As someone else mentioned: when it can no longer do what you need/want it to do.

I prefer old(er) machines and typically buy off lease refurbished boxes. The one I am on now is an HP AMD Athlon II, 8G RAM/1.5T HDD (https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-com...windows-7-pro/), it works well, although I rarely play games, occasionally 0AD. I think its about 6 years old. I use mainly use IceWM or Fluxbox.

My wifes laptop is an old Gateway (one we actually bought new) which is about 12 years old and it's still chugging along for her purposes (internet, email, traveling pc etc...). I had to replace the HD, fan and the power cord, battery is shot but she uses it with the plug anyway, it tends to run a bit warm/hot with some youtube videos so she has to choose a lower quality for the video (usually 480 or 360p). It only has 2GB RAM (max) and 250GB HDD. https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834101136 . She likes LXDE.

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How long's a piece of string? IMHO, this truly is a 'relative' question. I'm no 'green warrior', to be sure, but I fail to see the point in chucking perfectly functional equipment out just to satisfy the dictates of the tech community. I mean.....who cares?

Both my boxes are as old as the hills; a Compaq Presario tower PC from 2004/5, and an even older Dell Inspiron laptop that's almost old enough to legally buy its own drinks. It'll be 18 later this year.

The Dell we bought new in 2002; despite having used these things for getting on for 40 years, I was green as grass with respect to knowledge of what made these things tick. 'Netburst' Celery; 128 MB RAM, 20 GB IDE/PATA HDD.....how the hell it ran XP I'll never understand. The SP3 'upgrade' took over 4½ hours to run through, with the CPU 'red-lining' the thermal cut-off zone pretty much all the way ..!

Those old 'NetBurst' chips positively thrived on heat. The hotter they got, the better they seemed to run.....and it never appeared to hurt 'em much.

The Dell now runs a 2.6 GHz 'proper' P4, 2 GB DDR1 RAM, and a 64 GB SSD.....along with with a Seagate 500GB USB HDD, & a M$ 'Lifecam'.

----------------

The Compaq was inherited from my sister about 5 years ago. Like most non-'techie' types, she upgraded to Win 7 by buying new, so I rescued it from an ignominious end at the local 'tip'. Younger bro donated a 15.1" 4:3 Dell pNp monitor when he invested in his first iMac 'Pro'.....

Originally a single-core Athlon64, w/1 GB RAM & a 160GB WD Caviar 'Black', it had a very gentle life; mostly eBaying, and an occasional burst of 'The Sims'. It's been heavily upgraded; a dual-core Athlon64 X2, 3 GB DDR1 RAM (yes, that's laughable by today's standards, where 32-64GB of DDR4/5 is commonplace, but remember, 4 GB was the de facto 'max' for any DDR1 mobo), a 500GB WD Caviar 'Blue'; new PSU, external, 3TB Seagate USB 3.0 desktop drive, new Gigabit Ethernet card; a Belkin USB 2.0 card for a song off Amazon, giving me a total of 11 USB 2.0 ports, and a TP-Link USB 3.0 adapter card w/4 ports.....and a Logitech c920 HD Pro webcam. You get the picture .....need I go on?

The original mobo was among the last manufactured by MSI to Compaq's own exacting standards prior to the HP buyout; Rubycons & Nichicons all the way through, and even after 16 yrs, no signs of 'blowing'.....yet. They must be getting dry by now, but they're still behaving themselves for the time being.

On both of these machines I run only 'Puppy' Linux; 11 on the PC, and a pair on the laptop. Very lightweight, running entirely in RAM during a session.....and I'm not a heavy 'multi-tasker'.

I don't play games.....well; perhaps the odd game of chess. The original, onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200G chip still gives a beautifully crisp, clear picture...

---------------------------------------------------

My point being that. despite their advanced years, they're still perfectly capable of doing what I want from them. More than anything, aside from relatively heavy browsing, the only other use they really get is the odd screen-captured tutorial, editing with OpenShot, and building a fair number of packages for the Puppy community.

No kernel compiling, or other heavy, resource intensive tasks like that.....aside from which, my compiling skills are atrocious anyway! The X2 copes with video rendering handily.

When this pair of 'veterans' finally shuffle off this mortal coil, only then will I say they're too 'old'. They 'work' for ME.....and that's all I'm concerned with.

Just my two-penn'orth, FWIW.


Mike.

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Purpose determines age for me.

My current desktop / server is an i5 3470 ivy bridge from 2012. It runs everything I need with plenty of headroom. Encodes a dvd rip into an MKV in 20 minutes or so. Not the best but it's adequate for me. When I was on Windows this thing would run WoW @ 100fps maxxed out (Radeon RX570 did most of the heavy lifting of course). It's got a long way to go before it is useless.

I have an old Dell Laptop with a Core2Duo in it. Tossed an SSD and a new battery in it. I take notes with it. Can't play games, but it doesn't need to. With Xubuntu it is more than what I need.

My living room media center is also an i5 3470 in a Dell Optiplex 3010. PXE booted from the main mentioned above, runs my media center just fine. My bedrooms both use AMD AM1 sockets, not sure of exact chip. Both PXE booted as well for media center usage. They both do just fine for what I use them for.

All of my machines have a long way to go as they are more than capable of their current job. Barring any major hardware failures I have no worries and plenty of headroom for the time being. With the exception of the bedroom media center boxes and my mouse, the other machines + peripherals are used / ebay parts. I haven't spend a lot and I have more than enough for what I do. Goodwill has been good for me. 24" 1080p monitor for 5 bucks, not a single dead pixel. Winning all the way. Got a 22" Samsung 1080p for 10 bucks another time, gave that one to a friend.

The time between when it is announced, and when it is generally available.
When you can buy it, it is passe.

Some very interesting replies and it's great reading all your stories about your older hardware.

So to summarise so far, the answer appears to be to do with types of oldness - i.e. industry vs personal.

Some useful responses are that hardware can be considered old when -

- it no longer has the ability to do whatever it is one wants or needs it to do;
- it is outperformed by newer hardware
- physical age

For my own machines, my oldness classification looks something like this:

Desktop - Q8400, 6GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 - about ten years of age, capable of doing everything I want except for playing many FPSs made since 2016. Cannot play the most recent Tomb Raider games, unfortunately, but pretty much everything pre-2016 and lower-spec demands are fine. Classification: old but still highly capable.

Laptop 1 - Dell E7270 - made in 2017, can do anything I would expect it to do. Faster than my desktop. Classification: definitely not old. Would even go as far as to say 'new'.

Laptop 2 - Dell 6320 - made in 2012, can do anything I would expect it to do, but slower than laptop 1. Has an annoying glitch [apparently inherent in the model] whereby one can't use the trackpad whilst charging. Classification: old but capable for general needs.

Laptop 3 - Chromebook - made in 2015, I don't expect much of it. It was a gift but it's not a well-built machine and being a Chromebook, has its fair share of problems to give to Linux users. Classification: old and usable as a secondary backup.

Laptop 4 - Samsung netbook - made in 2009. Can't stream online video without a battle. OK for light browsing and music streaming. Classification: definitely old but better built than the Chromebook. Usable in a zombie apocalypse.

TLDR: it's a trade-off between usefulness and age.

My actual home computer is a ASUS laptop 17" (model V75X? I think) i7 processor 3xxx generation (U type, low power laptop edition), integrated Intel graphics, 6 GiB RAM, a separate NVIDIA 2 GiB graphics card and 1TB hard drive (no SSD). I bought it as "refurbished" as a temporary solution because my tower (Core2Duo from 2007) fell out of service. Unfortunately, I didn't still fix that tower, so the temporary solution became permanent! A good point is that it keeps quite low temperature, unlike my sister's Toshiba i5 (around 2011). One problem was that this laptop came with ms windows 8 home, that is the worse system I saw ever

My job's computer is now a powerful i7 8700 (12 intel virtual cores that is 6 real cores), 16GB RAM (although I asked for 32, as it will be used for engineering CAD and calculations), and 250GB (237GiB) Samsung M-2 SSD drive. I feel that the weak point is the operating system (win10). This computer did replace a Quad core from 2009 with 4GB RAM and vista . The hardware was in rather good condition, with minor problems for 10 computers during 9 years of service (all power supply units replaced, 1 or 2 graphics cards, 1 RAM chip). The main problem was with the software: the server's o.s. (I think ms 2008 server) was broken by external intrusions (2 or 3 times during late years) and never was fully fixed. Most of these boxes went for waste or recycling. I'll take home the one I used. With a new bigger hard drive (or SSD) and a newer Linux it can be a nice box for home use. Adding some RAM would be helpful too. I always loved to take the most I could from any computer before looking for the next purchase.

Seen through a Linux user's glasses...
I used to say that a good rule of thumb is 10 years: if your laptop is older than 10 years, and you have problems installing $NEWB_FRIENDLY_DISTRO on it, don't bother.

The 2002 consumer laptop that's been gathering dust in your attic is more than old, it's ancient.

For desktops the rule is a little different than for laptops: they last longer.

However, in recent years I notice that it's not that easy anymore, what with different architectures and different types of laptops, desktops, mini-PCs....

Anyhow, if it's not able to boot at least one of $MAJOR_DISTROs ootb (or at least without jumping through hoops), it's too old.

With graphics cards it's kinda simple: If your CPU's integrated GPU is more powerful than your graphics card, ditch the graphics card Kinda obvious, I know, but this has happened to me after a mobo/CPU upgrade.

And I'll say it again:
I see everything through a Linux user's eyes. Nothing else matters for me.

It was my intention to bring up a Linux server on a 2009 Mac Mini (4 GB, 2 x 500 GB, 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo) as a test bed before converting to Linux my current MacOS server, a 2014 Mac Mini (8 GB, 1 TB, 2.6 GZ i5). However, without having tried it yet, for the low workloads expected I am thinking the older machine will suffice, making the more recent available for something else. The only impediment seems to be that wireless may be dodgy, which would not be a problem.

I certainly follow the rule mentioned, if there is a problem installing something standard, don't (unless that itself is where you get your kicks).

^ Does that mean that the typical Mac user buys a new laptop every 5 years?

Who knows what the typical mac user does? That particular upgrade (of a mac mini server, not a laptop) was because I felt like it and I could. I kept the old machine, knowing I would be able to re-use it. It has already done time as a media server, for which it is no longer required.

Still, I recently helped someone upgrade from an eleven year old Mac laptop to one only six years old, as a luxury given the old one still did its job. Is that a good example of the five year rule?

I've just replaced my dead desktop (home-built in 2005) with a custom model based on a AMD A6-9500. Since that processor was introduced in 2016, I suppose that some would think it's heading into obsolescence already! My Thinkpad's still going strong as it approaches its 17th birthday — the HD passed the last SMART test with flying colours.

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I tend to use computing equipment until it flat out breaks. Or until I see that it's throwing errors into the system logs to let me know it's on its last legs.

I have a graphics card for which driver updates are no longer being produced. Is it old? Yes... but it performs well enough that I don't think about replacing it yet. It still plays the games I occasionally fire up so it's not yet 'old enough' that I'm chomping at the bit to replace it.

I have a few systems that are still booting from internal SCSI disks configured as 'md' devices? Are those old? Oh, heck yes. But they're still working. I had one that provided ~20 years of useful life based on the production dates on the controller board chips and the date it finally died---I'm sure I have some still in use that are at least that old. They're reliable little suckers, typically out-living multiple motherboards before they die. You can tell when something is considered "very old" when sites are asking prices for the necessary cables as though they're collectables.

At the other extreme, at one employer, the Wintel team considered something "old" the day the initial warranty period expired. "Gotta replace it now."

Cheers...

Beauty and the eye of the beholder..

Manufacturers would prefer we believe hardware is old as soon as they release it's new model.

Linux again presents freedom from this insane notion.

Hardware becomes old when it is no longer capable of performing what you want it to perform, in the time you want it to perform. Both depend entirely on the user/usage.

There are many in this world who lack a computer all together and as such, a i586 would easily be regarded as both "new" and "useful".

I run a 7th Generation i7, a 3rd generation i5, and a desktop with an AMD Phenom Quad core (2.2ghz) from 2008. Why? Because after replacing the motherboard twice, RAM thrice, power supply twice, and 5 hard drive/ssd upgrades.. the damn thing still kicks! When it finally dies I'll probably grind down the pins and wear it as a necklace.

Beauty, beholder.

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A friend of mine owns and uses an Apple notebook of at least 10 years, perhaps older. It works well, it seems for what he expects (internet, some light image processing, word processing, email, skype, ...). He connects it to a video projector to show videos on the wall too. I know he couldn't afford to change Macs often. I'll ask him about eventual problems.

It seems that obsolescence comes sooner for ms windows systems than for other systems.

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As a mainly Windows user i always though hardware > 5 years was old but last month i decided to educate myself on Linux and my test rig was a 2009 PhenomII X3 with integrated graphics! Shockingly the latest Linux distros ran fairly quick and lighter distros like Bodhi Linux was lightning fast! So i agree with the peeps who said "its only too old if it can't do what you need it to" Still i imagine a socket 754 Duron or socket 478 Celeron both strictly 32 bit platforms would be too outdated to run modern linux let alone windows (XP?) me thinks?