“Why do Mac computers last longer than PCs?”

Posted on by Fred Langa

Oh, baloney. Macs aren’t magical.

It’s an easy mistake to make: For example, in your mind’s-eye comparison, you may picture “a PC” as something like a $200 Lenovo laptop; and “a Mac” as maybe a $2400 MacBook Pro.

But that’s hardly a valid comparison.

When you compare roughly equivalent hardware you’ll see that Macs and PCs both can be equivalently long-lived.

And with decent care and feeding, even the cheapest PC hardware can last an astonishingly long time.

Here’s a real-life example: My mighty MSi L1300 “designed for Windows XP” notebook, purchased on the fly in a Walmart a decade (?) ago as an emergency replacement after my main laptop died towards the start of a month-long road trip.

I bought it because it’s what they had. This was no carefully-considered, cherry-picked selection: It was an emergency!

That cheapo, Walmart, “designed for XP” puppy survived the trip just fine, and more: Over the years it’s run XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10, and Linux.

It’s still in service today:

Still ticking, after all these years: My MSi L1300
(If I recall correctly, MSi had only recently changed its name from “MicroStar International.”)
Behold, the mighty Atom!
As I said, it was an emergency.

I bought the laptop in Saskatchewan; it’s a dual-language English/French model designed for Canada, with a very confusing keyboard. Strange little machine. But sturdy!

I keep it updated and still use it several times a year:

Here it is quietly shuffling bits in a corner of my office; syncing some of my long-term, archival backups among various drives.

I doubt any Apple product could have done better, even at Apple’s prices.

Bottom line: Macs aren’t magical, and “Macs last longer than PCs” is baloney. Equivalent hardware, treated in approximately equivalent ways, will have roughly an equivalent lifespan.

(PSSST! But the Macs will still cost disproportionally more! 🙂 )

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3 Replies to ““Why do Mac computers last longer than PCs?””

  1. What upgrades and modifications have you made to this netbook? What OS is it running now? I have an old Atom-based ASUS netbook myself that I use to keep the backup of my KeePass database (which I update manually whenever I make any changes to the database on my main PC) in order to keep it away from ransomware. (I don’t have this netbook connected to my network.) I’m wondering if there’s more I could be using it for.

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  2. Pingback: “What upgrades and modifications have you made to your old netbook?” – Langa.com

  3. No, I disagree with you. I think pc last longer than macs. Why? Just look at mac transition from intel to apple m1 processor. In few years, all intel based mac/macbooks will be orphaned. Meanwhile, most pc will still be able to run latest os versions of windows and linux without any issues. Also, in terms of upgradability and repairability, older pc and pc laptops are much better than macs/macbooks.

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