Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

[Pentium4]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Main computer (gamer): Core i5 2500K
Main laptop: Core i3 350M
File server: Pentium 4 3.6GHz (65nm)
Linux Router: Pentium 4 2.26GHz
HTPC: Core i3 550 3.2GHz
Linux file server: Pentium III 933MHz

I like having a mix of old and new...

[thesloc]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

You guys realize that i3/i5 systems are about $300-400 at most NEW, right? Just take that into consideration next time you wanna upgrade/buy something used (I know everyone here is a fan of old technology).

You're gonna have to catch up eventually in spite of how much you keep ignoring new technology.

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Nobody in my house is. The newest thing in the house is my Dell latitude D630 with a Core2 T7700 (2.4gHz Memron). Why? We don't need anything faster and it's not worth the expense to upgrade.

Yep. If anyone saw my computer stuff, very few, if any, are modern computers that are in the i5 era. Only two laptops in the house are recent: one in May 2011, and one in December 2012.

My dad's WinXP desktop runs on a Pentium III, and his laptop is a Pentium 4 Celeron heater.
My gaming desktop runs on a Core 2 Duo. (E6550)
My sister's laptop is also on a Core 2 Duo. (T7200)
My mom's second laptop is also on a Core 2 Duo. (T2300)
My two servers are in the Pentium III era.
My workstation desktop is a dual Athlon MP 2800+ setup.

Especially since I work on older builds, anyway... I have Socket 7 systems I still use every now and then as well.

[Elysarian]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

My servers are a Dual Socket 604 Xeon box and a quad-core AMD Phenom II...

They work well enough for alpha testing any software I write

Servers don't need to be super powered unless you have large numbers of users connecting at the same time or are crunching numbers in a database app (mine run SQL server on server 2003 and IIS on server 2008r2 respectively and never have more than half a dozen users connecting)

[smason]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Nobody in my house is. The newest thing in the house is my Dell latitude D630 with a Core2 T7700 (2.4gHz Memron). Why? We don't need anything faster and it's not worth the expense to upgrade.

Yep. My server is still a Quad 6600 and my desktop is a Core 2 duo 6600.
Still more than enough.

[ratdude747]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Maybe if you replaced that ancient Core Duo of yours.

Everyone's on at least i5 technology.

Nobody in my house is. The newest thing in the house is my Dell latitude D630 with a Core2 T7700 (2.4gHz Memron). Why? We don't need anything faster and it's not worth the expense to upgrade.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Maybe if you replaced that ancient Core Duo of yours.

Everyone's on at least i5 technology.

Actually, if you're talking about my Acer laptop, which has a Core Duo 1.66 Ghz, that was doing fine, it just has a bad T-con connection on the screen.

And the problem I was having was with an Athlon II HP laptop. Sucker was a blazer!
Looks like there's zero chance of Linpack passing or gaming without air blowing underneath.

[lurker]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

As a hobby I like to repair desktops, laptops, monitors, receivers, washers, dryers, or anything around the house.

I worked on two laptops that was shutting down after a few minutes of being turned on. Pulled huge pieces of ghost turds that was blocking the exhaust of the heatsink. There's nothing in the household that is dust free, even my head is full of dust.

We have desktops and laptops in my household. In my opinion it's just so much more comfortable using a desktop with a nice monitor, full size keyboard, and mouse than using a laptop.

My main desktop case is at least 10 years old. The mobo runs DDR2 with an AMD 640 quad core which I paid $65 out of the box. Just replaced my balding white haired 9800 GT with a GTX 560. Gaming looks excellent on a 1080p 23" monitor. I have lots of storage and occasion can burn a single layer DVD in about 5 minutes. Desktops are hard to beat in shear power. My old heatsink was about 75% covered with dust but the cpu never overheated.

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

I have a tablet, a Galaxy 10.1, with a bluetooth keyboard. It's not a substitute for a full-function PC. I use a laptop as my regular computer, but I'm a very undemanding user. A demanding user or one with a really tight budget "needs" a "desktop", unless portability is necessary.

[cheapie]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

You can't keep upgrading a PC forever lol.

Sort of... after you upgrade it enough, it kind of becomes another computer. I had an old computer. I bought a pretty new case for it, and kept the old one. Later, I changed the hard drive, and kept the old one. Then, I changed the power supply and threw it away because it wasn't that great. Then, I changed the motherboard, CPU, and RAM and kept the old parts. I then bought another power supply and had two computers. Next, I need to upgrade that one until I end up with three. Try that with a laptop (or tablet).

[mariushm]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

I keep the computer running 24/7 - this is relevant further below.

I had a Q6600 with 4 GB DDR2 and Radeon 4850.

It was OK but as I got a job that involves doing video encodings it took a lot of time to encode stuff (generally leaving computer encoding over night for 2-3 nights in a row) therefore heating up the room and using lots of power.

The video card was also maximum DirectX 10 and had no OpenCL support besides some basic stuff, so I couldn't use it to accelerate some video encoding related stuff.

So I upgraded to FX-8320, 16 GB of DDR3 memory and a Radeon 7770 Ghz edition - probably about 400-500$ investment.

The old system was using 160-180w idle, 270-290w when doing video encoding or playing games.
The new system uses 90w while idle, about 220w when doing encoding.

Keeping the same encoding settings, the new system finishes stuff 2.5-3x faster, but I upped the encoding quality so the process is done only 2x faster.

Basically, I cut the power bill in more than half because the system is only 90w idle vs 160-180w which adds up considering the system runs 24/7 and I no longer heat the house with the pc.

The added memory and responsiveness also increases the efficiency, instead of spending - let's say - 30 minutes to prepare a video, I can finish it in 25 minutes. It adds up when I have to queue 20-30 encodings over the night.

later edit:

so the idea is that I basically save about 10-15$ a month in electricity. As I won't upgrade for about 2-3 years, it's about 250$ in savings... not enough to justify the 400-500$ investment but it's not all about the money, it's also about me feeling good when working at pc, by having a more silent environment to work in (less noisy fans required to cool the pc) and so on... imho it was worth the investment.

[ben7]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Why would you upgrade your computer so often too? It's not like it is that necessary :S

I still have a Dell Dimension 8250 that I use - it's not super speedy, but it isn't snail paced either.

I don't understand what all the hatred of AMD is about. My guess is it is just from being uneducated about their products. Besides, all brands have a few products which are duds. My laptop from 2010 actually is fairly decent. It's a toshiba. AMD Phenom II, 3 core processor. It has radeon graphics too. With the same operating system, and from the same year, a friends laptop (a dell btw) is slower than a pentium 4... it has an i5 in it too... EH?

Besides, I HATE touch screens. I have small, dextrous fingers, but it is just clumsier than a regular mouse in my opinion. Especially when it comes to the touch screen keyboards. They are slow, and sometimes they draw lines around the keys and random words are typed ... talk about WTF! Not to mention their auto-correct is a joke. I am a fairly fast typer so the slowness is quite an annoyance.

[Elysarian]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

new processor only actually entails a motherboard transplant (an occasionally RAM) - I upgraded from an AM2 to AM3+ recently, had to switch to DDR3 finally and replace the montherboard but eveything else worked fine (including Win8 w/o a reinstall after a call to MS to reactivate).

Total cost was around £300 which included quadrupling the amount of RAM I have from 4GB to 16GB.

The parts I removed went on to go in my mum's PC to give it a life extension.

[c_hegge]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Once a new processor/new technology comes out you pretty much have to swap the entire motherboard + a lot other components. You can't keep upgrading a PC forever lol.

You can still keep your case, PSU (usually), monitor, keyboard, mouse and DVD drive. Good luck doing that on a laptop.

[Wester547]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

I also like to play older games from time to time. Hell, I still play OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe open source clone) from time to time, which is an isometric 2d game.

Still, there are games in which beautiful graphics and sound add to the immersion and the pleasure of the game... for example I can point anyone to STALKER series WITH the Stalker Complete MOD to see how graphics and ambient sounds can make a game great.

Basically, graphics can complement a good story. Where there's no story and no graphics...

I agree that graphics are an added bonus for the sake of the immersion factor and good graphics are a good thing... I just don't think graphics should be the only factor a game relies on to be pegged as "good" (it should be a combination of things as you said, though I think good gameplay and a memorable story are enough to make for a good game and far outweigh a game with good graphics whilst lacking in every other facet).

When I opened our 4YO Dell (which had been sitting on the floor for the entire time) to see if the P/S was the reason it wouldn't turn on, that was the first time it had ever been opened. I know, shame on me! BUT, much to my surprise, it had very little dust inside. Barely enough to get my fingers dusty when I was unplugging all the P/S connectors. So I'm also puzzled at how much dust you have to clean out.

FWIW, the P/S was a Liteon, had lots of Ltec caps and one OST. Quite a few of the Ltecs were bad - O/P side and near the PWM - and the OST was at an odd angle, so I assume it almost blew off its bung. Replaced the P/S, the computer works fine.

Sounds like the startup capacitor went bad (a commonplace failure), and that some of the output capacitors went bad too (+5VSB failure, possibly?). The Lite-on PSUs I've seen either don't allow for the best airflow on the secondary (a sprawl of wires covering the capacitors, a common airflow issue in PSU designs because of the amount of components, but that's a problem that I noticed Newton Power/Delta nicely avoid in many designs in organizing the secondary side wires better, at least in their older PSUs... some PSUs also have another PCB soldered right in the path of the airflow to the secondary side, but I reference PSUs with 80mm front or rear fans, not bottom mounted fans) or sandwhich capacitors next to hot components (toroids, PI coils, etc).

It's not about technology at all, it's about money.

QFT. This is why bad capacitors are still used. Electronics are designed to have a limited shelf life for this very reason.

[Sparkey55]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Once a new processor/new technology comes out you pretty much have to swap the entire motherboard + a lot other components. You can't keep upgrading a PC forever lol.

[thesloc]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Once a new processor/new technology comes out you pretty much have to swap the entire motherboard + a lot other components. You can't keep upgrading a PC forever lol.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Its not about technology; its about playing.

Everyone knows that.

It's not about technology at all, it's about money. That's why Nintendo and Sony (and Microsoft, how many Xbox-only games can you name that aren't on the PC?) keep flogging out game consoles instead of licensing games to "rivals" like the PC, they want people to be fooled to think that their systems are the future, only to release a brand new console two years later and force gamers up upgrade if they want to play the next series of a game.

Namco did this a lot with the Tekken series (as Namco and Sony were butt-buddies since Tekken's inception, with the Tekken 1 arcade machine being not much more than a hacked up PlayStation 1 with the CD-ROM removed, despite Namco having their own arcade system, known as "System 22", which would have easily been up to the task for a fighting game using a basic 3D engine; Ridge Racer was much more "killer app" than Tekken in the 3D department). Tekken Tag Tournament was a PS2 exclusive, but the arcade version was the same as Tekken 3 and retained the PS1-like graphics - Tekken 5 was released on PS2 (and its arcade variants were based on the PS2 as well), but everyone soon wanted the updated "5.1" (arcade release only) or Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection; of course, guess what ended up on the PS3 and PSP to force gamers to buy another expensive console or two?

While this may have worked in the 1980s and 1990s when the PC hadn't fully developed, but the tables have since turned; game consoles are generally weaker as they cannot be upgraded to become more powerful or useful (just like today's tablets in fact, no-one wants a tablet or phone from 2011 because it is already obsolete and "unusable"). It would be like buying a bottom-end PC tomorrow and leaving it as-is in its stock, bargain-basement configuration; don't change out the RAM, don't install a graphics card, just use the onboard graphics, don't change out the hard drive for more disk space, don't install service packs or a later OS, don't replace or overclock or unlock the CPU (the latter for cheap CPUs with cores disabled), the list goes on.

The same can be said about Apple and its anti-jailbreaking stance. They don't want you using "rival" programs that aren't endorsed by Apple themselves, they could be cheaper or even free and Apple would lose profits!

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

When I opened our 4YO Dell (which had been sitting on the floor for the entire time) to see if the P/S was the reason it wouldn't turn on, that was the first time it had ever been opened. I know, shame on me! BUT, much to my surprise, it had very little dust inside. Barely enough to get my fingers dusty when I was unplugging all the P/S connectors. So I'm also puzzled at how much dust you have to clean out.

FWIW, the P/S was a Liteon, had lots of Ltec caps and one OST. Quite a few of the Ltecs were bad - O/P side and near the PWM - and the OST was at an odd angle, so I assume it almost blew off its bung. Replaced the P/S, the computer works fine.

[mariushm]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Ha! You think that's bad? I still play games that look ten times worse from the late 90's. I don't really care about graphics, I just like games with engrossing stories and engaging gameplay, and well developed characters.

I also like to play older games from time to time. Hell, I still play OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe open source clone) from time to time, which is an isometric 2d game.

Still, there are games in which beautiful graphics and sound add to the immersion and the pleasure of the game... for example I can point anyone to STALKER series WITH the Stalker Complete MOD to see how graphics and ambient sounds can make a game great.

Basically, graphics can complement a good story. Where there's no story and no graphics...

And like I said... I do use the desktop computer for other things... such as work. I do video encodings, video processing/editing, web design, programming for own personal websites from time to time... people actually work, don't just waste time on the Internet.

It's a bit hard to be efficient on 14-15" screens with 1366x768 resolution.