[GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Sat, Sep 16, 2023 at 1:12 PM Peter King via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> A few years ago one of my desktop units failed.  I replaced it with a
> miniPC, a minisform model I put more RAM and two 2TB SSDs into, and it runs
> just fine.  Maybe that is the way to go.
>
For many uses this works just fine. The miniPC offer simplicity, small size
and low power consumption if you're OK not being able to upgrade more than
RAM and storage.

> (I have a portable high-resolution LCD screen now, and I think I'll
> eventually just carry around miniPCs rather than laptops.)  But then again
> I also have a 14-year-old ThinkPad that still runs like a dream once I put
> in an SSD; one of the last models with the "real" IBM keyboard in it.
>
If that matters, it's still possible to buy an original IBM-PC type keyboard
<https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT> regardless of where you get your PC.
They've taken the original design and made faithful duplicates, as well as
Mac-friendly key layouts.

> Perhaps mistakenly, I thought that the combination of new hardware with
> the rough requirements gamers have for their machines -- able to be run
> hard for long periods of time, for instance -- would give me durability and
> was the Next Best Thing to the trouble of actually assembling a desktop
> machine myself.  (I actually like to build computers, but I just don't have
> the time these days, unfortunately.)
>
A good chunk of this can be done online. The state of the art of online
assembly, NZXT.com, does ship to Canada. But Canadian retailers such as
Canada Computers offer local services that are similar if not as slick. You
of course then deal with the various brands for motherboards, power
supplies, cases, etc. but if you trust the store you generally will do OK.
This is the preferred path for gamers, since high-end GPUs have special
needs. I rarely hear people in this list talk about water cooling.

> I didn't even consider ThinkCentres, which word-of-mouth had rated as
> overpriced and underpowered,
>
You had me at overpriced.

It's not that they're under-powered -- you can easily buy a ThinkCenter
with an i9 inside -- so much as being too expensive for the power you want.
This raises the word that is critical to our discussion that hasn't been
said yet: VALUE. Everyone has their own tradeoffs of price versus
performance versus features versus intangibles (shapes and positions of the
keytops, for instance).

To some people the value of the brand is worth the premium, which takes us
back to the original subject.

> I am not a market of one (yet).  But there are times when it is starting
> to feel that way
>
That's what the custom PC makers listed above are pretty-well designed to
address; those people for whom one size fits one.

>   I suspect this list of desiderata would apply to many in this group:
>
>  - reliable and long-lived
>
This is usually measured by warranty length. For instance: typically cheap
storage drives will have a year or two warranty, high-end drives (that
might otherwise have identical specs) five years or more. All part of the
value tradeoff.

>  - user-upgradeable and user-fixable
>
I find a remarkable amount of PC hardware not user-fixable.
User-replaceable may be as good as it gets.

Keep in mind that "user-upgradeable" has a shelf life for many components,
even if building your own PC. Eventually your CPU and RAM sockets will
obsolete, after which upgrade parts will become rarer (and more expensive)
to the point where it may be cheaper to replace than upgrade. Be realistic
about what (and how soon) you can see yourself upgrading.

>  - high storage capacity
>
High is in the eye of the beholder. If you have a home server the
individual stations may not need much.

> - able to manipulate high-end graphics (and sometimes high-end audio) files
>
That's too vague for a recommendation, because "manipulate" takes many
forms. High-end video editors and format conversion tools can chew up
plenty of CPU and/or GPU.

Good luck. Apologies if I've been stating the obvious.

- Evan
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