@Cerridwyn
Who likes working on a tablet? They are worse in every way, except portability. The only “exception” might be the Surface Pros because they are designed to be ultra-portable laptops, rather than tablets.
I understand that Apple is pushing for the iPad to become some sort of alternative to PCs, but that won’t happen until they can get at least mouse+keyboard+headset support and be able to run PC versions of most software suites (Office, Adobe CS, etc.) Even then, 85% of professionals using a computer at work will never switch over for many reasons, including existing software and hardware compatibility, power, ease of use for extended periods of time, and just because they are used to the current systems.
@Cerridwyn@DVDBZN Microsoft really blew it thinking that everyone would switch from a PC to a tablet. It took them forever to come out with a tablet based version of Windows, and then no one wanted it because a tablet really is just a tablet and as you mentioned, it’s really difficult to use them as a daily workstation. Many people, all the way up to the President and CEO were fired and/or “retired” because of this mistake. But it seems to have all been forgotten by now, just a few years later.
@shahnm Mine was a Zenith with two floppy drives and I later added a 20 megabyte hard drive. My first computer was a Zorba portable-the size of a sewing machine case. It was a CP/M machine with Wordstar (which worked on all my subsequent computers-for fun-up to , I believe, Windows 7). It was similar to a Kaypro.
@shahnm I can feel the rads from the monitor, hear the high pitched squeal from the monitor, and imagine the spindle at the electric meter just spinning like it’s trying to win a race.
@InnocuousFarmer@PooltoyWolf@UncleVinny I agree that the original IBM PC had pretty much the best keyboard ever. This was the PCjr. The PCjr keyboard was marginal, but at least the model I had (and the one pictured here) had real keys (though without the legendary PC keyboard click). The original version of the PCjr shipped with a chiclet style keyboard that was awful, to say the least. The PCjr keyboards also used a wonky IR connection to the computer, unless you opted for the optional (pretty much necessary) keyboard cable… Good times.
Once I determined I really need a 28" monitor for these old eyes, and don’t want to carry a computer around all day (I have my phone, ffs,) then desktop it was/is/shall be.
I bought a $99 desktop from some other daily deal site so I could rip CDs, since my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. When I got it, the CD drive didn’t work. Wah waa.
@00 This is all you need to add CD/DVD playing and ripping capabilities to your laptop. These kinds of things sometimes go on sale for even less, and they are essentially plug and play:
@hchavers@shahnm that’s what I ended up buying to make the desktop fit its purpose. But I wanted a new machine that I could use to rip all of my CDs since I generally use my laptop on my lap. This felt like a desktop project.
Work and home, desktop all the way. I think I’m one of the few who still has a desktop at work, everyone else has laptops. They gave me a laptop if I have to work from home, buy I try not to do that.
We have cable TV and I have a couple of win 7 desktops as cable DVR boxes with a cable card adapter, and I have a couple of other desktops gathering dust, all are home made. The DVRs are in Antec Fusion cases.
Although it’s narrowed, there’s still a price/performance difference between a desktop and a laptop. Plus, it’s easier to upgrade individual components in my desktop. Plus, my desktop offers more expandability. Show me a laptop with two DVD writers and a blu-ray writer.
@moonhat I proof for court reporters, mainly depositions and arbitrations, not much in court. I started about 1975, before the advent of computers. The reporters at that time dictated their whole jobs and I transcribed it. Then I started transcribing video depositions. Also some odd jobs for different attorneys. About 15 years ago I got burned out on the transcribing but was hired to proofread depositions by some of the reporters. Today there are a lot of reporters that don’t use proofers. I think you’d have to call around to different reporting companies and see if anything’s available. I like it because I love to read and I get all different kinds of subject matter.
@moonhat@pooflady so I assume you are saying you don’t need a desktop since even a basic phone could do this task as long as it’s hooked up to a large enough screen for you to read it. Which is basically everything.
@canuk X-plane VR finally got the home cockpit thing right. It is an utterly amazing experience! I will put together a new way-overpowered computer in the next couple of months, just to try to maximize the sliders…
@shahnm yeah, I’m using Windows Mixed Reality because I got a headset for ~$200 (Dell). I thought with a 8GB graphics card and 32GB of RAM on a 6th-gen i7 it would be enough, but it’s all about the graphics card (I think I have the AMD Radeon 450). The system RAM doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. It seems to be all about the type of graphics card.
All in all, X-Plane VR is awesome though. So much better than trying to mess with multiple monitors. Especially for flying visually, I can finally fly a nice traffic pattern.
@InnocuousFarmer how is it worse performance though? In my experience, the GPU makes the difference and Thunderbolt has the bandwidth to run a shiny new nVidia 2080… my laptop is running an i7 with 16GB of RAM and that hasn’t seemed to be the problem.
@canuk Thunderbolt 3 only has 4 PCIe lanes, where in desktop motherboards, you have those cards plugged into slots with 16 lanes. I’ve read people saying it is an average of a 10% performance hit, varrying on how much data is getting moved to the graphics card how often. So maybe it’s not that bad. I’d think VR and the newest, fastest cards would be where you’d notice incremental differences the most, though.
Plus, desktop CPUs tend to be faster. That probably helps too.
@canuk@InnocuousFarmer X-Plane 11 is largely bottlenecked by the CPU more than by the video card (particularly at current VR resolutions). I’m running a GTX 980 4GB card and have the rendering sliders pretty high (though with minimal antialiasing). My 2-year old i7 is what turns it into a slide show if I have too much stuff on (buildings and scenery, etc).
Although XP11 does technically use multiple cores, it does not do it particularly well. Most of the processing of the scenery items is done on one core, while the system delegates other cores to lesser sim tasks. However, the fastest speed you can get out of one core will determine the limits of how much stuff you can render.
I’m wondering if a modestly overclocked liquid cooled i9 paired with an RTX 2080 Ti will be worth the price of admission…
If a Raspberry Pi counts as a desktop, I have a Pi-Hole, to block all the terrible ads and tracking scripts on every device on my home network. It’s great!
I play old games (last was Half Life, Half Life 2, currently Deus Ex) on a 43" 4k monitor.
I also do occasional work (reading drafts, novice spreadsheet work, etc)
One of these days I hope to upgrade my video card so I can play games at 4k from this decade. Until then, my Radeon 7850 is going to keep churning out 1080p but realistically, the textures from these games weren’t really designed for more than 1024x768, so does it really matter?
@smigit2002 The last action game I played was Wolfenstein, which I occasionally revist. I started Doom but did not get far and got bored, or something.
I use it for work, personal email, paying bills and occasional games (solitaire and Tetris). I am learning to use it for photo editing. I use Wikipedia often. I keep up with local arts organizations.
I had a functional desktop machine for the longest time, and I did use it quite often for a long time. This machine was new when Windows XP SP2 was new, and I upgraded and updated it several times. Over the years I started to use it less and less as my usage migrated first to my laptop and then to my smartphone, but the final nail in the coffin was Microsoft dropping support for XP. I still have the machine but it is no longer connected to the Internet for the safety of the media stored on it. We are now coming full circle and looking for a desktop replacement notebook PC for the whole family to use, as there are certain things we just cannot do on our phones.
@PooltoyWolf - I have four desktops at work, including the Optiplex 330 that runs the legacy XP system. I haven’t accessed that system in more than six months, though, and it’s been more than a year since we migrated from the XP system.
Oh, and I work in the global data center of a multibillion dollar transnational company.
I bring my own laptop in to access the internet. It’s an old Ultrabook, but it’s faster than the work system.
I’ve had a desktop since the Trash 80, then an Apple II and now a current iMac. I have a phone and tablet (iPad Pro w/kybd) for mobile, but I do a lot of photo doc , hi-res mapping and spreadsheet work and I need that BBBIIIIIIIGGG screen and a real keyboard.
I also have aging eyes and clubby thumbs, so its the only way I can really get through these forums …
/giphy big screen
I run a Plex Media Server under Windows 7. I’ve considered moving it to other hardware (my NAS could run it for example) but the NAS cannot run all of the various other things that put the media on the server, so I’d end up having a Windows machine anyway. My job provides the base computer to which I’ve added a better GPU and external storage (the NAS and other things). I do need to upgrade to Windows 10 (probably should have already) but I’ll likely do that with a new machine (also from work).
The computer is officially used for remote desktop and other things at work (I’m mostly a sysadmin) though I could do much (probably all) of this with a tablet or even my phone.
I don’t see much point to laptops tho… Either the desktop or a tablet. I use a tablet for most reading these days.
Oh. Forgot to say this… I do have several raspberry pis as well and I’ve considered running Plex on them but they only support about two users so I’d need 3-4 of them and then some kind of load balancer in front of them… All doable but meh…
we both have laptops that are nice to use when you just want to sit on the couch - i work on mine, and use it for internet browsing too. i have an ipad but as with most apple products it’s kind of useless now bc the ios is outdated. also i don’t like touchscreen stuff really. i need a keyboard. mobile games i prefer my phone for, and any sort of media we watch on one of two tvs. it was great for taking to my housekeeping clients for listening to podcasts and i also bring it on the rare occasion i travel somewhere without a tv in the bedroom so i can put netflix on at night. my partner also has a tablet but i’ve almost never seen him use it.
@baqui63@jerk_nugget I also have Plex and that is the primary reason for my desktop. It also does Remote control software on versions newer than the license I own, I used to use a virtual machine for that. I just started using Plex and I’m very pleased with it. It gives me much more control over my media and it’s got a great interface for the Roku, though they’ve changed it twice since I’ve had it and it’s been less than a year.
I use my laptop for work and a phone for everything else. I have a tablet that I almost never use. I’m not sure why. Probably my phone is just more handy.
@baqui63 I have Plex running on an AMD processor and I can’t run some of the high end video (4k) that I would like to. It really takes advantage of Intel processors. I can’t imagine the quality would be good on a Pi.
@Fuzzalini@jerk_nugget I regularly have 3-5 concurrent users on my Plex server so using underpowered stuff doesn’t fly too well. I have considered using dedicated raspberry pis (one per user or pair of users) to reduce power cost (~$45/month) but I’d need to write a front end load balancer to maintain the standard plex user experience (tho I guess I could name the servers after the users assigned to them). My content is mostly TV and I don’t have much use for 4K stuff, so raspberry pis will work fine if I keep them to one or two users each.
I am semi-ridiculed in my household for being a dinosaur and having a desktop, but everyone starts singing a different tune whenever they have significant work to do and need to borrow it.
I have a laptop. At this point, for $800, you can get a laptop powerful enough to run all but top tier games, and it’s portable enough to take on vacation so you actually have TIME to play those games too! I pretty much have to have a laptop or desktop for my work (I’m an editor), because I need a full sized keyboard to type on and a proper word installation (Word365 won’t work for me unless I shell out for the $20/m version, as I need the track changes/comments feature. I’ve tried google docs and I don’t like it either for that.)
I’m a sysadmin and computer consultant. I have a desktop at work I use for additional screen space, a desktop at home I use for remote access, and a laptop I almost always have with me.
If a Mac Mini counts as a “desktop” then, yeah. I’ve got one that acts as my HTPC - slash - Plex server.
Haven’t watched “live” TV since I can’t remember when.
I built myself a gaming PC this year. I’ve been catching up on various indie games and Fallout 3. Mostly I just like the stability of having a device I made myself.
I have it for work (I work IT so remote stuff is needed sometime) and I have it for gaming. I play a little bit of everything on it. I also need it for regular Windows things because everything else in the house is Android based and things like printing and scanning to non-cloud printers isn’t easy enough for the less computer literate of us in the house.
yes and no. my partner has one, for work (IT) and for gaming. we have another one that we intend to set up for me to work on (freelance designer) but right now it’s just the computer bit which is our media server.
I have a lap top that I use for financial book keeping, spreadsheets, drafting projects, letter compositions, email, photo storage, movie downloads, etc. very useful. I gave up on a desktop in 2016
Software development here. Easier to do with 4 monitors on a desktop than one little laptop screen. Also gaming, and many other hobbies. I have raspberry pi units as well, and other single board computers.
SCII, L4D(I, II), Portal, Prototype, Diablo III, Crysis, etc… Too many to mention. Now that I have the VR desktop up and running, I will add a few titles to that list. I might check out Mechwarrior again.
@Cerridwyn
Who likes working on a tablet? They are worse in every way, except portability. The only “exception” might be the Surface Pros because they are designed to be ultra-portable laptops, rather than tablets.
I understand that Apple is pushing for the iPad to become some sort of alternative to PCs, but that won’t happen until they can get at least mouse+keyboard+headset support and be able to run PC versions of most software suites (Office, Adobe CS, etc.) Even then, 85% of professionals using a computer at work will never switch over for many reasons, including existing software and hardware compatibility, power, ease of use for extended periods of time, and just because they are used to the current systems.
@Cerridwyn @DVDBZN Microsoft really blew it thinking that everyone would switch from a PC to a tablet. It took them forever to come out with a tablet based version of Windows, and then no one wanted it because a tablet really is just a tablet and as you mentioned, it’s really difficult to use them as a daily workstation. Many people, all the way up to the President and CEO were fired and/or “retired” because of this mistake. But it seems to have all been forgotten by now, just a few years later.
Yes, I have a desktop computer, and what I “need” it for is none of all y’alls damned concern.
Not counting things like the TI 99-4/A, this was my first desktop computer:
I still get a little nostalgic looking at it…
@shahnm those keyboards are a little dab o’ heaven.
@shahnm Mine was a Zenith with two floppy drives and I later added a 20 megabyte hard drive. My first computer was a Zorba portable-the size of a sewing machine case. It was a CP/M machine with Wordstar (which worked on all my subsequent computers-for fun-up to , I believe, Windows 7). It was similar to a Kaypro.
@shahnm @UncleVinny I use a Model M keyboard with my occasionally-used desktop PC.
@shahnm I can feel the rads from the monitor, hear the high pitched squeal from the monitor, and imagine the spindle at the electric meter just spinning like it’s trying to win a race.
@PooltoyWolf @shahnm @UncleVinny Me too! I believe it is from 1989. What a great keyboard.
@InnocuousFarmer @PooltoyWolf @UncleVinny I agree that the original IBM PC had pretty much the best keyboard ever. This was the PCjr. The PCjr keyboard was marginal, but at least the model I had (and the one pictured here) had real keys (though without the legendary PC keyboard click). The original version of the PCjr shipped with a chiclet style keyboard that was awful, to say the least. The PCjr keyboards also used a wonky IR connection to the computer, unless you opted for the optional (pretty much necessary) keyboard cable… Good times.
@PooltoyWolf @shahnm @UncleVinny https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Model-M-Spacesaver-Tenkeyless-Buckling-Spring-Keyboard/173711127648 is the one I really want, but I just can’t quite bring myself to pay that.
@InnocuousFarmer @shahnm @UncleVinny Mine is a model 1391401 from 1992. I pulled it out of a dumpster behind a computer repair shop
@PooltoyWolf @shahnm @UncleVinny I was forced to buy mine from ebay for $30. Same model
@InnocuousFarmer @shahnm @UncleVinny I still need the key cap for my right side CTRL key!
@PooltoyWolf @shahnm @UncleVinny I remap caps lock to ctrl, never use the right key.
@InnocuousFarmer @shahnm @UncleVinny All of my keys work, I just want the cap for cosmetic completeness
iMac desktop . . . to do the same thing we do every night - try to take over the world!
/giphy pinky brain try to take over the world
Yes. I just need it.
Once I determined I really need a 28" monitor for these old eyes, and don’t want to carry a computer around all day (I have my phone, ffs,) then desktop it was/is/shall be.
I bought a $99 desktop from some other daily deal site so I could rip CDs, since my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. When I got it, the CD drive didn’t work. Wah waa.
@00 you can buy a USB CD player for less than $30.00. Make that a DVD player.
@00 This is all you need to add CD/DVD playing and ripping capabilities to your laptop. These kinds of things sometimes go on sale for even less, and they are essentially plug and play:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAH197TP2724&Description=usb dvd drive&cm_re=usb_dvd_drive--9SIAH197TP2724--Product
@hchavers @shahnm that’s what I ended up buying to make the desktop fit its purpose. But I wanted a new machine that I could use to rip all of my CDs since I generally use my laptop on my lap. This felt like a desktop project.
I basically just spend all my free time in front of it
So far, I’m disappointed. Isn’t anyone going to say porn?
There’s a joke to be made there about laptops, but I’m not sure I want to pursue it.
@aetris Understandable. The topic could get a little sticky.
@cinoclav why? Is your phone broken?
By the way, are we now channeling poll questions from 1983 or so?
Work and home, desktop all the way. I think I’m one of the few who still has a desktop at work, everyone else has laptops. They gave me a laptop if I have to work from home, buy I try not to do that.
We have cable TV and I have a couple of win 7 desktops as cable DVR boxes with a cable card adapter, and I have a couple of other desktops gathering dust, all are home made. The DVRs are in Antec Fusion cases.
@Kyser_Soze And the smaller one.
Although it’s narrowed, there’s still a price/performance difference between a desktop and a laptop. Plus, it’s easier to upgrade individual components in my desktop. Plus, my desktop offers more expandability. Show me a laptop with two DVD writers and a blu-ray writer.
@parodymandotcom Firt you have to give a shit about all that stuff.
I’m a proofreader. I need it to find spellings of proper names, drugs, streets, just about anything.
@pooflady how do you become a proofreader? That sounds like a good gig. How long have you been doing that? Details pretty please.
@moonhat I proof for court reporters, mainly depositions and arbitrations, not much in court. I started about 1975, before the advent of computers. The reporters at that time dictated their whole jobs and I transcribed it. Then I started transcribing video depositions. Also some odd jobs for different attorneys. About 15 years ago I got burned out on the transcribing but was hired to proofread depositions by some of the reporters. Today there are a lot of reporters that don’t use proofers. I think you’d have to call around to different reporting companies and see if anything’s available. I like it because I love to read and I get all different kinds of subject matter.
@moonhat @pooflady so I assume you are saying you don’t need a desktop since even a basic phone could do this task as long as it’s hooked up to a large enough screen for you to read it. Which is basically everything.
X-Plane VR. Originally was using a laptop but needed moar power to get the VR frame rate up. I’ve been eyeing those Thunderbolt e-GPUs though…
@canuk Don’t do it. You’ll just have to pay more for worse performance.
@canuk X-plane VR finally got the home cockpit thing right. It is an utterly amazing experience! I will put together a new way-overpowered computer in the next couple of months, just to try to maximize the sliders…
@shahnm yeah, I’m using Windows Mixed Reality because I got a headset for ~$200 (Dell). I thought with a 8GB graphics card and 32GB of RAM on a 6th-gen i7 it would be enough, but it’s all about the graphics card (I think I have the AMD Radeon 450). The system RAM doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. It seems to be all about the type of graphics card.
All in all, X-Plane VR is awesome though. So much better than trying to mess with multiple monitors. Especially for flying visually, I can finally fly a nice traffic pattern.
@InnocuousFarmer how is it worse performance though? In my experience, the GPU makes the difference and Thunderbolt has the bandwidth to run a shiny new nVidia 2080… my laptop is running an i7 with 16GB of RAM and that hasn’t seemed to be the problem.
@canuk Thunderbolt 3 only has 4 PCIe lanes, where in desktop motherboards, you have those cards plugged into slots with 16 lanes. I’ve read people saying it is an average of a 10% performance hit, varrying on how much data is getting moved to the graphics card how often. So maybe it’s not that bad. I’d think VR and the newest, fastest cards would be where you’d notice incremental differences the most, though.
Plus, desktop CPUs tend to be faster. That probably helps too.
@canuk @InnocuousFarmer X-Plane 11 is largely bottlenecked by the CPU more than by the video card (particularly at current VR resolutions). I’m running a GTX 980 4GB card and have the rendering sliders pretty high (though with minimal antialiasing). My 2-year old i7 is what turns it into a slide show if I have too much stuff on (buildings and scenery, etc).
Although XP11 does technically use multiple cores, it does not do it particularly well. Most of the processing of the scenery items is done on one core, while the system delegates other cores to lesser sim tasks. However, the fastest speed you can get out of one core will determine the limits of how much stuff you can render.
I’m wondering if a modestly overclocked liquid cooled i9 paired with an RTX 2080 Ti will be worth the price of admission…
I’m a Mac guy through and through but last year I built a decent pc. I’m really starting to dig it. Built for video editing.
@ChadP welcome to the light side
If a Raspberry Pi counts as a desktop, I have a Pi-Hole, to block all the terrible ads and tracking scripts on every device on my home network. It’s great!
@sanspoint +++ advertisers can eat my pi-hole 24/7. But it’s cheaper than this “deal” and more useful
I play old games (last was Half Life, Half Life 2, currently Deus Ex) on a 43" 4k monitor.
I also do occasional work (reading drafts, novice spreadsheet work, etc)
One of these days I hope to upgrade my video card so I can play games at 4k from this decade. Until then, my Radeon 7850 is going to keep churning out 1080p but realistically, the textures from these games weren’t really designed for more than 1024x768, so does it really matter?
@smigit2002 The last action game I played was Wolfenstein, which I occasionally revist. I started Doom but did not get far and got bored, or something.
I don’t use my desktop much…mostly when the mobile interface for a website is garbage…
@UncleVinny So, for Meh nightly
Notebook computers are the new desktop. Who wants to be stuck in the one place anyway? I’m talking physically, you virtual nerds.
@hchavers desktops are for power. Phones are for casual shit. What are you hauling around an antique laptop for?
I use it for work, personal email, paying bills and occasional games (solitaire and Tetris). I am learning to use it for photo editing. I use Wikipedia often. I keep up with local arts organizations.
Mine holds a pile of junkmail
I had a functional desktop machine for the longest time, and I did use it quite often for a long time. This machine was new when Windows XP SP2 was new, and I upgraded and updated it several times. Over the years I started to use it less and less as my usage migrated first to my laptop and then to my smartphone, but the final nail in the coffin was Microsoft dropping support for XP. I still have the machine but it is no longer connected to the Internet for the safety of the media stored on it. We are now coming full circle and looking for a desktop replacement notebook PC for the whole family to use, as there are certain things we just cannot do on our phones.
@PooltoyWolf - I have four desktops at work, including the Optiplex 330 that runs the legacy XP system. I haven’t accessed that system in more than six months, though, and it’s been more than a year since we migrated from the XP system.
Oh, and I work in the global data center of a multibillion dollar transnational company.
I bring my own laptop in to access the internet. It’s an old Ultrabook, but it’s faster than the work system.
@aetris Huh, my machine is an Optiplex GX620, the small form factor tower. Go figure.
I’ve had a desktop since the Trash 80, then an Apple II and now a current iMac. I have a phone and tablet (iPad Pro w/kybd) for mobile, but I do a lot of photo doc , hi-res mapping and spreadsheet work and I need that BBBIIIIIIIGGG screen and a real keyboard.
I also have aging eyes and clubby thumbs, so its the only way I can really get through these forums …
/giphy big screen
@stolicat that res looks about right for your apples
I run a Plex Media Server under Windows 7. I’ve considered moving it to other hardware (my NAS could run it for example) but the NAS cannot run all of the various other things that put the media on the server, so I’d end up having a Windows machine anyway. My job provides the base computer to which I’ve added a better GPU and external storage (the NAS and other things). I do need to upgrade to Windows 10 (probably should have already) but I’ll likely do that with a new machine (also from work).
The computer is officially used for remote desktop and other things at work (I’m mostly a sysadmin) though I could do much (probably all) of this with a tablet or even my phone.
I don’t see much point to laptops tho… Either the desktop or a tablet. I use a tablet for most reading these days.
Oh. Forgot to say this… I do have several raspberry pis as well and I’ve considered running Plex on them but they only support about two users so I’d need 3-4 of them and then some kind of load balancer in front of them… All doable but meh…
@baqui63 we use plex too, it’s wonderful.
we both have laptops that are nice to use when you just want to sit on the couch - i work on mine, and use it for internet browsing too. i have an ipad but as with most apple products it’s kind of useless now bc the ios is outdated. also i don’t like touchscreen stuff really. i need a keyboard. mobile games i prefer my phone for, and any sort of media we watch on one of two tvs. it was great for taking to my housekeeping clients for listening to podcasts and i also bring it on the rare occasion i travel somewhere without a tv in the bedroom so i can put netflix on at night. my partner also has a tablet but i’ve almost never seen him use it.
@baqui63 @jerk_nugget I also have Plex and that is the primary reason for my desktop. It also does Remote control software on versions newer than the license I own, I used to use a virtual machine for that. I just started using Plex and I’m very pleased with it. It gives me much more control over my media and it’s got a great interface for the Roku, though they’ve changed it twice since I’ve had it and it’s been less than a year.
I use my laptop for work and a phone for everything else. I have a tablet that I almost never use. I’m not sure why. Probably my phone is just more handy.
@baqui63 I have Plex running on an AMD processor and I can’t run some of the high end video (4k) that I would like to. It really takes advantage of Intel processors. I can’t imagine the quality would be good on a Pi.
@Fuzzalini @jerk_nugget I regularly have 3-5 concurrent users on my Plex server so using underpowered stuff doesn’t fly too well. I have considered using dedicated raspberry pis (one per user or pair of users) to reduce power cost (~$45/month) but I’d need to write a front end load balancer to maintain the standard plex user experience (tho I guess I could name the servers after the users assigned to them). My content is mostly TV and I don’t have much use for 4K stuff, so raspberry pis will work fine if I keep them to one or two users each.
I am semi-ridiculed in my household for being a dinosaur and having a desktop, but everyone starts singing a different tune whenever they have significant work to do and need to borrow it.
@DrWorm You touch my desktop and I keel you with neck stabbing.
I play games.
I have a laptop. At this point, for $800, you can get a laptop powerful enough to run all but top tier games, and it’s portable enough to take on vacation so you actually have TIME to play those games too! I pretty much have to have a laptop or desktop for my work (I’m an editor), because I need a full sized keyboard to type on and a proper word installation (Word365 won’t work for me unless I shell out for the $20/m version, as I need the track changes/comments feature. I’ve tried google docs and I don’t like it either for that.)
I’m a sysadmin and computer consultant. I have a desktop at work I use for additional screen space, a desktop at home I use for remote access, and a laptop I almost always have with me.
Paradox Games like CKII and EUIV
If a Mac Mini counts as a “desktop” then, yeah. I’ve got one that acts as my HTPC - slash - Plex server.
Haven’t watched “live” TV since I can’t remember when.
Hard drives, games, serverish things.
I have a desktop for work (academic advisor at a college) but my husband bought me a nice gaming laptop for home.
I built myself a gaming PC this year. I’ve been catching up on various indie games and Fallout 3. Mostly I just like the stability of having a device I made myself.
@Kawa if you are just on fallout 3 and like it. Fallout new Vegas kicks it’s butt off.
Right now, Destiny 2 is taking up a lot of my gaming time.
I have it for work (I work IT so remote stuff is needed sometime) and I have it for gaming. I play a little bit of everything on it. I also need it for regular Windows things because everything else in the house is Android based and things like printing and scanning to non-cloud printers isn’t easy enough for the less computer literate of us in the house.
yes and no. my partner has one, for work (IT) and for gaming. we have another one that we intend to set up for me to work on (freelance designer) but right now it’s just the computer bit which is our media server.
TO LEARN ABOUT COMPUTERS.
Too much work to take off the desk now that I have a laptop, plus it has all my photos on it, from when photos could be digital.
I have a lap top that I use for financial book keeping, spreadsheets, drafting projects, letter compositions, email, photo storage, movie downloads, etc. very useful. I gave up on a desktop in 2016
My gaming PC was a gift from my cousin and I’ve graded some of the components(GPU and case). I mostly play BF4, R6, and CS:GO
I use it for playing games like unreal and for school.
@lumine007 What studio produced “for school?” Unreal was good back in the day
Software development here. Easier to do with 4 monitors on a desktop than one little laptop screen. Also gaming, and many other hobbies. I have raspberry pi units as well, and other single board computers.
I moved in August and it’s still sitting in the box so I guess I don’t do anything with it.
SCII, L4D(I, II), Portal, Prototype, Diablo III, Crysis, etc… Too many to mention. Now that I have the VR desktop up and running, I will add a few titles to that list. I might check out Mechwarrior again.
First person shooters.
After a day at work.
Work computer is a laptop with a docking station. So I can work in the office, in the field, or home.
Personal computer is a MSI gaming laptop for everything else.
Not since before I moved out of my parents house. I do my PC gaming on a laptop now.