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That’s fine, nobody said you’re wrong, but you are increasingly a minority, and the economics of scale are not working in your favour. This is not backed up by
by danieldk 11y ago
That’s fine, nobody said you’re wrong, but you are increasingly a minority, and the economics of scale are not working in your favour.
This is not backed up by any facts. First of all, the graph shows desktop PC shipments. Laptop shipments haven't drastically changed:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-forecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-f...
Secondly, the other logical explanation is that most machines of the last five years are still fast enough for general purpose operating systems. So, people are simply upgrading far less often.
The other outcome is the developer PC continues to exist, in an increasingly rarified (and expensive) form as workstations migrate to the economies of scale that drive server chip sets.
Or the same cheap processors that run embedded devices simply become fast enough to handle normal desktop workloads. So, why would they be more expensive? The Raspberry Pi will probably be good enough as a modest development workstation in a couple of iterations at 30 Euro. Heck, some people do their work on Chromebooks running Crouton.
I don't think hardware is the problem. Every kid will be able to afford some device to start tinkering. More worrisome is the move away from general purpose operating systems to walled gardens, plus reliance on proprietary web applications. For this reason, we need a flourishing Linux/BSD/FLOSS ecosystem.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoI wish I could up vote you more than once.
- StavrosK 11y ago> worrisome is the move away from general purpose operating systems to walled gardens And, on the other end, open hardware is absolutely booming with computers that cost less than shipping. I hope to see open software and hardware flourishing even more as this trend continues.
- tbrownaw 11y agoYeah. My desktop at home is from January 2010 (the only part I've replaced is the early-generation SSD that went bad). My work computer -- that I also do software development on -- is a laptop with a docking station. Raspberry Pi is fast enough to use in "teach kids programming" workshops, and cheap enough to have the attendees take them home after. . My 2 year old phone has a crack in the corner of the screen, and sometimes gets confused about if/where I'm touching it. Plus it sounds like Project Fi doesn't work with it, which I take to imply there's something outdated about its radio. There's a good chance I'll be upgrading as the cell service market shakes itself out a bit more.