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Author Topic: No, I will not fix your computer.  (Read 65306 times)

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Rico

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #500 on: April 17, 2012, 10:46:55 PM »

A lot of it does have to do with monitor resolution as in one of the notes in that graphic. I'm doing fine with an old card at 1680x1050 with modern games. If this monitor dies I'll probably have to get a new card along with the replacement, though.
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Thad

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #501 on: April 18, 2012, 07:50:52 AM »

I haven't digested all that because JESUS FUCK WHY AN INFOGRAPHIC, but I want to point out that anybody who tells you your computer can't be future-proofed is old fashioned.  My computer is over 5 years old and still plays most things at max or near-max settings.  I did upgrade to a newer mid-range GPU a couple years ago, but still.

Same here, but I think all that really says is that the importance of Latest-and-Greatest has moved so that it's explicitly a video card issue.  Older processor or RAM speed isn't generally what's going to get you.

Moore's Law has kind of fucked off the PC sphere and moved to mobile devices, so the only obsoletion event you really have to fear is the wholesale obsoletion of PCs altogether.

Weeeell, I think before we see that we'll see another round of changing standards.  I think SATA's going to stick around for awhile, but USB3's starting to creep up, and fuck knows how long HDMI's going to remain standard, what with a handful of companies pushing DisplayPort and the total compromise of HDCP.  As far as PCIE, I don't really know; hasn't it already changed spec once?

And for all that I think Windows 8 looks terrible and nobody's going to want it, hardware manufacturers ARE going to have to ship it, and the good news is that that means MS is finally dragging them kicking and screaming into EFI support.  (Small fucking comfort to those of us with 32-bit EFI.)

A better analogue is the car market. As the market for computing matures, more and more sizes will creep in to accommodate people's individual specific needs. We're already seeing tablet/phone size hybrids and interestingly, people are buying them (even though they make for fairly awkward phones). PCs are more like the vans and trucks of the personal computing world [Ted Stevens joke goes here]; whereas smart phones are more like compact cars - good for short hops here and there.

I think you're right on, here, but backing up:

And a PC-size case will always be able to hold more tech at a significantly lower price than a smartphone case considering there's like an order of magnitude's difference in volume constraints.

But that's irrelevant to nearly all users.

Most users need Web access and...that's pretty much it at this point.  I'd say end users don't even really need Office anymore.  (Business users do, but I'll get to them in a minute.)  Phone hardware is more than powerful enough to support the programs a typical end user needs.

The drawbacks of phones -- again, for most users -- aren't in horsepower, they're in interface.  You can't write a report with your thumbs.  (Well, you can, but why would you?)  If you want to sit down and actually use your device for anything more than casual Web browsing, then you want peripherals -- a keyboard, maybe a mouse and a printer, and as you say, a monitor (though if you've got a 10" tablet that might be enough screen space for you).  But none of that's got anything to do with how much CPU/GPU power or RAM you've got on the thing.

Mobile data rates will probably always carry some cost premium over landline data, even if it is only marginal.

I think in ten years' time it'll be nominal.  I don't think by-the-byte/by-the-minute pricing will last in the wireless space, any more than it did in the land line space.

I'd say the biggest challenge portable devices face at this point is efficiency.  Flash is on its way out precisely because it sucks battery life like a Colombian hooker.  And honestly I'd say this is a software problem as much as a hardware one at this stage -- the chip makers are doing a great fucking job of coming out with more efficient processors, but software developers have spent the last decade in a world where cycles and RAM were cheap and never learned to bother with optimization.

All that said: phones aren't going to replace PC's for a majority of users for quite some time.  Business users will be a major holdout, as will graphic designers and gamers.  (Never forget that PC gamers are a niche -- but they're a niche that spends a lot of money.)

I AM curious as to whether tablets will eventually cause a reversal in the trend of laptops outselling desktops.  I don't expect that it will, since the price difference between a good-enough-for-most-people laptop and a good-enough-for-most-people desktop is so small at this point and that being able to take your computer with you if you NEED to is an appealing option even for people who rarely use it.  But I think, for the minority of users who own a desktop AND a laptop, they might consider trading that laptop for a tablet, and I suspect that'll create a shift that, while not major, will be noticeable.
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Brentai

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #502 on: April 18, 2012, 08:27:54 AM »

Laptops have already pretty much outmoded desktops for general business use; for high-power use (gamers, graphic designers, developers et al) desktops will always be preferred unless the standard hardware spec of a laptop is changed to allow easier modification.  Docked tablets will probably become a lot more common in the retail space, and touchscreen-oriented systems like Android will ironically have to shift more towards accomodating the mouse/keyboard (with touch still the main input).

And that "wholesale obsolesence of PCs" crack was a joke, in case that wasn't clear.
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Mongrel

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #503 on: April 18, 2012, 09:36:23 AM »

Interface is pretty crucial too. Lots of people are much more comfortable with a desktop setup. I kind of went into this with my screen-size comments, but yeah, the full keyboard and the like is just as important.

Battery life was something I'd forgotten. Ironically, it's RIM that's done the best job (by far) in maximising battery life. Too bad they don't push that as a big point (I mean, it's not going to win them a marketing war, but it's actually a pretty good point in their favour to bring up).

I think for casual and business users we may start to see a product come out in a generation or two where a smartphone is docked into a desk setup with full-size screen and keyboard. Business users may embrace this as it only continues the trend of blurring work and home spaces. The threshold is simply a smartphone that matches current low-to-midrange laptops in capabilities.
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Thad

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #504 on: April 18, 2012, 09:42:24 AM »

Interface is pretty crucial too. Lots of people are much more comfortable with a desktop setup.

Except that Apple and MS are determined to foist a phone interface onto desktop users whether they want it or not.  (GNOME and Canonical, too, for us Linux users, but since I'm speaking of general end users I'll leave that as a parenthetical aside.)

Keyboards and mice are great tools for interfaces designed around them.  They're not so good at interfaces designed for touchscreens.  And yet here we are.

I think for casual and business users we may start to see a product come out in a generation or two where a smartphone is docked into a desk setup with full-size screen and keyboard. Business users may embrace this as it only continues the trend of blurring work and home spaces. The threshold is simply a smartphone that matches current low-to-midrange laptops in capabilities.

Long-term, yeah, I see that happening, and that could be precisely the reason Apple and MS are so damn keen on unifying their interfaces.

Short-term, people don't fucking want their desktops to behave like phones, because it's stupid.  Win8 will do the same kind of business that Vista did: yes, end users will buy it if they buy a new computer because that's what comes with the computer, but business purchasers aren't going to touch the fucking thing.  Not even the ones who standardize on Windows Phone (which still has the potential to make major inroads with business customers, since RIM is on the decline and Apple doesn't have a dominant position in that space yet).
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Shinra

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #505 on: April 18, 2012, 10:49:43 AM »

Anecdotal:

At Verizon I was supporting Jetblue, LiveNation, Vangent and Acosta, and here at HP I support Pfizer. With the exception of Acosta, while all of those companies supported Blackberry, by and large most of their people with smartphones were using Iphones. As soon as Verizon got their own iphone every exec, salesman and mid-range desk jockey had one, and almost everybody at Pfizer has one. For every one blackberry call I get, I get 10-15 iphone calls.

I feel like Microsoft is going to be a day late and a dollar short with the W8 phones just like they were with the W7 phones. The iphone is moving quick to supplant the blackberry and Microsoft is taking their sweet time to get their product to market, I suspect because of this assumption that the only 'business' machine in the handheld game is the Blackberry. Here's the problem: It's my experience that businessmen and accountants and marketers aren't tech savvy. They want a machine that works. The Blackberry used to be the simplest, fastest way to get and send email on the go. Now it's the iphone. Microsoft is going to bring a product to market with productivity apps and 'multi-tasking', and it's going to confuse and frustrate people just like every prior windows mobile device did. The 6700 was the only really successful Windows Mobile phone and that's because it lived in the very brief period where Blackberries sucked and Palm Pilots were dead.


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Brentai

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #506 on: April 22, 2012, 12:43:11 AM »

Apparently Derbler Three is out to prove me wrong about future-proofing, and now I need a new box.  Or at least a new CPU and accompanying motherboard.

I've got between now and mid-May to watch for deals and build a monster out of cadaver parts.  WHAT WILL SCIENCE DO?
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Syl

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #507 on: April 24, 2012, 12:58:41 PM »

Well, science just launched intel's Ivy Bridge and accompanying Z77 motherboards.  So that's pretty damn awesome.  Also there's a chance that the nVidia 6xx midrange cards could, potentially, come out before may - but I find that somewhat unlikely.  Also harddrive prices are starting to drop again, (about time!) and SSD's are constantly getting faster, more awesome and cheaper.

Seriously though, get an SSD.  More than pretty much any other computer upgrade, the money spent towards an SSD will make the biggest most noticeable performance difference.  (Except for a videocard if you only care about gaming over every other aspect of a PC)
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Ziiro

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #508 on: April 24, 2012, 01:37:35 PM »

Solid state is pretty amazing. I can't imagine living without one now. Load times are null. I'm concerned about it failing but anything of archival importance is stored on a mechanical drive anyway. Using steam mover is pretty much a necessity.

 I'd like to be able to justify the want of the new IvyBridge and GTX680 or whatever but I can't because my CPU/GPU combo still plays games at max 1920x1080.
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Thad

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #509 on: April 24, 2012, 01:59:59 PM »

I'll keep it in mind, but the price per byte is still pretty prohibitive.  Maybe when I get around to doing a full OS reinstall I'll use one as an OS drive and keep /home on one of my bigger drives.
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Classic

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #510 on: April 24, 2012, 02:07:50 PM »

As I understand it, because of the increasing speeds of RAM and the way most virtual memory schemes redistribute latency, we've had scenarios where (game) performance was limited by disk access rather than latencies in RAM to CPU or RAM to GPU transfers since about 2008.
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Niku

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #511 on: April 24, 2012, 02:30:21 PM »

I picked up a SSD for my OS and a SSD for games when building this rig and have not had a single regret.  Sure they're tiny compared to storage drives, but I have a few of those already where I can keep backups of things while just keeping the essentials on the SSDs.
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Brentai

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #512 on: April 24, 2012, 04:02:25 PM »

Small SSD/Large HD was the plan for this rig since moment one.  Not sure if any kind of RAID is appropriate for that setup though.
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Syl

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #513 on: April 24, 2012, 05:05:37 PM »

You can't raid them together, but i'd do either Raid1 or Raid5 for the mechanical drives simply for fault tolerance.  If you get one of the newer intel chipsets you can also do this really cool SSD cache thing which should help the speed of your mechanical drives as well.  I forgot the name they used for it. 
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Classic

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #514 on: April 24, 2012, 05:59:15 PM »

I didn't think you'd need to RAID them if all you want is a small archive of backup/restore data, but I don't know why it'd be impossible to do a RAID 1 scheme between the two (or rather a partition of the HDD and the SSD).
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Classic

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #515 on: April 24, 2012, 07:56:54 PM »

Huh! My laptop's screen is starting to die.
After about a day of being on the screen refuses to show any light, and I don't have a light source powerful enough to check if the LCDs are updating.
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Classic

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #516 on: April 24, 2012, 08:01:21 PM »

I didn't think you'd need to RAID them if all you want is a small archive of backup/restore data, but I don't know why it'd be impossible to do a RAID 1 scheme between the two (or rather a partition of the HDD and the SSD).
Forgot how RAID 1 schemes handle disparate latencies. So it could also just defeat the entire reason for using a SSD.
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Smiler

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #517 on: May 01, 2012, 08:41:41 AM »

I did a memtest to see if my ram has been the cause of all of the BSODs I had been getting.

500 errors. Yeah, I ordered new ram.
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Beat Bandit

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #518 on: August 06, 2012, 02:42:48 PM »

Up until about two weeks ago, any embedded video player would stay at full screen whenever I clicked away from the window.

Now the internet is telling me about all the .dlls to replace and registries to edit, or trials to start and applications to install. Any chance someone here just knows what button I hit? (I use Chrome)
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Mongrel

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Re: No, I will not fix your computer.
« Reply #519 on: September 06, 2012, 09:28:02 PM »

Has anybody else been having really horrible freezing problems on YouTube lately? I've noticed it on multiple computers, multiple operating systems, and multiple browsers.

Cursory internet searching seems to indicate there's some crippling fuckup with Flash 11.3... but no real solutions other than reverting to v10.x.
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