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Comment by _red | Hacker News Reader

A friend and I were speaking of this recently. The current trend for "all-in-ones" is to have "monitor computers", however practically speaking it would be better to have a "keyboard computer" that you can change every few years and keep the investment in your nice 2k monitor.

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I can't even count the number of Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboards I bought over the years because they wore out, or I spilled milk on them.

I've never owned an AIO, and I'm not sure I'll ever "get it." But then I'm just not the target audience for that particular niche market.

I'd even prefer my laptops to be more "upgradeable", but lately they come with LPDDR3 soldered on, and if I'm really lucky, I can maybe install a SATA or M2 drive.

Anyone remember the CW Keyboard from Heathkit? I'm frankly not even sure what it was for, but I have played on a busted unit and the keys and they were sw(ee)t.

It also reminds me of a Brother computer/typewriter/printer I used for a while. Thermal built-in printer and a 3-row LCD display.

With all the brand new tech in the house, whenever friends or kids visit, the first things they play with are the tunrtable and the typewriter that's nearing a century old.

but then if you spill your drink you've ruined a $2000 computer instead of a $50 keyboard...

Then stop drinking near your computer.

Or buy a laptop stand.

with a combination keyboard/chassis you can't do that unless you want to reach up to your laptop stand everytime you need to type. Not practical.

Your laptop's keyboard and/or pointing device are/is for use when you aren't at your desk. When you are at your desk, you can put your laptop on its stand, plug in a USB keyboard and mouse, and use it like that.

"just stop using your PC the way you're accustomed to so that you can use my new product", what a winning sales pitch. It's like if instead of making his phone not suck, Steve Jobs had told people to just stop carrying their keys around in their pockets.

I mean, drinking soda and gaming is practically a meme at this point, so goodbye to all those customers. And anyone else who wants a beverage while they edit photos or do their taxes.

I was talking specifically to you, not all people who drink beverages at their computer.

I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just concerned for the longevity of your computing hardware.

What if you installed a $200 monitor on your desk, upgradeable, connected by a standard interface like VGA or HDMI, and on your desk had a $50 keyboard and mouse connected over USB or PS2. You could kept the expensive parts of your computer in a separate (hear me out here) sturdy, formed sheet-steel enclosure. This could go under your desk out of the way, so it could be large enough that average users could open it with simple tools or thumbscrews to remove, replace, upgrade, or add internal components to the computer. Sounds crazy, right? That would never work..../s

In contrast to the IBM-compatible PC form factor, the idea that you'd want to embed the computer into the monitor or keyboard, or replace the tower enclosure with a hockey-puck sized amalgamation of microscopic, proprietary, ESD-sensitive parts held together with glue, is a little crazy.

I admit there's a place for laptop computers, but I don't think that most of those use cases require aerospace-grade thinness and lightness to the extent that it precludes serviceability. Or maybe I'm just bitter over the fact that my high-end E-ATX silent case now houses a mini-ITX board with a single graphics card and onboard M2 storage, and I can't find a replacement that I like for my aging Thinkpad...

Honestly, I've been 100% MacBook Pro for years. Plenty powerful enough for me. My personal one is 7 years old, and my work one is a few years old.

(I plug in two monitors, keyboard, mouse, ect.)

I can understand needing a standalone, modular computer, if you're actually doing things that require a very powerful computer.

It's likely you've now forgotten just how much faster and more powerful desktop computers are than laptops.

I stopped using my Windows development desktop computer because a Windows VM ran faster on my new Macbook in 2013.

At that point I was thrilled that I could get rid of a KVM.

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