Hardware

I have used one for heavy production till last year (i5 7200U) and it was slow but could manage coding and CAD. I am using one for personal use nowadays (8th gen i3, running Fedora), it is also very much fine.

For heavy workloads you definitely need more juice nowadays, but with the right software they are still fine. Windows getting bloated doesn’t help at all, I moved mine to Linux for this reason.

Imo dual cores still fine depending on what you’re using it for, having a good SSD is more important.

Dual cores chug a lot even in basic tasks like using a browser or opening the file explorer. I would recommend 4 cores minimum.

A major problem with them is that most dual core chips floating around lack 4k h.264 hardware decode. So it's easy to basically bring the computer to its knees by selecting the wrong thing on YouTube. The lack of modern video codec decode in general in MOST dual cores tends to make these computers frustrating for the modern internet.

Generally, they obviously aren't fast and I'd generally recommend an upgrade, but the computers are perfectly usable. Especially if you just want to use an old laptop with a nice screen and keyboard for something like writing. It's hilariously more important to have an SSD than it is to have a quad core.

You would want to run a lightweight linux distribution like lubuntu. It's basically your only choice. Win11 will bring dual core machines to their knees.

I have a MacBook Air 15 M2, and a piece of shit expensive Dell Inspiron. I have a couple of desktops with pretty high-end CPUs and GPUs too.

But I also have a 2012 Thinkpad X220, that I use quite a lot. It cost me $75 plus another $100 for upgrades. It’s great for Linux on-the-go. Decent battery life (much better than the 2020 Dell), fast enough, small, and cheap enough to not have to worry about it getting stolen.

I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 15 5555 for college. (Visual Studio 2022, VSCode, Microsoft Office and a bit of light gaming (Geometry Dash, Minecraft, Terraria, ADOFAI and others)) It works surprisingly well. The only problem is the battery and the fact that I could have gotten something better for the price but i was in a hurry. It uses a I5 6200u, 12GB of LPDDR3 (idk why the guy who sold it put that), a 500GB SSD and it even supports Windows Hello

My father still daily drives a Compaq Presario which must be around 17 yo. Mostly a Linux machine, because W10 maxes the Core 2 T5500 (iirc) out just idling.

If it has Hyperthreading then you can still boot up any game. If it doesn't, it's still good enough for web browsing, and other basic stuff.

Dual-cores are starting to struggle with more modern software that assumes a lot of cores and processes. Back when dual-core was introduced there was much more of a leaning towards multi-threading which is often better on older machines.

These older machines have lower disk I/O too so modern programmers assume faster standards and can be sloppier through complacency.

Both of these things are forgotten when people analyze Linux distros and the like by focusing primarily on RAM.

usable? Sure

Would i want to use one? Not when i could find a dirt cheap quad core (or better) used laptop.

For light usage (web browsing, word docs, email,etc) modern dualcores are more than enough

I have a early 2015 MacBook Pro I use for college at home I have a nice gaming rig but the mac is the only laptop I have and it’s a dual core i5 and it’s more than fine for some tasks I might need to remote into my home pc like using any kinda of vm that’s isn’t Linux or Android studio but for light programming in vs code is more than fine the 8gb of ram hurt it more than the dual core cpu.

It's not a dual core but I just upgraded my grandfather from a Phenom II X4 925 (2.8GHz) to a Phenom II X6 1055T (2.8GHz turbo to 3.3GHz). Even he noticed the performance boost. The system already had an SSD but it boots faster and loads programs and web pages faster. All he does is craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and a few other sites. So I'd say the extra cores help these days.

I have an 8th gen intel i3 laptop and it does fine for light browsing and media consumption. But I'm a heavy browser (lots of tabs, never ending reddit with images and videos expanded etc.) and it becomes sluggish before too long.

I still use a dual core MacBook Pro from 2013 for simple browsing. I have much more powerful computer for work and video games. But the old laptop is just fine for a couch computer.

I still have a dual core (with hyperthreading) in my laptop, and it's totally functional. Nobody would accuse it of being fast, but it's certainly usable.

Lol... Look at this topic... Where did you live in Brazil? In most remote place in Amazon jungle? I don't use dual core laptops since mid 2000's. You can argue that hardware is expensive here... But not that expensive. Even my 9 yo son have a barely decent laptop (4c/4t with 12gb ram).

Depends on what you're doing with it. I have an old Dell laptop I picked up for dirt cheap running a dual core i7-4600U and 16GB of RAM and it works great under Linux. I use it for web browsing and light programming because of its small size and it works great, hardly any slowdowns.

Laptops no, they're too restricted in clocks. My third PC's 5ghz G3258 purrs in Linux Mint though

I daily drive t450 i5 5300u to this day.

I swapped ssd, 8gb ram 4x4 dual channel, and it has windows 10 on it.

I can basically do every light tasks without much of discomfort. It is slower than modern pcs obviously but It is fast enough to google search and watch youtube.

When I bought T450(like 5-6 years ago), general consensus was that do not get the Haswell 4th gen 22nm intel cpu or below.

5th 6th and 7th gens are 14nm and has better power efficiency and way better igpu performance that it was a huge jump for the laptops. (Desktop was different as 2th~4th gen could push more mhz and rival 5~7th gen by feeding more power)

I can’t remember well but it was $250 refurbished when I got it from the best buy and it is like $180 now on amazon and walmart.

I would recommend this for any kids or older folks who doesn’t know much about Pc. Old Thinkpads are made like tanks, it just won’t break. But if you are any techie person, just buy modern day thinkpads.

I watched someone in Cuba photo editing with probably a super old version of photoshop on windows XP. If you have the money get an m series mac. Even the base model makes the competition look idiotic.

But if you have a budget. I would get a used one and just upgrade the internal drive.

You would be amazed by what people can pull off with older gear

My parents still use a 7th gen Intel dual core laptop.

It is not the fastest machine, but YouTube, generally Internet Browser works just fine. Excel, Word etc is no problem.

The screen is 720p but for them it is still fine.

Yes I still use a 2013 MacBook air lol

There’s a lot of old field laptops in my workspace using dual core intel 3rd Gen to 7th Gen that are fine. Wouldn’t describe them as great but they don’t have any problems. I also personally use a surface book for casual use with a skylake dual core i5, and it’s starting to get a little slow, but not awful yet. I wouldn’t go buy a new one today though. But if you already have one, I wouldn’t throw it out.

I have a i3-10110U and it's good for basic usage (ms office, light programming, web browsing).

I'd like to point out that the number of cores by itself is rarely the issue. Rather it's how old the cores are. Two more modern cores could outperform four older cores.

I have an old Thinkpad with an AMD E-350 CPU, and I consider that not very usable (could be used in a pinch, but it's certainly not fun to use). My Dell XPS 13 with a i5-6200U is still usable.

Regarding RAM, 8GB is still perfectly usable for light use.

I got a Lenovo T460 with 8GB and i5 6300U 2C4T for my mother and it's still perfectly fine for web browsing and youtube 1080p

I analysed data for my thesis in computational biophysics mostly using an i5-5200U laptop. With enough ram and an ssd they're still more than usable. Without windows sucking out resources even more so.

Still running my old thinkpad that is 2c/4t on Linux just fine. Ssd is important and avoiding bloated Windows revived that thing.

Nothing more than basic office work, basic web browsing.

Even video playback is tough on old chips because they don't support newer codecs like H265 and AV1, so by default anything over 720p on youtube will struggle and you ll need H264ify extension to enable the old h264 streaming codec that they support.

Personally, i'd rather buy a modern midrange/low end android tablet, +BT keyboard/mouse. People forget to mention that old laptops typically had garbage 720p screens and speakers and run with 4GB RAM and dead slow hard drive. You won't be able to install modern windows anyway, and they run even worse after doing all the security updates on them.

You'd have to have a very specific usecase to use an old dual core x86 laptop running windows 7 or lower rather than pick a modern low end Android tablet. Windows 11 would run ok with just 2 cores of the newest Zen4 and Raptor Lake architectures that would be better than 6core laptops back in the day, but you don't have modern cores in those dual core laptops. You have garbage in today's standards.

It all depends on your usage, for personal use, surfing, typing etc. etc. it's perfectly fine.
Where you can hit problems is with newer games, CAD, animations and stuff like that.

If you do not do gaming(or at least not games who needs high specs) or other "heavy" stuff, don't sweat it.

depends.... dual core "core 2 duo" struggles with 1080p youtube, while dual core i5-4xxx (laptop) which is dual core and ht works 1080p quite well

For browsing and text editing , spreadsheets , remote desktop they are still quite allright.

And even occasional game of Doom or Wolfenstein !

I have a duo core laptop with a 7th gen intel CPU. Speed is fine for what I do with it, but I'm considering upgrading because the battery life is awful and lenovo messed up the thunderbolt so they get corrupted after a couple years.

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.

My laptop is a Lenovo 12-inch Thinkpad X270. It was only bought last year because I desperately needed a laptop and didn't have much money for it. The CPU is a Core i5-6300U, 8 GB of RAM, two 256 GB SSDs and the FHD touchscreen. At home it is connected to a Lenovo Ultra Dock and a 29" widescreen. Ubuntu / Windows 10 dual boot.

I'm using one for watching videos, mails, studying and coding (just basic webdev stuff). The apps I'm mostly using right now besides the usual stuff are Pro Tools, IntelliJ IDEA and Webstorm, so not just super light stuff, I'd say. The fans are pretty much always running, which doesn't really bother me. For watching videos...Anything beyond 1080p gets choppy.

Ubuntu generally feels a bit more responsive than Windows, but Windows is perfectly usable IMO.

Is it perfect? No. I'd rather have a current gen Lifebook if I had the choice. But it's definitely not as bad and unusable as I've read in other posts. I might have to upgrade eventually, but at this point in time I see little reason to get anything better.

If it's basic use, yes it's usable

Yes, dual-core laptops are still usable in 2023. I use one as a secondary pc beside my desktop. It's an older Lenovo Ideapad and has a 2C/4T Intel i3 8th gen. It does just fine in web browsing, simple programming, office apps and video playback. Even running Windows 11 and with a 1920x1080p screen I have no issues with the performance for everyday tasks.

Would I buy one today? Probably not, personally I'd like to have a higher buffer in performance.

I replaced my gaming laptop some time ago with an ultrabook that has an i3 10110U. The lightest task I use the laptop for is browsing the web. The heaviest task is using it as a real-time effect processor for my guitar. Dual core CPUs are still perfectly viable, depending on individual needs.