Axios Older hardware is a broad term. 1yr-5yr-10-yr-25yr-30yr?
Where do you stop?
Interesting, a question that can be looked at from several perspectives.
Replacement
Consumers replace laptops, on average, every 3-5 years. Businesses usually have a 5-year replacement cycle.
That's a simple measure of what consumers and businesses consider "old".
Support
Apple supports computers for about 7 years.
Microsoft has no hardware cutoff as far as I know, but supports OS releases for about 10 years (e.g. Windows 10, 2014-2024). Windows 10 can be installed on computers that shipped with Windows 7 (2009), so in the case of Windows 10, the effective support period is 15 years. Windows 11 (released 2021) supports computers built 2018 and after, so assuming that Windows 11 is supported for the normal 10-year period (2021-2031), Windows 11 will have about 13 years effective support.
The Linux desktop community has no formal standards at all, as far as I know, but effectively cuts off support as support for hardware and components ebbs and flows. Support for 32-bit architecture is gone, and the kernel has dropped support for chip architectures over the years, most recently 486 architecture. NVIDIA support for older models is spotty at best. Solus is moving linux-lts to 5.15 because "the former 4.14 kernel is holding us back in several areas and we are going to upgrade", and computers that won't work with the newer kernel are not going to boot. Functional obsolescence is a fact of life, even with Linux.
Regardless of OS, software has obsolescence cycles, too. Many games won't run on older architectures, for example, or run so poorly as to promote gnashing of teeth. What's true of games is true of most resource-demanding software.
"Old" is difficult to quantify using support as a measure, but in my view, unsupported hardware is "old" by definition.
User Experience and Usefulness
The forum is full of comments to the effect that Windows 10 doesn't run (or "barely runs") on older hardware. True enough. Most of us have experience along those lines.
That is true of Linux, too, though, despite the prevailing myth that Linux is the solution for "older hardware". I have a friend who takes great pride in the fact that he is able to run Linux on his Satellite Pro 430 (circa 2005). How he does it is beyond me, but I've noticed that he doesn't actually use that computer except to show off that he can do it. At some point, a computer is so obsolete that user experience becomes so bad that the computer is no longer useful.
To me, a computer that is not useful for daily use is "old". What is "useful" will depend on the user, of course. A user who uses a computer to check e-mail once a day can use a computer with less resources than someone like me, who uses computers several hours per day, and a user that does high-end graphics design or intensive gaming is going to need a lot more than I do.
Cost/Benefit
@WetGeek got to the heart of this question in another thread (My wifes old laptop (12yo)) concerning an older laptop: "I don't know what your situation is, but I wanted to mention that I've bought 4 or 5 refurbished desktops and laptops over the years that have been excellent machines, for a fraction of what they would go for if brand new. Might be a worthwhile idea for your wife's computer instead of spending money to keep such an old machine running. Professionally refurbished, these machines were recent models, and hard to tell from new."
At some point, nursing older hardware along is no longer cost effective, and at that point it is time to call a computer "old", give up the ghost, and recycle/replace.
Bottom Line
I don't think that "old" can be strictly quantified by age, in the sense of "1yr-5yr-10-yr-25yr-30yr". I think that the question really revolves around user experience, usefulness and support, and that, in turn, depends in part on how the user is using the computer.
