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Heck, most people keep their laptops plugged in all the time and never use the battery (my parents are great examples of that, sitting and doing online shopping and social media while they watch TV) and of course mine stay plugged in as well. If I need real mobility I got tablets that work best there.

The batteries in these old machines are still working however, unlike any modern machine I've used that's either not allowing charging or has such hindered battery life that it's lucky to go 5 minutes before dying. Keep in mind that despite the spinning disk (which is working still, while an SSD has a finite lifespan and WILL fail, vs. the MIGHT of an older HDD--more disposability) and over decade-old battery I can still go an hour or two per charge. However, the only time I'm using the battery is when I'm engaged on a YouTube video and don't want to pause while I'm on the toilet or making dinner or doing laundry. They work great for that. Plus, they make for great UPSs for power outages so nothing is lost.

Sure, any modern system with an HDD will run Windows 10+ like utter garbage. That's another reason I stick to Windows 7 and never update my apps. The systems in question perform on par with a modern system with SSD.

How is a standard barrel plug that's been a thing for 30+ years proprietary? that's about as anti-proprietary as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Now USB-C with all the headaches it brings, broken standards, various other issues? that's proprietary.


As for the battery life, I was lucky to get 3 hours of video playback on the most modern laptop I own, which is a 2022 Lenovo IdeaPad 3 running Windows 11 with SSD. Thing always ran hot, even with little CPU usages and that crappy fan design had a lot to do with it. It wouldn't even run the fan at first then all of a sudden WHOOSH for another hour. It was the farthest thing from silent. Think fan of a MacBook Pro level of noise.
 
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