And I saw prices rising, having three vendors serving seven transnationals, and on their heads Jensen Huang’s name. The bottom line is, older computers are fine.

I thought of some battlestation upgrades, then changed the plans. The market is not a culprit, the reasoning converges to the infamous “we dun need it”, an argument that happens to fit. Of course, some folks are in IT, work from home etc.; some are independent and some are artists. I doubt that an average household PC experiences use that advanced. Hanging around thematic boards, I feel that the discussions online are somewhat delusional. Devoid of the narrower categories, e.g. homebrew ML/AI enthusiasts, less than 16 GB RAM still makes a browser-unfriendly potato. Graphic cards, the actual spice melange, won’t let one play a video game with just 8 GB VRAM. Although CPU expectations are less inflated — but Windows 11 comes then.

Gaming aside, my experience differs. In 13 years, I had three personal laptops. Base mid 13-inch 2012 Air (i5-3427U, 4 GB RAM, unironically — the best computer I’ve ever had), base 13-inch 2018 MBP (i5-8259U, 8 GB RAM), and a salvaged x220 (i7-2640M, with the original 4 GB stick swapped for 8GB). MBP life was short, it was sold early on: I really tried, but those defective keys, lack of physical ESC and the permanently soiled screen (goodness gracious, “oleophobic coating”) have been bugging me too much. So, I am a meme Thickpad user, with the slightly chipped mSATA bay being stylishly covered with a piece of tape.

Many talk about software bloat, poor optimization and other topics I’m not an expert on. By no means do I dismiss the aforementioned, but to date, not a single time have I been uncomfortable doing mundane tasks on past-gen machines. Yes, I have a clear work/life separation policy for devices, whatever runs on employer-provided computers is a different story. But I’m not a purist either — I don’t mind that framework I often read about, the really slow and really bad one that real software never uses; an ex-colleague might send an invite to some cloud service, and so on. Even speaking of serious work, some years ago I refined several structures while traveling with the x220. And these are exceptions, my typical personal computing is unrestrained browsing, text and notes, watching a video — activities an objectively old laptop is fully capable of. Turns out, a decade-plus-old hardware works, no sacrifices so far.

Offhand, a homage — hardcore guys do hardcore stuff. But said hacking ethos and vigor is no prerequisite. LowTechMagazine has a nice read related, more of a curiosity than a guide to follow. What’s certain is that a laptop from, let’s say, 2020 is a modern machine retaining surplus of power. Perhaps, an answer to the rather prevalent question “what laptop should I buy for college” is “a used one”.

All these wouldn’t do without Linux, its friendliness is discussed elsewhere at length. However, the notion that an average user doesn’t need superficial familiarity with the OS and CLI tools is misleading. But the required familiarity is superficial indeed, hardly qualifies as arcane knowledge, community-supported and should be institutionalized.

I don’t particularly like Ed Zitron, a bit long-winded and repetitive he is, yet I would refer to the midsection of the Never Forgive Them article, “I’ll give you a more direct example…” This part is fair, concludes with a strong statement:

Those who can’t afford 300 USD (at least) phones or 600 USD laptops are left to use offensively bad technology, and we have, at a societal scale, simply accepted that this is how things go.

An alternative exists. I blame tech journalism and, a splash of newspeak, influencers. There is no doubt that a new flagship device is snappy and great. What about that 5/5 editor’s choice five-year-old product — does it hold up? It probably does. Synergistic with the recent TPM/Secure Boot requirements, rising prices will hurt small-to-medium enterprises. On a personal level, it’s not as apocalyptic. Glued slab batteries and authentication controllers are problems far bigger and older.

PC gaming-wise, it’s somehow similar. A hypocrite praising dated hardware, I have a relatively beefy (by 2021 standards) desktop PC, AMD 5700x/32 GB DDR4-3200/RTX 3070 — clueless me once upon a time thought that finally I’ll play all those games. Turns out, for most (all?) games 16 GB RAM suffices; the chase for crazy rates does not make that much sense either. Honestly, these are games. I get an impression that 64 GB is considered the contemporary gaming build bare minimum since DDR5 2x16 sticks are the baseline offer. Still, I can’t refrain from yelling at clouds. Are there so many AAA titles lately that justify paying top penny for a top video card? Futile subjectivity, I haven’t seen that many. But entertainment-wise, akin to music or literature or any other form of art, the legacy is rich. I don’t refer to the games I have a strong imprinting on, the last fifteen years have seen gems too.