[conspire] new computer?

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

On 11/19/18 9:26 PM, Rick Moen wrote:

> One:  If you honestly want no hardware-support problems, avoid buying
> anything with a chipet that hasn't been on the market at least a year.
> The simplest way to ensure that is to buy a _system_ model that's been
> offered for sale for at least a year.  (Even then, there are occasional
> gotchas where an OEM has slipstream-changed the constituent parts of a
> PC system without bothering to change the model number.  Dell is
> particularly infamous for doing this.)

I tend to use computers till some of their parts start to be unreliable. 
While it seems we still have support for trident video cards, with newer 
video board I'm starting to experience dropped support from kernel/vendor/X.
Here 2 out of 3 desktop PC are having problems with newer kernel/X since 
video board support has been somehow dropped/experienced some regression.

Few years ago I moved from proprietary ATI drivers to open and now on 
one PC I had to stop upgrading the kernel and on another one I had to 
put on hold X video drivers.

At least here in Italy used PC that come with a warranty are expensive 
and used PC sold by private are way too old.

Even on a 6 years lifespan, 1 year missing support taken from the 
beginning or from the end is a non negligible slice of their lifespan, 
plus you've to consider installation, configuration and data transfer time.

A really big slice of economy now run on Linux. No one would be so crazy 
to put on the market "common hardware" that can't run Linux and nowaday 
chipset are highly coupled with the CPU (so coupled I'm not aware of any 
chipset made by 3rd parties other than the CPU maker).

There hasn't been that much innovation in other parts.

Notable exceptions are: wifi for notebooks, video boards, ethernets.

Branded PCs with newer parts are available on the market few months 
later than DYI parts.

If you're going to buy a used desktop/notebook there is not that much 
choice on the performance side and the cheapo tend to be too old.

Servers tend to be supported from day one, you really have to be dumb to 
put on the market a server that can't run Linux smoothly.

Of course newer software tend to be buggier.

I was used to take computers phased out from the companies I worked for, 
cost couldn't get lower than 0 and I did know if they were in reasonably 
good conditions to be worth a resurrection.

Unless you've friends willing to donate hardware on which you're going 
to bet is going to last enough to pay for the cost of labour of setting 
it up I prefer to buy new *well chosen hardware*.

If you're not doing something "special" the cost of hardware doesn't 
stand up with the cost of your time, unless you're having fun.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
https://www.webthatworks.it https://www.borgonovo.net