Laptops have soul

A laptop you can take apart and put back together and it’ll be fine. You take apart a phone and put it back together and it’s like haunted now. You can’t get it wet anymore, and it rattles sometimes. It says it doesn’t like its new screen, so it’s not gonna let you unlock it with your face anymore. It doesn’t trust you since you took it apart. The buttons feel different now. They still work, but they feel… different.

You just don’t know how to do it right!
(I’m replying this before anyone else does.)
- It was a joke, relax.
  (This too.)
Most laptops these days are not that far away from the glued together phones. It used for be you could swap out a hard drive or RAM in a laptop no problem, I even had a macbook way back that you could do it with like one screw. These days I won't touch other people's laptops anymore (I'm lucky enough to have a framework where I can, and have, upgraded it).

This person and I have had wildly different laptop experiences.

Yours actually have legs?
- In french the word "marcher" can be used either for "walking" or for "functioning/working".
  The classic prank was to call random numbers in the phonebooth and ask "does your fridge work/walk?" Pretending you're trying to sell them a new one and when they'd say yes to get rid of you, you'd suggest them to buy it some shoes (damn weren't we smart in the 90s).
  All that to say, there's a joke around that concept somewhere in there.
- Well duh. How else do you expect it to use chopsticks? Like cmon now.
- And an intense will to live

My current laptop survived three phones and it was already refurbished when I bought it. And I can still install current versions of my OS (Ubuntu) on it.

Buy better laptops.

I just threw Ubuntu on mine and my god it's so much cleaner than Windows, but I have so much to learn.
Tell me about it. My daily driver is 12 years old and the only time I even remotely feel it is on websites designed by imbeciles.
- Mine is ~8yo and it's still a solid dev machine.
A Linux laptop has, like, three souls
- Inside you there are 3 GRUB entries
Buy better laptops.
More like, get rid of trash OSes
Dell Business :0
MacBook
Impressive longevity

I've got a 23-year-old netbook that slowly perished under the weight of windows. I've got some lightweight Linux distro on it and its absolutely fucking fine.

I resurrected it specifically to use as a digital reference guide for electronics, and to program my new Arduino. It can even barely load Firefox (exclusive) OR play videos!

Tldr is: Buy old electronics. Use better software.

I wonder how many people glossed over "netbook" without understanding what your referring to That's incredible 🤣
After much hesitation, I bit the bullet and installed Linux Mint on my old netbook from college, an HP Mini 210. It runs MUCH better than the stupid limited Windows it had, and it's great for running old DOS games for my kid. Firefox is... another story.

Mobile phones are so locked down from regular users that those usually just physically break before the operating system becomes unusably slow.

Laptops can be destroyed by software. Give a regular user permission to install programs, and suddenly there are a random purple monkey sitting on the desktop telling jokes and multiple crypto miners.

In my experience it's the opposite. It starts behaving unreasonably slow way before it physically breaks, unless I do something very stupid, and there is no way to free it from creeping bloat or even diagnose what's actually wrong. Old laptop will behave like new again when I get it clean and install fresh OS on it. With phone there is nothing can be done, I have like 5 perfectly working old phones that just became too slow at performing the same tasks
Oh no, I haven't thought of BonziBuddy in a long time!
Not really destroyed though. Do a fresh install, or rollback to a previous OS image, and everything is back to normal.
Anecdotal, but I’ve never had a phone break on me. Every phone I’ve replaced still technically worked, but was just older. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of people are the same.

There’s definitely a ring of truth to this. Not for me personally - as others have commented, I know what I’m doing and tend to look after my tech well - but for plenty of friends and family who are seemingly incapable of taking care of a real computer with a desktop OS.

Happens all the time: they buy a new laptop, probably without asking for advice first, and within weeks they’re asking for help because it’s on its last legs. The fans spin up like jet engines, two dozen random apps open as soon as it boots, the desktop is a landfill of icons, normal actions cause error messages, etc.

‘Oh yeah, it just does that.’

Some people can’t be trusted with full control over their hardware.

I miss the old days when you needed to actually understand the machine to use it. Using the terminal wasn't something reserved for "tech wizards," it was the primary way to use the machine. Things weren't as capable, but at least the average user understood it. Also, back in those days, devices came with schematics and whatnot so you could repair it yourself, and many did! It was a magical time when people cared enough about their stuff to learn how it works.
- It’s tempting to agree but I think we should be careful about gatekeeping technology through that kind of nostalgic lens. The improvements to ease of use in computing have, broadly, benefited everyone.
  You can be a good driver without knowing how to rebuild an engine.

Try buying quality laptops.

Over the years iv learned more and more. Almost every fucking major problem with laptops everyone always has basically boils down to
People are cheap fucks.
- It's like my MIL, she bought a 150 euro android phone and always complained about it. At some point my wife got a new iPhone and gave her mom the old one. Now she is telling everyone how iphone is so much better than every android phone.
My MacBook Pro 15“ from 2013 still runs perfectly and all parts work. Had to replace the battery at some point and the charger cable is falling apart.

My experience is pretty much the opposite. Phones give weird problems and I can't even properly diagnose.

Yeah and also with a laptop you just think what OS do I want to install or what application do I run? Instead of oh is this app in the app store? Will my phone ever get that new version of android?

I think this is more of a bloated ass windows problem than the form factor. It's so fucking heavy that it kills the machine, crushed under the weight of an inferior OS

Sounds like Windows laptop problems.

“Was I good laptop?”
“You were weirdly cheap, entirely made of plastic, and had very little cooling…so no not really.”
As someone who has worked in both refurbished consumer electronic resale as well as enterprise systems administration, for me it's the Consumer-grade hardware. Thin plastic, no reinforcement in the weak spots, and if you need to open the thing, clips that break, hidden screws, nonsense. Enterprise laptops on the other hand, survived my sales reps throwing them or running them over. A thinkpad's shell may crack, but it's innards are stronk
- Yeah I can see that... I guess I'm just spoiled since I got a Framework a year or so ago, and it's built like a goddamn tank lol
- Last thinkpad I had went through 4 failed displays in the first year, all replaced under warranty until it failed again 1 month after the warranty expired and they told me to go pound sand. I’ll never buy another Lenovo again.

Y'all're talking about this as a windows problem but for my old laptop it was the USB ports started dying then some keys stopped working and finally the frame began dying. It didn't last 5 years.

I'm afraid to even hear what this person thinks about a desktop.

If I were to guess
"A desktop computer is like an elephant. Goes forever, respectable, venerated. All have their own personalities and we mourn them when they go.
Some are weird lean elephants, almost like horses, as they also want to go fast and explode.
But most people have their elephant they will only replace when it finally slowly lays down to rest. And never get up again. "

Surprised everyone is blaming windows. Maybe I just have bad luck but almost all of my laptop problems have been hardware or firmware related. Although windows certainly doesn't help the battery life when it decides to just ignore power rules and I open the laptop to find it never reacted to closing the lid and it has just enough charge left to flash 'battery low please plug in' before dying on 0%.

My Arch install is still chugging along on my Dell XPS 13 from 2017, and I've noticed no difference whatsoever.
Windows machines definitely don't last as long, though I think a massive part of that is the ever increasing piles of steaming shit they keep piling into Windows every update. That's bad down to make any machine appear like it's slowing to a crawl.
I haven't owned a MS Windows laptop in more than a decade. The ghosts exist on Linux, too.
But, I feel like I have more control over my Linux than I ever did over MS Windows, so I've been able to keep a Debian installation on my desktop working great (not without problems, but still my preferred computer to use) since Nov 2007. (Sometimes the filesystems are live migrated to other storage, sometimes the storage is moved to a different case or main board, but the installation continues.)
Laptops, I honestly use less, but I often swap out whatever distro (if any) the come with to Debian (because I know it best), acknowledge any limitations that brings, and use them until the battery life gets too short or the CPU gets too slow. Even then, they still always feel more "haunted" than desktops. I think that mostly comes down to less control/planning on components specifically for Debian. (I built my own desktop.)
- Maybe you feel you have more control because Linux doesn't rearrange the whole OS behind your back, and surprise now it doesn't go to sleep when closed and chokes to death in your non-ventilated backpack ...
Gaming laptops break surprisingly fast. All that heat is not good for any part in there
- Gaming laptops put the budgets in fast processors and graphics cards. They skimp on everything else.

I have a 2010 Thinkpad that I ordered new. I still use it on campouts and in the garage and stuff (plugged in, no battery)

I have a 2003 thinkpad... I don't use it any more.
I'm super tempted to try to get antix running on it before 32 bit is dropped in the Linux kernel, so I can have a time capsule of sorts. But I really want to put either dapper drake or fedora core 4 on it, since those were the first linux distros that was actually usable for me and started my journey, or jaunty jackalope because that was when all the hardware worked without issues and I could finally ditch windows.
- Oh man, memories. Yes! A time capsule laptop is essentially what my Thinkpad is 😅

I have no idea what this means

Tech illiterate people create their own problems and blame the machine. Smartphones largely prevent you from messing things up too badly.

Lmao what have y'all devolved into?

It's not that I don't like it, I'm just scared

It's not that I don't like it, I'm just scared
"This is amazing. Hold me until I stop shaking?"

A computer is like a pet. You need to care for it, clean it, feed it (cooling paste) If it's left neglected for too long it will suffer.

Also, here's your reminder to clean your keyboard. Properly, remove the keys and give a good cleaning. Take a picture first so you know where it goes back.

@flamingos@feddit.uk peep this article - long worthwhile read

On November 21, I purchased the bestselling laptop from Amazon — a $238 Acer Aspire 1 with a four-year-old Celeron N4500 Processor, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and 128GB of slow eMMC storage (which is, and I’m simplifying here, though not by much, basically an SD card soldered to the computer’s motherboard). Affordable and under-powered, I’d consider this a fairly representative sample of how millions of people interact with the internet. […]

It took 1 minute and 50 seconds from hitting the power button for the laptop to get to the setup screen. It took another minute and a half to connect and begin downloading updates, which took several more minutes. After that, I was faced with a licensing agreement where I agreed to binding arbitration to use Windows, a 24 second pause, and then got shown a screen of different “ways I could unlock my Microsoft experience,” with animations that shuddered and jerked violently.

[…]

The computer pauses slightly every time I type a letter. Every animation shudders. Even moving windows around feels painful. It is clunky, slow, it feels cheap, and the operating system — previously something I’d considered to be “the thing that operates the computer system” — is actively rotten, strewn with ads, sponsored content, suggested apps, and intrusive design choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.

So much more!:

Never Forgive Them
EDWARD ZITRON
DEC 16, 2024
42 MIN READ

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

Maybe someone will know here. Is there a best-choice for replacing an old laptop battery when the official stuff is not around anymore? Like a third party option that isn't a company there today and gone tomorrow, who's company name is a string of random characters?

I was telling someone my laptop was old yesterday and they commented, "yeah, I know. it has a disk drive." x_x

I don't know if it'll help but so many batteries are made out of sticking 18650 batteries together. Laptop batteries, ebike batteries, car batteries... A good chance is that's what's in an older laptops battery, and if you can get it out and open the plastic, you might be able to swap those old ones out for new ones. This would only work if the charge is not holding ofc.
18650 cells look like A batteries but bigger (18mm in diameter and 65mm in length, I wonder where that name come from 😁).

my original school laptop, a shitty ThinkPad 11e, had lasted me 8 years without any issues, and I stopped using it only because I got a better laptop for free, the 11e still has probably another 8 years left if I take care of it, since it's battery life is virtually the same as I first got it and no matter the amount of drops that thing takes, it will never break.

I put Linux distros on it from 2021 to 2024, sure it stuttered because I liked GNOME and I didn't adjust anything, but it was still amazing. Now that I think of it, I should definitely get windows off my newer machines, probably flash fedora or something.

What kind of crap laptop did you buy?

I have an old macbook that's been around for years. Its been featured on my profile before as part of an old project. It has lived far beyond its prime. The fan mounts snapped off the motherboard so if I wanna use it I have to deal with the fan vibrating against the internals and lemme tell ya, she screams. She's been laid to rest, until I need access to a machine with USB 2 ports and don't have my desktop available for some reason.

Laptop or just windows?

My LG Gram still going strong after almost 3 years. Amazing battery life, extremely lightweight. Absolutely useless for gaming, but it's been awesome for what I actually use it for. It travels with me every week in a backpack.