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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree. I look at the nutrition facts on the food I purchase. I look at the specs. when I'm buying a car, and the specs. do inform my purchasing decision. When I'm buying a computer, I do look at specs. to decide which computer will run my computational tasks most efficiently.

For me, a world without specs. would be bleak indeed.

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While I agree with you, I think the article was talking about the nontechnical consumers, the ones who don't understand what mhz and gigabytes mean, they just want a computer that does what they want it to do (yes, I'm being intentionally vague here).

That said, I'd like to think that most people/kids under the age of 20 or so have much better grasps on a computers technical specs, at least comparable to how most people are familiar with the relevant specifications on a car (HP, torque, fuel efficiency, etc)

Most completely non technical people will ask the advise of a friend/family member in order to make a computer purchase even if they don't know anybody they will ask a shop attendant to advise, these people will then interpret the specs on their behalf.

The reason that specs don't seem to be so important in the tablet world so far is that there really aren't many to choose from and in many cases people simply want an ipad in which case there are really only 2 to choose from and they are basically the same anyway.

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