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Hold on to Your Hardware

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411–420 of 559 posts

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just launched a $600 amazing laptop and the top models have massive performance. What are we talking about here?

8GB isn't an "amazing" laptop, it's a budget laptop . It's also thermally constrained quite a bit, so not even as "amazing" as it could be.

The point about Apple is that everyone from zoom, slack etc will be forced to optimize for that 8GB. (Same like getting rid of awful flash player).

Many a people need only a basic device for Netflix, YouTube, google docs or email or search/but flights tickets. That will be amazing.

Many have job supplied laptop/desktop for great performance (made rubbish by AV scanners but that's different issue)

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#412
post #401
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is that phone hardware will be used more and more in mini PCs and laptops keeping the cost down and volume up. We see it with Apple and many Chinese mini PC makers I looked at.

The original Raspberry Pi was built around an overstock phone chip. Modern alternatives built around Rockchip and similar high-end phone chips venture into the territory of lower-end laptops. Aliexpress is full of entry-level laptops based on ARM phone chips (apparently running Android). This will likely extend further and further, more into the "normie" territory. MS Windows is, of course, the thing that keeps many…

No, a set-top-box chip.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just launched a $600 amazing laptop and the top models have massive performance. What are we talking about here?

but I don't want a $600 amazing laptop, i want a powerful desktop x86 machine with loads of ram and disk space. As cheap as it was a couple of years ago.

x86 going away wouldn't be surprising. Ignoring David Patterson was a mistake to begin with.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading some of the doomer comments in this thread feels like taking a glimpse into a different world. We're out here with amazing performance in $600 laptops that last all day on battery and half of this comment section is acting like personal computing is over.

Personal computing and IBM PC clones are not the same thing. The fall of PC clones can happen while other personal computing devices continue to be produced. The $600 laptop is not a PC.

Apple laptops are PCs (Personal Computers). They are not IBM PCs. But IBM hasn't made PCs in years, and there hasn't been any IBM PC hardware to clone in years.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#415

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Expanding renewables to the easily replaceable items like power plants, generators, and most consumer vehicles would radically reduce oil usage to where it becomes a minor concern. Also things like biodiesel exist. A more sustainable, renewable-forward, electrified reality is easily possible. There is not a risk of resource shortage of copper. The doomer and prepper talking points you're parroting are not based in re…

The risk of copper shortage is a very well know fact https://press.spglobal.com/2026-01-08-Substantial-Shortfall-... You're into renewables, yet you can't grasp the fact that resources are limited on this planet ? That's peculiar. And I don't even understand your other points to be honest. What do you mean "consumer vehicles" ? Are you taking about individual's cars ? I'm not taking about that, these don't matter tha…

It makes sense that you don't understand the other points. Based on how you approach conversation, I suspect it's an issue you run into frequently.

Look up what it means to have a conversation in "good faith" vs in "bad faith" and you might learn something useful about conversation tools. For example, lying about what someone says and calling it "peculiar" is "bad faith".

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#416

This may not be entirely appropriate to the reasons behind the article, but it feels tangentially related: I'd like to say a brief thank you to what the brief, golden period of globalisation was able to bring us. I hope that that level of international trade and economic cooperation across geographical, ideological, political, and religious boundaries can be achieved again at some point in the future, but it seems th…

> I'd like to say a brief thank you to what the brief, golden period of globalisation was able to bring us.

Not everyone benefited. Market globalism wasn't particularly kind to the global south, and the specific mandates that the WTO enacted on countries in latin america / africa (Washington Consensus) greatly increased local wealth disparities despite visibly growing GDP for a time.

America profited handsomely because for most of the past 30 years, it was where the (future) transnational conglomerates were based. These companies stood to benefit from the opening up of international markets. Now that these companies are being out-competed by their asian counterparts, instead of going back to the drawing board and innovating they are playing the "unfair trade practices" card and of course the current administration is on-board with it.

Globalisation is not going anywhere, but America is increasingly alienating itself from allies who it could stand to benefit from.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rarely doge a chance to shit on Microslop and its horrible products, but you don't use a browser? In fact, running all that junk in a single chromium instance is quite a memory saver compared to individual electron applications.

I kind of hate how the www has become this lowest common denominator software SDK. Web applications are almost always inferior to what you could get if you had an actual native application built just for your platform. But we end up with web apps because web is more convenient for software developers and it's easier to distribute. Everything is about developer convenience. We're also quickly running out of software d…

Yeah it's awful. Web apps are slower, they don't integrate well with the system, they are inaccessible if the network is down. A native app has to be truly abysmal to be worse than a web app. But far too many developers simply do not care about making something good any more. There's no pride in one's work, just "web is easier for the developer". And of course the businesses producing software are all about that, because they are run by people with a business ethic of "make the product as cheaply as possible, ignore quality". It's a very sad state of affairs.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#418
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I personally dropped $20k on a high end desktop" This absolutely boggles my mind. Do you mind if I ask what type of computing you do in order to justify this purchase to yourself?

I'm thinking the same. My total computing purchases in the last 25 years, including desktops, laptops, monitors, phones, and tablets is way under 20k. I would bet it continues to be more affordable to buy reasonable specs with current consumer hardware, rather than buying a top system once.

I haven't purchased a new computer in, at least, 10 years. I take pride (i.e., I have a sickness) in purchasing used laptops off eBay, beefing them up, and loading Debian on them. My two main computers are a Dell E5440 and a Lenovo ThinkPad T420. I, too, am a software developer, but [apparently] not as much of a rock star software developer at this gentleman. :-D

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#419
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't usage, it's waste. Every byte of RAM that's used unnecessarily because of bloated software frameworks used by lazy devs (devs who make the same arguments you're making) is a byte that can't be used by the software that actually needs it, like video editing, data processing, 3D work, CAD, etc. It's incredibly short sighted to think that any consumer application runs in a vacuum with all system resource…

I dunno man, I have 32gb and I'm totally fine playing games with 50 browser tabs open along with discord and Spotify and a bunch of other crap. In not trying to excuse crappy developers making crappy slow ad wasteful apps, I just don't think electron itself is the problem. Nor do I think it's a particularly big deal if an app uses some memory.

Lazy developers can make bad apps that waste RAM no matter what framework. But even conscientious developers cannot make an app with Electron that compares favorably to a native app. Electron is inherently a problem, even if it isn't the only one.

Re: Hold on to Your Hardware

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just launched a $600 amazing laptop and the top models have massive performance. What are we talking about here?

Reading some of the doomer comments in this thread feels like taking a glimpse into a different world. We're out here with amazing performance in $600 laptops that last all day on battery and half of this comment section is acting like personal computing is over.

Two different populations — those interested in computing, and those interested in computers.
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