[doomketu]

This is a good question. The average lifespan of a laptop including the updates given and oem bloatware updated , is about 5 years. Laptops in general are always specced low as compared to the desktop compatriots. However if your office or your budget allows you to get a top shelf laptop with 16 gig ram a decent processor and some storage , you can make it last a while.


For desktops it really depends. As it’s a modular product you can extend bits and pieces for f it periodically till such time that it’s a ‘ship of Theseus’. (Yay for me using it correctly once)

I built my desktop in 2015 and only recently in 2021 did my gpu fry. Prohibitive costs prevent me from replacing it , but for a day to say use my ssd ensures that I don’t lag opening any task and as I’m not a power compiler or a video editor , simple browsing , excel macros and other trivial tasks are munched by this processor (i5 4440). Now that I have extracted the max value from it , I plan to build a new one next year.

For prebuilts same cannot he said as they have certain restrictions in place but you can add more ram and replace hard drive with ssd to see meaningful daily use improvement.

Drawing a parallel to our cars, is it still doing it’s job ? Can we spend a bit and make treats to bring it up to speed again ? No mechanical failure ? Is it a need vs greed scenario?

If we answer all the above questions your replacement time will be well defined by you.


P.s : with evolving software requirements and architectural changes , there is a chance that your work horse may not be relevant in today’s landscape ( Amby without seatbelt’s from bygone era won’t be able to do the same comfortable milemunching an entry level sedan will )

[Sran]

My personal use laptop, Sony Vaio ×64 is 10 years old, bought at a premium over other brands at that time. It came with all things that Sony is known for like infamous Toshiba hdd which went kaput under an year(replaced under warranty). The webcam is gone but I rarely used it before. AMD graphics card went bad in 5th year, replaced the motherboard with non graphics card mb of same spec. I use it for writing, web surfing and almost everything which doesn't require high processing. It runs smooth.

My work laptop is Lenovo which I bought 5 years back and I am looking for a new one, will probably switch to hp.

I keep my electronics free from every bloatware that comes free with it and am one of those who find other people amusing who keep their electronics cluttered with apps and softwares that comes pre-installed. So it's a task for me to choose a new laptop or mobile.

So it's 8+ years or till the time it runs for me. No, I am not an environmentalist who is not buying new gadgets due to consideration of e-waste. It's just that I don't require it often and if the need arises I'll buy at once.

[umohan98]

I think upgrading as you go is the best way here. So far, I've replaced the battery, the screen, upgraded the RAM, added in a SSD in my 5 year old laptop. And when that starts slowing down, I plan to throw Windows out and install either Ubuntu or Chrome OS Flex. After that, I'll buy a new Laptop.

[MaheshY1]

Here's my list of laptops:

1. IBM Thinkpad R51 Intel Centrino
Lifespan: 4 years (Feb 2006 - Feb 2010)
Status: Burned
Reason: Got burned, literally; when our house caught fire
It was unbearably slow and lasted only 30 min on a full charge.

2. MSI Dual-Core with Nvida
Lifespan: 4 months (Aug 2010 - Dec 2010)
Status: Sold for half price.
Reason: It was an ergonomic problem coming from Thinkpad. The display stopped working and was replaced in warranty within those 4 months.

3. Samsung N150 Netbook Intel Atom
Lifespan: 8 years (Aug 2010 - Mid 2018)
Status: Still with me lying idle
Reason: It's still with me. The power button broke. I intend to upgrade it to SSD and double RAM and give it to my kid for casual gaming like old NFS HP2, Counter-Strike, etc. The battery lasts 3 hours with HDD. With SSD, it may give 4-5 hours easily.

4. Macbook Air 13 (2012 - i5 4GB)
Lifespan: 8 years (Dec 2013 - Sep 2021)
Status: Still with me. Lying idle.
Reason: The display gave up. It was starting to get too hot and couldn't handle enough tabs for my workload. I still have it. Instead of selling it for junk or replacing the display for Rs. 20k, I bought a 29-inch wide LG monitor for Rs. 15k. It can still handle basic entertainment with HDMI and enough tabs to reliably run all my trading-related workload like TradingView, Opstra, Sensibull, my broker, international futures. I intend to turn this into my trading terminal with the widescreen monitor if I start deploying 5-6 medium to high-risk strategies simultaneously. Currently, it's lying idle as my phone is more than enough to manage 1-2 low-risk strategies.
Currently, I'm using the monitor with a mechanical keyboard at the office.

5. Asus E200 Netbook 11.6-inch Intel Atom 2GB
Lifespan: <3 years (Aug 2019 - Present)
Status: Still with me. Lying idle.
Reason: This is not good for anything except very lightweight applications and sites. I only bought it for Rs. 11,500 specifically for an Excel course and thought of selling it off soon after. But, this is my only Windows machine and I think my kid could use it to learn Excel a few years down the line. MS Excel is lighter on the hardware than Google Sheets.

6. MacBook Air 13 M1
Lifespan: <1 year (Sep 2021 - Present)
Status: Primary workhorse for working from home. I leave the office laptop in the office to limit the risk of damage if I crash while riding to or from work.
Reason: Replacement for my old Air. M1 is reliable even for Intel apps. I waited reasonably long to see if the processor has any problems. But even without a fan, it looks like it may last about as long as my old Air. Apple fixed the keyboard with M1 Air. So, I don't expect it to give up like the slightly older keyboard technology. It has inverted T arrow keys and a smaller trackpad, which rarely interferes with typing. It doesn't have a touch bar and has biometric login. The only things I miss are the full USB A and a magnetic charger.
It looks like a perfect replacement for my Air. I didn't even wait for the Diwali offers. 5-7,000 discount means nothing for a 7-10 year of ownership.
------------------------
As you can see, I have started keeping my laptops for as long as possible and I look for ways to repurpose older laptops with minimal cost. I use all of my things, including vehicles for as long as I can. Refer one of my most recent posts (Has the continued rise of fuel prices made you reassess buying/owning cars?)

The newer M1 Max and Ultra with 64 or 128GB RAM seem like great investments for heavy-duty users. Even for 3D and video editors, it's so future proof that it might last a decade. So, it's not as expensive as it looks in one glance.

[charanreddy]

Voted for 4-5 years, but depends on the laptop.

My office laptops don’t seem to work well beyond the 2 year mark (top of the line + 16 GB RAM). Currently this is a HP elite book . I can see a marked decrease in performance after the 2 yr mark and my usage is heavy on browser based apps like Zeta, google slides / sheets , share point etc. and heavy excel files and powerpoints.

My personal laptops however run fine. I have a MacBook which is 5+ years old and runs perfectly. I would say replace the laptop when performance goes down or when you hit the 4/5 year mark.

[vredesbyrd]

Voted for 4-5 years:

I assembled this rig myself back in 2019 and was my first PC building experience. Specifications are:

Ryzen 5 3600
MSI x570 Gaming Plus mobo
Gigabyte RX 5700XT Gaming OC
64GB Adata XPG 3200Mhz
2x4TB Seagate Barracuda

It still is a powerhouse

And to top it off, replaced my 27" Samsung QLED monitor with an LG BX55 OLED and I don't think there's a turning point after reaching the OLED stage





And for the office laptop, it's an HP
i5 7th Gen with 16GB DDR4 ram. It's old but keeps chugging along

Planned upgrade in next two years:
Ryzen 7 5800x with a 280mm AIO cooler
A new GPU (possibly an RTX 3080 equivalent because I'm sick of AMD drivers crashing all the time)

[TheCatalyst]

The use case for big corporates (or SMEs) is different as they are entirely dependent on the support offered by vendors (OS, applications, softwares etc). This is to make sure that they have the latest patches (security, regulatory) and skill set from resourcing point of view. The vendor themselves are further dependent on 3rd party resources. So the entire ecosystem moves ahead every 5 years or so.

Same thing applies if you are into video rendering and animation sector. Its a totally different ball game and you would need to keep up with the hardware industry standards to serve your client needs.

But for personal use or even small business needs, in today's world, it would be a waste of resources to upgrade every 5 years so. Reasons being -

- Everything is on cloud. Thats the buzz word nowadays. What this also means that the work of heavy lifting in most cases is also borne by the cloud. You would only need the latest browser and basic 3D rendering to supprt a decent desktop / laptop experience. Even office products have moved to cloud is most cases.
- Most custom applications are web based, even the locally hosted applications. Which again means, the server side takes most of the load. Locally installed applications are a thing of the past. As long as your setup supports the browser requirements you are good. This does not always mean latest browser versions.
- If you have desktop setups, its easy to upgrade the hardware components to keep up. However even with laptops, you would be surprised to see the difference made by a RAM size and speed upgrade. Upgrading to SSD and RAM, gives a new lease of life. Formatting afresh is like detailing a new car.
- Most new software products try to include startup animations and use more resources just to give a modern user experience. These animations can be eaily turned off in settings. E.g. Windows Aero mode used to slow down some systems.
- If you are technically inclined, an old laptop can easily be converted into a streaming server or a NAS storage or even use it with a simple large monitor and external keyboard as an alternate setup for kids.
- Most people think their hardare is outdated, because their OS (especially windows) get bloated with software patches, too many background applications or a nearly full hard disk.
- Just like cars, believe it or not, desktops / laptops need servicing. Cleaning out cooling vents clogged with dust (radiator), ventilation at bottom (underbody), keyboards keys cleaning, battery health (20-80% is ideal) and software servicing (removing caches and unwated files - windows has tools for this).
- Again a good FNG repair workshop would save a lot of bills which the ASS charges. Applies here too

I have numerous obsolete laptops, some more than 15 years, which are perfecty fine for web browsing, school use or even remote office work.

In the end, just like cars, it all depends on your use case and ofcourse budgets. I would advise instead of upgrading all the hardware, upgrade one and let the older hardware take the place of lesser demanding tasks in the pipeline.

[PrasunBannerjee]

This is highly subjective, depending on the works being carried out.

For our small office setup, we have fixed a criteria, getting upper-mid range laptop/desktop, assign it to the tasks requiring high computing power (coding/media works). Tenure is fixed to 3-4 years. As every 3-4 years there are newer things in the market that require higher compute power, for example 4k video editing wasn't a thing 5 years back in masses and requirements. Also with every year, same software in updated guise have more ram and processor appetite. back in 2015, we could render full HD videos with 6th gen i3 computer on a certain software, but in today's date, even 11th gen i3 will struggle to render the similar video in the 2022 version of same software.

Once this PC finishes its duty, get a new one in its place. With that, the one in current use is shifted to jobs that require lesser compute (social media/accounting/general works). This way a computer works around 8 years but segregated usage in the same organization.

Few things kept in mind:

1. These devices are designed to fail. No point getting extremely high specced/priced machine if its not really required. 7 year old i7 will work better than 4 year old i5, but not better than latest gen i5. Also the motherboard, etc. have been abused enough so far.

2. PC after 8 years is like a car after 2 lac kms. It might have the juice left, but can go kaput any time. So if you work in media/any line of work where you cant afford even 2 hours of downtime or restricting access to your date or losing it, set goals of periodic replacement.

3. After 8 years one can assign these for general purpose personal use, or for kids with replacing SSD/bumping up RAM, etc., and it will plonk in another 1-2 years of life

4. At times in office setups, a computer runs far more hours and compute resources than home PC. For example, there have been numerous cases of my computer continuously running for 36+ hours and some automation going on even while I'm sleeping. Not quite the case with a personal PC. Hence bigger companies follow a generalized life span across the organization. A 4 year lifespan in office usage can translate to 7 year lifespan in personal usage. There are more than storage and processor and ram that makes a computer. Motherboard is one tricky part. Things become more complex if its a laptop. Desktops are immensely upgradable and low cost repairable in comparison.

5. Keeping replacement target is good from financial calculation point of view too. While we follow the above process stated, we still miss the target by 1-2 years usually, and these calculations are mentally done that way keeping buffer. This post is typed from a 6 year old 6th gen i3 PC which was intended to be retired in just 3 years. However, stretching into 7th year is not something looked forward to, as it will be a highly unreliable machine in its 7th year despite the upgrades. Also parts availability. Like this PC uses DDR3 RAM in certain frequency which isn't that widely available with DDR4 advent in markets. Also the motherboard isn't supporting anything more than 8th gen i5 if I were to upgrade the processor itself.

[sundarsarma]

Having been using PC's and Laptops Since 1998, I have experienced MAC's last longer than Windows based devices, be it Mac book's or Mac Mini's. The current Mac Book Air i am typing this post is with me since May 2014 and works flawlessly

[N33raj]

Over the course of 2+ decades, i have owned:
1. ThinkPad R40E Win 98; 2001-2008 (passed on)
2. Sony Vaio VGN-FW 25G/B Win Vista; 2008-15 (catastrophic h/w failure, unable to source parts)
3. HP Pavilion DV-2000 series Win XP SP3; 2012-still running
4. ThinkPad E470 Win10; 2016-still running.

#4 is my daily driver and i have upgraded bits of the h/w to suit my work needs; so 1TB SATA SSD and 16GB DDR4 Ram last year. With the upgrades, i m getting approx 8+ hours of battery compared to 4+ hours when it was running a spin drive.
I have a dock running external keyboard, mouse and display so the famous red dot + buttons sees use only when i m on the move.

#3 is there for 3 reasons:
1. it can run Emulators very well and i get to play my favorite retro games! (yes i still play Contra!)
2. it can run an obscure pipe designing program as it is running XP SP3. I have tried to make it run on the E470 with admin settings as well as setting up a virtual machine but to no avail.
3. using it as a backup machine for certain works and files.

I keep laptops running for as long as i can especially if there is a particular need. By the looks of it, i will have to keep #3 for the next 2 years after which it can safely retire. I have a few spares kept just in case something goes wrong. Have to find a way to make the Emulators work properly on Win10.

[tejus.s]

This is great question - I think many of us would want to keep machines as long as possible for few reasons -

1. Setting up a new laptop is not easy - even with cloud storage and web apps in 2022.
2. Environmental implications since laptops are not ethically recycled
3. Budget/affordability
4. Laptops and desktops from the last 2-3 years have more than enough power for everyday use. Demanding professionals might need performance upgrades, the rest of us can keep up with routine maintenance.

With the advent of technologies like Apple Silicon - where all components like RAM, storage, GPU etc., are fused into a one entity - these piece wise upgrades/changes will become virtually impossible. In such instances, consumers and businesses will need to rely heavily on Apple to optimise and support existing hardware for many years. Also, we will need to pay money upfront and think through future proofing as well.

I am not questioning the capabilities of Apple Silicon (I'm writing this on a M1 MacBook Air, have an iPhone and iPad), but bringing out the reliance on companies to support these things on the long run.

For a lot us relying on more open platforms like Windows or Linux, I hope choice remains with the customer and computers last a long time.

[Sarinkrc]

Still Using a Toshiba Satellite L655-1HC Core I5 processor bought in 2011.Not playing games these days. After the laptop slowed down a lot I upgraded the hard disk to a NEW SSD hard disk & now laptop is running very fast with no lags at all . If u have i5,i7 intel processors better to upgrade to SSD , RAM and the pcs would run faster. No Need to spend money buying a new Laptop if your usage is for Office work Net Browsing etc. High Intensity Applications is the main usage then you should consider upgrading to a new laptop.

[samm]

Laptop can be used as long as it doesn't impact productivity. So, depending on the quality, life may vary, but majority of laptops can be used as long as its not slowing you down.

I have a personal Mac book pro from 2011, did a RAM upgrade to 8GB and replaced the hard disk with a 256GB SSD, and it works superb.

Now using another Mac book pro from office, for last 4 years, with no changes. Disk space runs out sometimes, but then delete garbage from outlook and file folders, and it works well.

I had bought a Lenovo couple of years back, but its a lower config, so obviously, its not very great to use. There are no problems, just that it doesn't feel that good, and not very productive to use for any serious work. For general browsing, its decent.

If you are a software developer, then you will surely need some good configuration systems (MacBook Pro, Dell Latitude, etc), or you might need more frequent upgrades. 8GB RAM, with SSD is a must to have a decent usable life for a laptop.

[agastya]

Can't vote on the thread, but I'm a firm believer that all electronic gadgets should be used until they become unusable, rather than buying a new one after a certain number of years. Today's laptops can easily be used for 7+ years, at least for basic applications like MS Office, web browsing etc... The only thing that degrades is the battery, which can easily and cheaply be replaced.

[Tucker48]

Voted for 8+ yrs, as my laptops last around 10 yrs. But it mostly depends on the performance needed from the laptop. For the top notch performance in gaming and editing high resolution videos, the laptops need replacement in about 5 yrs even after upgrading once in between. i9 makes a strong use case here.

For me in particular, if I have to buy a laptop now, I will go for 11gen i7 h or hk series. 16 gb ram upgradable to atleast 32gb of DDR5 ram. Atleast 12mb of cache memory upgradable to 24mb. AMD laptops are good too. One upgrade in 4-5 years will extend the life to 8-10 years. Also monthly self maintenance is required to extend the life.

Currently, the technology in computing is not growing as fast as it used to be earlier and that will remain the case untill quantum computer is available as replacement which is still some time away IMO.

Nowadays, companies are making it difficult to upgrade laptops like other electronics. Soldered RAM is one example and this is just the starting.