How old is your computer?

[Dani]

Inquiring minds want to know. What are you working with?

I currently have an Apple M1 Max 14" 2021 model.

[SCBWV]

2021 Dell XPS 8940 desktop, Intel i7 10700 2.9 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 1 TB SATA HDD, NVidia GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB, Dell 27" U2720Q display I run at 3840x2160. I'm retired, so I didn't replace my laptop when it suddenly died.

[Dani]

I used to have a Dell Precision workstation that I loved. My husband, however, is an engineering manager at Apple and he declared that we have an Apple-only household. Alas, the Dell started really showing its age, and my Macbook is actually more performant. I ended up giving the Dell to DaniWeb's sysadmin, blud, who promptly upgraded nearly every component except for the motherboard and CPUs.

[Reverend Jim]

I currently have an ASUS Vivobook K350 that I bought in Dec 2022 but I would never buy another ASUS product. Too many stupid annoying problems that don't quite reach the level of justifying the expense of replacement. My older son (medical researcher) is currently looking at a new Lenovo Thinkpad P1 and based on how that turns out I will likely go that route next year when I reach pissed-off critical mass.

[Reverend Jim]

I should also mention (as I detailed in another thread), my previous ASUS had to be returned for refund because of a problem (second internal drive bay would not work) that ASUS claimed was fixed after being sent back for repairs, but was still broken when I got it back. Also, my wife's ASUS is flakey. I bought the two laptops after having a positive experience with two laptops that were purchased years ago for my brother and father-in-law. Their quality took a nosedive.

[Reverend Jim]

he declared that we have an Apple-only household

Sounds more than a little heavy-handed but I can sympathize. Windows computers have to allow for "any hardware/anywhere", causing no end of quirks and compatibility problemd, whereas Apple is more of a closed ecosystem. Microsoft also pushes features that most users do not need or want (copilot, onedrive) and are damn near impossible to disable.

[rproffitt]

The everyday workhorse is a simple(?) built it myself desktop with the usual i7 etc. I did pick up a new laptop that I'll migrate to any day now which is the Lenovo Core i9 with all the trimmings.

[Dani]

Sounds more than a little heavy-handed but I can sympathize.

It stems from a place of just being very proud of the work he does (he leads the team that is responsible for battery life across all Apple devices), and wanting his household to use the products that he took an active role in working on.

Unfortunately, when I moved to the Bay Area, I left my Dell workstation tower back in NY. When I moved across the country, I was renting for the first bunch of years, and was just using a Macbook hooked up to external LG monitors. It wasn't until we bought a house a handful of years later, and settled down here, that I brought the majority of my belongings over. At that time, I brought over my well loved Dell, only to be sorely disappointed that it was now outdated, and my recently purchased Macbook M1 was more performant for my daily tasks. Soooo, I gave the Dell to blud, because I knew he would be able to make really good use out of it.

[SCBWV]

MANY years ago I had a Dell Precision Workstation with two CPU sockets and (I believe) the Xeon processor, and error correcting memory. I had a SCSI hard drive, which was very fast for the time. Love the machine, but not close to what is available today performance-wise.

[Reverend Jim]

I stick with Windows because of long familiarity at the office. After years of networking/sysadmin and dbadmin I just had too much invested in MS. Too bad OS/2 died. When we got PC workstations for the control centre operators to interface to our AGTC/SCADA system we went for OS/2. We felt it was far superior to anything from Microsoft at the time. It was a fully multitasking OS with a DOS shell rather than an MSDOS base with Windows running on top (it wasn't until much later that Windows NT came out). It's biggest failing at that time was that all configuration had to be done with a text editor rather than a GUI. We stayed on OS/2 until shortly after Warp came out. AMIGA Intuition, however, blew them both out of the water.

As for networking, though, I'll give kudos for ease of management to Windows over Banyan Vines and Novell Netware, both of which I had to learn for work.

[toneewa]

AMD Ryzen 5950X - 32 threads, 3090 24GB, 32 GB, 2K - 27" 144Hz, 1080P - 27" 144Hz, M.2
AMD Ryzen 5900X - 24 threads, 3060 TI 8GB, 16 GB, 4K - 28" 60Hz, SSD