35 ms·

I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers

• ecpottinger 6y ago
  I notice the lack of user input/output options. USB requires you to jump thru hoops to use it and does not give the constance bandwidth I got with older ports that the CPU could bit-bang. Today I have multi-GigaHertz machines that I can't build the simple projects that I could use with my Amigas because I have no way to interface directly to the buss. The latency of what present computer supplies is horrible.
  • lukehutch 6y ago
    These days the standard way to do this is to use a USB UART adapter, or a USB-connected Arduino, an Ethernet-connected Raspberry Pi, etc. -- they have GPIO ports, both analog and digital, as well as I2C, SPI, etc etc. There are enormous numbers of options for motor controllers and sensors available off the shelf. You can bit bang all you want from your desktop computer, via this interface!
    • ecpottinger 6y ago
      The problem is the bandwidth you get from such solutions. I could push 3.5 megabytes per second thru my Amiga interface, the USB->RS232 limits me to about 32 kilobytes per second.
  • jeffbee 6y ago
    Hrmm. My latest PC motherboard has the usual 2x 16550 UARTs and a wealth of other headers for various serial protocols. The optional BMC board for same has a ridiculous abundance of GPIOs, too. And a parallel port on a PCIe stick costs $20. It seems like the bit-banging abilities of these current PCs are as good as they ever were.
• bigpoppa 6y ago
  mac pro 5,1 with a few upgrades does the trick
• geocrasher 6y ago
  From the article: "What worries me as much as the end of general-purpose computing for the masses is that so few seem to understand that it is ending." Correction: Has Ended. The vast majority of people using computers has shifted to phones and tablets. I have a friend who's a millenial who barely knows how to use his desktop PC (It's a Mac) but is fluent on his iPad/iPhone. Most people are not content creators, they are consumers. The people who are still building their own PC's are mostly enthusiasts. There's no profit in building custom PC's anymore, so local computer shops aren't selling them (And if they are, it's at a hefty premium). The author of the article calls the 1980's the "Golden era" of personal computing. I disagree. Networked computing is an amazing thing, but it's also been monetized and now the consumers are the product being sold. And happily so. The outliers are those who buy pre-2012 computers so they can skip UEFI and are happy to live under their rocks to do it. That's okay with me. Personally I need a faster computer than that, so I'm stuck with UEFI and because W10 is the right OS for my needs, I'm stuck with it phoning home. This doesn't mean the golden age was in the 80's or 90's. It means that by the time we figured out how to make computing awesome, we also figured out how to make computing itself profitable, not just the computers. The golden age the could have been, never was.
  • benlivengood 6y ago
    Android is still general purpose. I have Termux if I need to compile and run something. I can sideload APKs. I run Windows on desktop for newer games, but quite a few work on my Ubuntu laptop too.
    • smitty1e 6y ago
      Unless your overlords benign be: "Nein!"
    • Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      Only if you root. General purpose computers can run alternative OSs.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
• boyadjian 6y ago
  I’ve always had desktop PCs at home, and I’ll always have. For me, a laptop PC has always been a complement to a desktop PC, not a replacement. My desktop PCs are sitting on the floor, so they don’t take up much space.
• moonchild 6y ago
  I don't understand the conflation of uefi with secure boot. Uefi can be independent of secure boot—I use uefi and have never enabled secure boot—the purpose of uefi was to consolidate definition and discovery of various bios-level APIs. Probing memory, setting video modes, and more; these things were poorly specified, and implementations frequently differed. Uefi is huge and overengineered, but it's still a definite improvement.
  • aksss 6y ago
    You can of course leave secure boot disabled in UEFI, but you can’t run secure boot with BIO, to my knowledge. That’s why the association - if you want SB, use UEFI.
    • marmaduke 6y ago
      > if you want SB, use UEFI Not sure I've ever seen anyone wanting secure boot. what is it actually good for aside from generating searches for Google when you have to figure out how to circumvent it?
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        In theory, if a rootkit gets installed on the system, having Secure Boot enabled would prevent it from running.
      • vel0city 6y ago
        I prefer to use Secure Boot when it makes sense. It completely shuts down lots of incredibly hard to detect forms of malware. Its nice knowing the boot environment is exactly as I intended and hasn't changed.
      • easton 6y ago
        It makes sure that someone didn’t boot into another OS on my laptop and try to decrypt BitLocker, since BitLocker will hard lock if the secure boot keystore is fiddled with or if a USB drive is booted from.
      • 6y ago
• jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Over the last 10 years or so I have transitioned to having two big desktops, one at work and one at home, with with a large dropbox folder keeping them in sync. I found I just never needed to carry a laptop with me and could get better price / performance in desktop. I do get a little nervous being without a computer when I'm on holiday 5-6 times a year, but in 25 years I've never actually had to do any emergency work while on holiday. I think the risk is very small.
  • marmaduke 6y ago
    Did you get work to pay for both of those? I like the prospect a lot but not sure I could bring home something newer than 2014 in that scenario.
    • jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I'm a consultant and provide my own tools, but I'm well paid and $5k for a few computers that will last a long time is a fairly minor expense.
• avalys 6y ago
  I don't understand what the author is concerned about. Are there PC laptops being sold today on which you are prohibited from installing Linux because of UEFI / Secure Boot?
  • smabie 6y ago
    I don't understand it either. Probably some obscure moral stance that no one besides him cares about.
  • wmf 6y ago
    No. He's fallen for some scaremongering.
  • Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    There was once a time while windows RT still existed and microsoft had a requirement that it must not be possible to disable secure boot. There is also the T2 chip on macbooks which currently does this.
    • avalys 6y ago
      The T2 boot loader lock can be disabled by an Apple-provided utility.
• smabie 6y ago
  I much prefer desktops and don't even own a laptop at the moment, but what's with the fixation on UEFI? I'm not well versed in the technical differences between BIOS and UEFI, but I don't think it really matters? All these people like Richard Stallman and this guy make their lives harder as a method of virtue signaling. I'm convinced they get off on the masochism of making their life hard for the sake of "freedom." Meanwhile, the rest of us just want to get work done: my Arch Linux desktop that boots with UEFI is functionally identical to one that boots with BIOS. So.. really, who cares?
  • 0df8dkdf 6y ago
    https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/HTG-EXPLAINS-HOW-UEFI-WILL-REPLACE-THE-BIOS/ https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/HTG-EXPLAINS-HOW-UEFI-WILL-R... Seems like UEFI make sense, as it is agreed upon by all large vendors like Intel, Apple, MS.
  • aksss 6y ago
    UEFI has more capabilities than BIOS, and is the go-forward standard. You may see functional parity on your workstation simply because you aren’t using any of the UEFI features. UEFI can do what BIOS did, but BIOS can’t do what UEFI does (e.g. TPM chip, secure boot, and many other cool things).
  • mrkeen 6y ago
    > So.. really, who cares? Consider yourself lucky if you don't need to care. It's a mechanism to lock down a computer to only run "trusted" OSes. Who gets to decide which OSes are trusted? Does Arch have lobbyists? It's just one falling domino in a series of falling dominos, where maybe one day you don't get to run Arch anymore. This stuff really can go either way. People were allowed to record TV using VCRs in the 90s. Ripping CD Audio onto hard disks? Dunno. Copying DVDs & Blu-ray onto hard disks? Definitely not. What about running software on a phone? Better "jailbreak" it. > my Arch Linux desktop that boots with UEFI is functionally identical to one that boots with BIOS Stallman agrees with you that you don't get anything from UEFI: "This is not a security feature. This is abuse of the users. I think it ought to be illegal." He also made the claim, "Microsoft demands that ARM computers sold for Windows 8 be set up so that the user cannot change the keys; in other words, turn it into restricted boot." Crazy? > For logo-certified Windows RT 8.1 and Windows RT PCs, Secure Boot is required to be configured so that it cannot be disabled. > https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/disabling-secure-boot https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur... edit: Just thought of three more battles currently going on: * Oculus headsets now require Facebook logins. * youtube-dl just got blocked on GitHub * Iranians and GitLab
• libraryatnight 6y ago
  I'll never give up my desktop PC. Never. Pry it from my cold dead hands if you dare.
• ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  My main concern with desktops is that they’re much less power efficient than laptops, and therefore create a lot more heat in my office. Something like a Mac cheese grater is probably more power efficient than my custom built PC, but you lose a lot of the value going with a prebuilt system.
  • acdha 6y ago
    This is only slightly true: if you buy a well-designed system and don't disable power management, a desktop will use more power but not substantially so unless you're actually using that extra capacity. If you buy some massive gaming / ML rig, yes, that'll use a lot more but it's a lot closer if you buy a comparable capacity and quality system. The best way to see this is to buy a watt-meter and test it while doing what you normally do. Also remember that two decades ago you'd probably have had the computer _with_ a CRT sucking several hundred watts constantly, probably with some nice incandescent / halogen bulbs to keep things extra toasty, and a decade ago if you weren't using a Mac you probably had most of the power savings features disabled for system stability and/or compatibility. By now even the faster components have great power management when they're not fully loaded.
  • kaylynb 6y ago
    Not necessarily more power efficient. Modern desktop systems have quite good power management features. Depending on the workload, a device that consumes a lot of power but also goes into an idle state much faster could actually use less overall power.
  • eptcyka 6y ago
    Why do you think a well built desktop PC would be less power efficient? It's probably more power hungry, but I don't think desktop PCs use inherently more power per instruction executed or whatever arcane metric we'd be measuring. Modern desktops can clock up and down just as quick as their more mobile counterparts, and due to proper cooling, the same chip you have in a laptop would be more efficient in a desktop enclosure - the cooler a chip is, the more efficient it can be - higher temperatures necessitate more power to move a charge across a conduit.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  I prefer a desktop because: 1. I like big, big monitors. 2. I prefer a full size keyboard. 3. I prefer a separate mouse. 4. I prefer big freaking disk drives installed. 5. I put the desktop under my desk, and with a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, there is much less of a snarl on my desk. 6. The desktop has an optical drive I still use. 7. The desktop has lots of USB ports and they're all in use. 8. I can replace/alter parts of the machine without buying a new one. 9. Desktops are cheap. 10. I can build what I want with parts from newegg. Premade powerful computers are always "gaming machines" and I don't want a gaming machine that comes with a graphics adapter that sounds like a 747 taking off. 11. I want an all-metal case because a machine caught fire once. Edit: 12. My desktop doesn't have a microphone or camera, so they cannot be surreptitiously turned on remotely.
  • m463 6y ago
    There are no osha-approved laptops.
    • mrweasel 6y ago
      Pretty similar in other countries. Here you do in fact need an external monitor, because it's required to be height adjustable. Similarly you're not allowed to work without separate keyboard and mouse. You're even required to have these things at home, if you want to work from home. Basically you can work on a laptop, unless it's a special extremely short term situation.
  • polskibus 6y ago
    12. High end desktop CPUs are noticeably faster than mobile counterparts (higher freq, more cache)
    • agloeregrets 6y ago
      Is that actually true anymore? I mean, hardware wise they are not much faster, but cooling is a different story.
• ufmace 6y ago
  What seems odd about this to me is his complaint that what he wants is out there, in the form of laptops built for linux and set up exactly like he wants, but they're "overpriced". Uh what? If you're gonna be that picky about your setup, then it's time to pony up and pay for it. This stuff is never gonna get more manufacturer attention unless people buy it. If you wanna pay the lowest price, you should expect to get lowest common denominator in terms of setup.
  • kristov 6y ago
    I agree. Even if the attention of major manufacturers is not caught, at least you are supporting the small companies doing it right. Back in the "golden age" we wouldn't have dreamed it would be possible to run a profitable company building free software friendly laptops or phones. I feel the frustration of the OP but at least now there are ways to vote with your wallet.
  • mxschumacher 6y ago
    I'm generally quite price-sensitive and frugal and I want to describe why I think you are right in calling out the author on their "overpriced" comment: Two aspects are important to keep in mind for a decision of this kind: This machine is going to be your primary professional tool for the next several years - do you really care about a few hundred dollars extra? Especially if you have niche-requirements (read: non mass-market) like strong Linux desktop support and deep concern for privacy / security? Sure - you could do the research and build yourself and pay less for the parts - but if you consider your time at market rates, are you really making a financially smart decision by not paying a small premium on the price of constituent parts? Of course, I am aware of the excitement that can be associated with creating a custom build - if you are into that sort of thing: enjoy it as a hobby project, not because it is a better deal. Humans seem to have a hard time taking costs into account that are not easily quantified.
    • AdrianB1 6y ago
      Just calculating, $400 extra means doubling the price for most of the corporate laptops (I checked the prices, my laptop was a bit cheaper than that). And I guess the OP was already spending more for a better spec'ed laptop, not buying the cheapest junk, so doubling up the extra is easy to speak about, harder to do, especially if you don't work for big money and you are in the rest of the world outside USA, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.
• m0zg 6y ago
  Nothing beats 32 cores with a 32 inch 4K IPS monitor, and a proper mechanical keyboard. Also, wired internet, not subject to radio interference. The very pinnacle of computing experience.
  • nickthemagicman 6y ago
    128 gigs of RAM. This is nerd porn.
  • cma 6y ago
    64 core options are available.
    • smolder 6y ago
      It's true but they are also a bit past the point of diminishing returns, at least in the bang/buck department.
  • lanstin 6y ago
    I have never understood the fixation on what terminal one uses to connect to the network with. I never have anything of great value on my laptop or desktop, and I use them mainly to communicate with bigger machines in data centers (or websites like ycombinator and Twitter). If I haven’t got pushed recently I might lose a little work if the endpoint gets broken but I mostly push too often rather than not enough. (My commits don’t all have a Jira number). I do like a screen big enough to have two files side by side but I prefer not to have everything visible at once as it reduces my concentration on the one thing I am doing. Multiple tmux windows or an excessive number of emacs buffers will remember the state of those tasks till I need them again. It is a shame I need 32G of ram to let all the corporate spyware run and have it be as fast as an 8G from ten years ago, but ssh and emacs are still reasonably snappy. Basically the same setup with more pixels and slower UI as when i did the same work (different languages and less compute) over a 14.4 modem. But I also have enough spare local compute and bandwidth to have a browser tab playing music from YouTube somewhere while I work instead of from the CD player.
• avalys 6y ago
  I have been reading this same article for the past thirty years. Yet, I can still install and run whatever operating system and software I want on my laptop _and_ desktop, and I don't see any sign that that freedom will go away anytime soon. It is true that the billion-dollar media companies have decided a subscription model is more lucrative than a one-time-purchase model for the mass-market content they produce (movies, TV shows, music, etc.). But also unlike the author, I don't think my ability to consume mass-market media on my own terms is a moral imperative or has much bearing on my overall freedom. If Warner Brothers doesn't want to sell me a copy of Transformers 43 that I can play with VLC, I don't see that as much of a threat to anything I care about.
  • smitty1e 6y ago
    Another angle is educational. With the kid, I want to get a motherboard, power supply, RAM and disk and build it all up to a prompt. Then do Linux From Scratch on it. Not practical for daily usage, but invaluable for teaching what is at stake with the stack.
  • atq2119 6y ago
    I can still install and run whatever operating system and software I want on my laptop _and_ desktop, and I don't see any sign that that freedom will go away anytime soon. The question is how much of that is thanks to this kind of article appearing for the past thirty years. It's kind of like saying Y2K wasn't a problem: it would have been a problem if we hadn't prepared for it.
    • dontbesquare 6y ago
      Exactly. What happens in the future when people quit caring about computing freedom?
  • jacobsenscott 6y ago
    You cannot install whatever operating system you want on your tablet, phone, or, soon, any mac desktop/laptop at all. The enthusiast/gamer market isn't enough to keep the intel/adm desktop market going. Soon the only place you'll be able to run a free operating system is on a rented vm in the cloud.
• ebcode 6y ago
  >>Now, nine or more years out of date in computer technology, I am still using laptops with mostly USB 2.0 ports and internal SATA SSD's. I'm also using old laptops (T500s) so that I can replace Intel's firmware with libreboot and also install alternative wireless cards. The USB 2.0 thing is a problem, and reading this article made me think that there might be a way around that, and sure enough, you can get a PCMCIA card with USB 3.0 ports[1]. I know this isn't a long term solution, but it might be an immediate solution to the time spent making backups. [1]https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-00GU-00075?Description=PCMCIA%20usb&cm_re=PCMCIA_usb-_-17Z-00GU-00075-_-Product https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-00GU-00075?Description=PCMCIA%2...
• lucb1e 6y ago
  Author: the site reads comfortably for me at 50% zoom, the default is very hard to read on, um, desktop.
• monoideism 6y ago
  Instead of blasting UEFI, take a minute to learn about tools like `efibootmgr`, and how to install your own keys, so that you control your own machine. UEFI is a bit overengineered, but it's OK. - Most computers' UEFI firmware, desktop or laptop, allows you to install your own keys. - And every computer I've ever heard of with UEFI will allow you to disable secure boot. - Linux runs just fine on UEFI. I'm worried about a lot of the trends in laptops and smartphones, but I'm not yet worried about UEFI.
  • hackmiester 6y ago
    It was hard to read past the attitude that Secure Boot is the enemy. That’s just not the case, and if the author believes it is, it kind of undermines their expertise/the rest of the writing.
    • reanimus 6y ago
      Yeah, hemming and hawing over whether or not an x86/64 PC can disable Secure Boot in 2020 is a bit silly when it's been a certification requirement by Microsoft for ages
      • vxNsr 6y ago
        As someone who knows little to nothing about UEFI except what I read on these types of blogs and comments, what do you mean that secure boot is no longer an issue? and that it's been a certificate requirement by microsoft?
        • Arnavion 6y ago
          https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/secure-the-windows-10-boot-process#secure-boot https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio... >All x86-based Certified For Windows 10 PCs must meet several requirements related to Secure Boot: > - They must have Secure Boot enabled by default. > - They must trust Microsoft’s certificate (and thus any bootloader Microsoft has signed). > - They must allow the user to configure Secure Boot to trust other bootloaders. > - They must allow the user to completely disable Secure Boot. The last two points in particular. It's been this way since SB was introduced. Note that this requirement does not apply to non-x86 devices. In particular, ARM devices (Windows RT) are explicitly required to disallow SB from being disabled, to meet the certification requirement.
• josteink 6y ago
  > I understand that firmware malware is a legitimate cause for concern, UEFI seems to me to have been more about locking Linux out of the laptop market to insure that Microsoft Windows remained dominant. Ignorant nonsense. UEFI, while overengineered, allows for a computer-OS to tell the firmware how to cleanly boot it, so you can have several OSes installed in parallel without anyone stepping on anyone else’s toes. Basically it simply and cleanly solves the dreaded and always unreliable dual/multi-boot situation which almost exclusively Linux users have had to endure, with Windows update accidentally overwriting their bootloader every now and then. But who complains about UEFI and the solutions it brings and clings to legacy BIOS boot with all its warts and complications? Yup. Linux-users who are so politically opposed to UEFI that they cannot bother looking into the actual technology to see if their political opposition is warranted at all. Talk about FUD, eh. It’s a sad sight. And I say that as a happy (UEFI booting) 100% Linux desktop-user.
• aprdm 6y ago
  If your place of work is static, like an office desk at your company or at your home, why would you not want to use a desktop for work?
  • Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    My workplace was static until this year when we all without notice started working from home.
  • 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
    Meetings. Working in different areas. Even at home I won’t stay in one place. All the pro desktop vs laptop arguments are funny. No one wanted less performance at higher prices. We want to take the machine with us and use it in different places.
• secondcoming 6y ago
  Just the other day I reluctantly put in an order for a laptop with Dell. I hated using laptops for software work. Nothing was powerful enough and specs were limited. My last laptop had a max screen resolution of 1366x768; I was disgusted when I booted it. I don't like Macs. Due to Covid I moved away from our central office, but next year I'll have to commute there every month or two for meetings. Obviously I can't lug a massive desktop around on a train. So I bought a customised Dell Precision Mobile workstation. It cost a small fortune, but I reckon I'll have this for years. The CPU will probably outperform my current 4790K and it allows more RAM (128GB) than my current motherboard (32GB). I can also stick a 4G SIM card into it so I'll have broadband pretty much anywhere I am. Ideal for these days of remote working. I'll get work to buy a M.2 drive and I'll stick a VM on it and restrict work activities to that. If I leave I can just send that back. I'm not sure I'd buy another desktop if my current one goes kaput. Potentially for gaming, but I don't do that quite so much these days. (Ryzen would be a temptation though.)
• fossuser 6y ago
  The more I see articles like this, the more I think about Urbit. I wish people interested in this gave it more of an in-depth look and actually played with it. It really attacks the problem at its source in a way a lot of these other methods don’t. You can use a desktop, but services are still going to be largely centralized. We need a from first principles correction to fix broken incentives.
• japhyr 6y ago
  Does anyone have any recommendations if I want to keep using macOS, but I'm not tied to a MacBook? I realized I hadn't taken my main MacBook off the dock in 9 months. When I go out, I have an older one that I'm happy to use away from my desk. Since it's acting like a desktop now, I though maybe I'd replace it with a higher-spec mac desktop. But a high end mac mini isn't much different than a high-end MacBook. It seems if you want a high-performance mac but don't want to spend 6k+ on a mac pro, a specced-out 16" MacBook is the best choice. Is that correct?
  • schwartzworld 6y ago
    I went to the apple website and they have new iMacs for <$2000
  • finnh 6y ago
    Do they still make iMacs? My main computer is a 2015 5K iMac, maxed out for that class, and it is way faster than all the much-newer MacBook Pros (that I also use, at other desks/when traveling/etc)
    • japhyr 6y ago
      That's interesting, I had never considered an iMac because I always thought they were designed as lower-spec family workstations. These look like the middle ground I was hoping to find. I'm still not sure I like the form factor, but I'll certainly consider this when it's time to replace my current system. Thanks!
      • finnh 6y ago
        I used to think the same thing - my previous workhorse was a Mac Pro, but I switched to the iMac to get "Retina" back in 2015 (hard/annoying on Mac Pro at the time), and it totally impressed me.
  • 91edec 6y ago
    Just get an i7 Mac mini? Or since you already have a mac as a backup you could build and configure a hackintosh.
• linuxhansl 6y ago
  I never left. Assuming a full Laptop with secure boot disabled, running Linux (Fedora) counts. Unlike the author I do use recent Laptops with Linux. Like the author I like to actually own my machine. I would never trade this for a "gadget" running Android, ChromeOS, or IOS - other than my phone that is.
• curiousllama 6y ago
  > I know that new "open" laptops are still available, but most of them--the System76's, the Purisms, etc.--are overpriced in my opinion This quote suggest to me the author is an integral part of the problem. Companies are ALWAYS trying to increase their profitability. If they can lock down the computer, they can drop the price while _increasing_ CLTV. That’s why System76 is more expensive. They’re NOT overpriced. They’re priced as “general purpose computers” must be to be competitive. I agree with this author, but this suggests that the strength of his conviction is maybe $400.
  • kccqzy 6y ago
    This is exactly my takeaway. The author is simply dishonest. He wants freedom but doesn't want to pay for it, or pay companies that support it.
    • EdPF 6y ago
      As someone who worked a couple of decades for a company selling GPL-ed development tools, I was always mystified by a similar case. It was the developers who wanted to develop proprietary software and were upset that they would have to pay subscriptions if they wanted to distribute their software without the GPL "restrictions".
  • nmlnn 6y ago
    This line bugged me also - the definition of wanting your cake and eating it too. How would such products ever get to the volumes required for prices to come down if even people who "care" aren't prepared to buy them.
  • maddyboo 6y ago
    I came here to comment on this exact quote. "Overpriced" is such an odd word for the author to use in this context, it undermines their entire argument. Are these laptops more expensive than a similarly spec'd mainstream alternative? Yes. However, as is the point of the article, you're really not buying the laptop for the specs. Unfortunately, the desire for open source being rather niche, these companies do not benefit from the economies of scale a mainstream brand enjoys. AND these companies are not positioning themselves to profit from their customers recurringly through cloud memberships, app stores, microtransactions, and the likes.
• pessimizer 6y ago
  I never properly moved to laptops, I just put my desktops on a shelf and wired them to a network, and use a laptop, an obsolete N900, and an Intel NUC attached to my flatscreen (controlled with a bt mini keyboard) with no important local data on any of them - to interface with the desktops. All the drives on the desktops are encrypted, all long jobs and services are run on/from the desktops, the desktops are on Debian stable and the laptop and tv are on testing. If the day comes that I can't get a laptop that I can unfuck, I guess I'll just have to work in a remote desktop on a VM in one of the servers. I can always keep the laptop and devices from chattering through the routers. I do have a real fear that it might become hard to find routers that I can install OpenWrt on, or that OpenWrt might go the way of Firefox.
• swiley 6y ago
  I used to make fun of desktop computer owners but wow! They're cheaper, the manufactures aren't pathologically trying to screw you over, and the ability to expand them is real! At this point I'm pretty happy with cheap small laptops and ssh into my larger ryzen desktop in my workshop.
• djhworld 6y ago
  I really wish the technology was there for a thin client laptop that can hook up to a more powerful desktop machine, GUI and all, sharing hardware etc. I've tried VNC and other remote desktop solutions but the but the performance has always been abysmal, it's a niche idea and obviously comes with the network requirement, but I think it would give the best of both worlds when you need the portability of a laptop around the house, with the power of a desktop. I guess plan9 tried this approach....
  • walterbell 6y ago
    iPad (with keyboard and mouse/trackpad/touch) can be a thin client to Windows, Mac and Linux desktops.
  • easton 6y ago
    Parsec is good at performance, you might loose a bit of picture quality on lower-end connections but the latency is top notch. RDP is also fantastic (text is sharper), as long as you don’t need to play movies or games or something.
  • johanbcn 6y ago
    We are getting there, actually, because of improvements on this area for videogame streaming/remote playing.
• Gravityloss 6y ago
  I would like a pc that would be silent, small and would actually look good. Most cases have "gamer" or "office" aesthetic, neither of which I like. I think the only decent looking is Streacom DB4: https://streacom.com/products/db4-fanless-chassis/ https://streacom.com/products/db4-fanless-chassis/
  • sincerely 6y ago
    r/sffpc might be up your alley
    • Gravityloss 6y ago
      Those mostly seem to be basically naked pc:s with a completely perforated case and lots of fans. This would make them very vulnerable to dust. I was thinking of the opposite: the case being the heat sink. The Fanlesstech blog presents these sometimes. https://www.fanlesstech.com/ https://www.fanlesstech.com/ I don't know if it's enough to just cool the CPU (and using integrated graphics) and let convection handle the other components? Does the chipset or memory need active airflow over them?
• elorant 6y ago
  For me the most important factor against using a laptop is cooling. With a desktop you can go to the extremes and install water cooling. With a laptop you're always compromising on performance because if the load gets high the processor starts throttling and thus its performance is severely reduced. As a side effect there's also the issue with noise. A laptop fan is way more noisy than a desktop one because there's so much more space inside the box.
• hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
  I use a 6 core 64 gb ram thinkpad, I also have a desktop I can use for long running, large disk tasks or virtualisation, when doing so I use RDP.
• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Already there. 1. 104-key is in my muscle memory and i'm much more efficient. 2. Laptop plus keyboard plus power supply = desktop. 3. By being flexible, I can use only secondhand hardware.
• GTP 6y ago
  I agree with the point that modern devices like smartphones ad tables aren't a PC replacement. But having to buy a pre-2012 laptop just to be able to install a Linux distro is false: nowadays mayor distros support secure boot and if this isn't the case of your distro or it complicates the install process you can easily disable it in most of the cases. Actually I was unaware of the existence of motherboards preventing you form disabling secure boot before reading this article. AFAIK the only laptops where you could actually have problems installing Linux are MacBooks due to a security chip (it's called T9? But also I'm not informed about MacBooks so maybe there's a way around), on all others you shouldn't encounter actual roadblocks, in the worst case scenario you could have some minor hw incompatibility.
  • EdPF 6y ago
    I have a MacBook Pro running Manjaro Linux, Audiophile Linux and the latest OS-X. There's no issue: there's a command that can toggle the security status. I think the instructions are even in the Apple documentation. Now getting some of that configured to use the cheap hardware is a more complicated story.
• vmurthy 6y ago
  The subtext of the article seems to be the loss of "freedom to tinker" and the loss of control over your gadgets - both valid. Personally, I find the NUC a nice hybrid that is portable and modular enough to keep my inner nerd satisfied :). It currently sits under the TV and runs a Plex server. In addition, as a father of an inquisitive 6 year old, I find the PC a tad better for the following reasons: - Ability to show the internals (from a few feet away!) thereby spawning curiosity on the possibilities of technology - His coursework can be seen on TV and ensuring that TV is not merely entertainment - "Certified" media for him to consume (we don't have youtube installed in any of our devices so I use youtube-dl to download astronomy stuff for him)
• bartread 6y ago
  I've been thinking along similar lines, especially now that - with WFH likely to be the norm for the foreseeable future - my need for a portable computer is much diminished. I could get a lot more bang for my buck and build a system that was specced exactly the way I want. The rub for me is that I really dislike Windows. I use it for work - I have to - but it's not an OS I'd choose for myself[0]. I like OSX but the problem there is that, unless you go down the Hackintosh route (which soon I suspect won't really be a viable option anyway with the move to ARM), you have to buy preconfigured Apple hardware. And then there's desktop Linux, which fills me with dread simply because I've not had great experiences in the past. Moreover, some key software that I need simply won't run on it. Notably Ableton Live. (I know Linux-compatible DAWs exist, but I really like Live and don't want to have to give it up.) A decade ago, for me, buying a Mac was unequivocally the best option. Now that's perhaps no longer the case and, worse, there aren't any other great options that I can see. I'd be glad to be proven wrong though. EDIT: Actually, maybe what I could do is dual-boot Windows and Linux. Use Linux for software development and most everything else (even Office 365 will run on Linux under Wine nowadays, apparently), then use Windows for Ableton Live and games. With UEFI it might not be the worst thing in the world to set up and maintain either. [0] The main beef I have with Windows is that it just doesn't get out of the damn way. It really wants you to know it's there, from the dreadful multi-DPI multi-monitor support[1], gimpily inconsistent UI, the shitty 10 second dance all your desktops and windows do when you plug in another monitor[2], and crappy update mechanism, to the driver issues, WiFi connectivity issues, ropey audio support, instability and blue screens. And there's always, always, ALWAYS some random thing or other sucking CPU and running the fans. Don't get me wrong: every problem that bothers me on Windows also bothers me on OSX. It's just that on Windows these problems bother me several times per day, whereas on OSX I'm bothered by one of these issues maybe once a month. The upgrade to Catalina was initially painful and enraging but after the first couple of weeks, having upgraded everything, all was well again and remained so. [1] Granted, likely to be less of an issue with a desktop system where you're likely to purchase monitors with identical DPIs and resolutions. [2] Also less likely to be an issue with a desktop system, unless you need to use a KVM so you can share your desktop displays with your work laptop.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Dual booting is a good solution, but you actually could also buy a bit more RAM and run Ableton in a mixed VM Windows-on-Linux.
• stephc_int13 6y ago
  I worked on a laptop for 18 months, I'll never do the same mistake again. It was awful on all dimensions, even the portability as the thing I choose at the time was not light, I used it at home only once. Not worth it.
• dangus 6y ago
  > The golden age of personal computing in the 1980's is long over. When an article starts with a statement[1] like this I know I'm in for a whine-fest about how everything sucks now and we need to Make Computing Great Again. What the author wants is a ThinkPad P Series or a Clevo clone. I don't know why the author is making the assumption that a more modular, utility-focused laptop or portable device doesn't exist. They absolutely exist. Just don't be mad that it's a niche and that other people who just want an appliance have different needs than you. Don't be mad that other people in the world aren't necessarily any more interested in computing than they are in fixing their car. It's also entirely inaccurate to say that the 1980s was a freedom-loving general purpose heaven. In reality, users still bought into ecosystems and proprietary technologies, perhaps even more-so than today. For example, remember when you had to worry about what format your floppy disk was formatted in? Remember when the same productivity program on a different platform had different save formats? Remember when different platforms had different ports and physical connections for things as simple as a mouse? It's not like Amigas and Commodores and Apple ]['s were just oozing interoperability with each other.
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  I really wish my employer would just give me a desktop; they keep insisting on giving me a laptop that I immediately close and plug into a dock. But, it's just not a fight worth having for me.
  • thekyle 6y ago
    Well if they give you a laptop and as a result you're less productive, that's not really your problem.
  • a_imho 6y ago
    Were you required to take it home during covid?
• everyone 6y ago
  Ive been mainly using a desktop for years, ever since I started working from home. I have the keyboard, mouse and monitor on a sort of 'breakfast in bed tray' type thing I made. This tray fits on top of a little desk I made. So I can work at the desk or in a bed sitting up on cushions if I want. When I'm not in my computer room I dont want to be using a computer anyway, so theres no downside for me.
• matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Any good way to use desktop computers while lying in bed? It's so much more comfortable than actually sitting at a desk.
  • fctorial 6y ago
    ssh or remote X server
• ixtli 6y ago
  In January I knew the pandemic was going absolutely destroy everything so I bought 3k worth of parts for liquid cooled AMD build. After developing on OS X for 20 years, I’ve been working from home on Manjaro (gnome) for 8 months and never once regretted it. Totally done with laptops, honestly.
• vaccinator 6y ago
  I got an Asus PN50 today... nice little PC
• rcgorton 6y ago
  Dear bozo. Why are you "considering" vs. solely using a desktop? You obviously do not care about performance or privacy. So what are you complaining about?
• mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I get what the author is saying, on several levels. There is freedom (in the Richard Stallman sense) of having a better chance to control your hardware and software. There is something good about having one specific place to work; it is too easy to turn a laptop on in the living room at night when you should be paying attention to your family, friends, or roommates. Desktops are cheaper . All that said, I have moved 100% away from desktops. I really do like to be able to work outside (two areas to choose from), kitchen table next to our parrot’s cage, living room, or bedroom. Sometimes I need to work while traveling. Finally, iPad Pros (or similar products) are simply better devices for reading, doing research, and watching entertainment.
• davidhyde 6y ago
  Just buy an Intel Nuc i7 or an AMD Ryzen mini-pc. A 1TB m2 slot SSD and 32GB ram. Perfect for programming. You can fit it in your pocket if you need to move it around. Big screens, keyboards and mice should stay at the desks where you work.
  • billsmithaustin 6y ago
    You must have a big pocket if you can fit a 4.6” x 4.4” x 1.55” box in there.
• weare138 6y ago
  While were on the subject I'm tired of these BS laptop keyboards. Stop trying to cram a numeric keyboard on there and shifting all the keys and trackpad to the left. It's great for the 1% of the time I need a full size numeric keyboard but sucks for the 99% of the time I don't.
  • mythrwy 6y ago
    I thought the same thing then I saw an accountant work one of those like Mozart and understood.
    • Noumenon72 6y ago
      I do type Jira issue numbers and things quite a lot, I like the numeric keypad. Good for Civilization too.
• theelous3 6y ago
  Pretty much anyone who works for more than 1hr a day at home and doesn't do so on a big beautiful desktop has been making a mistake. (Presuming no limitations like affordability, literally can't fit a desk in their bedsit, etc.) Anyone who consciously thought desktops were a good idea to move away from in the above case made an initial, much bigger mistake. (Again presuming it was a general lifestyle choice and not some necessity.) It's as simple as answering the following question: Would you rather have a) a tiny monitor with a bunch of expensive fragile dying-to-have-coffee-spilled-on-it shit jutting way out at you in the horizontal, always at a weird angle or too low or b) a couple of big beautiful monitors and loads of desk space? If you think you can have both, you're probably wrong. Even a nice dock setup requires you to do things like install brackets under the desk to shove your laptop in to, and disable its monitor lest it become a weird bastard screen full of junk you have no intention of looking at. All the docks and laptop stands and extra monitors in the world can't solve the problem that laptops are broadly speaking, unpleasant to use. I think the only times I've actually been grateful to have my expensive and pretty laptop, are during power outs - watching netflix in bed. Though the whole setup is reliant on a well practiced construction of pillows and an external bluetooth speaker because no laptop has ever been made with speakers worth the power they draw. If you can even remotely get away with not using one, don't use one.
  • ashtonian 6y ago
    Mostly agree with you but MacBook pro speakers are better than most tvs builtins these days. Also for whatever reason the desktop screen market doesn't know about retina style high ppi displays. It's a shame, same with dropping 16:10.
    • theelous3 6y ago
      Low praise for the macbook speakers tbh :P I don't think desktops require retina displays. There are an endless selection of big, bright, high refresh rate, high resolution, and cheap monitors to choose from. Macbooks max out at 16 inches. Retina displays are (a good) attempt at trying to make laptops more viable for long use, but still they fall short of even the cheapest 4k decent nitts desktop monitor. They haven't adapted the tech, because it's not needed. The same pressures of selection aren't present. The biggest font and text clarity nerd that I am aware of agrees on the matter, and makes some sensible suggestion and gives reasoning here: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
• maxharris 6y ago
  We're not going to be truly free until we start building our own chips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrEC2LGGXn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrEC2LGGXn0
• courtf 6y ago
  I like mini-pcs (NUC) for dev work, they run linux without much drama, are nice and cheap, and crucially, are not intended to be carried everywhere and stay at the office. I enjoy being physically removed from my work machine. Covid has altered this relationship in a way I'm not sure I like.
• IAmGraydon 6y ago
  I never moved away from desktops. It’s too much fun to spec and then build the beast of your dreams. I have a cheap laptop for web browsing and low power tasks.
• redisman 6y ago
  I switched to a Linux desktop since wfh from a MacBook Pro. It’s superior in every way except portability - but there’s nowhere I could take my laptop right now anyway. I can get tons of NVMe storage, lots of fast memory, a wildly powerful CPU with 8+ cores, an unfathomable GPU(coming from laptops) for the same price as that laptop. None of this is news but it definitely makes the development experience so much nicer, and I can play any game with max settings on it too. Building desktops is also just a lot nicer than it used to be. There are tons of quality of life improvements in the cases, PSUs with detachable cables, silent fans and cooling solutions, etc.
• happyjack 6y ago
  It's nice to hear that I'm not alone. I still have a music library, and rip dvd's with handbrake. Ripping a dvd with a 12 core desktop machine is a breeze, and so are other general computing tasks. I know I'm probably a dinosaur. I run a lot of desktop applications for work, and run most my models locally. I use the shell to automate tasks, and rarely use the "cloud" and try to limit browser tasks. What's funny about this post is that I'm actually in the market for a new laptop, and am quite paralyzed in the process. I can't get myself to spend $1500 on some mediocre machine where everything is soldered on the mobo, I can't replace the battery, and that will become garbage in 2 years.
• 38911BBF 6y ago
  I sometimes answer questions in the tech-help reddits to get a feel for the kind of IT-problems everyday users are battling with. The amount of people asking if they can upgrade the CPU, GPU, SSD/HDD or memory in their new-ish laptops is disheartening. Most of the questions concerns the CPU og GPU where the answer is no 99.99% of the time these days. 90% of consumer grade laptops have the RAM soldered to the mainboard too now. Luckily the HDD/SSD is usually replaceable or upgradeable in case of failure, performance problems or lack of free disk space... but for how long? From a purely ecological standpoint, the laptop producers should be forced to buy back and recycle all their shitty unupgradeable, unrepairable, made-to-fail consumer electronics. It's a shameful situation we are in. If societies can get 99% of glas and plastic bottles recycled using bottle deposit money, we should be able to reach the same figures for consumer electronics like laptops.
  • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    This is a good point. Tangentially related, it’s especially ironic how much Apple talked about the environment in their recent iPhone 12 announcement when they pretty much started the trend of unupgradeable electronics, and aren’t about to stop.
  • II2II 6y ago
    The lack of an upgrade path wouldn't be as much of a concern if laptops actually shipped with decent specifications to begin with. One thing that caught me off guard was the number of low end models with 4 GB of RAM and pricier models limited to 8 GB RAM. With Windows using nearly 2 GB on boot and a chunk being used for the GPU, that doesn't leave much for applications. Having a non-upgradable CPU is not a huge issue in my opinion, except the performance of low end models is astoundingly abysmal. I doubt that many of them could keep up with my 8 year old desktop, which was not a high end build at the time. Not only is the hardware disposable, in many cases it is intended to have a very short life.
    • xiphias2 6y ago
      I feel the same with SSD, although it's replacable. Often it's cheaper to buy the smallest SSD option, throw it out and buy a new 2TB SSD instead of asking for it integrated.
• robomartin 6y ago
  I cooked two HP 17 inch laptops running finite element analysis tools for --the irony-- a thermal management project. They just couldn't handle the sustained load, even with external fans aimed at their air intake areas. I've always used self-built desktop towers. When it's time to upgrade we build them five or ten at a time so every system matches. It makes for a much simpler build and bring-up experience. In this case I needed to continue working, and so I decided to task two HP laptops on the network as external processors for the FEA tool. I have to say, they worked great for about four weeks. During that time they experienced about 18 hours per day of continuous processing. Fun while it lasted.
• walterbell 6y ago
  Even "appliance" devices can be used in a manner which increases freedom, e.g. retain iPad flexibility and reliability while using it as a thin client for self-hosted content and services on FreeNAS/TrueNAS on open hardware. Choose iOS apps (e.g. Omni, 2Do, DevonThink, GoodReader, Codebook, Netnewswire, LumaFusion, Textastic, Working Copy, Secure Shellfish, PhotoSync, Jump, Screens) which support synchronization protocols like CalDAV, WebDAV, ssh/scp, SMB, DLNA, RDP etc. With the recently introduced iSH (user-space Linux) on iOS, more integration options are available. You can also use an iOS remote desktop with mouse/keyboard to drive remote desktops and VMs that have less OS/app restrictions.
• Animats 6y ago
  I never left. I have a few subnotebooks around for emergencies and travel, but all real work is on desktops with a good keyboard, a big screen at eye height, a mouse, and a fast wired Internet connection.
• kamilszybalski 6y ago
  I was just starting to think about whether I'm ready to move from Macbook only to iMac + iPad pro
• titzer 6y ago
  What's crazy to me is how insanely overspec'd mobile devices are for what they deliver. If you went back in time and told 1999 me the following: I'll give you a computer with the following: * 256GB of solid-state storage * 6 CPUs @ 3+GHz * 8GB of RAM * Weighs only 200 grams * Battery-powered, lasts 5+ hours * 1440 x 3168 resolution display I would have been absolutely gobsmacked. Such a machine absolutely outclasses every desktop up into the early 2010s! And then you would tell me that it's mostly used to shitpost on reddit and Twitter and would be completely useless as a development machine, and the manufactures would do everything to make it impossible to put what software I want on it...and also it would spy on me everywhere I went in order to sell me garbage... We took a wrong turn somewhere, didn't we?
  • willbw 6y ago
    You want to 'develop' on a mobile device? Interested to hear how you would envision this being a pleasant experience. It's also a trade off between installing what software you want and security - the App store means you don't have to worry about (certain kinds) of maliciousness from software you install. I just think it's a little bit of a spicy take saying mobile devices "don't deliver" when they are most successful form of computing in history by a large margin. I would argue this is for a reason and they provide enormous value.
    • pier25 6y ago
      What if you could connect an external display, keyboard, and mouse? Of course, you need an OS that supports that and provides a proper desktop-like experience.
      • culopatin 6y ago
        Motorola Atrix comes to mind, or one of those. This was a thing back in 2011 or whenever that phone came out. You could dock your phone and use it as a laptop.
        • pier25 6y ago
• reiichiroh 6y ago
  Wants “open laptops” but won’t pay for them, dismissing efforts by Purism as “overpriced.” I can’t take this seriously.
• matthewfcarlson 6y ago
  It's frustrating to me (as a UEFI engineer) to see and read the fear-mongering on blogs like these. Much of what I do is focused on open-sourcing and making the industry as a whole better. I tend to side with others in the thread that the "end of general purpose computing" isn't a result of manufacturers pushing in a direction but rather following consumers. The percentage of computer scientists, programmers, and enthusiasts that consider the openness of their hardware a deal breaker grow smaller each year. For the rest of the population, they can find something that's general enough for their use cases. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for opening hardware up and making it transparent. But until we as general consumers (not just the fine folks of Hacker News) care enough to let that sway our buying decisions, this trend is going to continue. There will always be general hardware. It's just going to get more expensive.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    > the "end of general purpose computing" isn't a result of manufacturers pushing in a direction but rather following consumers. This is an even stronger claim than that consumers don't care if their hardware is closed. Consumers aren't begging for their hardware to be closed, and companies aren't passively trying to please them. The vast majority of consumers don't care if their hardware is closed until they discover something that their hardware is capable of doing that they're not allowed to do with it or something that their hardware is doing that they're not allowed to keep it from doing. Companies close as much as they can while trying not to upset consumers enough that they leave or complain to the government - which means either that they have to find ways to 1) add or limit functionality in a closed way, or that 2) they have to get all competitors to agree to prevent or allow the same things (to eliminate alternatives), or 3) they have to advocate a POV (and lobby for it in government) that whatever functionality is missing or required is dangerous to add or remove. This is following consumers in a way; like building a wall behind them every time they move in a particular direction could be considered following them.
    • takluyver 6y ago
      The consumer value of locked down platforms where you can only install approved software is that you mostly don't need to worry about viruses. It's really hard to protect systems against malware if they make it easy to run arbitrary code. People paying $60 per year for antivirus software is a symptom of this. Of course, Android malware exists too. But Google's approval process, application sandboxing and the ability to remotely remove applications after they're found to be malicious makes it a much smaller problem. It's not something consumers cheer about, but rather something we mostly don't think about when using phones and tablets.
• nine_k 6y ago
  As long as you work essentially at one place, don't need to work on the go, don't need to show your work to a customer when meeting in a cafe, and genuinely can use a ton of processing power and storage, a desktop is a clear choice. I suspect a lot of the movement towards laptops was and is due to the desire to run macOS. It just so happens that Apple desktop computers are either way underpowered or way expensive. An MBP is basically the sanest way to run macOS. So MBPs tend to become makeshift portable desktops, with external screens, keyboard, mice / trackpads, power bricks, and cooling pads. If your work processes are not beholden to Apple software, building (or ordering a customized) desktop is a refreshing gulp of power. You suddenly can afford much more, or spend way less. I'm writing this from a Linux desktop, and I'm quite content with it.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  It seems obvious to me laptop is only superior if you need to carry it with you.
• dragosmocrii 6y ago
  Personally, I prefer using a Workstation Laptop, such as the System76 Serval or Bonobo. Most of the time, I'll use a big monitor and mechanical keyboard. But if I'm travelling, I can still use the machine as a laptop.
• Havoc 6y ago
  The threat on cloud / data side seems a lot more real than on the hardware side. I personally don’t care what boot stuff is under the hood if it can boot Linux. Cloud eating everything on the other hand does worry me. Busy building a home server to get away from that a little
• galkk 6y ago
  At best I'd agree on something like VSCode remote: performant _local_ client and remote server. All the things like RDP access to powerful machine or even something in-browser (yes, I know that VSCode is also having electron underneath) are just too slow and too inconvenient. I had desktops for a while. Then I decided to switch to laptop and bought latest Thinkpad X1 Extreme (at a time). It throttles, it struggles to play even relatively easy games. Occasionally it loses connection to the lenovo dock and I need to restart it. It can't have more than 3 monitors. When the time of next upgrade will come I'm certainly going to desktop + some light laptop like my wife's X1 Carbon. I don't like macs and I strongly believe that Win + WSL / dual boot to linux are much better for development.
• temporallobe 6y ago
  I produce music with hardware from Universal Audio, which, if you want true zero-latency monitoring (and yes you do), this is your only valid choice, thus you are stuck with the Apple ecosystem. That means either one of their extremely overpriced and underpowered laptops (like my MacBook Pro), a Mac Mini, an iMac/iMac Pro, or a Mac tower, all with high cost of entry and completely non-upgradable and non-user-servicable. Sure you can try to build a Hackintosh, but I want to spend my time making music, not f-int around with incompatible hardware. So unless I want to shell out $6,000+ for a bare-bones Mac Pro which cannot even be upgraded nor can I repair it myself, desktop is not an option for me.
• kgin 6y ago
  The level of abstraction at which the average tinkerer is tinkering continuously increases over time. Certainly makes things harder for those who long to tinker at a lower level, but I don't see it as a tragedy.
• shinymark 6y ago
  If you care about performance you should not be using a laptop as your primary workstation. Period.
• ponker 6y ago
  You’ll be happy you did. People talk about how laptops are “fast enough” which they are, but when you’re using them all day, things happening a tiny bit faster makes for a much more pleasant experience.
• tracer4201 6y ago
  In the past several years, I began using my desktop less and less. All my work happens on a MacBook Pro... a 2015 model and now finally the 2019 16”. I was actually shocked to see on my iPhone that I’m spending several hours a day on the device. I remember five years ago, my main activity when laying in bed was thinking about things going on in my life or sleeping. Now I spend hours in bed reading on my phone — and honestly, it’s not the most productive or uplifting content. It doesn’t necessarily better me in any way. I agree that newer devices aren’t necessarily improving in the right ways. The MagSafe charger on my 2015 MacBook was a fairly innovative and user friendly design choice. It no longer exists, presumably to make a thinner laptop, but honestly — the weight of my older machine was never a problem. Apple solved a problem I never had, and I carried that MacBook to and from work everyday for the past 5 years. It basically feels like a rat race where companies, to show value and drive earnings for their shareholders, are making pointless design choices with no real vision. Even the larger track pad on the new machine doesn’t really solve a problem I previously had. If anything, I just needed a more performant machine, preferably with a larger screen. I honestly would have preferred a better front facing camera, but instead, I have a thinner machine, different keyboard, and larger trackpad. We’re in a period of cheap money with cut throat capitalism — in my mind, the federal government have made all this possible and massively inflated asset prices. Apple’s stock continues to go up up and up because of this. I’m singling out Apple for examples sake. They’re not alone in this.
• emp_ 6y ago
  Around 2015/6 I went full laptop (Razer Blade 15) with an eGPU and multiple monitors after trying the same with a MacBook Pro (poor nvidia integration) and after years of crashes, overheating laptop shells and weird Wi-Fi issues when returning from sleep with the eGPU, I just gave up. A couple months ago I got full ATX case with the 16 core AMD CPU, the best GPU out there and it runs cool, quiet and I just RPD to it when needed (prob less than twice a year)
• iamjohnsears 6y ago
  Bought a desktop computer last week for the first time since 2005. Installed Ubuntu. Still SSH’ing into it mostly from MacBook, but it’s such a boon to productivity to have an always-on machine right here. And yeah the modularity of a desktop form factor is really amazing compared to Apple product line
• sushshshsh 6y ago
  If I go back to desktop I would need a swivel monitor. Moving from a desk chair to a couch has made my life radically better
• ricksharp 6y ago
  I built my desktop about 3 months ago after 16 years of using a laptop. It’s great! I also had fun researching how to get the best deal ~$2,000.
• deleted 6y ago
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• ConcernedCoder 6y ago
  Always use desktop when available, better specs = better performance... I do use a laptop when necessary, on a plane, etc...
• SergeAx 6y ago
  I can't grok why people fall for laptops in the first place. Laptops are a bunch of compromises in every detail: screen size, storage volume, keyboard, sound etc etc. I got my first PC 30 years ago and never bought a new one ever since. It was always upgrades, small or large. Even stepping up MB and CPU I've kept my drives, graphics card, most of the smaller peripherals, sometimes even RAM, so even the largest changes are always in several hundred dollars ballpark. The process is fun, interesting and makes me keep tabs with industry. I've bought a laptop when switching to "digital nomad" lifestyle for several years, and it was my very worst experience with personal computing. I've spent about 15 hundreds bucks and never made worst investment ever since.
  • cehrlich 6y ago
    I don't think people "fall" for laptops. They're well aware of the cons, but the single pro of not being strapped to a desk outweighs all of the disadvantages for many people. I'm using a MacBook Pro from 2014, after putting in a new battery recently it still works great, and when I'm at my desk I plug it into a big monitor. Not as upgradeable as a desktop, but even assuming I can't sell the laptop when I upgrade it, it cost me less than $500 per year. I've tried using multiple computers in the past (big desktop + MacBook Air, costs about the same in total as a 15" MacBook Pro that is much less powerful than the desktop) but I realized that the convenience of knowing that all of my files are on one computer is more important to me.
    • SergeAx 6y ago
      Ah, Apple ecosystem! Then alas, you don't actually have any viable choice. Desktops are Mac Mini or iMac, first is crippled, last is overpriced, both are almost non-upgradeble (
      • cehrlich 6y ago
        I’ve owned Windows desktops in the past. I prefer MacOS, but Windows is fine. The reason I use laptops is because I only want to own one computer, and that one computer needs to be portable, not because I’m stuck in an ecosystem.
• stubish 6y ago
  I recently replaced the laptop that 80 year old relatives where using with a "desktop". It is just a small NUC box, 24" monitor, webcam, wireless mouse & keyboard. Cheaper than a laptop of similar power. And they love it. Because our eyes and hands worsen with age, and mobile computing something for younger people. Maybe this is me in the future, or maybe I'll be using voice control and a bit TV. But for all of us living to an old enough age, small devices will become a problem.
• bane 6y ago
  My current desktop is getting on about 7 years old. I used to build new computers every year or two, so the idea of getting almost a decade out of the same box is wild and represents how much PC tech has plateaued. However, I have a nice laptop from work and I really like my work setup, where I just connect a couple ports and instantly have a couple more big monitors, a good keyboard and mouse and other stuff. So I've really been considering replacing my desktop with a decent laptop at home. I've also seen some benchmarks that are putting fairly commodity systems within spitting distance of what my old workhorse can do, meaning if I invested in a decent laptop I could probably keep about the level of performance I have today, but gain portability. Then in the last few months we got the new Nvidia 3080 line (with AMD's RDNA 2 coming soon), the AMD 5000 series processors, new classes of SSDs like the 970 Evo Plus which have performance that used to be what we saw with DRAM. All of these combined in a new system are going to be an entirely new class of desktop performance that my old system won't even come close to touching and portable machines won't touch either. So I'm thinking of going with a new desktop sometime next year once inventory and prices stabilize, and if I need it a rock bottom budget laptop for traveling. Target price <$3k all-in.
  • movedx 6y ago
    I've gone from desktops to laptops and back again. The reasons are somewhat technical but mostly center around psychology. From a technical perspective not many laptops come close to my desktop's performance and if they did they'd cost way more. But the psychological benefit of having a desktop to do my work on is when I get home I don't continue working. I lock my ability to do most of my job (DevOps) to my desktop at my private office away from the home. That means when I get home I can do basic tasks on my 2020 MBP but for security reasons there's a lot I can't do. Maybe this is something to consider when making your choice? Let me know how you get on.
• shthrow 6y ago
  Old man yells at cloud. What these people usually don't get is that computer at the end of the day is just a tool. It is a means to an end not the goal. Having a powerful computer for the sake of having a computer doesn't accomplish any meaningful.
• Ziggy_Zaggy 6y ago
  ...I didn't realize SW people were leaving desktops?
• baron_harkonnen 6y ago
  If more people are working at home, in one place, the value of a laptop decreases quite a bit It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we see a resurgence in desktop computers since all the places a laptop shines: coffee shop, train commute, working on a plane, aren’t all that important anymore.
• bg24 6y ago
  Agree. Keeping a work desktop is better option, combined with a low-end MacBook Air, or anything you prefer. There are times when you still have to head to meeting rooms, work outdoors, or in front of TV. Laptop is handy at that time.
• lupinglade 6y ago
  Yep, laptops are horrible for productivity.
• mkatx 6y ago
  I can fully get behind the thesis of this post. But I still love using my thin laptop. My solution: run desktops at home as your own private cloud and use them in various ways from you laptop or phone. Create your own services or use oss services to fulfill your needs from your thin internet devices, no middle man/woman needed, use your desktop/s anywhere. This won't solve your uefi problem if you use modern laptops, nor will it solve your usb 2.0 problem if you stick to old laptops. But set up your own services, don't let them take over! It's quite a bit of work to setup, but maybe it'll get easier if more people take on the challenge. (Disclosure: this is my personal pipe dream, and I'm in the early stages of working this out myself.) On a side note, the open laptops you refer to can be more pricy, but if that's what you believe in, then support the cause!
• kbernholm 6y ago
  My current desktop system is a Raspberry Pi 4B with a 64 bit quad core ARM processor at 1.5 GHz and 4GB memory (8GB version is also available). It runs BSD's and Linux distributions, it has no UEFI, and I can tinker with it to my hearts content. It's great for writing and coding and everything else I do. If I want to play games, my son has several games consoles. I recommend that you take a look at the Raspberry Pi and other single-board computers. They're cheap too :-)
• ryan-allen 6y ago
  I did this a few years ago, I maintain a desktop at work and a desktop at home, and soon, a second desktop at home so one can be dedicated to work. I have a low powered laptop for 'on the go' but I only tend to use it to take notes in meetings, and rarely if never use it for work. Gone are the days of buying a 2k-3k laptop every 18 months and being disappointed with the performance!
• Uptrenda 6y ago
  I find it strange how the article puts forwards having to build a desktop computer as some kind of weird, horrific, form of torture. Oh no man! Don't build a desktop computer. Anything but that! The problem can't possibly be so bad that... h-he is considering --building-- a computer... Does the author not know how many computer enthusiasts do just that every day and what a basic task it is? They literally teach you enough about hardware to put together your own PC in most introductory college courses. These days its like lego blocks. I don't think the assumption that processing power is decreasing and all devices are becoming dumb terminals is true, either. Moore's law... Look at the new chips released by AMD and Intel. Look at CPU benchmarks: the more recent chips blow older generations out the water... and there's no conspiracy to keep these advancements out of consumer's hands. Anyone is free to buy a server rack and build a small super computer (should they have the cash.) What this article raises that I agree with is the complaint that many chips contain proprietary blobs that can't be inspected or removed. Unfortunately, technology like this is how companies try protect trade secrets. It's definitely not ideal, and backdoors + security flaws have been found in these areas in the past. I think if you're concerned about such flaws you really have to ask yourself whether you need to protect government-secrets... or whether your laptop is just going to contain your shopping list and other mundane data. Once you decide what type of data you're going to be working with. You can decide on an appropriate security strategy. I doubt it makes sense for most people to stick to decades old hardware to avoid the possibility of having someone exploit (and risk revealing what would probably be worth millions on the black market) something in their firmware or microcode.
  • desmap 6y ago
    > h-he is considering --building-- a computer... Does the author not know how many computer enthusiasts do just that every day Thought the same when skimming the post. Creators, streamers, AI folks, Kagglers, gamers, some crypto devs, all have a desktop, mainly because of nvidia GPUs. This isn't news for them for probably a decade.
• cleandreams 6y ago
  I just bought a system 76 ubuntu native build with 64gb ram and 12 cores. It cost a little over 2K. It was not over priced. There is a demand for these machines in AI and data science. They are not going away.
• xuejie 6y ago
  Personally, I already pulled the trigger 2 years ago when I first starting to write Rust professionally. A laptop just becomes far tooooo noisy compiling Rust code. These days I use 3 machines: * A fanless Chromebook with decent screen for travel use * An Intel NUC that is hooked to a big monitor, which is also the device I'm typing this on * A beefy Ryzen desktop that sits in the corner of my balcony, which I usually connect via ssh and perform all the heavy tasks To me I'm getting all the benefits of each computer, and the combined cost is still less than a so-called macbook pro :)
• rkagerer 6y ago
  I never left
• wiz21c 6y ago
  To me desktop computer means there's a place where I work. A fixed place. Moreover, as I use my computer a lot, my family knows where I am. It also mean I sit on a chair, not on a sofa. (it also means it can run Linux properly, not with battery issues...)
• cheph 6y ago
  I bought an HP Elitebook, it was quite pricey, about $3500 but I figured it will be reliable at least. So far the keyboard broke, the screen broke, the motherboard broke (the USB-C connector was loose) all in less than a year. Since replacing all three those the motherboard is breaking again and the keyboard is breaking again and will likely need two more replacements before the warranty expires, at which point I will just toss it for the garbage it is. My plan is to next time buy the cheapest laptop I can stomach and assume the thing will pretty much only last a year and then move resource intensive stuff to a desktop. Also I'm not ever buying HP again, they make overpriced garbage.
• rephlex2097 6y ago
  I like big monitors and I can not lie All you MacBook losers can't deny
• zerm778 6y ago
  good for u
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• paraknight 6y ago
  The author seems to care mostly about UEFI and secure boot, but there are other advantages to desktop (not to mention the likely partially permanent shift to remote work post-covid). Personally, I run a bit of a hybrid setup. My new Dell XPS 13 came with Ubuntu pre-installed (which I replaced with Void Linux) and for the most part allows for a lot of tweaking. When I'm at home, I connect to my eGPU unit with one cable, allowing me to use my secondary monitor, a proper mouse, and external hard drives (although internal is already 1TB SSD). The eGPU unit is a Razer Core V2 with a GTX 1060, which is good enough for VR games, which play well on Linux these days surprisingly. Then a lot of my stuff is self-hosted in the cloud anyway, like a media server, backups, servers for development, even an IRC bouncer. I also run my own smart home software on a raspberry pi. So while at the moment this might not be typical for an average consumer, the trend towards edge computing will really make the laptop into an "internet appliance" as the author says, and the browser an OS. Hell, with 5G, cloud gaming for VR may even be viable, and then we're back to the equivalent of terminals and mainframes. The only real issue then is the ownership of these services — I don't agree with the author that everything will become a SaaS and no more open hardware will exist. It will always exist as long as there's a demand for it, you just have to accept that it'll be more expensive and less consumer-friendly. E.g. I have to accept that I can't hotplug my eGPU on Linux like you can on Windows, and I need to pay for my servers. Spotify and Netflix will always be cheaper than any legal means of acquiring media otherwise specifically because of their size.
• Smurfspeaker 6y ago
  If you really care tham much, don't bitch about the price, but pay for your privacy and convictions. /linux laptop owner who paid up
• Smurfspeaker 6y ago
  If you really care, don't bitch about the price, pay up. Vote with your dollar. /linux laptop owner who paid up
• dusted 6y ago
  I've owned laptops for the past 16 years, and not once have I ever considered leaving my desktop computers. Sure, laptops are portable, but that's all that can be said for them. When you've set up your laptop to be ergonomic to use, it's as portable as a desktop, so that one thing it did well, it turns out, it couldn't even do that. Laptops are portable, when you REALLY need to be able to compute at some different place than usual. They're expensive and even then, still underspecced compared to desktops.. My desktop has 20 tib of storage and 64 gib ram, has a 5 ghz cpu and it runs silently most of the time, I can't even buy a laptop with those specs, if I could it'd be super expensive and noisy or frequency throttling. This is unfortunately going away a bit, but I still have many more upgrade options for a desktop. Now everything is USB but with the right adapters, I can still use those weird ISA cards I've got hanging around, I can still read 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, and CDs and ZIP. (and yes, the "easy" way to read those disks is using a isa floppy controller on a USB to ISA adapter). Also, I guess I just don't need to move around that much, but when I do, I have a second-hand I7 machine with 16 gib memory that runs linux off of an SSD reasonably well, if I need "performance".. If I only need connectivity, I'm using a this small blue HP StreamBook 11 that I bought for around $200 years ago, it also runs Linux well enough, but it's pretty much limited to running a terminal and ssh.
• peter_retief 6y ago
  I have never liked using laptops for software development for all the reasons (and more) listed in the comments. Also consider using Raspberry Pi for portable apps and development, I am also into open hardware, great projects like the Arduino and pure electronics on bread boards and designing your own pcb. Linux, once the bellwether of of tech freedom is slowly being diluted by corporate interests and bad decisions. There are still places to explore, the amazing world of materials like graphene which is fairly simple to synthesize. To quote from Breaking Bad, "It's Saul Goodman!"
• readme 6y ago
  The whole time you have been apart from desktops I have been using one. I recently stepped up the game a bit and built a homelab. I don't care if most people move on to using dumb devices that limit what they can do: they are probably not the people who were really using computers anyway. Everyone who wants a good PC will have one, nothing is threatening the existence of PCs and the esports industry will keep them alive. As for a brick and mortar computer store? If you're lucky you live near a microcenter or something.
• japanuspus 6y ago
  Surprised to not see more love for USB-C docks in this thread? Have set up three USB-C "workstations" with montior, keyboard and mouse (USB via Logitech Unify) in the house: One cable dock for any of the household laptops. There has been some toothing pain, but with USB-C reaching corporate machines, these are quickly becoming a non-issue. Have been moving the SO and kids to USB-C laptops over the last couple of years (used Thinkpad X's are great value -- and tend to get full teen approval).
  • busrf 6y ago
    I totally agree, I have the same kind of setup with an X series thinkpad and love it. Do you have any good dual monitor USB-C docks you could recommend? I’ve been wanting to expand my work station a bit.
• Insanity 6y ago
  I keep a light laptop for traveling, but at home I much prefer a desktop. The fact that I can upgrade incrementally as time goes on and have a choice over which HW goes in is something a laptop just can't beat. That said, pretty much every point of WalterBright also applies.
• desilentio 6y ago
  I would like a desktop computer (i) with a case that isn't ugly, (ii) that's completely silent, and (iii) core- and librebootable. Any suggestions?
• Markoff 6y ago
  sounds to me more like he should upgrade laptop more often than once in 8 years, if he clearly has issues with performance mine laptop (T520) was released 9.5 years ago and I have no issues with performance after upograding SSD hard drive and adding RAM
• jitendrac 6y ago
  The desktops are more rugged and robust in every means at most of the times. I do not remember using a laptop as my primary dev machine in last 10 years, I use the same 10 year old c2d 2.5ghz machine with newer motherboard(2014-g41mcombo gigabyte) and enough ram. The system runs both ubuntu and windows 7 at ease and I am not considering update in at least next year. that describes the robustness of desktop. It is not that desktop does not break, they do quite often. But mostly we can manually troubleshoot them, In 10 years I have fried a motherboard, bricked 2 psu, ram and 3 harddrives. Its that I can just fix broken part and get going. Hardware upgrades are only required if you are resource constrained, like require multiple vm, or multimedia editing and some crypot type gpu and cpu intensive stuffs. Even in those cases desktop shines. Laptops are really great for mobility and they are really capable machines which can be configured to comparable performance with most of the desktops but not in durability and flexibility.
• jmnicolas 6y ago
  I don't understand why the author only buys laptops without UEFI: I never had problem installing Linux on any machine. And as far as USB2 limiting backups speed, I would look at a NAS with gigabit Ethernet which any old laptop should have.
• rootsudo 6y ago
  I miss the modular ability of desktops, but I do not miss their lack of portability. The best camera is the one you have with you. The best computer is the one you have with you. But, I am annoyed heavily that I can't play some great games due to lack of graphic cards, and would like to investigate the whole usb-c/thunderbolt plug in video card thing.
• nottorp 6y ago
  Humm. The author is a bit too security conscious isn't he? To be polite. Also, he talks like using a laptop is the thing to do by default. Excluding his exaggerated motivation, why would you use a laptop for real work anyway, when you can run a multiple monitor desktop with tons of storage, no thermal problems and a real keyboard to type on? Personally I use a desktop 95% of the time for work. I own a laptop but I only work on it when I have no choice.
• mgkimsal 6y ago
  way late to the game here but... I too have been considering going 'back' to desktop recently, but it's to do with the pandemic. Laptop died last may, I got a new one, and... it's still reasonably good. However, I've been far less mobile in the last few months, and that will likely stay that way for a long time. I've been primarily on laptops for the past 12-13 years or so. Much of my work involves traveling and meeting clients, sometimes doing some work on their premises. This was not an every day thing, but it was enough that I considered the laptop the primary tool. And I would typically get the higher-powered laptop models when I'd get new ones, as it's the main day to day tool. The last 6+ months have changed most of my movements. I haven't met a client in person this year. I don't expect I will for at least another year. If it's sooner, it's sooner, but probably not. Being forced in to being non-mobile, my thoughts are turning back to desktops. I'll still want a laptop, but price/performance, I know I can get some more from desktop, and I'm considering switching to desktop as 'primary work tool' in the next couple of months. I'll keep current laptop (18 months old now) and it will serve fine as a secondary tool. I'm curious how covid will impact other peoples' decisions in this area. I can't be the only one in this situation thinking about this decision.
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I use a docked (TB3) laptop. I have a 49” LG ultrawide, powered by an eGPU. A desktop would definitely be faster. My wife has a low-end desktop that blows my top-end laptop out of the water. But I don’t play games, and need to take my system on the road, occasionally, so I need the laptop. I do have a couple of screamingly fast external USC-C SSD drives. They work nicely, and are teeny.
• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  why not compromise https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-mini-desktop-pcs/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-mini-desktop...
• KaiserPro 6y ago
  For previous work I had a big workstation (HPz620, 32 cores, 64 gigs of ram, large GPU) Whilst it wasn't portable, it was _fast_. Granted not in single threaded performance (they are all old hat nowadays) But I could run a bunch of containers, VMs if I wanted and run slack and chrome (although I use firefox mostly) New work has given me a fancy macbook. Which is fine, but I miss the extra resolution of the 4k screen (which I suspect is perceived rather than actual. I have very small fonts) I also miss linux as a local dev environment.
• vermaden 6y ago
  Not to even mention these shitty island type keyboards in all laptops. From all features of pre 2012-NOW laptops the REAL KEYBOARD is what I miss the most. I really hoped that Lenovo will make something more from its 25th Anniversary Edition ThinkPad (some name id T25) but from what I know only 5000 pieces were made and finito. Or ar least that Lenovo will PERMANENTLY provice a classic/retro ThinkPad with every new generation with REAL KEYBOARD. That is why I still use 2011 ThinkPad W520 and ThinkPad X220 - to have REAL USABLE KEYBOARD with REAL PGUP/PGDN HOME/END INS/DEL keys block in the top right space. Future looks very dark since years in the laptop space. The more I look into laptop computing (and often computing in general) the more only single word stands out. D I S S A P O I N T E D
  • busrf 6y ago
    To be quite honest I also thought, once upon a time, that I could NEVER leave my proper 7 row X220t keyboard for the shitty new island keyboards in new thinkpads. I now type happily on my X1 Yoga. It’s a very good keyboard, you get used to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There are tradeoffs we all have to make, and I chose having new processors and things like USB-C over having a really good built in keyboard. I just settled for a good keyboard, not a really good one.
    • vermaden 6y ago
      I used this type of keyboard for 3 years on ThinkPad W530. Thought that I will get used to it. I kinda did but the first moment when I moved back to REAL 7-row keyboard was like driving a bike again. Its just so good I do not want to get back to anything other then that. Maybe I will have two machines. One to type and one for other things ... or with external ThinkPad SK-8855 keyboard :) Time will come, maybe I will do one last 'hop' with ThinkPad 25th Anniversary Edition ... if they will be available in several years ... Thanks.
• hypertexthero 6y ago
  Recently I built a small form factor PC for playing video games and streaming and I love it! Here it is, Condensed Anthem Lazer Power: Frostblade NeWT: https://hypertexthero.com/pc/ https://hypertexthero.com/pc/ Two problems, it has: Weight/portability for when I do need to take it somewhere, and that it runs Windows and I prefer Mac OS. I keep my MacBook Pro because of these but am thinking of making the PC a dual-boot Hackintosh.
• cjfd 6y ago
  When I bought my current desktop computer it was not so very easy to find one without windows. I live in the Netherlands and I actually ended up ordering one from Germany. It used to be that I could just buy a windows-free pc from the local computer store. I find this a bit worrisome and shocking...
  • AMC11 6y ago
    Couldn’t you get rid of Windows and use whatever OS you want?
• ffwd 6y ago
  Regarding the "tragic" part of the post... It feels like there are more people learning Python and other things like that than there were 10 years ago. Linux is built into Windows, there is a lot of github activity, is all of this a sign that there will be more tinkerers in the future? That tinkering will be more for everyone rather than a few experts? Also since you have a lot of computer science majors, and coding is a thing everyone knows about (?), it seems like there will always be a sizable portion that will need proper computers and a proper OS that isn't just a "device". I mean without programmers and technical people in the future the companies themselves will not be able to run so there must always be proper options for those who want it
• anemoiac 6y ago
  Shouldn’t this be an obvious option? When did desktops become a non-thing? I know it’s not a practical choice for everyone, but I’ve always maintained both a desktop and a laptop. The desktop tends to be both significantly cheaper and more powerful, and it typically also survives a couple laptop upgrades before being replaced.
• miki123211 6y ago
  What I'm really concerned about is Secure Boot, Notarization (and Windows equivalents) and Mandatory SSL being pushed by browser vendors. Those three things taken together, with a well-targeted government intervention, could turn the internet into a walled garden, in the name of stopping scams/terrorism/child porn/piracy for the first few years, obviously.
• scottlocklin 6y ago
  I'm kind of flabbergasted anyone from the desktop era stopped using desktop computers. Trying to do serious work on a laptop is either not doing serious work or laughably insane. Big monitors, big IO (laptop motherboards mostly throttle IO), big memory chips, many hardware threads, actually fast and low latency internets; even the keyboard and mouse experience is vastly better than using the proverbial toilet paper tube of a laptop. I mean, maybe most people don't need this: I do. Pretty much every aspect of my desktop makes me more productive. The only downside is it's more difficult to transport my 60lb threadripper than my thinkpad, but even that can be done, and is totally worth the trouble when there is serious work to be done. Laptops have mostly regressed into consumer appliances; my 2011 thinkpad is significantly faster and has more memory than a 2017 macbook pro. The monitor (and I guess speakers if I'm using it as a TV) is better in the macbook; that's it!
• greyhair 6y ago
  There are a number of misplaced points in this article, but I will focus on two. UEFI, properly implemented, is a huge improvement over old BIOS. It isn't required to be 'locked', and I have never encountered a Windows laptop or desktop that didn't not allow you to disable secure boot within the BIOS. I am not as familiar with Apple hardware so I will not comment on that. UEFI and it GUID partition layout is superior to traditional BIOS. I develop within embedded systems that rely on GUID partitions to provide granularity of storage. One current system I support has 34 partitions, to support redundancy, safe image updates, and soft recovery. With UEFI on the desktop, you can implement the same strategies. So those are two statements in the post that I found to be misleading, if not outright wrong. On the hardware front, yes, current era consumer laptops have become completely sealed boxes. If you want to own a laptop that can be upgraded and maintained, you need to buy either a gaming or enterprise laptop. For most people, and enterprise laptop is only going to be slightly more expensive than a consumer grade device. It is not going to be as slim and 'sexy'. It t will likely have useful ports down the side. On desktops, as long as you are buying a full sized desktop, I have not seen any (yet) that are not completely equipped with appropriate connectors and cabling to support upgrades. I have seen 'mini' systems that are completely soldered down, but that is the price you pay for small. Connectors consume real estate.
• zarkov99 6y ago
  I am surprised by this article. Obviously laptops are vastly inferior as desktop machines. The trouble now is that laptops are becoming crap as laptops as well. The thermals on my new XPS 15 are garbage and looking around there doesn't seem to be anything better out there.
• hexa00 6y ago
  I went one step further. Use a server! , You can get cheap used, Dual Xeons 12 cores, with like 128G of ram on ebay for about 1000$ And that's not the only thing you get compared to a regular desktop you get: - IPMI - Dual Power supply - Hot swappable drives! - ECC Ram (nice for zfs) - A decent Motherboard with PCI extensions But yes it sounds like a airplane, but the idea is to put that computer away from your desk in a closet or in your basement. Thanks to Fiber Optic based DisplayPort cables, I have my server 30 ft away from me in the basement. My work area is dead silent! Note I also use a usb extender and a usb DAC, so I got 2 long cables and I get keyb/mouse/audio and 4K 60Hz video. I think a comparable spec new desktop would have cost about 5-10k.. With the savings I was able to get a PCI card with NVME drives, and 2x16TB drives and that was still cheaper :)
• dhagz 6y ago
  I used to have a dream computing setup back when I was in college: A beefy desktop computer - high performance/$ CPU and GPU with several terabytes of storage so I could not worry about how much stuff I download and have several OSes installed without having to shortchange some on storage. A netbook - one of those 10"-screen dinky little things that had just enough compute to run some basic desktop stuff. I would use this as a remote terminal to the desktop so I could still use the desktop's power from my couch. As wifi speeds have increased, netbooks have all but disappeared and laptops mostly suck, I'm seriously considering this again, but instead of a netbook I'd jerry-rig a Raspberry Pi into a "laptop".
• NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Much of this is the reason for every laptop of mine has a docking station
• morgengold 6y ago
  I have a big website about finances. Today 80% of the traffic is "mobile". I seriously don't get it. Because personally I hate to do 'research' with my phone. Of course on the go, or for a quick lookup that's perfectly fine.
• GoodJokes 6y ago
  Huge if true
• dappiu 6y ago
  Glad to see it's not just me :p
• sizzle 6y ago
  I love my maxed out Mac Mini. I hope the Arm processor version breathes some life back into this line
• uhtred 6y ago
  I built my first PC recently, a desktop that I'm running Linux on. Cost me under $600 and is powerful enough for my needs. I love it.
• HeavyStorm 6y ago
  Never left. On work, I had no choice, but @ home, always desktops.
• ece 6y ago
  EFI as a standard needs to be better implemented, but TPMs are your friend when you can change the keys. I switched back to desktops when the 1st gen Ryzen 8-cores came out and haven't regretted it for a second. Bigger screens, beefy specs, more connectivity, and all of it is incredible value given the price of some 13-14 inch laptops! I can go actually as light as I would like on my laptop now, even something ARM so that's a plus too, if you don't need mobility and beefy specs at the same time.
• huntleydavis 6y ago
  I think the idea of the 'Personal Computer' has been grossly warped over the past 20 years from a tool that primarily serves our personal goals to a 'Device' that's designed to serve the goals of a corporation. The general public has become 'ok' with the concept of paying for a premium for a device but not really owning it.
• machinesbuddy 6y ago
  I'm also considering going back to a custom build desktop. Lots of flexibility, much more stronger, cheaper, upgradable, etc. I'm already connecting my laptop to a display and mechanical keyboard and mouse. Specially now we work from home and probably continue doing so which I enjoy a lot, I can just put the laptop aside for rare cases I need a mobile computer.