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> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here Interesting, could you tell

> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here Interesting, could you tell me which part of US you are from? --- My 2 cents, small country, mid-Europe, more or less in the middle of list of GDP / AIC per capita in EU. Nearly everyone has some sort of PC or laptops for personal use. Now it's changing, kids(~5-13yrs old) are using phones and tablets for school, Tiktok, Ytube, games. And only minority of kids is using PCs. After they reach certain age, they've switched to PC games, at least in the past. Let's see what will happen now. Gamers use primarily PC (Windows, because forced BS Anticheats), consoles are minority. Probably because big tradition of piracy here, for long time it was legal to download anything. Even after forced change from EU, it's somewhat grey area and you can torrent anything, without VPN and nobody will care. But regarding pirating games, it changed years ago, with Steam of course. Like everywhere else. Still it's funny that we have same price or sometimes even higher than US and our median salary is ~5x lower than US. :-) Here we call it "specific market", meaning "everybody buys it and everybody's stupid". Only prosecuted cases I know, it was people uploading movies (usually local production) and they've made money from it. In case of Germany and their automation of spamming letters from lawyers with ransom for €1k because someone on your internet torrented something. That's totally ridiculous from our point of view and it would spawn huge public backlash. I think that even lawyers torrents here :D

xaitv 1y ago
Netherlands here. Most people I know (outside of gamers) tend to have a laptop only if they have one for work anyway, they use their phones for banking, tax, searching the correct spelling of words etc. That's in the age groups from like 30 all the way to 70. I don't think I know any non-gamer that has an actual desktop, just people with laptops. For the gamers consoles are the vast majority, of the PC gamers pretty much all use Windows. When I tell friends I use Linux it's mostly "oh yeah I looked into that as well when Windows 11 came out but didn't end up switching".
- Fokamul 1y ago
  Yes, top of the list, it shows :) Latops and desktops, it's a mix here. Older people had mainly desktops in the past. That's my experience, at least. Banking, yeah mainly phones because of ridiculous forced banking apps from corporate masters, like everywhere else? (certain bank even lost a lot of customers because of that) Taxes, if you are just an employee, taxes are done by your employer for you, by law. (I presume it's a post-communism BS, so people doesn't pay attention how much taxes we pay.) If you have other types of income, you do it yourself, you have app/website to click through it, easy. Not automatic though. Self-employed IT pay less taxes than normal employees :D and overall lower-income people pay bigger taxes by percentage, what a great country :D We call your country Holland, great country imho, If I would thinking about moving, that's top option for me. Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Hell, I can even legally carry katana, not kidding. Linux is used only by IT people, friends cannot switch because they play MP games with invasive Anticheat running on kernel. Personally, I'm only switching people to Linux if they cannot afford new PC because of Win11 upgrade. Zorin OS usually.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Wild. I had no idea you can do this in continental Europe. I found this map on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11qkksb/concealed_carry_in_eu_map_made_by_me_feel_free_to/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11qkksb/concealed_c...
  - 400thecat 1y ago
    are you talking about Czech Republic ?
- VagabundoP 1y ago
  College students will have laptops or a laptop-like device.
jabroni_salad 1y ago
(US minnesota) recently a 23 year old new hire advised me that he doesn't have a normal computer or laptop and he buys plane tickets, files his taxes, plans projects etc on a phone or ipad. Thinking that some tasks are better suited to a desk / 2 monitors is apparently a millennial thing now .
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I had my first personal computer in 1986. But I can easily do all of those things just as conveniently on my phone. 90% of tax payers claim the standard deduction. That means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and it importing your W2’s automatically if your employer uses one of the major payment providers like ADP or worse case taking a picture of your W2, clicking “Next” a few times after answering a few questions and it’s done. Why would I need a desktop to buy plane tickets? I launch my airline app, get the ticket. Plans? For my personal projects I use Trello. I have an M2 MacBook Air that I only bought when I was between jobs for around a month to do a side contract. My wife wanted a new computer to replace her aging x86 MacBook Air and then her older iPad went out. We bought an iPad Air 13 inch and paid $70 for a regular old Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and that’s her “computer” now.
  - Fokamul 1y ago
    >That means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and it importing your W2’s automatically Whoa interesting, so everyone is using 3rd party company service, is it paid service or free, I've checked their website and cannot understand if it's free or not for this basic level you've mentioned. In my country, if this was a thing, that you must pay some company to file your taxes, it would probably cause public meltdown and end of any current government :) Here, basic level taxes are done by your employer for you, by law, for free. Because actually they don't do taxes, but they only report amount of tax advances, social security, healthcare paid by your employer, to state, (all 3 is required by law to be paid and you or your employer have big legal problems if not). And also variables for tax deduction and then "something like IRS" will just send you tax return into your account. And for any other cases(if you have more sources of income, eg.: salary + self-employed / rent) you must do taxes yourself, website for helping you to file taxes, is managed by state agency, for free. Or you pay some money to "tax specialist" to file your taxes for you and liability to file it right goes after them (something like accountant, but hired only for this one task)
wltr 1y ago
I’m curious to know the country, if you don’t mind sharing. I thought these EU letters of happiness are a real deal.

xaitv 1y ago

Netherlands here. Most people I know (outside of gamers) tend to have a laptop only if they have one for work anyway, they use their phones for banking, tax, searching the correct spelling of words etc. That's in the age groups from like 30 all the way to 70. I don't think I know any non-gamer that has an actual desktop, just people with laptops. For the gamers consoles are the vast majority, of the PC gamers pretty much all use Windows. When I tell friends I use Linux it's mostly "oh yeah I looked into that as well when Windows 11 came out but didn't end up switching".

Fokamul 1y ago
Yes, top of the list, it shows :) Latops and desktops, it's a mix here. Older people had mainly desktops in the past. That's my experience, at least. Banking, yeah mainly phones because of ridiculous forced banking apps from corporate masters, like everywhere else? (certain bank even lost a lot of customers because of that) Taxes, if you are just an employee, taxes are done by your employer for you, by law. (I presume it's a post-communism BS, so people doesn't pay attention how much taxes we pay.) If you have other types of income, you do it yourself, you have app/website to click through it, easy. Not automatic though. Self-employed IT pay less taxes than normal employees :D and overall lower-income people pay bigger taxes by percentage, what a great country :D We call your country Holland, great country imho, If I would thinking about moving, that's top option for me. Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Hell, I can even legally carry katana, not kidding. Linux is used only by IT people, friends cannot switch because they play MP games with invasive Anticheat running on kernel. Personally, I'm only switching people to Linux if they cannot afford new PC because of Win11 upgrade. Zorin OS usually.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Wild. I had no idea you can do this in continental Europe. I found this map on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11qkksb/concealed_carry_in_eu_map_made_by_me_feel_free_to/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11qkksb/concealed_c...
- 400thecat 1y ago
  are you talking about Czech Republic ?
VagabundoP 1y ago
College students will have laptops or a laptop-like device.

jabroni_salad 1y ago

(US minnesota) recently a 23 year old new hire advised me that he doesn't have a normal computer or laptop and he buys plane tickets, files his taxes, plans projects etc on a phone or ipad. Thinking that some tasks are better suited to a desk / 2 monitors is apparently a millennial thing now .

scarface_74 1y ago
I had my first personal computer in 1986. But I can easily do all of those things just as conveniently on my phone. 90% of tax payers claim the standard deduction. That means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and it importing your W2’s automatically if your employer uses one of the major payment providers like ADP or worse case taking a picture of your W2, clicking “Next” a few times after answering a few questions and it’s done. Why would I need a desktop to buy plane tickets? I launch my airline app, get the ticket. Plans? For my personal projects I use Trello. I have an M2 MacBook Air that I only bought when I was between jobs for around a month to do a side contract. My wife wanted a new computer to replace her aging x86 MacBook Air and then her older iPad went out. We bought an iPad Air 13 inch and paid $70 for a regular old Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and that’s her “computer” now.
- Fokamul 1y ago
  >That means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and it importing your W2’s automatically Whoa interesting, so everyone is using 3rd party company service, is it paid service or free, I've checked their website and cannot understand if it's free or not for this basic level you've mentioned. In my country, if this was a thing, that you must pay some company to file your taxes, it would probably cause public meltdown and end of any current government :) Here, basic level taxes are done by your employer for you, by law, for free. Because actually they don't do taxes, but they only report amount of tax advances, social security, healthcare paid by your employer, to state, (all 3 is required by law to be paid and you or your employer have big legal problems if not). And also variables for tax deduction and then "something like IRS" will just send you tax return into your account. And for any other cases(if you have more sources of income, eg.: salary + self-employed / rent) you must do taxes yourself, website for helping you to file taxes, is managed by state agency, for free. Or you pay some money to "tax specialist" to file your taxes for you and liability to file it right goes after them (something like accountant, but hired only for this one task)

wltr 1y ago

I’m curious to know the country, if you don’t mind sharing. I thought these EU letters of happiness are a real deal.