I have a laptop from 2014 that runs Win8 just fine; and my main desktop machine runs Win7 with a motherboard from 2011 and many parts older than that. Everything works fine.

(And yes, as I'm sure people will feel obliged to remind me, I do know Win7 and Win8 are now "unsupported", but I feel that's more a feature than a limitation.)

Meanwhile I am sitting here with a 5 year old windows/linux laptop and will probably continue using it for another 5 years. It still has a hidpi, HDR, ips display, great keyboard, 16gb of ram, 2tb of nvme storage and weighs the same as a current MacBook pro of the same size.

I highly doubt you can find any $1500+ laptop that is "unusable after 2". I might want to pick up a new one with a 3:2 oled display or more ram at some point, but that is want not need.

This bullshit is repeated ad nauseam as if it was true, it's almost funny.

First, there's no "Windows" hardware. Unless you are talking about Surface.

Second, all laptops I had were useful for far longer than 2 years. My current one is almost 4 years old and still extremely good for everything I need.

I also replaced Windows for Linux recently, and I suspect that will extend its lifespan for many years still.

That's really not true, I ran each of my "Windows" laptops for 6 years; a Toshiba from 2011-2017 and a Asus UX430UA from 2017 to this year. Bought a MSI GF65 Thin for a GPU, I refreshed Windows and installed only what was necessary and removed dead files/services, with constant HW health monitoring as long as I could; then migrated them to Arch/Fedora with i3wm; keeping as minimal of a setup as I could.

I don't know if that qualifies as easily using hardware, but I think I am very lazy, and that was the path of minimal resistance to keep them up and running. Both those laptops are happily being used by my parents for keeping track of their finances, doing admin tasks for whatever organizations they're a part of. My father even uses them for complex SAP tasks. The only HW fault that came up was the Toshiba fan broke once and was very quickly replaced and has been working fine since. The battery is dead of course, but the Asus still gives a 2-3 hour backup if necessary.

Sorry, I misphrased that. The hardware might be fine, but the OS will not be. Re-installing windows every year is basically a must. Same for restarting every day.

Linux or OSX? Leave them running for a year and nothing changes. To be fair, my last experience with Windows was 3 years ago.

>Re-installing windows every year is basically a must

This has been nothing but cargo-culting since the end of XP

> To be fair, you can easily use apple hardware for 5 years

I have a MacBook Pro from 2015 which I still use every day. It's still going strong.

My only issue with it is that it can't be upgraded to MacOS Ventura, and it prevents me from enabling full encryption on all the iCloud stuff. I will probably replace it with a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro 16" later this year and my expectation is that it'll last me for another 8 years. Yes, 4 grand for a laptop is a lot, but not really if it lasts for 8 years and then can be resold to recoup some of the cost or given to a family member.

So for me the lifespan of the machine is over (iCloud encryption being the dealbreaker), but I'm sure it'll last at least a couple of more years for someone else.

I'll let my desktop running a 4790K know. Thanks!

I have a $700 Asus that started with windows 7 or 8, from 2014. It does everything except AI, it can play every game I throw at it(1080p) at high or ultra high.

I did just replace the battery last year. I think it was $35 dollars.

This is my main computer, I want to upgrade, but it keeps living.

This is 8 or 9 years so far.

I don’t know what games you throw at it, but my desktop regularly needs to be updated to keep up with current titles.

I pretty much only play GOTY tier games. I don't have time to play the weekly buzz.

I just looked up my steam games/GOTY games from the last few years, I don't have any.

For some reason I decided against them, not sure, maybe they are a genre that I'm not interested in, or they are from a series I've deemed are overrated.

Anyway, some games that seem pretty intense graphically that I can play: Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, Assassins Creed. Graphics are as I mentioned, at least on high. Sometimes I'll knock down the AA to 2x.