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The Technology of "Enough"


raymac46

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It must be tough to be a PC manufacturer or OEM parts maker these days.

Aside from the competition they get from Chromebooks, tablets and smartphones, they are confronted with the technology of "enough."

By this I mean that yesterday's trailing edge technology is pretty much OK for doing what most users want today. In the early days of Windows you had to upgrade your hardware every 3 years or so to run the latest software or Windows release. Nowadays Windows 10 will run well on a Windows 7 machine that may date back to 2010. And if you run Linux you can easily find something that'll work on a 2005 era machine.

Right now I'm typing this on my best Linux unit - a desktop I put together 3 years ago. The APU is an A8-5600K - 2012 AMD "Trinity" technology but it's still considered a good part for 1080P gaming. I did add a discrete GPU last year because AMD was phasing out support for its older graphics technology - but it wasn't a critical decision since the Linux FOSS driver works pretty well. I have an SSD in the unit for booting but this isn't a recent thing.

This unit is blazing fast and the grandkids love to play web based games on it because it can handle anything they want from Thomas the tank engine to Star Wars. I'd say the limit to performance is likely broadband bandwidth. It isn't the greatest here in the Canadian boondocks.

Much as I love to tinker I can't think of anything I'd have to do to make this desktop a better performer - unless something like the power supply fails. It's always better to stay a bit trailing edge with Linux anyway.

I read all the sales flyers from Newegg but sadly they won't be getting much business from me. I guess that's good for my balance sheet but not for theirs, or Gigabyte's for that matter.

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