"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.
It's not actually the "older hardware" that's responsible for security vulnerabilities, it's Microsoft chosing to end support for Windows 10.
That "older" hardware capable of running Windows 10 is more than capable of running any Linux distro which will keep on getting security updates for a long while (and you can just upgrade it again if that stops as Linux is nowhere as hardware demanding as Windows, especially the latest, Electron + AI, Windows).
For people who just use their PC for Office software, e-mail and browsing - who are the ones getting entry level PCs - hardware has been more than powerfull enough for 2 decades, and it's only Windows bloatware having grown to use the available computing power that has forced people to upgrade the hardware.
Also distros aren't the final step of availability.
There are forks like elks linux runnable with 256Kb RAM.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just thinking the more well known stuff with the "fancier" desktops and shipped with applications like LibreOffice and Firefox which are probably closer to familiar and don't look like a step back for Windows and Mac users.
If you really want to extend the life of your hardware to the max, well, whilst Linux has discontinued support for 486 and Pentium processors last year, any hardware newer than that (so, around 30 years or less) will still run the latest kernel and as you mentioned there are distros targeting machines with very little RAM and HDD space.
People believe it, I couldn't even convince my own father. He rather spend 600 bucks for a new laptop, for no reason.
My hope is that the crazy RAM and HDD/SDD prices and hence crazy prices for new PCs will push more people to try Linux.
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.
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.
Saving for my kids college went out the window.
Saving for my kids computers now
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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