A question to compter hardware experts

[Syndrome]

It dawned upon me that the laptop I'm currently using is the one I have used for the longest. ASUS G55V purchased in 2013. In the past I used to update my hardware between every 3 and 5 years. This machine still works fine. I remember the first few PCs became unusable after about 4 years.

With the law of diminishing returns and Moore's Law slowing it appears there isn't a need to change hardware as often as in the past. Does it mean computers as we known them have reached there peak with new and significant changes will become more scarce?

[b0son]

SSD? Probably the most significant performance gain in the last few years.

[Mr Brooksy]

The new Threadripper AMD CPUs mince the best normal CPU's most machines have at the moment. Yes they are super expensive, but that tech will become main stream soon enough. And the Ryzen CPU's have caught Intel napping, so CPU power is jumping currently.

Boson is also correct, SSD's changed computing for years to come.

There is still work going on with Quantum computers and they as with anything will trickle down into home entertainment/offices everywhere.

I.T. is such a HUGE industry, I can not for the life of me see why trillions of dollars poured into new tech will see us hit the ceiling of computing power anytime soon.

Personally I think it comes down to what you ask your laptop to do, not current or upcoming tech limits. I had a great little MSI Dragon series gaming laptop (2015) and it was awesome, ran everything I wanted up until 2018-19. Really loved it, but I realised that the biggest restriction I found that I couldn't compensate for was the insane power GPUs have now. I also realised that no amount of upgrading of laptops would ever be worth the $$ compared to updating a PC GPU every few years if needed.

I left the high powered Gaming laptop and went back to the trusty tower, and couldn't be happier. If and when my gtx 1080 can no longer handle games I want to play (of which I do enjoy), I'm very confident that my Ryzen CPU will still be able to cope with a GPU upgrade.

Bought a newer spec PC, a decent middle of the road laptop for remote office work AND a little notebook for overseas training programs for less than another high end gaming laptop (at an affordable non Alienware budget).

If all you use your machine for is regular word processing and not power hungry games and some video editing of your family holidays, laptops do last a long time. But as soon as you want to play seriously power hungry gaming titles at good FPS rates, edit amateur and higher level advertising and training videos and smashing out content for digital media and the insane advertising world of the internet... a laptop a few years old really becomes a drag!

[zilo]

Prior to 2013 the electrolytic capacitors used in computer equipment made in China behaved almost like a hand grenade.

Basically they stole the patented acid formula used as the electrolyte in capacitors and started making them a whole lot cheaper in China.

but...they didn't realize they only got 75% of the full chemical details.

So capacitors rated as 105 degree temperature were lucky to be even 50 degrees.


Problem was in computers,plasma TV's, microwaves...car ECUs...laptops of course and most devices like laser printers.

Looking at any old mother board around the CPU where it gets hot you will see the top of the capacitors bulging from the acid erupting.

Fixed from 2013 on if I recall correctly.

Symptoms ranged from USB ports not working, intermittent resets and of course running slower and slower.

Yours sounds like it is one of the good ones.


Rant over....

[MITCHAY]

The advances are probably not noticeable to the average person but even still CPUs, RAM, and now SSDs are heaps faster.

I have a Dell XPS17 from 2011. I tried installing Win10 for free but it **** itself for some reason so I ended up doing a clean Win7 install which was really good for a long time.

Fast forward and Win7 ran out of support, I installed Ubuntu. A bit of a curve but running really good so far. Linux does well on older hardware if nothing else.

I have a i7-2630QM and GeForce GT555M still kicking on strong. Only issue is it appears the charging jack is ****ed but I might repair it when I buy a desktop.

I need to buy a proper PC to WFH because while it is good for the odd day, doesn't cut it long term.

[MercuryT]

Yep I'm up with all this tech. Just replaced my hard drive and monitor so runs like a dream.

[Captain Stubing]

Originally Posted by MercuryT

Yep I'm up with all this tech. Just replaced my hard drive and monitor so runs like a dream.

image

The Commodore ran so much quicker than a Dream... which was my first computer in the 80's, and homemade from an article in an electronics magazine (ETI).

The DREAM 6800!

[zilo]

Originally Posted by Captain Stubing

The Commodore ran so much quicker than a Dream... which was my first computer in the 80's, and homemade from an article in an electronics magazine (ETI).

The DREAM 6800!

Motorola was so inferior...

Okay, you probably know what i mean when i say that I am halfway through building a brand new Dick Smith Super-80.

yes...brand new....a bunch of guys on the net reverse engineered the PCB board and I got one...sensational quality...40 bucks.
With 1 Megahertz clock speed it really kicks a.ss.

Previously I made a TRS80 from just the schematics as well as a Microbee just from the circuit diagrams.
Can look at a page of Hexadecimal numbers and tell what it is doing.

That is sick, I know.

All in my spare time when I had a job.

[Captain Stubing]

Originally Posted by zilo

Motorola was so inferior...

Okay, you probably know what i mean when i say that I am halfway through building a brand new Dick Smith Super-80.

yes...brand new....a bunch of guys on the net reverse engineered the PCB board and I got one...sensational quality...40 bucks.
With 1 Megahertz clock speed it really kicks a.ss.

Previously I made a TRS80 from just the schematics as well as a Microbee just from the circuit diagrams.
Can look at a page of Hexadecimal numbers and tell what it is doing.

That is sick, I know.

All in my spare time when I had a job.

My second computer was a SWTPC, which I think was older, but I bought it second hand out of curiosity. Then I got married, and wasn't allowed a computer till I got rid of the wife.

[MITCHAY]

Haha even I'm old enough (33) to have used a Commodore 64

[zilo]

Originally Posted by MITCHAY

Haha even I'm old enough (33) to have used a Commodore 64

33? Phtttt

My Honda XL185s is older than you and the rear tyre is 1980 factory original from japan.

Starts first kick.

[MITCHAY]

Originally Posted by zilo

33? Phtttt

My Honda XL185s is older than you and the rear tyre is 1980 factory original from japan.

Starts first kick.

I also had an Atari. I loved playing Frogger. Good times!

[wodahs]

Originally Posted by MITCHAY

I also had an Atari. I loved playing Frogger. Good times!

rich kid huh !
we had a Coleco Telstar with pong ........ goooood times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C...Colormatic.jpg

[MITCHAY]

Originally Posted by wodahs

rich kid huh !
we had a Coleco Telstar with pong ........ goooood times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C...Colormatic.jpg

Lol hell no. Just was lucky we had one. Grew up in one of if not the roughest suburbs in Canberra mate.

[Crazy Dazz]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

Does it mean computers as we known them have reached there peak with new and significant changes will become more scarce?

Firstly, companies always have to have something new to sell you, so they will keep pushing back the boundaries.
Sadly, this is especially true of software, so it will keep bloating, necessitating new hardware whether you like it or not.

There's a big challenge now of course, to put more and more power into phones.

I also suspect that what we will increasingly see, is improvements in efficiencies, particularly when it comes to the amount of power lost to heat.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by zilo

Prior to 2013 the electrolytic capacitors used in computer equipment made in China behaved almost like a hand grenade.

Basically they stole the patented acid formula used as the electrolyte in capacitors and started making them a whole lot cheaper in China.

but...they didn't realize they only got 75% of the full chemical details.

So capacitors rated as 105 degree temperature were lucky to be even 50 degrees.


Problem was in computers,plasma TV's, microwaves...car ECUs...laptops of course and most devices like laser printers.

Looking at any old mother board around the CPU where it gets hot you will see the top of the capacitors bulging from the acid erupting.

Fixed from 2013 on if I recall correctly.

Symptoms ranged from USB ports not working, intermittent resets and of course running slower and slower.

Yours sounds like it is one of the good ones.


Rant over....

This effects the original Xbox - the capacitor which looks after the system timer leaks and irreparably damages the PCB and it's bin time.

I reckon is another 10 years the original Xbox in working condition is going to be worth $$$$

But yes I'm putting in another vote for SSD, my laptop is also 7 years old with an SSD and it still works great for my uses.

[creative]

SSD, add some more Ram if you can and dare I say it...... Linux of some flavour, will breathe a new lease if life to it.

[simon varley]

for the vast majority of users PCs have been good enough and fast enough for years now. If all you are doing is MS Office and Internet trolling, you don't need the latest i7 or 2000 series graphics. In fact the biggest speed advantage of the last few years has really been the NBN speeds

Gaming, Video and Photo editing is another issue though - there are still some very significant advances year by year to be had here, and they are in no way slowing down

[aussiblue]

In fact the biggest speed advantage of the last few years has really been the NBN speeds

I wish; I had my fast cable services take away and replaced with a much slower and less reliable hybrid-fibre-cable.

[pauljh74]

Originally Posted by Syndrome

It dawned upon me that the laptop I'm currently using is the one I have used for the longest. ASUS G55V purchased in 2013. In the past I used to update my hardware between every 3 and 5 years. This machine still works fine. I remember the first few PCs became unusable after about 4 years.

With the law of diminishing returns and Moore's Law slowing it appears there isn't a need to change hardware as often as in the past. Does it mean computers as we known them have reached there peak with new and significant changes will become more scarce?

The releases of CPUs slowed in recent years because Intel was dominating and held back on new releases. Why burn money on high R&D levels when there's no real competition? Now with the new AMD CPUs and their more aggressive roadmap for new future releases, Intel have woken up a little. i3 desktop CPUs are now running 4 core/8 thread configurations that were the domain of i7 CPUs not long ago. GPUs the improvement from generation to generation is even greater. It enabled us to move from 4:3 displays to 16:9 or 21:9 at higher resolutions and game smoothly on them. But the relatively rapid move from single core to dual/quad etc basically ramped up CPU performance significantly. Those tasks you bought a strong single core CPU for are barely registering on today's mid-range multi core CPU. The Intel K processors have enabled enthusiasts to maximise performance and it is why my main PC still runs an i5-2500k @ 4.6GHz and is still a solid gaming rig with a more recent GPU. In the next year or so a new build is on the cards.

Looking at the specs of your laptop - if you want to extend it's useful life, swap out the hard drive for an SSD. It should make a vast difference to bootup times. My friend is still using his 2008 Macbook Pro - the SSD really helped. It became painful installing and updating Win7 on normal hard drives I bought another friend an SSD for his desktop mainly to ease my suffering when setting it up.

8GB RAM should be OK - I would be cautious spending money on machines running older RAM without a genuine need. 4GB >8GB would be a no brainer, but most machines won't need more than 8GB without running something demanding. If you are, then it is likely there'll be shortcomings in other areas as well.

[pauljh74]

Originally Posted by wodahs

rich kid huh !
we had a Coleco Telstar with pong ........ goooood times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C...Colormatic.jpg

Yours was in colour! Luxury!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

I was trying to find the one we had and I couldn't find it. It basically had about 6 buttons on the console for each game from the old stick tennis to other sports games and the joysticks were narrow with no spring to centre them. Might have had Space Invaders in black and white as the most advanced game it had. Definitely from the 1970s

[zilo]

Originally Posted by pauljh74

Yours was in colour! Luxury!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

I was trying to find the one we had and I couldn't find it. It basically had about 6 buttons on the console for each game from the old stick tennis to other sports games and the joysticks were narrow with no spring to centre them. Might have had Space Invaders in black and white as the most advanced game it had. Definitely from the 1970s

Probably teaching a few here to suck eggs
but there is a free program called MAME that plays all the games...and I do mean ALL the games in an emulator on even the most basic windows PC.

Then there is MESS that does all the PC's as well.

Worth an investment in time if you don't know about it....

[MITCHAY]

For all those still on Win7, you can still download Win10 from Microsoft to my surprise.

I installed it on my mums HP last week with no issues. It is a bit slow to start up but seems to work fine other than that. It's worth noting it is an i7 however with 8gb already.

I think I might have just got a dodgy update when I tried on my Dell because if it is fine on hers, it should be at least as good on mine and probably better. Though if I recall I did it via USB on mine whereas with hers I just ran the update tool.

It doesn't matter for me since I now have Ubuntu, but worth a shot if you'd prefer/need Windows.

[creative]

Originally Posted by MITCHAY

For all those still on Win7, you can still download Win10 from Microsoft to my surprise.

yep, even works on non genuine versions as well. you end up with a legit copy of W10.

I always recommend running Disk Cleanup as an administrator, if you happy with how W10 works, and deleting the windows.old folder. This folder is just system files for W7 in case you want to roll back. It will free up 20gb or so iirc.Its also worth running this periodically to remove the orphan update files that windows insists in keeping!

[MITCHAY]

Originally Posted by creative

yep, even works on non genuine versions as well. you end up with a legit copy of W10.

I always recommend running Disk Cleanup as an administrator, if you happy with how W10 works, and deleting the windows.old folder. This folder is just system files for W7 in case you want to roll back. It will free up 20gb or so iirc.Its also worth running this periodically to remove the orphan update files that windows insists in keeping!

Yep already blew that windows.old file away and a lot of other stuff. I couldn't connect to wifi until I removed IPv6 option from the wifi adapter. Only hiccup I had.

No point rolling back anyway so might as well pick it for whatever parts and junk it or just put on a Linux distro IMO. Ubuntu running happily for me so far.

When I get a new desktop since a lappy is no good for WFH for my work, I will try repair the charging jack and see how it goes.

This one will be for my brother since mum already went out and bought a new lappy. It will get as much use as her Galaxy tablet. At least she keeps the economy going

I already said if you **** it up with viruses I'm not going to fix it. A long time ago when I think we still had XP, I went out to the city and then came back and the computer was totally ****ed.

That was when I didn't have my own computer so I was not ****en happy! Now I zero obligation to fix it.

"I didn't do anything wrong", yeah I know exactly what went on mate

[gooseneck]

Originally Posted by zilo

Probably teaching a few here to suck eggs
but there is a free program called MAME that plays all the games...and I do mean ALL the games in an emulator on even the most basic windows PC.

Theres a thing called a Rasberry Pi 4 and software called Retropie which is really cool:
https://www.youtube.com/c/drewtalks247/videos

drewtalks goes through the distributions and reviews them.

I'm fiddling with the 64GB VIRTUALMAN image at the moment on my rpi4.

[zilo]

Originally Posted by gooseneck

Theres a thing called a Rasberry Pi 4 and software called Retropie which is really cool:
https://www.youtube.com/c/drewtalks247/videos

drewtalks goes through the distributions and reviews them.

I'm fiddling with the 64GB VIRTUALMAN image at the moment on my rpi4.

yeah...got a couple of them...amazingly small but powerful.

we have one on a pole because our "farm" is a flightradar24 feed site in tassie.

it logs a pile of stuff

shame it is linux.

[Schtoo]

Depends a lot on what you need from it as well.

I bought this thing in late 2012, and I haven't yet run into anything that tells me "you need to upgrade". Granted, at the time it was a 'modest' gaming laptop, in that you could get angrier ones, but this one had all the basics on point, i.e; i7, GTX graphics, etc, etc.



Actually looking at your G55V, I've got basically the same thing in Lenovo. I'd reckon we hit a real sweet spot in laptops where the prices were good, the performance great and obviously longevity has proven to be solid.



I did add an SSB boot drive (it had an 'assist' SSD, I added a bigger one and fiddled to make it work), more RAM and an upgraded wifi and it went from 'pretty good' to 'make the local mac geek cry'.



The only things I've done since were OS updates/upgrades and had to replace the spinny HD after it died when I dropped it in Narita airport, but thanks to automatic backups, got it all back to normal with a $70 HD.


I'd like to update, but it's well down the list of things to spend money on. Certainly not a priority. That said, even my wife's business Lenovo still holds up very well and while it's starting to get a little soft around the edges, it still does everything we need it to with ease.


Should also add they were both bought for work, and have paid for themselves dozens of times over, along with being at least half written off for tax and mine in particular coming with a $500 rebate* when I bought it.



(*I really miss buying this stuff in Japan. Wangle it just right, and they'll practically pay you to buy laptops, phones and similar.)



Stu.