The Repairable PC Is Dead

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If you are truly a PC enthusiast, how can something like this ever happen? Could you imagine owning a computer that you didn't build? :eek:

We are both dyed-in-the-wool PC enthusiasts, tinkerers and system builders by nature. We have both built, fixed, optimized and upgraded so many systems over the course of our professional lives that we lost count after the first few hundred, however many years ago that was.
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The only PC I ever bought was the first one! IBM PS/1 33 MHz SX in 94 I think...rolled it down the cliff in 2000! Time for new build I7 nelham kinda old now.
 
No more trying to make hand-picked white boxed or retail components work with each other and spending hours prepping systems. You buy a PC, it comes with an OS, and it just plain works. And your applications are subscriber-based, so you're always up to date.
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What the hell parts and OS is this guy using? The last 5 years or more building PC's has become a cake wake. With my last build, I spent more time doing the cable management than everything else including installing Windows etc... combined.
 
8du8 said:
What the hell parts and OS is this guy using? The last 5 years or more building PC's has become a cake wake. With my last build, I spent more time doing the cable management than everything else including installing Windows etc... combined.
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Yup, I spent as much time cutting noise dampening material to line the inside of the case with as I did actually putting the pieces together. How hard can it possibly be, if he did truly build "hundreds" of PCs.
 
8du8 said:
What the hell parts and OS is this guy using? The last 5 years or more building PC's has become a cake wake. With my last build, I spent more time doing the cable management than everything else including installing Windows etc... combined.
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This x100

I haven't bought a PC in 20 years. As soon as building them was an option that was the only option.
 
Note: Win8 is actually a boon to the enthusiast builder since Win is finally, actually, and truly PnP now. We are in the golden era of Clones today. Hundreds of cases, power supplies, RAM, storage devices, graphics cards, CPU's, etc.

It's almost TOO many choices.

Imagine my surprise when I found Walmart sells DIY computer components. That's about as mainstream as you get.
 
8du8 said:
I spent more time doing the cable management than everything else including installing Windows etc... combined.
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Truer words have never been spoken. Hell, I swapped out my 6 year old cpu/mobo this week and didn't even need to re-install Windows 8, just install the new drivers and re-activate it.
 
Note2: I spent today hotrodding an old HP All-In-One computer to give to my niece.
These are like notebooks with touchscreens and no batteries.

Even though upgrades are not documented, and it has a crappy BIOS, I still boosted it pretty hard.
Boosted the dual core from 2.2ghz to 3.06ghz (yes, many notebooks have replaceable CPU's).
Upped RAM to 8gb.
Put in an SSD.
Loaded Win8.1 on it.

For a web-browser, and MSOffice platform, it really woke up. Vista sucked anyhow.

But it's not "user serviceable" according to HP. Bah!!! :D
 
There was an article similar to this years ago from a well known hardware/tech site guy who just because bored and fed up with PCs, games as a hobby. I wish I bookmarked it because he had some good points.
 
Ultima99 said:
Just a laptop.
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When I bought my laptop I bought it as bare and cheap as Toshiba would make it then bought several upgrades cheaper than Toshiba was charging.
In the end I was only able to upgrade the ram the hard drive and the wireless card but I also has to fix the hinges which required near complete disassembly.

Not user serviceable is a relative term I have a soldering iron and an not afraid to fix the board myself. They are talking about how the all in one pos they see on the shelves is a nightmare to do anything to. The pc enthusiasts realm was never something just sitting ready to go on a shelf.

They are whining because the quality and affordability of decent out of the box machines is high enough that techs are experiencing a decline in demand.
 
I'm going to give a serious answer.

That article isn't targeted at [H]'s market segment. If you're a large business user with a resilient high-capacity bandwidth, then it's worth considering. Or if you yourself have a data centre capable of hosting such. But the home, small, medium business user would be entirely wrecked if the connection were lost. THe risk of someone accidentally cutting the cable is non-trivial. IME it happened at least once and usually twice a year. And the home user might not be able to afford the high-capacity, low latency bandwidth. And the home enthusiast user - the [H] user - often does weird and wonderful things so it's not relevant.
 
The article is just more propaganda to get people into cloud and closed devices. I see a big future for PCs, especially building and repairing. You can thank Steam and Linux. Modern PC's give the impression that the user has lost control of their machine. I know that's how I feel dealing with Andriod, iOS, and Windows 8. Yes Android, cause getting something like CyanogenMOD on a phone is like pulling teeth.
 
Qinsp said:
Note: Win8 is actually a boon to the enthusiast builder since Win is finally, actually, and truly PnP now. We are in the golden era of Clones today. Hundreds of cases, power supplies, RAM, storage devices, graphics cards, CPU's, etc.

It's almost TOO many choices.

Imagine my surprise when I found Walmart sells DIY computer components. That's about as mainstream as you get.
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Meh windows has been "truly PnP" for a long time.

I know what you are referring to, BUT I bet most people these days don't actually know what Plug'n'Play ACTUALLY refers to!

Back in the days of ISA systems, you had to manually configure the IRQ and memory addresses of each card/peripheral/whatever. You know those PCI VendorID/DeviceID things? That is also part of PnP, and how the computer knows what kind of device you put in there, that sorta shit didnt exist back in the days of ISA either. You basically had to tell the computer what hardware was installed and exactly how it was configured. Some more modern OS's could probe to find things like ISA modems automatically, but that pretty much sucked.
 
Ashbringer said:
The article is just more propaganda to get people into cloud and closed devices. I see a big future for PCs, especially building and repairing. You can thank Steam and Linux. Modern PC's give the impression that the user has lost control of their machine. I know that's how I feel dealing with Andriod, iOS, and Windows 8. Yes Android, cause getting something like CyanogenMOD on a phone is like pulling teeth.
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The average computer user does not care about building or care about learning how to repair their computer. Linux does not appeal to anyone but a very tiny percentage of people. Even most people who build their own PCs just use Windows and have no desire moving to an OS which has poor software compatibility.

Steam is irrelevant as it just appeals to PC gamers (and not all of them), and only a small percentage of computer users play 3D games.
 
I saw this coming. It's really sad where things are going these days. :( It's all about ways to make companies more money.

There needs to be an available open source hardware project to keep modular computing alive. Heck if x86/64 licensing and all that BS is an issue, it could be a whole new platform, I'm sure Linux devs would back it to ensure Linux runs on it.
 
I'm going to hate myself for using this terminology, but after seeing that article...

TL;DR
 
Red Squirrel said:
There needs to be an available open source hardware project to keep modular computing alive.
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These sets of standards encompass what's known as ATX, along with other consortium-developed things like PCI and PCI Express. Some offshoots of these standards eventually become de facto standards; others don't.

It's currently a perfectly healthy system.
 
I guess zero sum articles with headlines like these are all about click bait. Many PCs are simply very small and compact devices now.
 
8du8 said:
What the hell parts and OS is this guy using? The last 5 years or more building PC's has become a cake wake. With my last build, I spent more time doing the cable management than everything else including installing Windows etc... combined.
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Apparently his "hard earned skill" of putting Lincoln logs together is coming under attack!
 
Really doesn't effect me, just build myself a new PC, I'm a little sad that the barebone notebook seems to have died.
 
PCs these days can last a LONG time. I see a Core2Duo from ~2006 as 100% ready to be refurbished and last the user an additional 10 years.

Often, an SSD is all that is needed to make a "slow" computer indistinguishable from a new computer for office tasks.

I mean, we're at the point where a large percentage of people are still running a 12 year old OS, and are content with that. I don't recall people running Windows 95 12 years after the fact. Not only is the Repairable PC not dead, I would argue that we are, RIGHT NOW, in the "golden era" of the Repairable PC.
 
I repair laptops every day. It's just that there are some jobs that aren't worth doing.

Screens? sure.
Fans? usually, maybe not.
HDs? absolutely.
RAM? duh.
Motherboards? No. Screw it. Not worth the trouble.

You can still sell desktop PCs... just show people what the longevity and repairability of a desktop is vs a laptop over 6-8 years.

People seriously think that they can buy a $400 laptop and it will work with no repair for 7-8 years like their last desktop. It's crazy. But the industry has been lying by omission for years.
 
Of all the computers ive had, only my first was off the shelf... the rest i built myself :)
 
The article says user repairable/DIY automobiles are dead too. And they very much are not. We need to quote that part of the article and forward it to all our car-friends and sic them on the ZDnet comments section.
 
pankkake said:
Didn't read it, but, isn't it worse in every possible way? How does that make sense?
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Seems to be the best way to get people to use products that sound really bad. Apparently, cloud is so important that it's the future. Even though on Linux there's repositories which are a lot like cloud, but without the inconvenience and losing rights to content part.

"So if there is a future for folks like Adrian and myself to make a skills transfer of our two plus decades each working with PCs and PC operating systems, it's understanding how to use them in the context of cloud application delivery technologies."

Also iOS and Android are so important that PC users will switch over.

"Where the endpont devices are concerned, whether we use Windows or Mac or something else entirely, such as a mobile OS like iOS or Android, we are simply end-users."

Had a guy from Optimum come over to try and convince me to switch over from Verizon. Talking to me about how awesome it is to watch TV on Android or iOS devices, and about smart TVs. I point out my 73" TV running Windows and he was shocked. Somehow he missed that in my living room. He then complimented on my smart TV, and I explained the TV is dumb, but the HTPC next to it is really smart. :rolleyes: I then proceeded to match the switch using said HTPC on my TV, cause I had to email him some PDF's. :D

So yea, unless I suddenly feel like losing control of my computing ability I'm not switching to cloud or mobile OS's. At some point I'll even switch my HTPC over to Linux, cause I'd have more control over that then Windows 7.
 
extide said:
Meh windows has been "truly PnP" for a long time.

I know what you are referring to, BUT I bet most people these days don't actually know what Plug'n'Play ACTUALLY refers to!

Back in the days of ISA systems, you had to manually configure the IRQ and memory addresses of each card/peripheral/whatever. You know those PCI VendorID/DeviceID things? That is also part of PnP, and how the computer knows what kind of device you put in there, that sorta shit didnt exist back in the days of ISA either. You basically had to tell the computer what hardware was installed and exactly how it was configured. Some more modern OS's could probe to find things like ISA modems automatically, but that pretty much sucked.
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All that irq stuff wasnt terrible, the terrible part was hunting down a driver that didn't bork your machine. The idea was plug your item in and Windows will get you a driver. I think this got good with Vista.
 
I've been predicting this for 22 years! Eventually it WILL happen. I also have predicted the Cubs will win a world series, Vikings a super bowl, hydrogen will replace fossil fuels, and my wife will stop bitching about me spending money on (ugly) electronics which WILL all happen too!
 
GaryJohnson said:
The article says user repairable/DIY automobiles are dead too. And they very much are not. We need to quote that part of the article and forward it to all our car-friends and sic them on the ZDnet comments section.
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My choice of car deeply depends how far I can stick a wrench into it. Acura so far has failed miserably in that department. You try changing a rear motor mount in a MDX. Stupid things are the worst repairable cars I've ever laid my hands on. I don't trust mechanics, and I don't wanna spend hundreds of dollars for a $40 part to be installed.

I also have a Compaq laptop that I've had no problem ripping to pieces. I had to, cause the northbridge chip stopped working due to bad solder joints. I fixed it with a heatgun, but now the wifi constantly goes out, and the only solution is to reload CMOS defaults. Course the laptop is 3-4 years old, but it shouldn't have stopped working cause of failed use of cheap solder.

In a desktop computer if a motherboard failed I simply just buy a $50-$100 replacement and call it a day. It's usually an upgrade, cause in the last 3-4 years motherboards advance. In a laptop where the only motherboard that fits is from the manufacturer, cost $200+ new. The only thing that advanced is how to spend money.
 
Ashbringer said:
So yea, unless I suddenly feel like losing control of my computing ability I'm not switching to cloud or mobile OS's. At some point I'll even switch my HTPC over to Linux, cause I'd have more control over that then Windows 7.
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Not sure what Verizon charges you for their boxes and "DVR Fees" on top of that, but since you have a HTPC you might want to consider a HD Homerun Prime and cablecard. A Homerun prime costs about $140 on sale, and a cablecard about $2/month. It replaces your set-top box and should save you the DVR/STB fees. I know I broke even at 7 months.
 
I am not so sure this guy isn't describing a future we all saw coming 20+ years ago.
The fun was getting there.
Its not over yet tho...
Still some room to play with really powerful stuffs in the near future.
 
Wholeheartedly agree with the article. Yes some may classify that as a sensationalist article, but lets look at the general direction the BIG OEMs are going towards:

smartphones
tablets
sleeksbooks
macbook airs
ultrabooks.

These are the computers that the majority of consumers want and buy. All of those devices are moving to get thinner, lighter, and faster. How does one get to that, you design parts that are unserviceable and sealed out of the box (look at the retina macbooks).

Yes will enthusiasts continue to clamor for modular sleek devices that they can tinker with; of course
Will the market slowly respond to the majority of consumers; Yes
Can both coexist; depends on the enthusiasts.
 
Advil said:
People seriously think that they can buy a $400 laptop and it will work with no repair for 7-8 years like their last desktop. It's crazy. But the industry has been lying by omission for years.
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You'd think I punched a person right in their face when I tell them the likelihood of their shiny new consumer-grade $700 notebook has a snowball's chance in hell of lasting over 4 years :rolleyes:
 
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