How long do you expect your laptop to live?

Firetastic

Got a Dell Inspiron 531 desktop which is seven years old and "touch wood" not a breakdown. Mind you these dells seem pretty dependable.

Johnmcl7

wba31 wrote: »

come again?

Amongst these forums many people promote macs on here because despite costing more, they tend to last longer, so cost per year is lower...

Apple laptops are generally the worst to repair, ifixit carry out teardowns of machines and assign them a score based on how difficult they are to repair with Apple consistently getting the worst score for their laptops, for example:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2015+Teardown/38300

Although Apple are leading the way in this regard, others are following suit as clearly it makes good business sense to have laptops that are difficult to maintain or upgrade to encourage people to buy another new laptop instead. I find it frustrating, hard drives, ram, keyboards and screens can fail but are usually easy to replace (depending on the design of the laptop some are mere minutes) and it keeps the laptop going for a while longer for not much money but increasingly that's not possible or far too expensive.

John

Sooler

Red-Squirrel wrote: »

Is 8 years a decent lifetime?

Yes, time for a new one.

wba31

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

Apple laptops are generally the worst to repair, ifixit carry out teardowns of machines and assign them a score based on how difficult they are to repair with Apple consistently getting the worst score for their laptops, for example:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2015+Teardown/38300

Although Apple are leading the way in this regard, others are following suit as clearly it makes good business sense to have laptops that are difficult to maintain or upgrade to encourage people to buy another new laptop instead. I find it frustrating, hard drives, ram, keyboards and screens can fail but are usually easy to replace (depending on the design of the laptop some are mere minutes) and it keeps the laptop going for a while longer for not much money but increasingly that's not possible or far too expensive.

John

The point i was making was that in my experience, and what i have seen in various places, these forums included, is that macs generally last longer than pcs anyway... I, and im sure many other mac users on here could tell of their macs lifetime;
feb 2006 - I originally had a sony vaio, paid £800 for it and it packed in after 18 months of use. i was quoted £350 to have it repaired (im not knowledgeable to do this myself) but would have lost all files on it anyway.
autumn 2007 - bought a macbook (the old plastic white ones). This still works today. battery needs replacing but when plugged into the mains is fine
Feb 2009 - Bought an aluminium Macbook (top spec one that became the pro a few months later). This still works incredibly well, will need a new battery soon however
december 2013 - bought an imac - this doesnt require comment as its only 18 months old.

I compare it to my parents laptop they bought 2 years ago, think it's HP. paid £400 for it. they have since paid for 2 years of virus checkers on it, for a network card to be replaced, and for some other work on it, so have now spent up to £700 (that includes the original £400). the question i raised to my parents when discussing their machine is how much longer will it last and at how much cost? when you look at cost per year of a machine, from my experience macs end up cheaper because they last longer (i just keep buying new ones before i need to..!)

There are PCs that do last as long as macs, im not denying that, but i generally find they belong to people who know how to properly look after them. not just wipe the screen down and shake toast crumbs out the keyboard, they know the OS inside and out, can make sure the OS is running as it should and updates are doing what they're supposed to. My parents, and many other PC buyers arent like that.

Johnmcl7

I was trying to explain why that simply isn't true - the perception is that Macs last longer but I don't find they do in practice. What I do find different is people's attitude - if your PC breaks, it's because Windows PC's suck and you should buy an Apple but if an Apple device breaks, you should buy another Apple device.

There is no getting away from the fact that Apple devices are difficult and expensive to repair and their internal parts are no different to a PC and have similar failure rates. Even if the parts don't fail (a battery always will and Apple glue those into the chassis), over time with memory prices dropping more ram and more storage is usually desirable to extend the PC's life which is either not possible or expensive with an Apple device.

People seem to frequently forget that the Windows PC market isn't just budget laptops, I always see these being compared to vastly more expensive Macbooks as justification for the Apple devices being superior. In your parent's case, a business-class laptop would likely have suited them just fine - cheaper than a MacBook, much better warranty (three year next day on site) and once it's out of warranty it would be cheap to repair or upgrade as necessary as unlike macbooks, most business-class laptops are designed to last.

Of course parts don't always fail but if you're going to put money on which laptop lasts longer, one that can have most of its parts cheap and quickly replaced is clearly far better than the one that cannot have most of its parts replaced and those it can are difficult and/or expensive. To be fair, more of the market is following Apple's approach but it's clearly not for the benefit of consumers.


John

georgiesmum

had my toshiba nearly 3 years, foe the last 9 months it has been going haywire. Dont do much with it, banking, shopping, no large downloads so should have lasted longer than that. Had it fixed twice ans am now getting rid before it goes through the window and costs me more money.

Jivesinger

I have a feeling that older laptops (mine built in 2006 ish) were more solidly built, even for a basic laptop like mine, than the equivalent point in the market today. Today's laptops are cheaper, but may not last as long, I suspect.

jbuchanangb

I have a 15 years old Toshiba laptop still in working order. I bought it refurbished 5 years ago for £50. Pentium III 1Ghz processor, 512Kb memory. Windows XP SP3, MS Office 2003, Google Chrome browser. sadly the DVDs drive has failed but everything else, including USB ports, floppy disk drive, LAN port, wi-if etc still OK.

S0litaire

I've two laptops,
A Dell which is nearly 13 years old (working apart from a dodgy video card but if that runs its fine) back up laptop.

And a 8 year old HP laptop still in use, only changed the battery a few months ago.

Liamstewart70

Hey guys! Just wondering, I bought a product from Apple using Apple finance thinking it would be leaving my bank through direct debt each month, I've received no payments for the past few months and starting to worry that I've misunderstood and should be paying for the product in another way, I've received nothing through the post telling me I should be paying in a certain way and received no info with the product, cheers