Is restoring a 12-year-old laptop worthwhile?
Is restoring a 12-year-old laptop worthwhile?
For what he mentioned needing to accomplish for school it should be ample. Besides, as I mentioned, 40 dollars to find out isn't quite luck...
Also consider that an older laptop—even after upgrading with a battery and SSD—will eventually stop functioning. The order of what you do seems somewhat unpredictable (based on my observations).
Being the "data dude" in the family, I often get criticized for throwing old laptops at me since only me and my brother can even install an operating system. With limited experience, I’ve noticed these issues (those that aren’t caused by obvious handling errors):
- Acer Aspire bought in 2019 (a very affordable model around 300$): It lasted about 3.5 years before the touchpad stopped working. The power supply also began to fail gradually, lasting longer than expected—this happened regardless of the operating system.
- Dell Lattitude D610 (used): It still works, though the stereo jack is broken, the battery is dead (it can run on AC power only), and it struggles with heavy CPU usage before shutting down.
- I still have an Acer Travelmate (model not remembered exactly), originally equipped with a 30GB IDE hard drive and Windows XP, bought in 2004. It still runs well, which is why I upgraded its battery—since it was a costly model back then and the keyboard feels much better than in modern laptops.
I finally acquired the small screwdriver required to open the laptop. Once I opened it and cleared out all the debris, I expected an empty RAM slot. Laptop RAM is also affordable these days. 32GB costs about 40$, while 16GB is around 25$. I also discovered a nearby shop that offers parts for these older models, including a new keyboard (this one is worn out), a palmrest/keyboard cover, and a cooler if needed. I think restoring it should be straightforward, with a total expense of roughly 100$. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don’t see any reason why a GTX 950 and i5 6300 wouldn’t handle basic tasks like using Visual Studio Code or browsing. I remember my brother used to play Apex Legends on this laptop about 4-5 years ago, which was his university machine too.
I would begin with the battery, SSD, and RAM. Check how it handles the tasks you need, then move on to the keyboard and other components. In the worst scenario, these adjustments could cause it to fail or shut down soon after. I think this laptop should still work fine.
Also, when evaluating using a computer that's already in use as a daily driver, it's strongly advised to run Memtest86+ (which is usually available in the boot menu of most modern Linux distributions) and let it rest overnight. This tends to produce these results:
Passes without issues. The device likely won't fail (the test doesn't rule out failure in other components).
RAM failure displayed on screen – Avoid using the machine. If you can, swap in known good RAM and retest.
The computer shuts down on its own. You might need to run several tests to determine whether the machine cuts power abruptly or powers off in a controlled manner. If it does shut down suddenly, it probably indicates an electrical issue with the power supply—either external or internal to the motherboard. If you don<|pad|>, you may struggle to identify the exact problem since the faulty component isn't visible. Because the defective part is unknown, replacing multiple components without a clear diagnosis could be risky. I once had a cheap laptop and, upon encountering this situation, I replaced its RAM and HDD, discarding the rest as worthless.