Laptop Price Inflation

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Facebook, email, maps, video conferencing, document/spreadsheets collaboration, house hunting, news reading, surfing HPC, generally on the sofa in front of the TV (sometimes kitchen table) using the home WiFi. Thats 98% of my non-work computing (excluding mobile) usage right there. Your experiences may differ.

I can see the attractions of a chromebook and do (sometimes) use a tablet in lieu of a PC for just those reasons...

but

I might be pushing the analogy with housing a little far but I am concerned that we are gradually being nudged from being 'owners' of our applications and data to being 'renters'.

I'm not entirely sure what the implications of this will be down the line but I've little doubt that corporate strategists have one or two favoured outcomes in mind.

[frankief]

I had the same frustration with W8 on a laptop.

I deleted all the apps nonsense and downloaded a freeware called 'Classic Shell' .

It installs a familiar W7 or XP style desktop over W8 - I would recommend it as I could not get on with W8 at all.

[whitemice]

What difference? The guys managing the servers need to know but its irrelevent from the user's point of view, no more than the OSs the servers are running.

Deceptively complex question. Answer is something like using commodity-class x86 computers instead of fewer large enterprise class servers, and all the wiring and architecture that goes along with it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform#Production_hardware

I might be pushing the analogy with housing a little far but I am concerned that we are gradually being nudged from being 'owners' of our applications and data to being 'renters'. I'm not entirely sure what the implications of this will be down the line but I've little doubt that corporate strategists have one or two favoured outcomes in mind.

I see where you're going, but the technology doesn't back that up at the moment:

Right now my computing experience is paid for by:

Hardware - Me

Connectivity/Dropbox/Web hosting/Business email - Rented

GMail/Search/Maps/HPC/Facebook - Ad supported (I am being sold to advertisers)

Wikipedia - Donation supported

I can host any of those services myself, and build my own hardware and os (based on open source), but it doesn't make much practical sense (like say home farming). Microsoft and Adobe have been pushing for software as a service for a long time, but seriously frack those guys.

[OnionTerror]

I can see the attractions of a chromebook and do (sometimes) use a tablet in lieu of a PC for just those reasons...

but

I might be pushing the analogy with housing a little far but I am concerned that we are gradually being nudged from being 'owners' of our applications and data to being 'renters'.

I'm not entirely sure what the implications of this will be down the line but I've little doubt that corporate strategists have one or two favoured outcomes in mind.

Harder to pirate software?

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Microsoft and Adobe have been pushing for software as a service for a long time, but seriously frack those guys.

Harder to pirate software?

Yes, the future could be that applications aren't going to be something that you ever own (or steal) but a 'service' that, one way or another, you'll pay for continuously and indefinitely.

I'm also thinking about the implications for our data as well as software, if and when hard drives are consigned to history - the impact on personal privacy and security, the potential for corporations to scan media collections for what they believe to be unlicensed material, the risk that by uploading your own data to the cloud you will be transferring ownership rights to the host, all sorts of concerns.

I only started using a tablet a few months ago and the first thing I noticed was how much more like passively watching television the experience is than using, say, an XP era PC. Ads everywhere, even within applications, 'essential' applications (equivalent to TV channels) pre-installed and much less control over what's going on in the background.

[Riedquat]

Deceptively complex question. Answer is something like using commodity-class x86 computers instead of fewer large enterprise class servers, and all the wiring and architecture that goes along with it:

As far as the user is concerned though that's all under-the-bonnet stuff and no more relevent than the OS running on the far end.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

I can host any of those services myself, and build my own hardware and os (based on open source), but it doesn't make much practical sense (like say home farming).

Good point - the cost of bespoke labour is a major issue in computing.

Last weekend I overhauled my father in law's laptop, which he bought in 2008, and which had got clogged up with multiple updates, crapware and fragging. I disassembled the case, cleaned the internals thoroughly, replaced the fan and thermal grease, upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 4 and replaced the battery. Then I nuked the hard drive (i.e. rewrote the MBR), installed a new "refurbished machine" OEM copy of Windows 7 and created a new system image (which I then made a copy of using Clonezilla, in case he gets malware into it in the future).

Total cost = $100 for Windows 7, $40 for the memory and $30 for the battery, plus about 6-7 hours of my time.

So for the parts purchases alone, the total bill came to only about $100 less than what a new, entry level laptop would cost. Obviously this is a bit of a false comparison, because the labour didn't cost anything (I was doing it in my spare time). But if the labour had to be bought at a typical going rate for that sort of IT expertise (I'm guessing around $50 an hour), I guess the total cost of the project would have been in the region of $700-800. For that money, you could buy a brand new, reputable brand laptop with a much higher spec than this one after I'd finished with it.

Microsoft and Adobe have been pushing for software as a service for a long time, but seriously frack those guys.

For some of the audio restoration work I do, Adobe Audition is still the only game in town for its price point, and so sooner or later I'll probably be forced into the "creative cloud" racket. At the moment I'm advising everyone who asks to buy reseller-provided non-cloud CS6 licenses while they still can, though.

[OnionTerror]

For some of the audio restoration work I do, Adobe Audition is still the only game in town for its price point, and so sooner or later I'll probably be forced into the "creative cloud" racket. At the moment I'm advising everyone who asks to buy reseller-provided non-cloud CS6 licenses while they still can, though.

Last time I looked, the "creative cloud" was around £700...A while ago, you could have downloaded a torrented msi file of Photoshop. However, when it installed, it had to go out to the web in order for you to use it...it was (apparently) possible to hack the host file so that it pointed to the local machine rather than the Adobe website...

Something like that will be very difficult to do with these SOAS solutions...the software company wont lose anything like they did through piracy a few years ago...

[fluffy666]

I only started using a tablet a few months ago and the first thing I noticed was how much more like passively watching television the experience is than using, say, an XP era PC. Ads everywhere, even within applications, 'essential' applications (equivalent to TV channels) pre-installed and much less control over what's going on in the background.

Yes, I've noted that as well. Even things like commenting on message boards are much harder with a tablet / soft keyboard.

[whitemice]

As far as the user is concerned though that's all under-the-bonnet stuff and no more relevent than the OS running on the far end.

Thats like saying the user isn't concerned that they are driving a Petrol vs Dessel engine car. Sure a lot of people won't notice the difference until they have to fill up, but there are real performance differences that a technical user will appreciate.

Also, there is no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to mention the term in a technical discussion on an online forum.

...But if the labour had to be bought at a typical going rate for that sort of IT expertise (I'm guessing around $50 an hour), I guess the total cost of the project would have been in the region of $700-800. For that money, you could buy a brand new, reputable brand laptop with a much higher spec than this one after I'd finished with it.

That laptop will demand your attention again sometime within the next 6 months (a chain is only as strong as its weakest link). If you price your spare time somewhere between $50-$100 (which you should) then Macs start looking cheap, and Chromebooks are almost disposable.

[Riedquat]

Thats like saying the user isn't concerned that they are driving a Petrol vs Dessel engine car. Sure a lot of people won't notice the difference until they have to fill up, but there are real performance differences that a technical user will appreciate.

The vast majority of people who say "the cloud" neither know nor care. People who do are more likely to say something like "is it one big server or a cloud storage system?" - no mention of "the cloud" though as if it's a single, big nebulous thing. And people who do appreciate the difference are just as likely to wonder what OS it's running, how many machines there are in it etc. etc.

Also, there is no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to mention the term in a technical discussion on an online forum.

Because it just sounds like a cheezy buzzword, because it IS a cheesy buzzword, even if it's derived from something a bit more meaningful. It's the "the" that makes it sound so godawful.

[Riedquat]

If you price your spare time somewhere between $50-$100 (which you should) then Macs start looking cheap, and Chromebooks are almost disposable.

Doing well here - something else I disagree with! Pricing your spare time has never really made any sense to me unless you've got lots of competing demands on it.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

The vast majority of people who say "the cloud" neither know nor care.

Including professionals who should both know and care. I am currently advising a major archive on the long-term preservation of a radio collection dating from the '50s to the '70s. Before I arrived, their plan was to digitise a building full of acetate transcription discs and quarter-inch tapes, store the resulting files in "the cloud", send the original elements to landfill and sell the land on which the vault building currently sits. No joke. When I explained to the director that "the cloud" means racks full of servers and hard drives that could be sitting only a flood away from total data loss, and that most likely she won't have any idea where or what security and data integrity arrangements the storage vendor has in place, she began to look a little startled. I then suggested that she Google "Iron Mountain fire Argentina" if she was under the impression that third-party vendors - even reputable ones - were foolproof.

Thankfully the vault stayed, and the originals will soon be joined by some LTO tapes. But not all such people are willing to be persuaded.

[whitemice]

Because it just sounds like a cheezy buzzword, because it IS a cheesy buzzword, even if it's derived from something a bit more meaningful. It's the "the" that makes it sound so godawful.

Help me out here:

I want to say that my device saves all its data in the *****, and that it's thereby not such a big deal if my hardware gets destroyed, all my data is safe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70mW1dWhT9M

* Potentially offensive word removed.

I disagree with! Pricing your spare time has never really made any sense to me unless you've got lots of competing demands on it.

You need to know how to price your time. Say you can drive for 45 minutes to a shop where you can get a 50% discount. Is it worth the effort + round trip? If you were self employed you would have to know how to do this.

Personally, I have a hobby that pays (mobile app development), a full time job, marriage, and a 19 month old son. That last one is a real time sink.

Including professionals who should both know and care....

Apparently you need a minimum of 3x copies in different locations to protect against data loss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_machine_replication#Fault_Tolerance

...and to do it at scale:

http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/3/how-google-backs-up-the-internet-along-with-exabytes-of-othe.html

Personally I'm always looking for the best way of storing 15 years worth of digital family photos.

[MrPin]

Personally I'm always looking for the best way of storing 15 years worth of digital family photos.

You should print them out and put them in shoe boxes in the attic!

[Riedquat]

Help me out here:

I want to say that my device saves all its data in the *****, and that it's thereby not such a big deal if my hardware gets destroyed, all my data is safe.

Fine, you've got a backup stored somewhere else. What's wrong with just saying "on a server"? If the way that's implemented matters to you (further robustness I suppose) then even "a cloud" doesn't sound too bad. It's the "the" that makes it sound so bloody stupid.

You need to know how to price your time. Say you can drive for 45 minutes to a shop where you can get a 50% discount. Is it worth the effort + round trip? If you were self employed you would have to know how to do this.

Self-employed people are still employed, so we're not talking about spare time there. If it's my spare time (and neglecting the travel costs) if I didn't have anything better to do with my time I might, depending upon what it was (i.e. not a loaf of bread). If it's something that's a hobby that I enjoy doing then it matters even less. I could come up with an estimate of how much I think my time is worth and decide to buy a ready-made model railway vehicle instead of a kit, which rather defeats the purpose that I enjoy putting the kit together. When it comes to employment costing the time is important because you need to decide whether it could be more economically used for another purpose. Money is the deciding factor there. It isn't for your spare time so using it as a measurement is just weird.

[bendy]

You should print them out and put them in shoe boxes in the attic!

[whitemice]

You should print them out and put them in shoe boxes in the attic!

Lifespan of colour prints is currently considered an unknown quantity:

http://www.metroimaging.co.uk/faqs/how-long-will-my-print-last

http://blog.photoshelter.com/2011/02/do-you-know-how-long-your-prints-will-last/

On a related note, I've recently cleaned all my old stuff out of my parents attic (boomers selling up) and found it covered in a nasty layer of moist brick dust. British attics are probably the worst place if you want to be storing anything long term.

...I could come up with an estimate of how much I think my time is worth and decide to buy a ready-made model railway vehicle instead of a kit, which rather defeats the purpose that I enjoy putting the kit together...

For me technical support is not a hobby but an annoying chore, which I try to limit as much as possible. Hence the need to account for man-hours of technical support with any purchase.

Of course your experience may differ significantly.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Apparently you need a minimum of 3x copies in different locations to protect against data loss.

Whether you go as far as three separate locations is a question of how paranoid you are and how much you're willing to invest in your archive operation, but I advise all my clients to go for copies in at least two. In my sort of work this is easier, because the data my projects create is unlikely to change much over time: audio or video asset digitised, digital surrogate archived in a format that is as futureproof as can be managed (uncompressed in the case of audio, lossless, non-proprietary compression for video where possible), and then the digital version is usually only used for access.

A lot of people think about the possibility of data loss caused by the technology itself (e.g. format obsolescence and chemical or mechanical degradation of the physical media), but a lot of people don't think much further, and will keep both the analogue originals and their digital surrogates next to each other in the same building, with no other copies anywhere, when a project is done. All it then takes is a natural or man-made disaster to hit that building, and they're buggered. I often explain this citing an example from the early '90s. An Australian radio station held their entire tape archive in the basement of a hospital, from which it rented the storage space. One day, the hospital installed an MRI scanner in the floor above one of the vaults. The electromagnetic crap coming out of it degaussed several thousand of the quatrer-inch reels, literally wiping two decades of the broadcaster's historical output.

The selection of your physical backup location(s) is important, too. Two or three miles up the road doesn't make that much sense if it's along the same riverbank, or if the entire area is a high earthquake risk area. For this reason, the big Hollywood collections tend to have their remote storage locations near the East Coast.

[Steppenpig]

You should print them out and put them in shoe boxes in the attic!

Or distributedly store them in the attic-cellar-bottom-of-various-cupboards-and-wardrobes-and-drawers continuum, hereafter to be referred to as "the dwelling"

[Steppenpig]

TOSHIBA Satellite C50-B-14D 15.6" Laptop - Black at pc world until wednesday for GBP 199

Seems reasonable.

[Steppenpig]

I can currently get one of these

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-G50-30-15-6-inch-Entry-Laptop/dp/B00MM1I6H4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1410624880&sr=8-2&keywords=Notebook+15%2C6+LENOVO+IDEAPAD+G50-30

for 199 euros in local retailer. I'm quite tempted, if it's still available on Monday. Seems to be a genuine reduction of about 60 euros. Obviously a basic model, but I don't do anything fancy. I have half been waiting for a new version of windows, but i guess that's a couple of years away.

Almost pays for the easyjet tickets.

[OnionTerror]

Once you start wanting to do stuff with these types of PCs, you will get the "spinney thing of doom", and get 3 minute bootup times...for that kind of dosh, and if you want it for basic things (web, email, officey type stuff), your better off getting a Chromebook or similar...

[porca misèria]

Once you start wanting to do stuff with these types of PCs, you will get the "spinney thing of doom", and get 3 minute bootup times...for that kind of dosh, and if you want it for basic things (web, email, officey type stuff), your better off getting a Chromebook or similar...

How many thousands of times more powerful are they than some of the half-a-million-squid 'puters I've worked on, and indeed ran my first ever web server from?

Or indeed, a raspberry pi with a hundred squids worth of peripherals.

[OnionTerror]

How many thousands of times more powerful are they than some of the half-a-million-squid 'puters I've worked on, and indeed ran my first ever web server from?

Or indeed, a raspberry pi with a hundred squids worth of peripherals.

It also depends what OS you have on it, and what your running...Even my 3rd gen i3 struggles a little bit if I have a few tabs open on my Win 8 version of Chrome...