Hardware life expectancy (was: Please help to test latest Debian 11 release candidate on real hardware)

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Should I participate if my laptop is 10 years old?

I fondly remember showing my 2003 Thinkpad X30 to my students when it
turned 10 years old.  Given that I grew up in the glory days of Dennard
scaling, the standard rule of thumb was that you wanted a new machine
every 3 years or so and a machine older than 5 years was just
utter crap.

So being able to still make good use of a 10 year old machine
seemed surreal.

Nowadays, I'm still planning to use that same Thinkpad X30 to display
PDFs in the classroom (when I get to meet students physically again),
and more than half of my machine are older than 10 years old.
Better yet, they don't seem significantly slower than my newer machines.

So, yes, 10 year old machines and still very much relevant.


        Stefan