Long time lurker, first time poster. I have a 7 year old lenovo y-40 running Ubuntu which has served me well, but I am starting to get concerned that it may be time to put it out to pasture. Nothing has broken, but I know it's getting a little old.

The way I see it, my options are to stick with this computer and upgrade the ram (currently 8gb, space for up to 16) and perhaps replace the hard drive (although replacing things makes me a little nervous, I have only replaced the battery thus far), or buy a new computer.

I kinda hate buying things but will throw down for a decent piece of gear if I need it. I have a budget of ~1000 (but if it can be cheaper that's better), want to run linux and use my computer mostly for programming and internet-stuff. I am also unsure if I need to stick with a laptop-I almost never take my computer anywhere and have it hooked up to a monitor anyway. I mostly have been looking at getting a T14 or something from System76 but they all seem a little pricey. Thoughts?

I thought it'd be fun to see how some of you keep your computer organized. Do you follow some general scheme, keep it arbitrary, throw everything on the Desktop or in Downloads or just abuse the search bar?

Feel free to go as general or as in-depth as you want.

I promise this is a genuine question and not a Windows hit piece.

Every Windows computer I've ever had has slowly gotten laggier over time until my impatience has forced me to reinstall the OS to get the speed boost that comes with a fresh copy. In the schools I've worked in, computer labs and carts full of Windows machines have slowly sunsetted, becoming wholly unusable over time. I think Chromebooks have taken over education in part because they have a snappiness to them that sticks around for a long time, unlike the decay demonstrated by Windows computers.

In my current job, I was issued a Windows computer and a Chromebook at the same time, when I was hired. The Chromebook is still chugging along just fine, but the once fresh and quick Windows computer is now ramping down. I know it's not because of startup or background programs latching on over time because I don't have admin rights and thus can't install anything! I'm not a power user either. I really only ever run a browser with minimal tabs, along with the very occasional instance of office software and/or PDF reader. That's it. And what used to be instant and quick is now like... trudging... through... sludge...

Is there some fundamental design flaw in Windows? Am I finding a pattern where none exists? Do I not have enough experience with other OSes to know that this is true for them too? I'd love someone's insight on this topic.

(I'd be surprised if this hasn't been asked before.)

A few questions that come to my mind are:

What are your computers' specs?

How are your computer parts/cabling organized? (Are they?)

What is the resolution of your monitor(s?)

What OS is it?

I'm not really knowledgeable when it comes to technology, so you can add you own questions as you please.

Edit: In hindsight, my knowledge of specs is even poorer that I thought it was and I can barely read the answers. Ah well "^~^

I'm looking for a ~24" 1080p monitor -- nothing flashy, purely for TV and movies.

Right now I have a crappy Dell TN. I don't mind it, but the viewing angles aren't great.

I just started looking tonight. A lot of posts are saying that VA is ideal, IPS has light leaks, and TN has the typical viewing angle issues.

The main things I am concerned about are:

• I'm close to this monitor (VESA mounted where you'd have a second monitor)
• Color reproduction is important -- same with decent contrast
• I often watch stuff in a dark room

I don't really care about specific models (regional availability), but I'm hoping to find out which panel is ideal. Does anybody have any experience with a VA panel?

TL;DR: How long should a graphics card last? What can I do to make them last longer?

This is perhaps an odd question to ask, but I've been a console gamer for most of my life and have only been all-in on PC gaming for maybe 1-2 years and I think I may be missing something.

So there has been about three times when I have spent money on a half-decent graphics card, and each time they have failed me. The first one was a genuine hardware failure, probably a memory failure judging from the artifacting. The second one failed for reasons I have been unable to figure out. It didn't appear to be overheating, but I was getting driver errors that suggested it were; reinstalling from scratch did nothing to fix it.

The last, most current one is the one that bugs me the most. I'm getting the same problems; driver crashes just like overheating, except this one has better temperature monitoring and I can see that isn't happening.

I previously thought that the reason why my graphics cards would always crap out on me was because those were cheaper cards from less reputable manufacturers, but this last one is really bugging me because it's relatively high end and from a reputable manufacturer - it's a Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700, complete with the giant AMD reference cooler. I'm getting it RMAed, but since I didn't keep the receipt I am still going to have to pay to fix it even though it should theoretically be under warranty.

I've done a ton of searching to find out how I can possibly solve this myself, but I am frankly astounded by how little information the drivers give out on Windows. I'm seeing that the device is being reported as unavailable but nothing whatsoever as to why.

To make matters worse, it seems like this isn't actually common for other people. Most people seem to be replacing their graphics card because they are obsolete, not because they physically fail.

So basically what I am asking is, how long is a graphics card actually supposed to last for? Do I just have astonishingly bad luck?

I have two computers (a desktop and a laptop) that broke down just before my city entered a lockdown. Being able to assemble and fix my own computer hardware is something I have always wanted to do, and if I knew that I would probably not be using a borrowed Macbook Air right now.

I have no immediate need to provide any maintenance services, nor do I require a primer in electronics or anything too advanced. Just enough to know how to assemble and disassemble a machine, identify and fix the most obvious issues without breaking anything.

I tend to learn better from sequential and structure learning materials, preferably in text/images form. But videos are also welcomed. I know the names of the things and what they are, but I don't really know how to put things together in practice.

Suggestions? :)

In terms of

1. Utility: It is useful!
2. Reliability: It will always work when you need it to!
3. Uniqueness: It gives you the option of doing things that would never have been necessary before it came along.
4. Aesthetic: It satisfies your sense of beauty: It gives you the same kind of feeling a painting or a poem would.
5. Transcendence: It transcends the zeitgeist and is the simplest it can and thus ought to be.

Mine are:

1. Vim
2. mutt
3. The Lucas Arts point and click adventure games
4. A Lisp interpreter
5. grep