Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

idiallo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 401 posts

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#131

Post by Zoomla »

simonsarris wrote: post #96

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems. When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just…

you can use a wireless/usb mouse and keyboard with a laptop or [windows] tablet and its pretty close to a PC... you can also use an external monitor on many of them. PCs need to become the size of a raspberry pi, that's all.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#132

Post by solnyshok »

Mostly agree, however, I think there could be more upgrade waves for home PCs, triggered by some qualitative improvements in technology. My guess, once we have a reasonably powerful, totally silent (fanless, 512-1TB SSD), book sized desktop PC, maybe in 2-3 years from now, it might trigger wave of home PC upgrades. After that, who knows...

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#133

Post by dikei »

awef wrote: post #90
carterschonwald wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emphatic agreement. I wind up helping folks a lot with writing high performance software, and it's very easy to get to the point where the time to run a model is totally determined by how fast the CPU and IO are. I'm talking problems where naively written C would take an hour, but if I'm careful and use some blend of very clever c or Haskell, the computation is done in 2-5 minutes

What kind of problems are those? I would love to find problems, ultimately examples, where smart Haskell and c blends are superior to pure c.

It's not neccesarily which language is faster, but the which algorithm is faster. He said naively written C, which mean the algorithm may be entirely different and run in O(n2) and much slower than a Haskell version which use a different algorithm and run in O(nlogn).

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#134

Post by solnyshok »

johngalt wrote: post #124
simonsarris wrote: post #96

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems. When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just…

We would be better off steering into the skid. History has plenty of examples of people who've tried to hang onto the old ways 'because that's how I learned it'. The way forward isn't to try and keep cheap PCs viable for creativity's sake, but to ensure that creative desires are being met on the newer devices. Would I have learned memory management and dual booting if I'd had a tablet instead of a 386? Probably not.…

I do not disagree, just wanted to mention that nowadays it is still possible to learn multi-booting with Android tablets and custom ROMs

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#136

Post by Jakub77 »

justincormack wrote: post #108
simonsarris wrote: post #96

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems. When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just…

I would pay for a silent PC. I paid a lot for a quiet Apple PowerPC Mac pro back in the day and built a quiet PC but they are not silent and I have moved to a quieter place and I can hear them (yes the Mac runs Fedora now). I have some silent ARM machines but they don't quite cut it yet though maybe the new quad core one will.

https://store.tinygreenpc.com/tiny-green-pcs/intense-pc.html Very silent fanless pc. I have one and I am glad.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#137

Post by solnyshok »

Zak wrote: post #130
simonsarris wrote: post #96

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems. When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just…

When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just plain hard to be disappointed with anything new. That's exactly what I'm disappointed with on everything new. The Thinkpad T60p, from 2006 remains superior on both points to everything new from my point of view.

I also enjoy quite old laptop (HP2530p, 2009, 12", Core2 Duo 1.9GHz, sturdy, lightweight). I upgraded to 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. Plenty enough for the next couple of years, me thinks :) Perfectly runs W8.1/LinuxMint/Android-x86ICS

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#138

Post by null_ptr »

I disagree with "The top of the line smart-phone or tablet you own today will be obsolete by the end of 2014 if not earlier."

I will use my 2011 smart phone until it physically breaks. If a 1.2GHz device with a 300MHz GPU, 1280x720 screen, and 1GB of RAM can't make calls and do a decent job of browsing the web, that's a problem with today's software engineering, not with the hardware.

And if Google decides to doom my perfectly good device to planned obsolence, fuck them, I will put Ubuntu Touch of Firefox OS on it. The day of disposable mobiles is over, we have alternatives now just like we do on PCs.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#139

Post by colanderman »

simonsarris wrote: post #96

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems. When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just…

people do not need $2000 Facebook and email machines

I dunno, Facebook and GMail seem to get slower each month. They're unusably slow, even in Chrome on Windows, on both my and my wife's circa-2008 machines.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#140

Post by nollidge »

romaniv wrote: post #85
UVB-76 wrote: post #46

People snack on smartphones, dine on tablets, and cook on PCs. A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets. Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell for the PC.

Why cook when you can eat chips and order pizza? Probably because it's better for you and because cooking has cultural significance that goes beyond simply replenishing calories. People who cheerfully proclaim that PCs are dead forger that PCs aren't just devices, they also attained a certain level of cultural significance. IF the death of PCs also means the death of PC culture (which involves things like game moddin…

That stuff is never going away. "Death of PCs" doesn't mean the complete disappearance of them, just their death as a dominant consumer item. Professionals and prosumers will never stop needing PCs, and they're the ones who constitute the groups you mentioned.
Post reply on HN