10 years old laptop - is it time to retire? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 months ago by someacnt@sh.itjust.works to c/hardware@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My dad has a laptop I used to use, which has been working well so far. Recently, he got frequent out-of-memory (RAM) issues - the computer freezes, forcing to restart. It is hard to diagnose, but it might be that 8GB RAM might be too small even for light workload these days.

So, I just checked when it is produced - 2015-10. So it is now 10 years old. While I am wary of producing e-wastes, maybe that was long enough life we got out of it. Perhaps it costs more in electricity than buying a replacement laptop? So, I want to ask - is it time to retire this laptop?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 points 5 months ago

lol, my daily driver laptop is a 2016 Chromebook that was shitty even in its day, with all of 2GB of RAM.

I put Linux on it and it works great. If I can do that with 2GB, you should have no problem with 8GB.

this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026

31 points (94.3% liked)

Hardware

8636 readers

1 users here now

All things related to technology hardware, with a focus on computing hardware.

Some other hardware communities across Lemmy:

Rules (Click to Expand):

Follow the Lemmy.world Rules - https://mastodon.world/about
Be kind. No bullying, harassment, racism, sexism etc. against other users.
No Spam, illegal content, or NSFW content.
Please stay on topic, adjacent topics (e.g. software) are fine if they are strongly relevant to technology hardware. Another example would be business news for hardware-focused companies.
Please try and post original sources when possible (as opposed to summaries).
If posting an archived version of the article, please include a URL link to the original article in the body of the post.

Icon by "icon lauk" under CC BY 3.0

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world

Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social