Nope, nobody wants it. You can try to sell it though. People don’t want even a free processor that needs an expensive mobo they’ll need to buy our own when they can get a much better ryzen board and a cheap processor that will trounce it. Nobody wants these old processors, many are so useless they’re being drilled for keychains.

While I certainly can't speak for everyone - I've had a 2011 Dell Inspiron that I upgraded from the i5-2450m to an i7-2670qm a couple years ago. Additionally the RAM and HDD were upgraded/swapped for SSDs.

The computer now lives with my mom, who needs a simple but reliable device. The i5 was sold on ebay for a few bucks to some lad or lasse who may have needed it for a cheap laptop build. Decade old computers aren't vastly different from today in terms of day to day use. Capabilities and high performance is one thing, but using devices longer, and upgrading entire systems less frequently is both better for your wallet, and better for the environment.

I agree, performance hasn’t changed much. But they’re relying on old motherboards which are way more fragile.

How often does your mother use that computer? Did the performance matter to her at all? Even if you swapped it back to the old i5 with the SSD I doubt much of a difference would be noticed.

The other comment points it out correctly, no one wants it price conscious or not.

Between the fact that many of them work without issue for years, and the fact that an new equivalent to your 2011 i3 becomes exponentially cheaper over time, repairing it will never be worth it.

A Raspberry PI 4 is a functional computer but costs less than just the CPU of that i3 based machine while trouncing it in performance and power efficiency.

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i3-2100 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/16396722

At some point, the CPU is almost irrelevant. A huge issue is software locked to a certain motherboard. And the fact that your Raspberry Pi isn’t going to be running x86 software flawlessly and doesn’t come with nearly the same peripherals as a typical laptop (without a lot more cost… but even then, a 1:1 replacement isn’t possible).

The assumption that tech gets exponentially cheaper over time, ie Moore’s Law, only applies to a portion of the hardware, one the CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage. It doesn’t apply to the glue that holds it all together, the integrated display, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. In fact, a lot of webcams are actually worse than they were 10 years ago. AND Moore’s Law has significantly slowed. Apple Silicon is a big improvement, but this is a step change, and it’s not likely to be a continuation of the 18 Month Moore’s Law doubling time of years past.

Even if it’s not cheaper, the devices aren’t really desirable. Most people don’t want a desktop, they want mobile devices. Lots of people still use old computers and significant upgrades don’t happen in the same generation which is the issue with upgrading Intel CPUs.

x86 isn’t what it was, MS made Windows 11 be able to run android apps, consumers don’t care about x86 software anymore. That’s been true since ChromeOS had been used more often since browsers mattered more than programs that only ran on windows.

It’s funny. I literally just had a long conversation with a fellow researcher still running a laptop from the late 00s, dual booting windows (XP!) and Linux. He is super happy with how reliable and effective it is, plenty of ports without a lot of software cruft. He does a lot of hardware instrumentation interfacing with it.

Do developers typically use ChromeOS to do development? I don’t think it can run, say, LabView or Matlab (the latter it MIGHT be able to, with some extra work, but not natively). It’s all a pretty big headache to use a device for serious work that is optimized for passive consumption and web browsing and social media. Everything you want to do that isn’t in a web browser is a pain.

Yes, they use it for SSH and programming without worrying about taking care of their hardware. Chromebooks aren't a pain, but I doubt your researcher can run those easily either with such old hardware my 1.6ghz atom netbook probably smokes it and still I wouldn't use it for that.

Most people don't need to run those programs, they're niche, and the normal consumer doesn't care.

Right. Chromebooks are somewhere between a full actual laptop and a tablet or phone. Good for consumers.

The Pi is just an example, $250 Laptops today have performance that cost $700 a few years ago

And the "extras" you mention also get cheaper due to economies of scale. 4k 30hz monitors used to run just under $1000. Now 4k 60hz monitors run just over $200.

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At the end of the day you cannot compete with how much better we get at making things over time right now.

Broken hardware is only a leading cause of replacing smartphones, and even the most repair unfriendly device can generally be fixed in 30 minutes at your local mall.

The cost for many of those parts and if they're glued will give you problems with reassembly.

It's true with electronic devices in general. I've tried to pass down (still in support) older tablets, Chromebooks, etc. through a friend who has some nieces and nephews. Basically, to quote my friend, "no one's interested in your old electronic crap."

Now I'm sure there are families with less money who might think differently but it's definitely not straightforward in general to hand down old computer-related stuff.

They already have phones. They’re not interested in your slower than their phone computers either.

And it was almost completely made from recyclable parts. It gets recycled, not trashed.