To add to that, old computers can still run old software just fine. Assuming it wasn't left somewhere moist and that you swap out the motherboard battery (which isn't really even necessary), a two decade old dell could just run windows 98 with office 95 or whatever it was back then just fine.
It makes sense that you'd have to upgrade hardware to use new software...
Re:The iPad Mystery
by SmellyGeekBoy on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @09:39AM
(#14349446)
Spot on. My Atari ST is just as useful as it was 25 years ago!
Go back and buy a computer from the 80s, and it's about as useful now as it was then. Buy one from the 90s, and that's still true for tasks that can be done entirely on that computer, but not so much for getting online.
Your iPad 1 is about as useful as it ever was when it comes to doing things that only involve the iPad. It's just that most things it could do want to talk to other computers, and those other computers haven't stayed static.
Find a computer that doesn't need to talk to the world, and you'll find a computer that can stay relevant for a long time. Every 20-year-old car on the road has 20-year-old computers in it still going strong, for example. But if you want a computer to both stay useful and derive its usefulness from the world, then you need the world to stop changing, and that won't happen.