Reject Convenience Forum

hi guys, ive had my gaming laptop for 4 years now, i run it on windows 10 with a windows vista custom skin(open shell, windows blinds, etc), but i dont really use it for anything else other than running my wii/3ds homebrew programs or league of legends (which i can play in my work macbook pro)
should i sell it and buy an old vaio windows vista/7 laptop and connect it to a vcr monitor? or would a desktop windows xp computer be better?

Hey cibergotika!

I don’t know if anyone can say what you should do, but my first question would be “why?”
And my second question would be “what’s your goal for doing so?” If you have a working computer, why would you sell it to buy another, older computer? Devoid of any other context, that seems inherently wasteful—I would argue “making what you have work” to be a better goal (not to mention saving you the hassle of selling a thing and buying a different thing )

Another consideration would be “can an old Vaio even run the thing you want to use it for? I know from experience that Wii emulation definitely requires resources that I wouldn’t expect an old laptop to have.

My suggestion? Keep your laptop, and if you want to play games on an old CRT from it, find an old CRT and an HDMI > RCA converter.

There's nothing really stopping you from playing retro games on modern hardware. Most games made during the Windows Vista era and later will run fine on Windows 10 and 11. Many games from before that time will also work fine, but may need workarounds or mods. You can alternatively just run these games in a virtual machine, which i guess also makes the experience more retro or whatever. Having powerful hardware also helps for emulating with enhancements, like more detailed textures and a higher render resolution. Retro hardware is cool, but can be a pain to deal with, especially in the long run as it begins to fail and replacement parts get less common.