5 ms·

Yeah, yeesh. So I'm in the market for an ultrabook and eventhough I had 8 GB of ram in my desktop over a frigging decade ago there still exist laptops with less

by tjoff 7y ago

Yeah, yeesh. So I'm in the market for an ultrabook and eventhough I had 8 GB of ram in my desktop over a frigging decade ago there still exist laptops with less than 16 GB today. Not only that, the cheapest 16 GB model is over a $1000 more expensive because now I must have an i7 and everything else. And no, not even with 16GB will I tolerate what slack uses even with their new version. Yes, I do consider upgrading the ram myself by replacing the soldered ram-chips. And do not for a second imagine I'm doing that so that I can send text messages@!

harryh 7y ago
The difference between an 8GB macbook air and a 16GB maxbook air is $200, not $1000. Lot's more options in PCs obviously, but 2 minutes of googling found a 16GB XPS13 $580 more than the 8GB version. Again, not $1000. I'm sure with slightly more searching there are cheaper options as well.
- tjoff 7y ago
  Yeah, as said the problem isn't just the ram price it's whatever else you might need to buy to get it. But 580 is also pretty darn depressing for 8GB. For reference I bought 64GB for my workstation for less than $400 a few years ago. And that's with 25% sales tax.
  - dijit 7y ago
    This isn’t a fair comparison. Desktop memory is cheaper, laptop manufacturers are rent seeking with upgrades normally, and with soldered memory they have free reign. It’s true that often the upgrades are bundled, ie; can’t get 16GiB without an i7. But I think that’s fairly rare at least. As for 16GiB, there’s a hard limit there for LPDDR3, and intel CPUs do not support LPDDR4 yet. Oh, and another thing regarding cost, there were some issues a long time ago with the factories producing them, which is why the price is still high, maybe artificially. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-entire-computer-industry-ran-out-of-memory https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-...
    - tjoff 7y ago
      Wasn't meant to be an apple to apple comparison. Just a reference. But it does kind of illustrate just how bad of a fit electron apps are. Well, the biggest point of soldered ram has always been to be able to recoup costs by denying people to buy ram from someone else. Even in the old days it was much cheaper to buy 2 GB of ram and then upgrade to 4 GB than buying it with 4 GB in the first place.

by tjoff 7y ago

harryh 7y ago

The difference between an 8GB macbook air and a 16GB maxbook air is $200, not $1000. Lot's more options in PCs obviously, but 2 minutes of googling found a 16GB XPS13 $580 more than the 8GB version. Again, not $1000. I'm sure with slightly more searching there are cheaper options as well.

tjoff 7y ago
Yeah, as said the problem isn't just the ram price it's whatever else you might need to buy to get it. But 580 is also pretty darn depressing for 8GB. For reference I bought 64GB for my workstation for less than $400 a few years ago. And that's with 25% sales tax.
- dijit 7y ago
  This isn’t a fair comparison. Desktop memory is cheaper, laptop manufacturers are rent seeking with upgrades normally, and with soldered memory they have free reign. It’s true that often the upgrades are bundled, ie; can’t get 16GiB without an i7. But I think that’s fairly rare at least. As for 16GiB, there’s a hard limit there for LPDDR3, and intel CPUs do not support LPDDR4 yet. Oh, and another thing regarding cost, there were some issues a long time ago with the factories producing them, which is why the price is still high, maybe artificially. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-entire-computer-industry-ran-out-of-memory https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxb35/the-year-that-the-...
  - tjoff 7y ago
    Wasn't meant to be an apple to apple comparison. Just a reference. But it does kind of illustrate just how bad of a fit electron apps are. Well, the biggest point of soldered ram has always been to be able to recoup costs by denying people to buy ram from someone else. Even in the old days it was much cheaper to buy 2 GB of ram and then upgrade to 4 GB than buying it with 4 GB in the first place.