“You’ll never own another computer cheaper than $500”
Chinese tech firms produce high end computers for less than $500
“SANCTION! TARIFF! EMBARGO!”
Now do cars, lol
You will never own an EV for under $80k
if you buy slightly used, you are doing something wrong paying more than 15-20k.
The used car market imploded when vehicle production dried up after 2008
The prices for tech on Taobao in China and in the US are nearly identical for the vast majority of tech items. So much is excluded from the tariffs that it’s silly they even exist on paper. There are indeed some newer items only available there, but they’re rarely on the affordable end of pricing.
Laptops and computer hardware in particular surprise me. I was hoping to get a new Huawei or Xiaomi laptop the last time I was in China since I got my parents a Huawei I’ve been jealous of in the US several years before they were banned. Absolutely nothing I could find on Taobao or in store was comparable value even to computers from Dell/HP/Lenovo.
I have a Huawei watch, and I think it’s great, especially for the price. I guess you can make quality, affordable products when you’re subsidised by the state.
The new entry-level PC will be a cloud-based thin client subsidized by collecting every bit of data it can about you directly on a Microslop server where you will have zero user choice.
You’re not allowed to say ‘Microslop’ it’s ILLEGAL!!!
Not now clippy… not now.
Yeah, I think one of the reasons the AI bubble hasn’t popped yet is because it’s being weaponized to remove consumer hardware from the market entirely. These companies want as much processing done on the cloud as possible so that they can control, monitor and mine data from every user.
Don’t forget the rentseeking.
They aren’t weaponizing anything against consumers. They don’t care about consumers anymore, they are irrelevant.
They think if they just spend more money they will win the AGI race and therefore the whole economy forever. Consumers don’t factor into it at all.
When you say cloud… I don’t think people understand it is just a huge data centers. There are 288 in Canada, and ¼ of them are in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).
I’m this close to just quitting society and becoming Amish or something. Technology is just getting worse and worse. Maybe I could be Amish but instead of being locked in the 1800s I just stay in like 2007 when technology was fun
Technology keeps getting better and better; it is capitalism that keeps getting worse and worse.
Frutiger Amish
We can’t even get reliable broadband across the full US yet (Hughesnet still somehow has customers), i don’t see consumer-VDI being especially popular any time soon.
They don’t need to stream you a desktop
They just make all their UIs browser based, all the storage cloud based
The own everything, they rent it to you, and you can be cut off if you refuse to be exploited.
Capital’s wet fucking dream
They don’t care. It’s a cost-benefit analysis.
If 5% of users can’t access a VDI because of poor internet connectivity but it means the remaining 95% create an extra 10% of annual profit, they will just tell that 5% to get fucked. Individuals don’t matter to them; only aggregates do.
They don’t care. They will literally throw people under buses at this point.
Real
I will go back to MB of ram from a new company that wants to fill the gap at any cost and will not be surprised if that happens.
I ain’t fuckin doin it
Access to the information superhighway will be relegated to only those who can afford a yacht. /s
Full circle back to the first days of the internet that only universities and the rich could use. Also high storage prices again when we’ve had it dirt cheap for decades.
Nothing new.
the majority of people access the internet on their phones or smart devices. almost exclusively.
desktop computer internet is going the way of the doh doh in terms of traffic. it’s for nerds.
Crazy isn’t it!
I stand by, phones are for consuming, computers are for creation. Of course humans thirst for consuming is unending, like an insatiable Godzilla.
Yeah well i’m a social pariah for not being a phone person. I’m over here like it’s 2002 consuming most of my internet on a desktop, not even a laptop! I spend maybe 15m a day on my phone.
Awesome. I do much as I can to live in 2003 (mostly using CRTs, watching my vhs tapes, playing dreamcast, ha!)
I do like my phone for on the go, but I’ve done all I can do de crapify it. Excited to get a pixel and graphene next year.
Along with anything else costing less than $500.
Only due to basically one reason - oligopolies.
I predict this research firm will not exist by 2030
Depends on how many corporations they can supply favorable polls to.
Before I’d say building your own can be more cost effective, but I can’t even say that now with those RAM and GPU prices.
I hope that they just fail in their half-assed attempts and the prices fall again.
Me too or supply rises to met demand with new companies, which can also lower the price. But I mostly want AI to fail.
yeah prebuilts are cheaper now, sadly
Saving for my kids college went out the window.
Saving for my kids computers now
Holding on to stuff longer isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the pc market was in a very wasteful state before all this. Still sucks though they way things have become :(
That’s true, but I’m also dreading the day my ram breaks down or I need more storage.
I just had to get a replacement drive for my NAS. Cost about half of what I paid for 3 drives 2 years ago.
It’s probably all to plan, for controlling the masses. Subvert and destroy education. Control media.
Also. Remove unmonitored access to information (phones only, outside of work). Especially those Linux fuckers who build their own, can’t have that spreading.
Does anyone know how difficult it is to swap keyboards on ThinkPads? I wanna get one used but the problem is, most of them don’t have US keyboards since I live in Japan.
I haven’t tried it myself, but at least iFixit has a bunch of guides: https://www.ifixit.com/Search?query=thinkpad+keyboard&doctype=guide
Sweet, thank you!
I can’t speak to the ease of the swap, but I do know lenovo is super great for letting you order parts.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/parts-lookup
I had to swap out the cooling on one of our newer legions at work and their parts game is on point.
Usually trivial to swap a keyboard, just gotta find the japan Lenovo FRU for the keyboard and order it. Sometimes you gotta buy the upper plastic too if the shape is different. If you have a model in mind I can find you the FRU and guide if you want.
If ThinkPad, easy. If IdeaPad, watch out, might not be viable.
It’s amazing how good Lenovo is about ThinkPad, and how crap they are about IdeaPad.
My old work place used to buy refurbushed ThinkPads, and they slid rather easily by sliding a switch. I have one of the more recent models (also refurbished) at home as well, I’ll try to see if it’s still the same.
That would be super helpful. I was under the impression that the recent ones aren’t swappable, it would be great if I could replace my surface with an actual laptop soon.
So, I’ve tried it with my T14 Gen1 (which, as I just found out is already 6 years old… Yeowza), and honestly… It’s pretty hard to get the keyboard out of that one already.
It’s nothing like I remember with older models, where you can take off the keyboard out by itself and slot a new one in, but now you need to pry off the mouse buttons of the trackpad, loosen screws under it and pry the keyboard forward to be able to get it out. The mouse buttons are also attached to it, which makes even more anxiety-inducing to get it out.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they removed the function overall in the most recent models, seeing as how it is with this model already.
I did the same for realtively new Thinkpad(p14s gen 5, I think). Got original US keyboard from Aliexpress (lucky). It was pretty easy just a couple ofnscreews and had to be careful with folding the flex pcb/cable.
Got myself a GTX 1660 for 460$ 5 months ago and I thought I paid too much for it, but now I’m glad I bought it Edit: GTX 1660 laptop
Well you probably overpaid slightly, and refurbished are about half the price, but prices are only going up so the best time to buy anything is going to always be months ago.
I mean GTX 1660 laptop, I forgot to write that in XD
Oh damn, a new gtx 1660 costs more than the whole laptop then, great deal!
I see the landlords found their new rent seeking endeavour. Allons-y les gars, lá révolution nous appelle une fois de plus.
Can you even get one now?
I built one back pre-christmas using ddr5 and onboard graphics. It wound out at about $500usd. Onboard Graphics which wasnt a dealbreaker for my wife but it was pretty ideal for a “rig now, gpu later” type plan.
If you skip a GPU maybe, no chance if you want to include one
I predict that almost everything will be about 6% more expensive by 2028. That will push things costing around $472 today into the $500+ category.
