TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:33:
chris2021 wrote on 2022-01-26, 23:29:
Sadly I'm lost by the quote and the reply. No matter I'll just buy whatever suits me, knowing full well that breaking the bank for cutting edge hardware never makes any sense (unless you're loaded or your livelihood requires it). I don't shoot for bottom of the barrel, sometimes wind up there regardless 🤣. I just buy what makes the most sense for the money. I don't spend hours gaming, not even minutes these days. Ultimately a computer is supposed to enhance intellectual endeavor somehow. The vast majority of hw and sw out there serves to dumb the masses down more then anything else.
call me conspiracy theorist but governments love dumb people they are easier to control.
Just look at social media ...full of exceptionally dumb people, the horrible thing is the realisation that at least half of them are even more stupid and use Tik Tok.
Governments AND Corporations like dumb people they can control. Heck, there's even individuals like that. My understanding is that it's hard to live and let live because it's so hard to teeter off into failure, but that's part of the challenge of life, and most people and organizations are incapable of rising to that challenge in a fair and proper way.
But on that same note, the "dumb" people are basically created by a mixture of peer-pressure, laziness, and a feeling of belonging to a group (ie "Brands").
Some other discussion I saw here was about how we all buy old computers because we want to play games. That's not always true, the truth about me, call me a bottom feeder - I don't care, is my technology ownership and usage has pretty much only been on old hardware. I've only owned ONE computer I built new, and even then, the CPU was 3-4 years old when I built it (Pentium D) - and still I spent less than $1000 ($800 actually) building that PC, with the biggest outlay being the video card (NVIDIA 8800GT) all for the purpose of a strong, reliable daily driver - and that one machine was more trouble than any crappy fourth hand Dell I've had ever since. Right now my main desktop is a 7 year old Xeon, my laptop, a 7 year old i5. Heck, I have a server from 2014 as well. outside of that $800 "gaming" PC I built in 2008, I've only spent, at most, about $100 building a fast, powerful machine out of everyone elses "old crap" they don't want, and been laughed at for it.
What do I use it for? Wiring diagrams, PCB design, recording/mixing/mastering music, recording/editing video, writing documents, some things involving my day job, Spreadsheets, modeling our finances, researching (that's a lot of it), paying the bills - and then maybe occasionally watching YouTube or playing a game (very rare). Every PC I've had has been like this since the original Creeping Net 1 (Flight 386 with a ZEOS 486 motherboard) in 2001. And I run it into the ground before I scrap/sell/part it out, usually getting 5-10 years a PC, on a PC that was already "obsolete" when I got it.