6 ms·
The midrange computer dies
- wyldfire 11y ago> What it adds up to for me is that midrange PCs are dead. Yeah, I might even go as far to say: it's mostly just smartphones, laptops, and servers now. ESR admits as much: ", except that [my high-end PC] is really more like a baby supercomputer"
- zyxley 11y agoAt this point, basically the only reason for a normal person to get a desktop rather than a laptop or a big-screened all-in-one is if they want a big graphics card. Even that's starting to go away with systems like the Razer Core. The only thing holding back more external enclosures is that most laptop hardware makers haven't embraced the idea yet.
- digi_owl 11y agoI do wonder if the licensing cost have been an issue there. Also, USB-C makes it easier to fit into the design.
- AnthonyMouse 11y agoI think all-in-ones are generally still considered desktops. And they have the disadvantage that when the hardware fails you have to discard the entire device instead of only the part that failed, which is becoming more important as hardware doesn't have to be replaced for being too slow as often anymore. The traditional format also allows you to use the big monitor for multiple devices, e.g. if you have a PC and a laptop dock or a fast PC and a Mac mini for OS X testing etc.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago"And they have the disadvantage that when the hardware fails you have to discard the entire device instead of only the part that failed, which is becoming more important as hardware doesn't have to be replaced for being too slow as often anymore. " BOOM! That and greater hardware customization are where desktops and servers have a benefit at all price ranges.
- takno 11y agoI'd definitely be tempted to just dump that computer into a cupboard and remote into it from the laptop
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- fezz 11y agoThe exception being content creation needing graphics horsepower and for the near future, the requirements from VR headsets like Vive and Rift.
- _JamesA_ 11y agoConfusing title. For a second I thought IBM was discontinuing the AS/400 / iSeries / IBM i midrange[1] systems. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer
- gizmo385 11y agoI didn't find it particularly confusing. I feel as though most people would take "midrange computer" to be what the author intended. Might just be projecting my own ignorance of the IBM systems however.
- mindcrime 11y agoThe term "midrange computer" to me is more synonymous with "minicomputer" (ala AS/400, etc.) than it is with "desktop tower PC" or whatever. My guess would be that most people would interpret it the same way, given that "midrange systems" is a pretty established and well known term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer
- nickpsecurity 11y agoThat's what I thought he meant as mid-range in terms of price/performance is always relative and changing. Maybe I should've known better.
- taejo 11y ago> most people would interpret it the same way For most people, a computer is PC.
- StudyAnimal 11y agoThat was my immediate thought too, and I half expected to see 20 year old article. First thing I looked at was the date and I thought, "I wonder what this guy is writing about".
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- cloudjacker 11y ago2012 called. If you had disposable income that is.
- Jtsummers 11y ago> 2012 called. If you had disposable income that is. One of the points in the article, near the end. We've hit a crossover point where these small form factor computers are both cheap and capable, rather than one or the other.
- smoothgrips 11y ago> [T]he quality and design of recent Thinkpads has gone utterly to shit. The new keyboards are particularly atrocious. I've never owned a Thinkpad until recently. I purchased a Thinkpad T450s and I love it. I also think the keyboard is quite nice as well. Now I'm curious how the older Thinkpads were. Were they considerably better? Did I buy a bad product and not even know?
- neogodless 11y agoThe W540 has really awkwardly placed Ctrl and Fn keys, and the trackpad is terrible. Not sure what the timeline is between W520 and T450. But I do know that the W520s were the predecessor to the W540, and it didn't have all those issues.
- Retr0spectrum 11y agoThey aren't that bad compared to other brands, but compared to what they used to be, they are quite a bit worse. This is partly because travel distance has been reduced to make devices thinner, and also because of perplexing layout choices. Edit: I should probably point out that I was just talking about the keyboard here.
- tsm 11y agoYes, in my opinion the Thinkpad peaked somewhere around the T43 or the IBM-made T60 (which was also made by Lenovo). Good keyboard layout, travel distance, spring distance. Even silly stuff like the shape of the key and the precise type of plastic were somehow better. And everything apart from the keyboard was solid too. How many non-Macbooks can be picked up by any edge or corner? How many laptops have a metal hinge for the screen? A magnesium rollcage inside? Clever drains that divert water out of your keyboard and out holes on the bottom, all without damaging the electronics? Easily user-accessible battery, RAM, HDD…even more advanced components like the screen and the wifi card?
- PeCaN 11y agoPretty sure the T60 was designed and manufactured entirely by Lenovo but they had permission to use the IBM logo on it. Nobody makes laptops like IBM used to :-( I know they seem to strongly prefer low-volume high-margin industries but I really would like to see what they could do today.
- mynegation 11y agoIt died few years ago for me. I scrapped my big honking tower (I would not even call it desktop as the only logical place was the floor) and purchased: MBPr that works as an actual desktop computer if I am not on a trip, attached to Thunderbolt display, Synology NAS to store data, and small Linux computer for Linux-y server-y stuff precisely the paperbook size ESR describes.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoIf so, we should start seeing effects on pricing: as the volume of midrange computers drops, price goes up until it gets close enough to that of a high end computer. At which point people who would normally buy midrange computers (like us devs) end up buying $3000 Xeon workstations instead. Luckily, gamers are keeping the mid range market alive, and it seems quite likely that VR enthusiasts will ensure that it stays alive for a few more years.
- basch 11y agoIf you dont need gfx, you can still turn a 6th Gen NUC into a pretty "mid range" pc. (also the author of this post is wrong about the Intel NUC being fanless) i7 NUC - http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7kyk-features-configurations.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7kyk... NVME SSD - http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/ssd950pro/overview.html http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisit... 32GB DDR4 - http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-memory-32gb-2x16gb-ddr4-sodimm-2133mhz-c15-memory-kit-cmso32gx4m2a2133c15 http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-memory-32gb-2x16gb-ddr4...
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- vanattab 11y agoWhen I was buying some NUCs for a project at work I am pretty sure I saw a few diffrent models some with passive cooling and some with fans.
- basch 11y agoall the ones i have taken apart have a fan in the lid.
- baobrien 11y agoHell, if you really wanted gfx, that thing's got a thunderbolt port.
- Impossible 11y agoThis statement is wrong for a large class of users This is more power than a typical desktop user would know what to do with, by a pretty large margin -absurd overkill for just running an office suite or video editing or gaming or whatever. His "Great Beast of Malvern" custom computer (http://www.catb.org/esr/hardware.html http://www.catb.org/esr/hardware.html) is under powered for high end gaming and doesn't meet Virtual Reality minimum specs (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-requirements http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-require...). It is fair to argue that gaming, and especially VR or 4K gaming is a niche market that isn't a relevant consideration in his arguments, but he does explicitly mention desktop computers as overkill for gaming.
- GauntletWizard 11y agoThe only thing he's missing is a graphics card, and that's because his use case is different (it would be easy to plop in). High end workstations and High end gaming are identical except for that. My rig (with very close specs to his, plus a 980TI) runs my Rift just fine.
- Impossible 11y agoYou helped prove my point by mentioning that he could easily make his machine VR ready by buying a $600 GPU for a workstation he already considers overkill :).
- bryanlarsen 11y agoHe needs to replace a $550 card (7950 price when he bought it) with a $300 card (GTX 970 current price).
- bryanlarsen 11y agoAn AMD 7950 was the high end card when his computer was built, and is only ~20% slower than the minimum recommendation. It should run most VR games just fine.
- adolph 11y agoNot exactly a counterpoint, but maybe a more interesting vantage: http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoEric Raymond writes: "fast memory access to extremely large data sets (as in, surgery on large version-control repositories)" and I'm wondering just how "extremely large" these things are.
- psadauskas 11y agoThe last couple years he's been blogging about converting old open source CSV repositories (FreeBSD, etc...) to git. Here's a post where he talks briefly about FreeBSD being 18GB, and GCC being > 32GB: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6830 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6830
- slededit 11y agoPretty small compared to a lot of proprietary repos.
- oxide 11y agonot everyone keeps a tower PC as a workstation, and there are other uses for a tower PC besides "mailserver." many people purchase desktop PC's because they are best bang for your buck when it comes to building a PC specifically for gaming. this article screams "out of touch" in the worst way possible. just because your tower can be replaced by a raspberry pi doesn't spell the death of midrange desktop PCs. in fact, that's an ignorant thing to say. full stop. as long as PC gaming exists, there will always be a market for midrange power in a tower.
- bencollier49 11y agoWhen I hear "Midrange Computer" I think IBM iSeries. Was briefly confused by this article.
- kjs3 11y agoYup...I immediately thought "Really? Someone is predicting the final demise of the AS/400? Like someone has every year for the last 20 or so?".