 10 years if you keep in clean- both in terms of software and hardware. And then it’s only problematic due to OS/driver update issues.
Until recently my main portable device was a laptop with a 700Mhz processor and a gig of ram. Anything over a 1Ghz and 2 gigs of ram is fine for basic office/web surfing stuff. Especially if it’s dual+ core.
After purchasing disposable laptops, my daughter suggested the Apple. Replaced the power supply under warranty. The technician told me to discharge the battery to at least 50% once a month. I had never discharged it. No other problems. I hope The MacBook never dies.
My experience with them is that they are hardy, well-built machines to begin with, but if they do fail, they fail quite expensively. It’s more expensive to find third parties that provide parts and service for them. If you don’t have extended AppleCare already, get it.