Your longest lasted (pre-built/OEM) computer

[Commander Matt]

By "pre-built/oem" I mean a computer/laptop from HP, Samsung, etc.

I have a Samsung NP-SF410 that I've had for more than five years, and it's still going strong. Like, way strong.
I've pushed it to it's limits (a lot) trying to play games like Space Engineers on it back in 2012ish.
A while back I took it apart and replaced the thermal paste in it with some Arctic Silver 5 and wow; made it ten times better. All the heat is now at the heatsink area instead of the whole laptop. 😀
Windows 10 pushed the poor thing (very slow boot on 10, and generally slow loading programs/doing things in general) so I put Linux Mint on it, and now it's as fast as it was when I first got it.
It holds a special place in my heart, and I doubt I'll ever get rid of it. Heck, now that I've found a cheap OCZ SSD with good reviews, I'm probably gonna put an SSD in it, install Linux Mint again, and put its HDD in my desktop (because why not? 😉 )
When the motherboard eventually fails, I'm going to try and fix it! I love that little ol' laptop. If it all comes crashing down, or the motherboard fails (beyond repair), monitor breaks, something that can't be fixed, I'm going to scavenge what I can.
I love that thing to bits. It's a living being, I tell you!

So, do you have anything like this? Something that's probably irrational to still be using, but you keep using it anyway? Gimmie all dem details

Please avoid any brand wars; we're here to talk about how we love our computers. C:

 

[ssddx]

just being branded instead of homebuilt does not necessarily mean it will last less time, that depends on many factors including what parts were used, how well it was cleaned, how hard it was pushed and other factors.

our first pc in the house was a pIII compaq we had for about 5-7 years. junk yes but it worked. before that i've played around on an early ibm and tandy though they werent owned by us. my first homebuilt we had for about 8-10 and this current pc is 5 going on 6. generally i keep the pc as long as it has usefulness to me. once it slows down and is no longer practical for the tasks i need it to run its time for an upgrade. i trashed my first pc from 2003 era earlier this year with a single core cpu. given that very few people actually want such old hardware its not even worth trying to resell it for chump change in most cases.

its certainly not worth repairing an old laptop or putting much money into it. a board for your laptop would cost $40-70 based on what i've seen which is very impractical given costs of new laptops with more performance. the only time i would suggest repairing old hardware is if its not replaceable.. such as if you have an old commodore or other vintage piece or perhaps something like a ps2 that you need to play old titles. we recently had a 2-3 year old asus rog laptop motherboard bite the dust and given the cost to replace the motherboard was $100-200 its still on the shelf likely never to be repaired, instead we just replaced the system with a desktop.

now, as far as "irrational" to being used, no not really as i'm very practical. i do have a 1987 model m keyboard that i have on my shelf though that i use once in awhile. i used to use it much more frequently and you simply cannot beat them. i have an older ips panel in storage that i'll use eventually though its currently not being used. i like old machinery and tools as well but only if they are useful still.

 

[CompGee]

I have an old HP Pavilion m7480n that's 10 years old, going on 11. First bought brand new in '05(by my grandma), it served around 8 years of solid, near every-day usage. It was never cleaned, so it got slower, hotter, and louder over the years. It finally quit booting, so my grandma replaced it with another HP. The dead HP computer sat just by the main pathway, with it's monitor for around a year and a half. I finally talked Grandma into giving me the computer, which I still have. On the first boot(in 1.5 years), I got a LOUD system(jet engine, anyone), and no video. Reboot. Still no video. I pop open the side, and I get dust balls, dust clumps, and dust everything SCREAMING at me, "GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!" You should've seen it. It was NASTY. I got some canned air and started blowing dust out. A HUGE dust cloud resulted from that. I put the side back on, booted it, and VIDEO!!!!! There were more problems. First, there was the issue that the computer was running so hot. Next, there was the fact that it sounded like a jet engine at takeoff. Also, I had not a clue what the password was. I later cleaned out the heatsink at the time I was going to change the thermal paste on the CPU. The heatsink's vents were PACKED FULL of dust. I wish I would've taken photos. After cleaning the heatsink and changing thermal paste, the noise and temperature issues had been solved. The password issue? I fixed that by wiping the 300GB HDD in the system and installing Windows XP MCE 2005 on the computer via recovery media. I took that computer apart countless times, so I know it forwards, backwards, and inside out. It still runs to this day. 😀 Sorry for the wall of text.