“Repurposing old laptops is a one-time delay strategy, not a permanent infrastructure model. Take a 4-year-old laptop, for example. This device will have a battery operating at 50% capacity… or worse. Even if it gets updated with a fast, low-resource system designed to run smoothly on older or weaker computers, such as a lightweight Linux OS, that battery will swell, fail, or die completely within 12-24 months.”
jesus, are y’all really dealing with laptops where the battery will swell fail or die after 4 years + 24 months of use? that sounds insane, I have an 8+ year old Dell Inspiron that I hammer every day and whose battery can still hold a charge
I actually did have a laptop battery fail recently – it swelled and the only reason i realized was the charging light switched from steady to blinking rapidly – something it usually does when the battery voltage is critically low.
Old laptops don’t always come with good battery charging software. Ideally you could set the battery to UPS mode and have it sit to 50%.
Funny enough there is a little Bluetooth dongle that can add this capability to usb-c laptops, but the development is now vibe coded and the developer has gone full AI and the quality of the software and customer support has taken a nosedive.
The devices definitely last, I have plenty of decade+ old devices that do still work. The issue is if the battery swells, it takes out the device with it quite often. The one swollen battery was a Blackberry Passport in otherwise perfect condition. The battery swelled, cracked the screen and tore a ribbon cable, this was long after BB went out of business. I’m still sad about it, it was such a cool device.
Regardless of swelling though, once a battery can no longer hold a charge some devices become functionally useless. For example I have a number of old handheld consoles, fortunately batteries are still being produced for them, but once they stop the device will be useless. With how great emulation is and all the new emulation handhelds, I’m really not interested in playing my GBA SP or DSi tethered to a wall outlet.
For laptops in particular yeah they have plenty of uses, especially a “4 year old” laptop, that’s still quite good hardware (unless it’s e-waste at production, like chromebooks with soldered storage and RAM). But it’s not gonna be a laptop anymore, it basically becomes a desktop / server etc.
“Repurposing old laptops is a one-time delay strategy, not a permanent infrastructure model. Take a 4-year-old laptop, for example. This device will have a battery operating at 50% capacity… or worse. Even if it gets updated with a fast, low-resource system designed to run smoothly on older or weaker computers, such as a lightweight Linux OS, that battery will swell, fail, or die completely within 12-24 months.”
jesus, are y’all really dealing with laptops where the battery will swell fail or die after 4 years + 24 months of use? that sounds insane, I have an 8+ year old Dell Inspiron that I hammer every day and whose battery can still hold a charge
I actually did have a laptop battery fail recently – it swelled and the only reason i realized was the charging light switched from steady to blinking rapidly – something it usually does when the battery voltage is critically low.
Old laptops don’t always come with good battery charging software. Ideally you could set the battery to UPS mode and have it sit to 50%.
Funny enough there is a little Bluetooth dongle that can add this capability to usb-c laptops, but the development is now vibe coded and the developer has gone full AI and the quality of the software and customer support has taken a nosedive.
…yeah I have yet to own a battery that lived past 3 years lol tbf I only ever had one swell, but yeah they do not last with me
Damn, guess I’ve reached the ‘back in my day!’ Phase of life, but I’ve definitely had devices last past 3 years
The devices definitely last, I have plenty of decade+ old devices that do still work. The issue is if the battery swells, it takes out the device with it quite often. The one swollen battery was a Blackberry Passport in otherwise perfect condition. The battery swelled, cracked the screen and tore a ribbon cable, this was long after BB went out of business. I’m still sad about it, it was such a cool device.
Regardless of swelling though, once a battery can no longer hold a charge some devices become functionally useless. For example I have a number of old handheld consoles, fortunately batteries are still being produced for them, but once they stop the device will be useless. With how great emulation is and all the new emulation handhelds, I’m really not interested in playing my GBA SP or DSi tethered to a wall outlet.
For laptops in particular yeah they have plenty of uses, especially a “4 year old” laptop, that’s still quite good hardware (unless it’s e-waste at production, like chromebooks with soldered storage and RAM). But it’s not gonna be a laptop anymore, it basically becomes a desktop / server etc.