Comment by markus_zhang
7 days ago
Better stock up with used laptops. I'm going to buy another one this year. Those used ones usually don't last very long.
What if in the near future it is simply too expensive to own "personal" computers? What if you can no longer buy used computers from official channels but have to find local shops or sharpen up on soldering skills and find parts from dumps? The big techs will conveniently "rent out" cloud computer for us to use, in exchange of all of your data.
"Don't you all have cellphones?"
Bingo. A number of corporate interests don't want to let you own your personal computers for different reasons. Google/Apple wants you to get locked down devices, and cloud/AI providers want you to use their services from a weak client.
Time for folks to familiarize themselves with Linux distros designed to run on older hardware. My 2009 laptop runs great, with the exception of the browser. Oh and the fact that 32-bit software is harder and harder to find.
Yes, I'm grateful I run Linux. You can get quite a bit done with 4GB RAM and a 6th generation (or even earlier) CPU. All 64-bit. I don't think such ancient hardware will be affected by AI demand to the same degree (though I think we'll still see some prices rise if people stop buying new stuff).
The worry is that at some point the older hardware will stop working.
A full-sized laptop from 2009 will probably boot a 64-bit distro, even Pentium M was no longer in use by then.
But it will be so slow to open any website to be useless.
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I think about this too. There are several headwinds. Rent-seeking and collapse of economies of scale in the consumer sector for sure, but also I feel like we've basically peaked in hardware's ability to meet routine needs.
Once the phone makers realize that they can sell phones and docking stations to businesses because 90% of knowledge work seems to happen in a web browser through one SaaS or other I think personal computers will be cooked.
I don't think phones are really any cheaper than the mini PCs that businesses can already buy. Which makes sense, because a phone has to include a battery, touch screen, and is under tighter space constraints.
Android phone is $100 a piece. Minipc is much more expensive.
I have heard that you can get used laptops. But they do not come with memory or SSD anymore... As even used components are now valuable enough to be removed and sold.
Many laptops from last few years have soldered memory. Your previous laptop's SSD can also be reused, since those don't die that quickly compared to the laptop.
In a lot of cases, owners remove the storage not because it has any value but rather they don't want to risk making a mistake letting a device go that still has data on it.
Also pulling and shredding hard drives is cheaper than paying someone to run DBAN or equivalent (which can take many hours to complete on a large drive), and there's no easy way to securely erase an SSD if it wasn't encrypted from the beginning.
Or worse, they have memory and SSD soldered on board, and are broken, so you have to learn soldering skills too.
Damn really? One of my go to moves when helping small political campaigns is to buy like a 2015 MBP and turn it into a locally hosted server to run all their stuff on the cheap.
Older MacBooks with socketed storage may actually be exempted because they use a proprietary connector instead of standard m.2.
I have 3 old employer laptops and my personal gaming laptop, which I use for work now. I'm happy about this now ;)
I probably will only need to return newest laptop if I leave the company.
Non state of the art lithography is pretty much commoditized (DDR3 & DDR4) so we will always have compute, although slower.
Why laptops specifically (and not also desktops)?
I no longer feel obligated to apologize for holding on to older devices for a long time. I have several desktops and laptops that are all still usable.
Eh, if this demand is really sustainable they will eventually start producing in adequate volume