How many obsolete computers after October

Scannerman · 2025-07-13T06:00:55-0400

MrBeaujhangles said:
I said previously that since I began building PCs in 1990, I never saw a PC benefit from an OS Upgrade. But for the Time, Energy & $ invested, no one ever got a return on that investment. I'm typing from a box I built in 2013 and it does everything I need it to do. Used to be that AutoCAD was responsible for most of my PC budget w/a major part of that being storage. When my kids were young,they never complained getting CAD PCs as hand-me-downs .... they would cost me about $6k to build back in the early 90s. AutoCAD 2D & 3D needs 1 core and, unless you need to do rendering (here want Quaddros) CPU GFX can handle the task.

Our upgrade plans are drive by potential failure concerns more than anything else. I don't think we'll ever see another instance where the new OS (Win 95 was 40% slower than W4WGS. It's very hard to financially justify the time, effort and dollars. Here's another example ... Infoworld reported that corporate America spent from $2500 to $4500 per seat in hardware, software, labor and training moving from W4WGs to Win95. Of course for many if not most of us, it's fun but don't try to convince a bean counter.

I couldn't possibly agree with you more and often the same applies to hardware. The elder daughter still living at home and leaving for university this fall is still using my old 2009 Dell Studio XPS 435T/9000. She's used it for rendering, coding, gaming, and just about anything else you could shake a stick at. This is an old, original i7 Bloomfield quad core we're talking about and by simply popping in an i7 960K and adding an NVIDIA 1070 card she was very pleased with it. She still won't let me replace it for her because it does everything she wants. It was enough for her to get on the road to software engineering. Of course the lap top I gave her for school is much newer and she likes that too. Funny thing tho . . . She still likes Windows 7 (like her dad) and just for old times sake she'll boot to that drive and game on it. I had to laugh when she wagged her finger at me and gave me explicit instructions NOT to touch her desktop when she's in university. She likes it because it runs Windows 7, Windows 10, Windows 11 (modified of course), and Linux Mint. So yeah, the money you save by NOT forking out for upgrades can afford you savings for a brand new laptop in the long run. This is why everyone on the home front uses multi-boot desk tops.

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T06:03:04-0400

Stepson also said the other day - he preferred Windows 7!

Scannerman · 2025-07-13T06:04:27-0400

We'll not see the likes of it again.

RD Mercer · 2025-07-13T06:20:55-0400

A lot of the new tech, hardware, operating systems rather it be computers, phones etc. has been driven by the latest and greatest crowd. I’ve always wondered, how did we ever got this far in life without computers. I had more free time in my life 50 years ago in my early twenties, with less technology. But here we are now in the new age, just jump on the boat, if not, we will appear to be the caveman crowd today.

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T06:23:46-0400

Scannerman said:
We'll not see the likes of it again.

Xubuntu, IMO is very Windows 7-like - in the way it operates, and is simple and intuitive. I prefer it to Linux Mint (for the fonts and look as well). I put it on my netbook before Windows 10 comes to an end.

What I don't miss about Windows 7 though, was the updates! Especially after doing a clean install - there were zillions and you had to weed out some that caused issues when installing.

SlicEnDicE · 2025-07-13T06:24:24-0400

I'm transitioning all my old machines to Linux. They run faster and does a better job at doing networking stuff than Windows ever could.

Edwin · 2025-07-13T06:28:40-0400

My grandfather had to chop wood, to build a fire, to boil water, to have a hot bath..., and they accomplished more in one day than we can in a week with all our fancy tech!!!

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T06:48:16-0400

Yep - my grandparents grew their own fruit and veg and semi lived from the garden. Computers don't grow vegetables. Or do they?

Fabler2 · 2025-07-13T06:48:28-0400

The laptops aren't obsolete it's just that Windows is not good enough to run them. Linux and Chrome OS Flex are

antspants · 2025-07-13T06:54:44-0400

Fabler2 said:
Linux and Chrome OS Flex are

You said LINUX. Apparently you are obligated to not follow this thread now.

antspants · 2025-07-13T06:59:23-0400

Fabler2 said:
OS Flex

But thanks for the new Onlyfans name.

“Cathode Ray Tube” has been retired.

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T07:01:39-0400

I've just installed Windows 10 on an 11.6" laptop from 2013. Mainly because there are no 11.6" laptops today with a core i5 processor and 8gb of ram. It will actually run windows 11 as well quite nicely, even though unsupported. But maybe not forever. It was a bit of a fiddle with drivers and set up at first, but they're all available.

So it's all very well saying - buy a new laptop, but there are gaps in the market. And I'm not counting apple which is a different ballgame. There are no 11.6" laptops with a core i5 processor and 8gb of ram! There are no mainstream manufacturer 10" laptops with a core i5 processor and plenty of ram (there is the chuwibook). ie - there are no small, fast laptops! Surface tablets with keyboards aren't laptops. Although I have just bought a used Surface go 10.5" surface go but that doesn't have a fast processor either.

There is an 8.3" ipad mini (which would be a great sized mini laptop - but it's not windows and doesn't have a keyboard).

We become dictated in what we use, by what is available. I never did see the point of a tablet without a keyboard!

SlicEnDicE · 2025-07-13T07:20:15-0400

Linux isn't really a solution for all windows problems, but at least you have something that works when Windows doesn't. Linux has its fare share of issues too though. More than Windows in most cases.

Edwin · 2025-07-13T07:24:17-0400

I've got an old 11.6" Insignia hybrid, with 2GB of RAM, running W10..., quite sluggish, but it's running!

Paid $99 bucks for it.

jimbo45 · 2025-07-13T07:28:09-0400

If your laptop works and you are happy with it then you'll be able to continue to run Windows 11 for a long time yet -- just install via dism /Apply-Image.

W11 will only stop working when it starts using some of the newer instruction set that the latest CPU's have - then I'm afraid you are stuck unless you run an older release - but that's unlikely to happen for ages yet .

There's too many people - including big corporate users of Windows who aren't going to replace zillions of machines for a few years -- plus with newer "Atom type" Linux "Immutable" distros giving a 100% stable really Windows like alternative.

Switching to this isn't now such an impossibility. Essentially the system stuff is all protected and apps essentially containerized with the whole system being a "turnkey" system - just "boot and go" which loads of bog standard windows users just want to do - not tinker around, bother with updates, install apps etc.

e.g Fedora Silverblue and Kinoite. (Classical Linux users and developers - you need to "unlearn almost everything you've ever done with Linux in the past"). The main difference is kinoite uses the KDE desktop - really "Windowsy enough" for Windows users to not find it too strange and Silverblue which uses the GNOME desktop - not my favourite - but again it's a user preference.

This stuff does work on a VM if you want to try it although it doesn't play too nicely with HYPER-V (yet).

Cheers
jimbo

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T07:30:44-0400

This is the 11.6" Core i5 with 8gb ram. It has a lovely screen and a horrible keyboard - hard to find anything that has everything right! HP elitebook revolve 810 G1

Hazel123 · 2025-07-13T07:55:04-0400

It's still not actually that small! 10" is small.

A Guy · 2025-07-13T07:56:09-0400

Hazel123 said:
It's still not actually that small! 10" is small.

A Guy

SlicEnDicE · 2025-07-13T07:57:44-0400

jimbo45 said:
If your laptop works and you are happy with it then you'll be able to continue to run Windows 11 for a long time yet -- just install via dism /Apply-Image.

The issue with Windows 11 is becoming more and more driver related not hardware related per se. The further in the future we move, the more issues old drivers will have. Even the simplest driver issue will bring down the whole OS.

It took me almost 6 months before Win11 24H2 ran stable on my Thinkpad. At first it crashed at install stage, but once it at least installed, there were issues with a lot of stuff. Now it runs stable though.

I've dropped out of IPs because me and MS are moving in opposite directions at the moment. And all they update are useless stuff or things I couldn't care less about. Or they make it more difficult or inconvenient to work in. This may change in the future though since MS are getting a bit slapped on their fingers from both Apple and Linux directions. Windows looks weaker and weaker for every day that goes by. MS needs to get their act together.

Silvio · 2025-07-13T08:58:13-0400

Hazel123 said:
I came across this quote today, which put, quite visually, the number of computers that could end up as landfill if they couldn't run Windows 11.

"“Roughly a fifth of devices will become e-waste due to incompatibility with the Windows 11 OS. This equates to 240 million PCs. If these were all folded laptops, stacked one on top of another, they would make a pile 600km taller than the moon.”

There is a difference between the following:

a) Devices incompatible with Win 11, due to CPU instruction set incompatibility,
b) Devices deemed incompatible due to Win 11 requirements, that will still accomplish a Win 11 install, with registry tweaks.

I wonder how many of the various posts on the web, take this into account.
Especially the people suggesting Linux instead of Win 11, even though it clearly does not run Microsoft Office.

How many obsolete computers after October

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