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points by josteink 4 days ago | 0 comments

I don’t know what could drive PC sales in this age.

Old machines from the last 10 years are still capable of all normal daily tasks, even development tasks. This has the 95% covered through existing or cheap second hand machines.

The only new use-case is local AI, which for most people is simply out of price range right now with the current GPU and RAM prices. There’s some people who’ll want this, but they are a minority. Not enough to drive sales at scale.

So whatever remains as a segment is business - which in these cost-aware times are mostly doing like the other 95% and only buy new machines if needed to cover new hires.

[–] 4k93n2 4 days ago

i recently dusted off an old desktop that i hadnt used in a really long time. the GPU was a 1070 from 2016 i think and it wasnt even that high end when i bought it but it works surprisingly well. although im only using a 4b qwen model and only asking it very basic questions but its still better than nothing and it means i only need to switch a cloud model when i need to do something more complex. that GPU is going for 100-150 these days as well and im sure there are better options that are still cheap enough