Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: TPMB12 on 22 May, 2022, 12:30:08 am
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I've been reading up on chromebooks recently and the way Google stops updates to them after 8 years. Not strictly obsolescence just the length of time that vulnerabilities get dealt with by updates. After n that time they can still be used but you might not want to our be advised to use them. A kind of obsolescence though.
So what obsolescence date is in other computing devices? Do windows, android and iOS devices have a life cycle after which they're effectiveness drops below acceptable levels or they stop being "safe" to use?
IME I android phones and iPhone have obsolescence due to battery issues. Windows computers reached the point that the latest version of Windows was too resource intensive to be loaded onto older PCs and the older Windows versions stop being supported. Is this effectively the same as chromebooks after 8 years of updates end?
The reason for this thread because initially my first thought after reading about AUE was that it was too abrupt a date and a deal breaker for me to get a chromebook. Thinking about it more I wondered if that was really longer than I would expect to use Windows computers or android phones / tablets?
Would I still be using a laptop running Windows bought now after June 2028? This being the AUE date of most chromebooks sold in main chains like argos or currys/pcworld.
What's your view on this AUE?
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Microsith's plug-pulling on older versions of Windows:
XP: April 2014
Vista: April 2017
7: January 2020 (security updates until January 2023)
8: January 2016
8.1: January 2023
10: Some time in 2025
11: They haven’t said yet but I'd expect it to keep going for most of the rest of the decade
My ancient Asus EeePC laptopette – which originally shipped with XP – will run Windows 10 but with a degree of enthusiasm on a par with that displayed by the BRITISH viewing public for the All-New Piers “Morgan” Moron Uncensored* Colossal Bellend Show. Even its 2014 replacement struggles.
My iPad Mini also dates from 2014; FruitCo stopped providing updates for it a couple of years ago and enough apps stopped working properly (or, in some cases, at all) that I had to rob a newer one off of Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.). Which I then dropped onto a brick-surfaced driveway chiz. Similar things happened with my cranky old grid of a Sony Android not-very-smart phone. It's a PITA for those of us who are too tight/skint** to fork out for New! IMPROVED!!1! Shiny all the time >:(
* Which it isn’t, as was discovered the other day when someone called Moron a Very Naughty Word.
** Strike out word which do not aply
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I bought a high spec laptop in 2012 which a friend still uses daily. It is running Windows 10 without drama and he can still stream and surf without issues. It came with Windows 7 in 2012 and I was able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free when that was a thing. It might still be for all I know.
In contrast he has a much newer Chromebook which is slow, lacks storage or memory capacity and is effectively a paperweight.
My recommendation is to buy a machine with as up-to-date it or higher processor, at least 8gb of ddr4 ram and a solid state disk drive (SSD). My 10 year old laptop has been upgraded to 8gb which is it's maximum capacity and the hard disk replaced with an SSD.
I do not know of folk still running out of support operating systems having particular problems but none of them are power users or, to the best of my knowledge, dark web or dodgy web consumers but who can really tell ...
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Occupational hazard of using commercial products. Old hardware can be kept running a *lot* longer if you're prepared to run a sufficiently un-sexy Linux distribution. Or perhaps one of those special embedded Windowses that's designed for driving expensive scientific/medical equipment.
Of course there's no reason you can't keep an ancient OS chugging along if it's not connected to the interwebs. And you probably get to a point where, say, Win9x is so old that most circulating malware won't run on it.
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Do windows, android and iOS devices have a life cycle after which they're effectiveness drops below acceptable levels or they stop being "safe" to use?
Certainly true of Android.
I have an elderly Lenovo tablet, and a year or so ago I had to reflash it after a meltdown. To my surprise and annoyance, a fair number of the apps that I'd had installed couldn't be reinstalled because they had been updated to require a newer Android version that wasn't compatible with the tablet. I managed to track down a few older APKs, but some apps I had to give up on.
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My Mac Mini has been in daily use since 2014 and seems fine for all the stuff I try to do on it, although some while ago I did try video editing and the processing on it took about six times as long as on My Dear Wife’s 2021 machine. But then I stopped video editing on grounds of sheer incompetence.
I don’t know how to find out exactly how old this iPad is because the “about” info doesn’t give me a date. We’ve probably had it about 5 years.
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Mucking about with video is very CPU-intensive. As our colonial chums might put it, there ain’t no substitute for cubic mips. The old machine in the Estate Office would transcode stuff at three times the rate of the newer one in the Great Hall - Intel i7/32 GB on the former, AMD Ryzen 3 3200/16GB on the latter.
Though there are actually conspiraloons out there claiming this is all a scam by the Technological-Industrial Complex (prop. W Gates) to sell us MOAR and MOAR expensive hardware and that an hour of HD TV can be stored losslessly in a few kB.
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I've been reading up on chromebooks recently and the way Google stops updates to them after 8 years. Not strictly obsolescence just the length of time that vulnerabilities get dealt with by updates. After n that time they can still be used but you might not want to our be advised to use them. A kind of obsolescence though.
What's your view on this AUE?
Well, if 'reading up' is taking advice from the CTC Forum, then yes.
If I get 8 years out of any modern electronic device then I'd think I've had my money's worth.
Expectations will have moved along as well, in terms of performance, and aesthetics, as well, probably, with battery life and connectivity.
Coincidentally I was trying to get Chrome OS Flex onto an ancient Asus Netbook yesterday (and failing). It's currently running Linux Mint quite happily, but it's a right pain to use because of the screen size, the nature of the touch pad and its weight. Back in the day, I thought it was the dog's wotsits - maybe 12 years ago.
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Early last year the director at work who makes the IT decisions sat at my old work laptop to look up a file saved on the server. I'd not long ago had our IT services contractor try to speed it up and it had a cat7 or 8 Etherley cable to the server, I got that when there was a rearrangement of the office and I needed a new cable as a result. Only a quid more than the cats.
Anyway, the director got so frustrated after 5 minutes waiting for a file to open. He went straight back to his laptop and called the IT guy to get something better. Ended up with a ROG gaming computer.
The old one was 10 years old assuming it was new and not refurbished when I got it. Pentium E50 chip iirc. It was windows 7 upgraded for free, surprisingly, to w10. That sped it up fire 6 months then it kind of clogged up becoming slow. Nothing helped much after that. IT guy said something about a metric of how quickly or slowly it processed. I think it was the lowest he'd seen from his voice.
I got a new mid range AMD chip and ssd on my new laptop at work. W10 from new. Lightening fast but it soon slowed down. Still better than the old one but I occasionally have to turn it off and reboot to "unclog"it. Not sure what the techie phrase for that but it helps if I find it struggling. I'm a big spreadsheet user and multitasker. Often needing Web based database access too.
IMHO nothing stays quick for long.
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I've been reading up on chromebooks recently and the way Google stops updates to them after 8 years. Not strictly obsolescence just the length of time that vulnerabilities get dealt with by updates. After n that time they can still be used but you might not want to our be advised to use them. A kind of obsolescence though.
What's your view on this AUE?
Well, if 'reading up' is taking advice from the CTC Forum, then yes.
If I get 8 years out of any modern electronic device then I'd think I've had my money's worth.
Expectations will have moved along as well, in terms of performance, and aesthetics, as well, probably, with battery life and connectivity.
Coincidentally I was trying to get Chrome OS Flex onto an ancient Asus Netbook yesterday (and failing). It's currently running Linux Mint quite happily, but it's a right pain to use because of the screen size, the nature of the touch pad and its weight. Back in the day, I thought it was the dog's wotsits - maybe 12 years ago.
I Checked out a load of chrome os geeky sites and the authentic site for chrome os. I use the odd hobby site like cycling forums to get experiential based opinions. It's one thing reading up on the tech side but not being from IT background (my hands on experience dates from windows NT servers decade plus ago and not very in depth at that) it helps to get the views of ordinary people. Of course on cycling sites we tend to find the more geeky mindset. People who can debate to the nth degree on the intricacies of a 7 speed RD from shimano compared to the 8 speed. Or discuss a particular tyre for a couple of pages. 😆
I think nobody should take the opinions of one or two sites at face value and as facts.
This thread was really about how my first thought about 8 years support put me off but later thought went along the lines of whether I'd still want to use it by the time of its AUE anyway. I've got a w10 laptop that rarely gets used after 3 years or so. My android phones become less useable due to battery issues at 2 years. Tablets memory always fill up and you end up removing apps just to keep your main apps updated.
I have no issues now with AUE. I am curious as to what peoples experiences of tech obsolescence. Talking timescales.
Laptop personal is about 5 years
Laptop work 8 years but wish it was 3 years if employers weren't so stingy.
Android phone 2 years dragged out to 3 or 4 years
Apple phoneI only have experience of one a 5c that was refurbished and a year old. It's carp from new!
Android tablet gets dragged out for 4 years or more or much less if the screen gets broken.
Apple tablet used only one, hated it and then it got nicked or taken home for "work"use and never saw it again. Really didn't get on with it trying to set up auditing apps on it. I really don't find Apple user friendly after being so used to android and Windows for so long.
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I'm still using my Samsung Galaxy S phone from about 2010, everything works as it has always done except the web browsers which cannot load current websites. The battery still holds charge for a few days.
The trick is not to update Android/Windows because newer versions get more and more bloated.
My laptop is a 2011 Samsung netbook running Linux with a SSD.
I would never buy any device that depends on updates and support to keep on working, eg smart TVs.
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For Android you can just get a new battery. The problem is apps not supporting older versions of Android after a while plus manufacturers buggering about with the base Android OS thus meaning they soon drop off the upgrade path.
For Windows, Microsoft usually offers corporate support and updates well beyond the date they end them for consumers. This is obviously at a cost depending on the contract and size / clout of the corporation.
Nothing stoping you running Windows once out of support. W10 has built in white listing (as does W7 Pro and above) and other code signing and tpm security features. Not user friendly to setup for your average user, but you could certainly keep it secure fairly indefinitely after support ends.
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But nearly all phones now have a soldered and/or glued in battery so not as convenient to replace as the phones with a separate battery.
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I have mentioned this multiple times on here but my ex-husband is still using my iPad that I bought in 2010. Not sure what Apps still run on it but clearly enough that makes it worth him keeping it charged (I can still see it on Find My IPhone).
My Mum still uses a 6.5 year old iPhone 6S.
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I have a galaxy sII I bought 3 days after uk release that can still be used. If I could get a third battery it would probably last a week between charges, like new. Not sure I'd want to. You do tend to get used to hardware and software improvements on stuff from that era. Much later on then I'm not sure that's the case. I reckon the latest iPhone and top Samsung phones are not really significantly better. Law of diminishing returns I reckon. Certainly as the prices of high end phones went significantly higher I went down the ranges and have been quite happy with what I've got.
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My instinct is to keep using things till they die, whether bikes (which basically don't die) or computers. With the latter, the problem is keeping them secure. New features are added to software, new hardware has to be supported, and new security risks emerge. All of these require updates. Eventually, the number of us using older kit falls to a level that makes it unattractive to support, given the additional complexity of doing so for a few people (compared to getting income from new stuff!) I'm currently getting warnings that 3G will be switched off next year and my phone isn't up to using the 4G replacement.
That said, I'm writing this on a desktop bought significantly over 10 years ago, and successively upgraded in its OS. I got it onto Windows 10 with some difficulty (the monitor being the final obstacle - I had to replace that because of the lack of a driver). It just gets harder and harder each time. Similar with Android devices.
As Lightning Phil suggests, the more technical you are, the easier you find it to keep older kit going - but, probably, the more likely you are to want newer! You can install your own Android version when the manufacturers of your devices stop providing upgrades, generally after a pathetic one new version, but again it's still not completely simple. Just as you can put Linux on a PC.
There's a massive difference between gaming (always requires the latest machines) and my life in email, browsers, word processing and spreadsheets. That's why such an old computer is just fine for me. I've never made it in gaming past Freecell, though I did try the old Cycling Manager series.
I don't know whether this is really sustainable long term. We're getting steadily better at recycling, but it uses masses of energy. Can we really keep making stuff and throwing it in the (recycling) bin?
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Anyone fancy cluster computing or grid computing with all your computers? It seems there's some here who have a few computers and a technical interest in computing to possibly look into it.
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Early last year the director at work who makes the IT decisions sat at my old work laptop to look up a file saved on the server. I'd not long ago had our IT services contractor try to speed it up and it had a cat7 or 8 Etherley cable to the server, I got that when there was a rearrangement of the office and I needed a new cable as a result. Only a quid more than the cats.
Anyway, the director got so frustrated after 5 minutes waiting for a file to open. He went straight back to his laptop and called the IT guy to get something better. Ended up with a ROG gaming computer.
Had something similar. A Several of layers of The Boss turned a deaf ear to my repeated complaints about my desktop machine being unusably slow until one day I was supposed to connect to some webby conference wossname and, in spite of starting the connection process ten minutes before the thing kicked off, couldn’t get in until it was almost over. A The Boss turned up at my desk the next day with a desktop support droid in tow and demanded a demonstration. I got a new machine the next day :thumbsup:
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It's never an issue until they experience it is it?
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These days the average computer lasts quite a while (this is a late-2015 iMac; if Apple bought a swanky replacement I'll tempted, but despite the rumours, it didn't debut this year, and honestly it's still fairly pacy unless you open a vector file with 500 million paths, but I'm not sure any computer would like that). For bigly work stuff, I always used to use AWS, the current mothership is getting us a swanky Mac studio (sadly that won't sit in my office) for remote access.
My little office server is a 2009 Mac Mini that still runs fine on an older version of MacOS, it runs headless and only needs to host a couple of USB disks and talk to the printer, that said, it's still mostly capable for browsing and stuff. I also have a 2011 Macbook Air which still runs fine though I don't really have much of a use for.
I did give up on a 2010ish iPad though, that was slower than treacle on a cold day to do anything and a lot of websites were, erm, no. The new one does everything instantly. I suspect you sometimes don't notice how slow your current devices are until you get a new one and have an 'oh' moment.
My iPhone is an XR, so must be four or five years old now. Still happily holds a charge for a full day, that's usually my guide when it comes to phone replacement.
Completely agree though, tossing away computers and devices every year or two is a terrible thing to do, recycling is mostly green-washing for a terribly wasteful industry, and buying less would have a far greater impact.
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I have mentioned this multiple times on here but my ex-husband is still using my iPad that I bought in 2010. Not sure what Apps still run on it but clearly enough that makes it worth him keeping it charged (I can still see it on Find My IPhone).
I have a newer, but still "old" iPad. Many websites no longer work properly (in either Safari or Chrome) and the YouTube app no longer works at all (bit of a deal breaker that). What really annoys me though is that it will soon be considered a complete brick as there is no possibility of loading any alternative OS. There's a version of Linux for pretty much everything, but seemingly the Fruit Co has these locked down too much for that to be an option. Shame, as there is absolutely nothing otherwise wrong with the hardware.
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Can't it be used offline as a ebook reader or as a media player for watching films?
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In the 90s, a two year old computer would be getting unbearably slow. At one stage, architecture was moving on so it would be literally impossible to run modern programs (move from 16-32 bit, then 64, etc).
My current work laptop is 3 years old and due for replacement. Not due to speed issues, but because the battery controllers are crap, the batteries overheat and rupture. (it is a Dell, btw) It will be out of warranty after 3 years, so I get a new laptop.
If it weren't for that defect, there is no reason why I couldn't keep using it for another couple of years at least.
I think that we've reached a stage where a general 'business standard' computer is going to be usable for at least 5 years, and probably more like 8. That is a heck of a lot better than it used to be.
I'm saying the same as Ian I guess.
Rebooting to speed a computer up is inevitable, when we clog our machines up with crap software that chews memory and network resources (I'm looking at you, Teams).
Used to be that you HAD to shut down (and park the disk heads) every day. Booting took minutes.
The main reason why computer's slow down is crap software.
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I think that we've reached a stage where a general 'business standard' computer is going to be usable for at least 5 years, and probably more like 8. That is a heck of a lot better than it used to be.
Very much this.
Playing video has been the upper benchmark for resource-intensive things that mainstream users want their computers to do for ages. The goalposts have moved somewhat over the years in terms of the quality of the video, but pretty much everything has been able to meet that standard for so long that obsolescence now tends to be driven by (frequently deliberate) software incompatibility rather than performance.
Obviously there are plenty of more demanding specialist applications, and some things (eg. gaming) will keep pushing the envelope simply because they can.
Hardware's been getting more reliable too. Batteries are certainly a limiting factor, but not to the point where people won't go near a device where it's glued in place any more. We're a long way from the capacitor plague years. Meanwhile, we've slowly accepted that it's reasonable for a device or piece of software to need to talk to its manufacturer's servers over the internet in order to work, leaving the end of life to the whims of business rather than technological limitations.
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Meanwhile, we've slowly accepted that it's reasonable for a device or piece of software to need to talk to its manufacturer's servers over the internet in order to work, leaving the end of life to the whims of business rather than technological limitations.
This is another reason why I don’t want a Chromebook :demon:
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For general use, a decade-old computer is probably fine, it's only when webly things start to not work that its prognosis negative. For laughs, I'm writing this on the 2009 Mac Mini - most websites still seem to work fine, other than the average local newspaper site, which will kill anything.
Mobile OS are of course, reliant on app developers continuing to support older apps (and the financial model beyond hobbyist apps doesn't encourage that).
Games need right-there, right-now performance so they push the envelope. Dealing with hi-definition video is still a load, especially at 4k and above, though with modern graphics cards you can mostly do this is in real-time without too much sweatbreaking. Print and digital imagery isn't even an effort – and I remember the good old days when applying a Photoshop filter meant you could go make a cup of tea, drink the tea, have a chat, make another cup of tea, pop to the shops to get some more biscuits, and come back to see it was still at 78%.
We do bigly data science which mostly requires a lot of memory, a machine that moves data quickly, but only reasonable processing power, but then it's generally down to how long do you want to wait for it to complete and is it worth paying more to not wait so long.
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[snip]
My current work laptop is 3 years old and due for replacement. Not due to speed issues, but because the battery controllers are crap, the batteries overheat and rupture. (it is a Dell, btw) It will be out of warranty after 3 years, so I get a new laptop.
If it weren't for that defect, there is no reason why I couldn't keep using it for another couple of years at least.
[snip]
If a replacement battery is not available, it can be still be used plugged into the mains, and also be used as a desktop with an external monitor and mouse.
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The only reason I pensioned off the media PC in the Great Hall – which IIRC dated back to ~2016 – was because the noise it made whenever it broke into a canter was driving me nuts. Otherwise it'd have been fine to keep doing what it was doing until Microsith pulls the plug on Win 10.
The fanless replacement job does generate some alarming numbers on CoreTemp when jibbling video, mind. I presume SCIENCE will throttle it back before it executes the HCF instruction.
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[snip]
My current work laptop is 3 years old and due for replacement. Not due to speed issues, but because the battery controllers are crap, the batteries overheat and rupture. (it is a Dell, btw) It will be out of warranty after 3 years, so I get a new laptop.
If it weren't for that defect, there is no reason why I couldn't keep using it for another couple of years at least.
[snip]
If a replacement battery is not available, it can be still be used plugged into the mains, and also be used as a desktop with an external monitor and mouse.
Err, I think you missed the 'overheat and rupture ' bit
It is best not to be near a lithium battery when it does that
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Is it one of those dimbo laptops that won’t run from the mains unless there's a battery installed? AIUI some are less fussy about that sort of thing.
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Is it one of those dimbo laptops that won’t run from the mains unless there's a battery installed? AIUI some are less fussy about that sort of thing.
It is one of those dumb designs where the battery is soldered in place, under the mousepad part.
Replacement involves Dell paying for an engineer to come to my location to do it (while under warranty).
So when the battery starts to go, the case bulges. I doubt very much it would run without a battery.
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I have told you about the time my Dell caught fire and forced the evacuation of the building and the exciting presence of the entire local fire department. It was less of a fire, more a slow smoky smoulder. Being the US though, the FD would only approach it in full breathing gear and hazmat. Being British, I was just standing there in office casual and pointing unnecessarily toward the offending item.
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Given that Big Business ™, not renowned for spending money on useful stuffs, generally has a 4 year refresh cycle on middling hardware running the nearly latest versions of Seattle software, I would say anything over this is a bonus for mostly just working. If you have the wherewithal and tuits to fiddle, you can invariably get longer from kit, but it is a cycle that follows the law of diminishing returns.
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I have told you about the time my Dell caught fire and forced the evacuation of the building and the exciting presence of the entire local fire department. It was less of a fire, more a slow smoky smoulder. Being the US though, the FD would only approach it in full breathing gear and hazmat. Being British, I was just standing there in office casual and pointing unnecessarily toward the offending item.
Dell seem to have form here.
How do you put out a lithium ion fire?
Seems powder extinguisher will do it.
So if stuck with a battery on fire, dump a packet of bicarb of soda on it.
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If I recall, they picked it up with tongs and dropped into a big bucket of sand and took it out into the parking lot. Made a fair amount of smoke, though not much flame, but was obviously burning as the plastic was melting and charring.
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I have told you about the time my Dell caught fire and forced the evacuation of the building and the exciting presence of the entire local fire department. It was less of a fire, more a slow smoky smoulder. Being the US though, the FD would only approach it in full breathing gear and hazmat. Being British, I was just standing there in office casual and pointing unnecessarily toward the offending item.
Dell seem to have form here.
How do you put out a lithium ion fire?
Seems powder extinguisher will do it.
So if stuck with a battery on fire, dump a packet of bicarb of soda on it.
I expect Dell have "form" mainly due to the degree of market penetration they've achieved.
As to putting them out, I found this.
"How to Extinguish a Lithium-Ion Battery Fire
Despite their name, lithium-ion batteries used in consumer products do not contain any lithium metal. Therefore, a Class D fire extinguisher is not to be used to fight a lithium-ion battery fire. Class D fire extinguishers, which contain dry powder, are intended for combustible metal fires only. Since lithium-ion batteries aren’t made with metallic lithium, a Class D dry powder extinguisher would not be effective.
So, how do you choose the right fire extinguisher in this scenario? Lithium-ion batteries are considered a Class B fire, so a standard ABC or dry chemical fire extinguisher should be used. Class B is the classification given to flammable liquids. Lithium-ion batteries contain liquid electrolytes that provide a conductive pathway, so the batteries receive a Class B fire classification."
https://resources.impactfireservices.com/how-do-you-put-out-lithium-ion-battery-fire
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Used to be a fair trade in old computer equipment at a corporate I used to work at. Cages would appear with stuff that had been replaced. You were free to take what you wanted, to update your existing corporate setup, for instance to add a second monitor, grab a laptop docking station for home, or to take anything else home and use as you wanted.
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How do you put out a lithium ion fire?
Unless you're on a plane or something, you contain it with the Explosion Containment Pie Dish™, chuck it out the nearest window or simply run away.
(AIUI the main fire-fighting approach is to try to keep adjacent cells cool enough that the thermal run-away doesn't spread.)
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How do you put out a lithium ion fire?
Unless you're on a plane or something, you contain it with the Explosion Containment Pie Dish™, chuck it out the nearest window or simply run away.
(AIUI the main fire-fighting approach is to try to keep adjacent cells cool enough that the thermal run-away doesn't spread.)
I believe the first thing to do in the event of a Lithium ion battery fire, is to start filming it...
J
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I have had great success with installing Linux on out-of-support Chromebooks. They can all do web browsing, youtube etc.
A ten year old PC is still a beast.
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The BHPC's former Official Jam-Filled Babbage Engine is one of those indestructible Toshiba laptops, 2012 vintage. It runs Windows 10 surprisingly competently (for now), and is entirely usable for basic web browsing and vaguely normal Officey things. Even the race timing software ran more or less okay, mainly through being designed in a way that all the time-critical stuff takes place on dedicated external hardware. The main problem was a lack of driver support (the WiFi chipset doesn't support WPA3, and the wired Ethernet doesn't support not randomly dropping packets), combined with our habit of doing lots of number-crunching very inefficiently in Excel. We decided to replace it before an unfortunately timed Windowsupdate permanently broke something important.
Plus we wanted a new one so we could use another software package that maintains a ring-buffer of uncompressed video in RAM for time-travel purposes. A screen that we can actually read outdoors in daylight is a bonus.
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I have a collection of four Lenovo Thinkpads I got fro free from a customer that was throwing them out due to upgrades. Swapped the HDs for SSDs and stuck an extra stick of DRAM in a couple of them and now they all run Linux really well. The screen resolution on a couple is not up to modern standards but for a bit of Email, web browsing or document editing they are great.
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I'm still happily using a 2012 Macbook Pro. It does (almost) everything asked of it but naturally won't work with some of the latest software. Still, a very capable machine with retro-fitted SSD and 16gb RAM (this is the last model that allows user upgrades ::-) which is largely why I've hung onto it ;)).
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I have a galaxy sII I bought 3 days after uk release that can still be used. If I could get a third battery it would probably last a week between charges, like new. Not sure I'd want to. You do tend to get used to hardware and software improvements on stuff from that era. Much later on then I'm not sure that's the case. I reckon the latest iPhone and top Samsung phones are not really significantly better. Law of diminishing returns I reckon. Certainly as the prices of high end phones went significantly higher I went down the ranges and have been quite happy with what I've got.
IIRC, the S2 had a screen that wasn't surpassed for some time. Being an AMOLED+ (according to Samsung's somewhat random nomenclature) it didn't have the Pentile pixel arrangement of later screens but a conventional RGB layout that made it look nice and sharp. The camera was a bit bollox though, when I compare old photos with ones I've taken on my newer phones.
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The camera gave me pretty good results. Better than the nikon coolpix digital camera I had from about the same time. For a phone camera it used to surprise my mate's with the quality.
I was part of a walking group and we used to share photos from walks and social gatherings for the online blog. They often used my phone's images despite some keen photographers with good dedicated cameras. My phone still didn't have the outright quality of their kit but it got the photos they missed purely by being easier to get out and get the images. It's why phone cameras have taken over from the more basic digital cameras. For its day the s2 was still a good camera.
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Original from 2010:- CPU i7 920 now overclocked to 3.5Ghz and motherboard with 6x2Gb ram.
Upgraded my vid card (9800->1050->1650), monitor (27"->43"), OS (XP->7->10) and changed from HD to SSD.
Various fans have also been replaced when they started to "chirp".
Still runs everything I want it to.
Luck ........... ;D
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As a Mac user, I had to dish out €699 to get a 2018 Mac Mini (Intel) when the M1 chip came out. My 2014 Mac Mini was not able to keep up with what I was using it for (Affinity creative suite etc), it only had a 250GB SSD anyway, which meant I was running out of space.
Other than that, I have a cheap PC I bought at Aldi for less than the mac mini (has a killer graphics card), and a tiny Acer knee-top that I installed MX Linux on (it originally had only a 32GB little flash drive, but I bought the necessary cable and installed a 250GB SSD). Runs incredibly well!
So, any Windows PC that is aging, you could install a lighter version of Linux and extent the life of the machine for many many years to come...