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Comment by grizzles | Hacker News Reader

This is the death knell for x86 PCs for the consumer market.

No regular user needs more than this. Developers and hardcore gamers will be the only ones left on x86. Intel will be a shadow of themselves soon. They have did such a bad job at diversifying.

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> No regular user needs more than this.

These are words I've heard from arrogant techies for decades, yet they are continually surprised to find that people don't use the shit they condescendingly designed for them based on that premise.

Well, for my web browsing, I use a battery powered tablet that's got less than half the processor this has.

The people not using the shit? They account for 58% of site visits. See: https://www.stonetemple.com/mobile-vs-desktop-usage-study/

Have you tried surfing the web on a Raspberry Pi 3? Even if the 4 is 3 times faster, it’ll be a frustrating experience.

Additionally, once you add in all the peripherals for a laptop, the cost is much higher than if you just bought a cheap netbook. 4GB of Ram Pi 4 is $55. $30 for a decent USB C power supply and cord, plus $50 for a display, $15 for keyboard, $15 for mouse, plus $15 for a decent SD card and/or hard drive... plus individual shipping and then you need a case.

Have you tried web surfing on a low end but modern dual core Intel laptop? It is painful as well.

I didn't realize how bad it was until I tried my wife's Best Buy special instead of my supped up dev machine.

The average low end device you get at Best Buy is barely usable. You at to at least go up to mid-range to have it not suck.

Shouldn't be surprising. All the developers are using 32GB 6+ core monstrosities and thinking everything is fine while doing their part to ensure that the world of computing still will continue to suck for the foreseeable future.

You are right about Intel but not x86. Get an AMD APU 2400g.

Until you launch an Electron based app, load Gmail, or go to an ad-laden webpage.

It might be a better idea to develop those apps on one of these, instead of using Macbooks + the cloud.

This is probably less of a threat to the consumer market than the endless stream of cheap ex-corporate x86 desktops which are adequate for basic use has been when combined with the long useful lifespan of hardware in the post-Moore's Law era.

What? Even on low-profile distros, Raspberries are terrible desktop PCs. This one is certainly looking better but i don't expect a game-changing experience, in light of existing i7s CPUs and javascript-"powered" apps.

Hardware is not the only criteria to fulfill when an average consumer buys a device. There's software and the ecosystem.

So it's far away from being a death knell for the consumer market.

I'm not so sure about this on a large scale but my first thought after reading this was to replae my parents' PC with a Pi 4.

Intel NUCs are pretty neat

And an order of magnitude or two more expensive.

walked into my local computer shop the other day, all their monitors had NUCs strapped to the back, pretty cool I thought.

I think it's great to have more options and this is interesting, but I don't think it's that big of deal. Anyone who wants to do any video editing, sound, 3D modeling, etc, or anything that requires graphics or serious software won't have enough with this.

For browsing and basic everyday use sure, but in that space people have been switching to tablets for a while now. So this might help that trend but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

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