
The midrange computer dies - jgrahamc
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7128
======
Impossible
This statement is wrong for a large class of users

 _This is more power than a typical desktop user would know what to do with,
by a pretty large margin -absurd overkill for just running an office suite or
video editing or gaming or whatever._

His "Great Beast of Malvern" custom computer
([http://www.catb.org/esr/hardware.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/hardware.html))
is under powered for high end gaming and doesn't meet Virtual Reality minimum
specs ([http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-
require...](http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/vr/system-
requirements)). It is fair to argue that gaming, and especially VR or 4K
gaming is a niche market that isn't a relevant consideration in his arguments,
but he does explicitly mention desktop computers as overkill for gaming.

~~~
bryanlarsen
An AMD 7950 was the high end card when his computer was built, and is only
~20% slower than the minimum recommendation. It should run most VR games just
fine.

~~~
eropple
I _strongly_ disagree with this, from experience. The minimum specs are not
joking when it comes to VR (and he's off in terms of both CPU and GPU--VR is
CPU-intensive too). Even at the minimum there are games that have stuttering,
and stuttering is the literal worst thing that you can have in VR. Oculus
forces games to fade out/black out before any load because having the head
tracking stop even for a split second can make you literally fall over;
dropped frames, especially during a big or sweeping motion can make you want
to puke.

Honestly, my second-biggest worry (after the specter of a much more intrusive
kind of harassment, which has already started to happen, hooray!) with VR is
people trying it on machines that were built to save a few bucks and being
turned off by the nausea of not having the necessary perf characteristics to
deliver.

------
_JamesA_
Confusing title. For a second I thought IBM was discontinuing the AS/400 /
iSeries / IBM i midrange[1] systems.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer)

~~~
gizmo385
I didn't find it particularly confusing. I feel as though most people would
take "midrange computer" to be what the author intended. Might just be
projecting my own ignorance of the IBM systems however.

~~~
mindcrime
The term "midrange computer" to me is more synonymous with "minicomputer" (ala
AS/400, etc.) than it is with "desktop tower PC" or whatever. My guess would
be that most people would interpret it the same way, given that "midrange
systems" is a pretty established and well known term:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midrange_computer)

~~~
nickpsecurity
That's what I thought he meant as mid-range in terms of price/performance is
always relative and changing. Maybe I should've known better.

------
bryanlarsen
If so, we should start seeing effects on pricing: as the volume of midrange
computers drops, price goes up until it gets close enough to that of a high
end computer. At which point people who would normally buy midrange computers
(like us devs) end up buying $3000 Xeon workstations instead.

Luckily, gamers are keeping the mid range market alive, and it seems quite
likely that VR enthusiasts will ensure that it stays alive for a few more
years.

~~~
basch
If you dont need gfx, you can still turn a 6th Gen NUC into a pretty "mid
range" pc. (also the author of this post is wrong about the Intel NUC being
fanless)

i7 NUC - [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-
nuc6i7kyk...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7kyk-
features-configurations.html)

NVME SSD -
[http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisit...](http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/ssd950pro/overview.html)

32GB DDR4 - [http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-memory-32gb-2x16gb-
ddr4...](http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-memory-32gb-2x16gb-
ddr4-sodimm-2133mhz-c15-memory-kit-cmso32gx4m2a2133c15)

~~~
vanattab
When I was buying some NUCs for a project at work I am pretty sure I saw a few
diffrent models some with passive cooling and some with fans.

~~~
basch
all the ones i have taken apart have a fan in the lid.

------
adolph
Not exactly a counterpoint, but maybe a more interesting vantage:

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-
computer/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/)

------
smoothgrips
> [T]he quality and design of recent Thinkpads has gone utterly to shit. The
> new keyboards are particularly atrocious.

I've never owned a Thinkpad until recently. I purchased a Thinkpad T450s and I
love it. I also think the keyboard is quite nice as well. Now I'm curious how
the older Thinkpads were. Were they considerably better? Did I buy a bad
product and not even know?

~~~
tsm
Yes, in my opinion the Thinkpad peaked somewhere around the T43 or the IBM-
made T60 (which was also made by Lenovo). Good keyboard layout, travel
distance, spring distance. Even silly stuff like the shape of the key and the
precise type of plastic were somehow better.

And everything apart from the keyboard was solid too. How many non-Macbooks
can be picked up by any edge or corner? How many laptops have a metal hinge
for the screen? A magnesium rollcage inside? Clever drains that divert water
out of your keyboard and out holes on the bottom, all without damaging the
electronics? Easily user-accessible battery, RAM, HDD…even more advanced
components like the screen and the wifi card?

~~~
PeCaN
Pretty sure the T60 was designed and manufactured entirely by Lenovo but they
had permission to use the IBM logo on it.

Nobody makes laptops like IBM used to :-( I know they seem to strongly prefer
low-volume high-margin industries but I really would like to see what they
could do today.

------
wyldfire
> What it adds up to for me is that midrange PCs are dead.

Yeah, I might even go as far to say: it's mostly just smartphones, laptops,
and servers now. ESR admits as much: ", except that [my high-end PC] is really
more like a baby supercomputer"

~~~
zyxley
At this point, basically the only reason for a normal person to get a desktop
rather than a laptop or a big-screened all-in-one is if they want a big
graphics card.

Even that's starting to go away with systems like the Razer Core. The only
thing holding back more external enclosures is that most laptop hardware
makers haven't embraced the idea yet.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
I think all-in-ones are generally still considered desktops.

And they have the disadvantage that when the hardware fails you have to
discard the entire device instead of only the part that failed, which is
becoming more important as hardware doesn't have to be replaced for being too
slow as often anymore. The traditional format also allows you to use the big
monitor for multiple devices, e.g. if you have a PC and a laptop dock or a
fast PC and a Mac mini for OS X testing etc.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"And they have the disadvantage that when the hardware fails you have to
discard the entire device instead of only the part that failed, which is
becoming more important as hardware doesn't have to be replaced for being too
slow as often anymore. "

BOOM! That and greater hardware customization are where desktops and servers
have a benefit at all price ranges.

------
oxide
not everyone keeps a tower PC as a workstation, and there are other uses for a
tower PC besides "mailserver."

many people purchase desktop PC's because they are best bang for your buck
when it comes to building a PC specifically for gaming.

this article screams "out of touch" in the worst way possible. just because
your tower can be replaced by a raspberry pi doesn't spell the death of
midrange desktop PCs. in fact, that's an ignorant thing to say. full stop.

as long as PC gaming exists, there will always be a market for midrange power
in a tower.

------
mynegation
It died few years ago for me. I scrapped my big honking tower (I would not
even call it desktop as the only logical place was the floor) and purchased:
MBPr that works as an actual desktop computer if I am not on a trip, attached
to Thunderbolt display, Synology NAS to store data, and small Linux computer
for Linux-y server-y stuff precisely the paperbook size ESR describes.

------
bencollier49
When I hear "Midrange Computer" I think IBM iSeries. Was briefly confused by
this article.

~~~
kjs3
Yup...I immediately thought "Really? Someone is predicting the final demise of
the AS/400? Like someone has every year for the last 20 or so?".

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Eric Raymond writes: "fast memory access to extremely large data sets (as in,
surgery on large version-control repositories)" and I'm wondering just how
"extremely large" these things are.

~~~
psadauskas
The last couple years he's been blogging about converting old open source CSV
repositories (FreeBSD, etc...) to git. Here's a post where he talks briefly
about FreeBSD being 18GB, and GCC being > 32GB:
[http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6830](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6830)

~~~
slededit
Pretty small compared to a lot of proprietary repos.

------
cloudjacker
2012 called. If you had disposable income that is.

~~~
Jtsummers
> 2012 called. If you had disposable income that is.

One of the points in the article, near the end. We've hit a crossover point
where these small form factor computers are both cheap and capable, rather
than one or the other.

