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A computer is like a pet. You need to care for it, clean it, feed it (cooling paste) If it's left neglected for too long it will suffer.

Also, here's your reminder to clean your keyboard. Properly, remove the keys and give a good cleaning. Take a picture first so you know where it goes back.

Lmao, that's a Major Payne reference in that last line.

@flamingos@feddit.uk peep this article - long worthwhile read

On November 21, I purchased the bestselling laptop from Amazon — a $238 Acer Aspire 1 with a four-year-old Celeron N4500 Processor, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and 128GB of slow eMMC storage (which is, and I’m simplifying here, though not by much, basically an SD card soldered to the computer’s motherboard). Affordable and under-powered, I’d consider this a fairly representative sample of how millions of people interact with the internet. […]

It took 1 minute and 50 seconds from hitting the power button for the laptop to get to the setup screen. It took another minute and a half to connect and begin downloading updates, which took several more minutes. After that, I was faced with a licensing agreement where I agreed to binding arbitration to use Windows, a 24 second pause, and then got shown a screen of different “ways I could unlock my Microsoft experience,” with animations that shuddered and jerked violently.

[…]

The computer pauses slightly every time I type a letter. Every animation shudders. Even moving windows around feels painful. It is clunky, slow, it feels cheap, and the operating system — previously something I’d considered to be “the thing that operates the computer system” — is actively rotten, strewn with ads, sponsored content, suggested apps, and intrusive design choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.

So much more!:

Never Forgive Them
EDWARD ZITRON
DEC 16, 2024
42 MIN READ

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

That's just windows, install mint, breathe new life into your old companion.

And going forward, for even more resiliency, prioritize reparability, like Frameworks.

I have an old macbook that's been around for years. Its been featured on my profile before as part of an old project. It has lived far beyond its prime. The fan mounts snapped off the motherboard so if I wanna use it I have to deal with the fan vibrating against the internals and lemme tell ya, she screams. She's been laid to rest, until I need access to a machine with USB 2 ports and don't have my desktop available for some reason.

Laptop or just windows?

My first laptop needed a new CPU fan installed annually because I dared to use it. Not while chain-smoking, or inside a sauna, or anything. It just ate thermal paste.

I still miss it compared to my reliable modern phone, which reliably goes 'hey guess what bitch, I'm installing an update in the next three hours, and you can't say shit about it.' Several times it has booted into some lock screen I've never seen before, and viscerally hate. Occasionally, with ads. I've had to open the camera using the power button double-tap just to get around some 'By clicking Okay you give permission we're totally not forcing--' that I had no say in installing or using. I can't even silence that inane 'use report' that tells me I somehow touched it even less this week than I did last week, when I use it essentially never. The battery lasts two weeks because it just sits there, face-down, until I receive a junk call or need to take a picture. And I might just buy a camera.

Maybe someone will know here. Is there a best-choice for replacing an old laptop battery when the official stuff is not around anymore? Like a third party option that isn't a company there today and gone tomorrow, who's company name is a string of random characters?

I was telling someone my laptop was old yesterday and they commented, "yeah, I know. it has a disk drive." x_x

my original school laptop, a shitty ThinkPad 11e, had lasted me 8 years without any issues, and I stopped using it only because I got a better laptop for free, the 11e still has probably another 8 years left if I take care of it, since it's battery life is virtually the same as I first got it and no matter the amount of drops that thing takes, it will never break.

I put Linux distros on it from 2021 to 2024, sure it stuttered because I liked GNOME and I didn't adjust anything, but it was still amazing. Now that I think of it, I should definitely get windows off my newer machines, probably flash fedora or something.

My LG Gram still going strong after almost 3 years. Amazing battery life, extremely lightweight. Absolutely useless for gaming, but it's been awesome for what I actually use it for. It travels with me every week in a backpack.