Thanks to EveningStar for the ping!!
Posted on 10/29/2016 1:59:49 PM PDT by EveningStar
The personal desktop computer used to once be an exclusive and expensive machine, though we now know it and its laptop counterpart as a mass-market commodity that most people can afford. This week, however, the companies that defined the personal computer, Microsoft and Apple, gave us a glimpse of the future and it looks like a return to the past: the PC is going back to being an exclusive and expensive machine.
Set aside all the explosions of color on gorgeous, high-resolution displays. Ignore the glamorous promo videos and the ultrathin, all-metal chassis of the new Surface Studio and MacBook Pro. Instead, focus on the prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
I used to use PC’s all the time. Last year on black Friday I bought a Kindle Fire tablet for $35. Since then I have very seldom used a PC for anything. This Kindle Fire is great. It never crashes.
I guess I am a dork because I don't have a business.
:-)
PCs and notebooks are still needed by content creators. Have you ever tried to build and write pages for a major LAMP website on a phone?
If you want to make a living (as opposed to surfing all day) PC skills are still essential.
I’m typing this on a Nextbook 10 computer that cost $139 from Amazon. It looks like a like a tablet, has all the basic MS programs, and works like a Windows 10 PC, because it is one. Great little machine that’s perfect for travel.
These were from Lenovo
I am sure they are on eBay for less
I was buying these for clients to use in their businesses
It’s also hard for us older folks to read on those tiny devices. I like the comfort of my desktop.
Don’t forget about the refurbished market. You can find some real bargains in hardware that’s two or three years old that has been refurbished to look and run like new.
My current PC was pretty high end when it was new. Way more than I’d pay. But with refurbishment, the price fell to be in line with a new medium high end PC.
ping
Hey, you left out us nerds.
As long as there is an operating system that runs a decent office suite and some games, I’ll continue to build a new PC every five years or so. The current ones I’m building cost between $450 and $1,000 depending upon the state of gaming graphics at the time.
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The fact is that hardware has now out-paced software. A truly decent PC or Mac (solid design and solid components) should be more than ample to last the average consumer ~10 years. Yeah, this R&D Engineer said 10 years!
You used to have to upgrade every 2-3 years. Then every 4-5 years. Now, if you start with a good solid platform, you should be good for about 10 years. The hardware speeds are limited more by the laws of physics than process advances. We have graphics engines that deliver for ~$300 what Top of the line $1,800 GPU’s delivered just a year ago
Drop $2,000 today on a good design and you have something that should be around for a decade, if properly cared for. This is something that Apple does well. The asymmetric fan design delivers quiet yet ample cooling. Apple products just last longer.
My Mac Pro is a late 2012 manufacture . It lives a good life as a desk top when we’re home and hides in the gunsafe when we’re not at home. We use it combined about 6 hours a day , not just on and sitting on the table or desk,,,,,use. Surfing, burning CD’s , school, research, work.
Solid platform, never had a virus or malware according to Kaspersky pro antivirus scans etcetera . I’m a fan of the Mac Pro laptops. Hope it does last 10 years plus.
Yeah. Wife likes the iPad Pro I gave her; I want a keyboard and a nice big monitor. So that’s what I use.
There are fewer of us left every day....
When I bought my latest MacBook I debated whether to get the small or large one. I finally decided to go with the smaller one because it’s more portable. When I’m at home, I plug in an extra monitor (about 3x the size of the MacBook screen) and work on both screens.
Maybe not a solution for everyone, but this has worked extremely well for me. If I were going to spend more money on a MacBook, I’d get more memory rather than more screen space.
I started retracking PC builds over the past 2 years.
$2k is a reasonable build price.
Market prices for older prefab machines supports $500/PC.
Main differences are chipsets and OS and secondary memory.
Motherboards centering around the Z170 chipset and 1151 slot allow for 5thGen intel chips.
Low end MB but all functions of the chipset, say an ASUS 170A, is about $150 for the Motherboard alone. That can range up to about $400-$500 for all the bells and whistles, but still not all the chip set functionality employed. That is developed over time.
Say $150-$250 for the MB. Add DDR4 memory at about $74-100/8GB stick. Motherboards max out at 32GB to 64 GB primary memory.
CPU, functionality of a 4-core i5 at about $250 or go i7 can range from low $300s to over $1600 for the i7 Extreme 10 core chip. Depends upon the applications being used. In most cases, I’d recommend an i5 Skylake.
Secondary memory now comes into play. Solid State Drives are now par for the course, but still have some defects in them. Recommend them for your OS and core applications where sections really don’t need much rewrite, only a fast boot time. Safety in numbers, recommend going with the best sellers and best ratings for best results. 128GB to 500GB SSD are probably decent general devices.
One word about memory,...dollar for dollar spent for performance, the user is probably better served to learn how his PC manages memory, then design the memory accordingly. One can easily drop $2k on different memory configurations, simply using default memory schemes, and still never use the power available. Likewise, if you fall back into older standard designs, the only functionality you will get will be a fast 386.
Typical memory designs are for 4-16GB RAM, 128GB SSD and a 1-3TB spinning hard drive. Most applications are still single core applications, but with gaming and internet apps, this is a whole different game.
OS. Note Win10 is not Win XP. Read the licensing agreement. (I think I am only 1 of 4 people in the US who has actually read the stinking thing. It doesn’t even appear the authors have read it. Like other systems, even the license appears to be plug and play, if a subsystem doesn’t work, they just cut it out and paste in a new one until it seems to work.)
Microsoft has geared the OEM OS to be used by the fabricator and NOT by the user. MS promotes toolkits to build the systems, then sell them to the user. After the user buys the preconfigured system it then authenticates the license to the user’s purchase. No more OS cloning.
If you buy the machine from an OEM, then you run the risk of Bing being installed and unable to fully remove it.
Win 10 runs $100-$200. $200 for say full Pro, non-OEM version.
Case and power supply, can run from $40 to $300. say $160
CD drives, and peripherals like USB packages, say $15 - $40 each.
SO
MB $200
RAM $200
CPU $250
Case $150 (incl CPU coolers/fans)
SSD $200
HDD $100
CD/DVD/Bluetooth $100
OS $200
SW $200 (min, this could easily go over $600)
Networking $50-$250, say $100
Keyboard Mouse fluff Say $100
Monitor $ say 4K UHDTV say $400 ($200-$400)
Video Card say $200-$400 (With the ASUS Z170A, on board video allows up to 4k UHD without a video card) If a gaming system, then you probably want more.
So off the shelf, these are $2k packages.
Reusing older portions can trim it down to about $1400, but it is hard to go lower without dropping into a lower class machine, that might be obsolete in 2 years.
Meanwhile
Simple desktops off the shelf offer some decent solutions for simple Office functionality.
Here are some other helpful links if you want to build your own.
https://www.parts-express.com/
http://www.computershopper.com/
http://www.laptopmag.com/best-ssds
http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/
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