this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Hey, recently I've been browsing r/thinkpad alot and have been a part of the ThinkPad craze. I've noticed that lots of people, especially on that subreddit, still use Dual-Core CPUs, and deem them as more than capable, or enough.
I've been in the US for almost 5 years now, but I used to live in Brazil back in 2019. I've never owned a laptop with a quad-core CPU if I'm not mistaken, and I don't think I've ever had more than 8GB of RAM (except on a Desktop) before moving here. I've grown accustomed to having a decent laptop, and desktop while living here, as well as a up-to-date phone, etc.

I'm curious to know what are people's thought on older CPUs and usability of older hardware. I currently own a laptop with an i7 6th gen, which is Dual-Core and 8gbs and it really doesn't get any attention, be it for watching youtube or doing online, browser-related study or just reddit browsing.

I couldn't really picture myself using anything that doesn't have 16GB Ram, and 4 cores, and preferably not freezing or having slowdowns, but after considering moving back to Brasil, and knowing the situation, especially for tech, since everything is harder to obtain and wayy more expensive, I've started question myself how many people are still using dual-core systems, that are happy with it and don't see anything wrong with that.

I'd like to give the old X1 Carbon 4th gen another try and see how much my view could change. I know hardware has been getting a little cheaper in some ways and quad-core and higher CPUs have been popular for a few years, but I'm not sure that it's still accessible to everyone as I'd like to think.

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Thanks in advance!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I have a dual-core Haswell laptop (i5-4200U, Dell Latitude) with an SSD and 8GB of RAM and it still works fine for basic web browsing, programming assignments, watching videos at 720p and 1080p, etc. I've tried it with both Linux Mint 21 and Windows 10 and it's totally usable on each. The only thing I've noticed as a "problem" is that some heavy websites will take a couple extra seconds to render in the content, such as Youtube when scrolling through the main page.