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by ed_balls·6y ago·view on hn ↗
> lasts a life time.

This won't change much. Nobody will work on Pentium II, drive a gas guzzler or get a low resolution MRI. It's hard to regulate such stuff. You can only improve it a bit e.g. mandatory 3-year warranty with an option to extend it to 6 years. While buying the consumer would see the price for each warranty length.

3 comments
Many computer programs or websites were more responsive in the times of Pentium II than they are now. It looks like we negated a lot of hardware advancement by inefficient software or by putting advertising in almost every possible place.
Pentium II no, however my desktop machine and main PC is 2011-era (aside from an upgraded GPU) and it still keeps up just fine. It won't play the very latest AAA titles, but just about anything else is fine. It gets ~50fps at 1080p ultra details in GTA V, which is not shabby at all.

For office and graphical work, it's obviously beyond merely capable. 200+ tabs in Firefox, no problem.

Nobody needs to work on a Pentium II- though I think we could probably find a lot of applications for really old CPUs. The main issue is how much power they consume.

My 2013 MacBook Pro retina started having weird, annoying keyboard issues. I could spend 600$ to get it repaired or 1000$ to get a newer, refurbished macbook. However I'm finding a hand me down 2009 MacBook is working just fine after putting an ssd in it.

Not a mac user, but fixing keyboard issues for $600 sounds crazy.