How Old is Too Old? (Computers, not Users)
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How Old is Too Old? (Computers, not users)
We love our devices, don’t we? We really love them. “My grandmother gifted this to me before she passed!”; “I bought this 8 years ago and it’s been so good to me!”; “This iPod has all my music on it!” But devices are technology, and the progress of technology marches ever forward. New innovations, new software, new hardware, these things can make our old devices go from “Wow it’s so fast/responsive/cool!” to “Oh my god please load!”. Not to mention the natural effects of wear-and-tear over time. Small errors build up that bog down our computers, batteries deplete, and hardware breaks down. Something that was mind-blowing 5 years ago is now a big fat “Meh” today. As an avid gamer and computer nerd, I know this all too well…
But when is that magic moment when we have to say goodbye to our beloved computerized companions? The answer is different depending on your device, the company that makes it, and whether or not it has any kind of damage, but there are some general rules of thumb that you can go by to make an informed decision.
Phones
Typically phones and other mobile devices (Such as tablets and some compact laptops, IE: Surface) are the devices that become outdated faster than the others. Apple iPhones, for example, are supported for about 5 years, but the hardware in them becomes outdated after only a couple generations. If you have an iPhone 11, it’ll still work just fine (Might need a new battery by now! Contact us for pricing!), but it would be a good time to think about upgrading to a 15 or even going for the newest 16’s. The primary consideration for these is how much do you care about the camera. Sounds like a strange thing to think about but I’m being serious. The camera is the piece of hardware in the iPhones that sees the biggest upgrade in each new generation. The OS is another consideration, but Apple very consistently supports its mobile devices for 5 years. With Non-Apple phones it’s more important to pay attention to OS updates, as the older phones kind of stop being supported somewhat randomly. Once the OS is no longer upgradable, you have about 2 years before 3rd party companies will stop pushing updates for that particular model. If you’re into mobile games you may want to upgrade even sooner than that, say every two generations. But typically a phone upgrade every 3 – 5 years is what you should expect. Browse your Cellular provider’s website frequently, because they often provide very nice upgrade packages to people who have older phones, in order to get a major discount on a newer (Or soon to be last year’s) model. The other devices such as iPads or compact Laptops are on similar schedules, but these will typically start showing their age at the 3 or 4 year mark.
Laptops
Laptop computers are probably the devices that most people hang on to well past their prime. I get it, they can be expensive to replace, and with a hefty investment from the onset people tend to want to squeeze every cent worth out of them. Especially with Apple laptops which can range from $999 to $5000 in some extreme cases. The general rule of thumb to remember with Laptops is that they age about 15 years for every human year. So a 10 year old laptop is roughly the equivalent of a 150 year old man. In other words, it should be dead but isn’t, for some reason. In most cases you’re going to get 5 good years out of a laptop if you take good care of it. Computers that find themselves in harsh environments (And by harsh I mean anything other than sitting on a desk in an office, such as on a nature walk, in a machine shop, next to the pool, etc…) may acquire damage that shortens its lifespan. Some computers can last a good 7 years before replacement really becomes kind of a must. Once again however, this is a rule of thumb and is not absolute. In many cases a computer that’s 5 – 7 years old is rather susceptible to environmental factors. You eat over your computer. Don’t try to deny it, we all do it. Little bits of food will always drop no matter how careful we are, and these crumbs or bits of jam or tiny splashes of coke build up on the top, but also find their way under the keyboard keys and in some cases inside the computer itself. The intake vents at the edges of the computer can suck in metal shavings that get stuck to speakers, small bits of food, tiny little beads or sequins, glitter, sawdust, ash, all kinds of foreign material. Usually this doesn’t cause a problem, but the more junk that gets in there, the shorter your computer’s lifespan will be. Best to keep in mind the 5 – 7 year lifespan though.
Desktops
Desktops are typically the most durable and long-lived devices out there. Macintosh products such as the iMac, the Mini, or the Mac Pro can easily last 10 years before they absolutely should be replaced. Usually this replacement is due simply to software no longer being supported, but at this point in the hardware lifecycle, the computer is outdated by five generations. Considering each generation effectively doubles the processing power of the previous, five generations is a lot. (If Gen 1 is 1x, Gen 2 is 2x, Gen 3 is 4x, Gen 4 is 8x, and gen 5 is 16x more powerful, on average) Software is going to be optimized for the newer hardware and won’t run as well on the older generation computer. I won’t go into clock speeds and RAM and hard drive spin rates and all the other things that we computer nerds think about, but for the purposes of deciding when it’s time to ditch your old and bring home something new, this 2x/Generation rule is the most important thing to consider. The primary benefit to Non-Apple desktops is that they can be upgraded part by part if you have any computer savvy (And if you don’t, we here at Systems Plus Computers certainly do!) In the case of the Apple desktop machines, 7 – 10 years (Barring hardware failure or catastrophic damage of some kind, liquid or smoke for example) is stretching that purchase to the maximum. After that, it’s definitely time to abandon ship. Sentimentality aside.
Take it from a Tech
Marc von Geldern