Or, at least on the Mac side (where this happens because Apple makes both the hardware and the OS), they need some new software, the new software has a minimum requirement of a relatively new version of the OS, and the hardware has a maximum version of the OS that will support it that is lower than the version required by the desired software.
My old Win7 machine was getting slower and slower so I finally caved and switched to this Win10 beast. I’m not savvy enough to know how to goose the old one, and I don’t want to spend money on it if it’s just dying… Tho I did back up the important stuff before I set it aside, so there’s that.
Built a Core i7-920 system back in 2009, I think, and it still runs great. I think the most recent games I’ve played on it are Prey and GTA V (Witcher 3? I don’t know what order they came out in). Runs like a champ on fairly high settings. Opening browsers, playing videos, Excel, etc., all work just fine of course.
Over the years, I’ve added memory, upgraded the video card a few times, moved to SSDs. I keep thinking I should upgrade the motherboard, memory, and processor, but I can’t convince myself that I need to do it.
There are three ways a computer ages. One is that it accumulates a bunch of useless crud, more and more programs that automatically start running in the background every time you boot, which all take resources. If you’re careful, you can avoid this, or clean out the ones you don’t need.
Two is that the computer itself stays the same, but you want to run more and more advanced programs on it. But if you’re still happy with your decade-old programs, they’ll still continue to work as well as they ever have.
Three is that some part actually wears out and breaks in some way. But for most parts on a computer that can fail, this is a binary proposition: It’s either working just fine, or it’s not working at all. So if the dice have rolled well for you so far, it’s not a problem.
And many of the most common bits of hardware to fail - power supplies and hard drives - are trivial to replace. CPUs and memories are a lot more reliable than these.
Graphics cards, too - especially on computers that play games. They take more heat abuse than anything else in the system. They’re pretty easy to replace, but there are a few different kinds that aren’t interchangeable, so there are folks who won’t be able to do it themselves.
For any of these (power supply, graphics card, hard drive) the price can get outrageous pretty quick if you have to play someone else to do it --and particularly on Macs.
I bought a brand new Mac for tons of money back in 2008 (think I spent $5000 but it included software I used for my career)
Still works like the day I brought it home, except I’m not able to update it anymore and a lot of programs are starting to not work with my Macs OS
I’ve got a Commodore 64, purchased in 1984, and it still works like it’s brand new. But I don’t find this surprising in the least—it’s not like the chips are going to decay. I’ve heard that some floppy disks can become unreadable after a few decades, but the dozen or so that I’ve checked have been fine.
In 2005 I got a very nice, small, quiet Dell Optiplex that ran quite reliably until 2016, and bumped along for a few months after the initial glitches until I finally had to replace it in 2017. And I miss it. But, the new one is super fast. (And I thought the Dell was fast compared to the one before that, which was also a Dell.)
Meanwhile in the same year my husband got a Mac, and it lasted till 2015… I think? I think it cost about twice as much as my Dell and before replacing the computer he had to replace the keyboard three times.
Okay, I had to replace my keyboard, too, but it wasn’t because it quit working. It’s because I type so much that I had worn the letters off a bunch of the keys.
I also have an old Kaypro. It might work but I have lost track of all the disks, so I have no media to feed it and it doesn’t have a hard drive, or I guess any drive. It was too slow for me even at the time I got it (1984 I think it was).
I have an HP desktop that I bought for my job in 2010 for $1500. Other than replacing a hard drive when it died with an SSD (drool) I haven’t had to touch the thing. I do web development and it gets used every day, for 8 hours a day. It’s an i7 with only 8GB of RAM.
For a long time I was building machines myself from spare parts for work, and they worked ok. I really love the i7, it has been a lot of bang for my bucks.
I have a machine in my living room that I built myself, all from new parts. I think in 2010 or 2011. LOVE that machine. It’s my “media server” and stays on 24/7. Nothing fancy to it. I’ve had to replace the video card and the wifi receiver but it’s still working great.
Windows 7 and 10 have been really great, IMHO.
I also have an 8 year old computer (a Dell). I did have to replace some things though:
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The graphics card was bad from day one and was replaced when I first purchased it. The replacement is still working although it is a bit under powered in today’s day and age.
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The hard drive went but I had enough warning to create an image and place it on a new drive.
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The fan in the power supply went (woke up to the smell of burning plastic one night. That was fun). I replaced it with a refurbished one I bought from Dell.
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I think replacing both the HD and the Power supply was to much for my OEM Windows license since it stopped seeing itself as legit after I replaced the PS. Dell support literally hung up on me when I asked for help so I had to buy a Windows 7 License which I since upgraded to Win 10 when they were giving that away for free.
The PC still works but I can’t play modern games on their highest setting. Also at some point a Windows update corrupted my start menu and task bar so those don’t work right (I am still investigating this issue and every once in a while it comes back).
I have debated getting a new one but so far I keep this one.
A lot of this has to do, I think, with what we use PCs for. About eight years ago, mid-tier PCs became capable of streaming 1080P HD video without little to no stuttering, open content-heavy websites and scroll smoothly, and multitask most common programs with few hiccups and relatively short load times.
At the same time, the mobile computing boom has resulted in content actually becoming MORE efficient. Things like HTML5 and reactive Javascript and efficient audio and video codecs have actually made it easier for PCs to handle tasks efficiently.
Aside from high-end gaming and 4k video, we really aren’t asking computers today to do anything we weren’t asking them to do in 2010.
I have a computer that is 29 years old and it works just like new. It was great in 1989 but there’s not much you can do in 2018 with a 12 MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM, and a 80MB hard drive. It’s like my own little museum.
Writing about my computer inspired me to keep looking into my Start Menu issue and I think I actually fixed it! It wasn’t Bill Gate’s fault after all. It was Comodo, my Firewall. Digging into error messages and logs it turned out the offending file was a .DLL that belonged to Comodo. Updating Comodo seems to have fixed it. Yay!
Forgot to mention before that my hard drive that has been running for 7.5 years (which people seem to think is a really long time in working hours) technically seems to be failing, but it’s taking a long time to do so. The pending sector count keeps going up by a little bit.
It’s why I finally broke down and set up Backblaze. By fiddling with exceptions, I was able to get all the important stuff backed up first. I also bought a new hard drive, but it failed on me. Fortunately, it has a 3 year warranty (which was why I got that particular one), so I should be able to replace it.
Though, given how well things are working, and the fact that I have an SSD as my main drive and can pull my data off of Backblaze, I may just push for my money back. We’re going through some hard times financially.
Yep. If your computer is eight years old and you haven’t replaced a single part, I’d say you’ve been pretty lucky but not extraordinarily so.
I would definitely make sure your hard drive is backed up, though, if you’re not already doing so regularly.
My computer is 9 years old and is my gaming computer, but it’s largely not as I originally built it. I upgraded everything but the motherboard, power supply and case when Fallout 4 came out. It wasn’t top-of-the-line in the first place, it’s an AMD Socket A Mobo and I was able to easily afford to max out the processor and RAM capacity at that time. Also replaced the video card and added an SSD. Still, for the power supply and MB to still be chugging along is great. I’ve definitely gotten my money worth.
Slow HDD death is charmingly rare! Neat!
Backblaze is a great service, and anybody without a backup should subscribe immediately. My only word of advice: if you ever have / suspect data loss, act FAST. Backblaze only keeps 30 days of backup data. I had some photos go missing, but didn’t realize for too long and was outta luck.
This is an old thread… but I’m not too surprised. I have a sweet gaming rig and it cost me half (in Canadian dollars!) what the OP paid for their computer. That’s high quality.
Did the OP get a solid state hard drive? My next computer will have that.
I sit my laptop on a USB-powered “cooling platform”, which is basically a couple of large fans in a little 2 inch-high box as wide as the laptop. I’ve had the laptop, daily use, for 5 years or so, with no problems, and I strongly suspect the constant cooling of these fans is a big part of it.