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Comment by asperous | Hacker News Reader

For the average person this might be kind true, however I can think of at least three places where desktop computers are very much cultural and symbolic:

* “Gamers” or other enthusiasts with their battlestations [1]

* Finace workstations with many monitors and Bloomberg terminals [2]

* Potentially musician workstations as well [3]

Any other niche ideas?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/battlestations/ [2] https://images.app.goo.gl/KfaJMqBp8JVkW6Yn8 [3] https://images.app.goo.gl/sVjkdWvKNrMN2xdD8

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All of those musician's workstations have the actual computer hidden somewhere out of sight. There's a monitor or two, a computer keyboard lying around(all wireless, it looks like?), but all those desks are dominated by musical keyboards, mixer boards, and speakers. Sometimes there's a laptop sitting on it. All the cables are hidden, out of the way.

Take away the monitors and the computer keyboard, substitute a couple of multi-track reel-to-reel tape decks, and it looks exactly like what I'd see when I'd visit my dad at his audio engineer job in the 1970s.

The computer itself is just an appliance, stick it under the desk next to the mini-fridge. Maximize the available surface used for getting the work done; as long as the computer's got enough airflow to not overheat when you push it hard, who cares where it is?

Well, gamers care I guess, they all have those crazy light-up cases with clear sides to show off how much they spent on their custom-built rig. The computer's become an object of desire there.

I'm a gamer and my rig is a mini itx tucked away. I like it quiet and performant. Yes the market slaps RGB lighting on anything and everything gamer but it's up to gamers to buy them.

I like having my case light up with the temperature of the components.

I've never succeeded making it anything but a deep green and it gives me a nice and fuzzy feeling, knowing that everything is at an optimal temperature while the fans lazily spin behind the tempered glass.

Ha! That's such a fantastic idea. I always keep my lights either off, or on white because I kind of dislike RGB lighting. I might have to look into this, did you use any specific software for this?

It is a setting in the nzxt control panel for me (I only used nzxt cooling components in my current build), but other manufacturers often have plugin architecture for the LED control, so it's usually not that hard to setup on others as well.

Interesting, I inadvertently own both a Corsair case and RAM, so I might be able to make something neat happen. Thanks for the info!

I am interested in something like this out of the loop with pc building. Do you have any more info about your rig online?

Although sometimes it's a chore to find something without the RGB.

I find the lights to be fun. I'm playing a game after all :)

Engineers who do mechanical CAD work using a specialized input device like a SpaceMouse [1] or similar.

[1] https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/

SpaceMouse works just fine on laptops, it's just kind of pointless when your software is pushing 15fps because of the shitty graphics card. You can't get Quattro cards on laptops, as far as I know. So anyone using CAD software regularly is stuck using desktops.

I think Lenovo offers Quattro cards on laptops, but IIRC they much more expensive than a desktop workstation

You can get the latest A5000 GPU's on the pro-grade workstation laptops.

You could Quadro cards on laptops for a long time. They're just the super thick stupid expensive models usually.

You can use an external GPU on a laptop though.

Lots of asterisks belong here. There are still a ton of compatibility issues, but when it works it can be a great option.

Not really a workstation, but seems like folks can take their homelabs pretty seriously too.

If it is central to home computing, I'd say audio/music workstations are a bit outside of that. However, if you allow that, then a video workstation would also follow.

Part of a musician "workstation" is already an ipad (or more). It's question of time, IMHO.

As a musician's tool, it's hard to beat a computer that fits neatly on a music stand and lasts all day on battery.

Eh, it depends on what kind of work you're doing within the music industry.

Solo studio tracking artist? Yeah, an iPad is probably good enough for you to practice with and do some rough scratch recordings for demo purposes.

If you're running a studio, you need the I/O to handle at least a few physical devices with dedicated PCIe lanes, and a high resolution input device like a mouse or trackpad to make precise edits in a DAW. Plus a keyboard. Audio/video editors love their keyboard shortcuts just as much as developers!

While it may be possible to connect any one of those devices to an iPad, connecting all of them and making it easy to disconnect the iPad, makes it impractical in reality. The iPad in it's current format is not a great device for professional audio recording and mixing, and if you changed the format to better fit that workflow, you've now described a Mac Mini and you should buy one of those instead.

These aren't cultural or symbolic uses, though. People who do these things need powerful chips and a cooling solution that allows them not to throttle under load. Most modern laptops are ultrabooks now with poorly designed cooling solutions (due to the thinness of the devices) that throttle under load and are unsuitable for these uses. Even M1 Macbooks have issues using multiple monitors.

I'm a filmmaker and visual effects artist who works with ray tracing rendering a lot, I'd say we're definitely a significant niche! Recently bought myself a new rig so I could render things 10x faster, totally worth it.

Obviously software developers.

If I would not be a software dev I would ditch laptop/computer and go with mobile phone alone. For day to day reading/banking/mailing all I need is there.

I think I could go full mobile phone if I would have cloud server + cloud IDE because I can connect big screen to the phone with mouse and keyboard anyway. Only dev tools are not really accessible on Android/IOS.

Having everything I need to work on single device that allows me to jump on the plane and go anywhere, that is great idea. Well maybe I would need to carry a keyboard and mouse but I hope that screens will be available in every hotel room/office space with option to connect with a phone.

The cultural icon of a developer workspace these days is a Macbook Pro in a coffee shop.

Of a web developer*

There are other programming jobs with different iconic setups.

It's a pipe dream though because company revenues need people buying more devices, not less.

> Finance workstations with many monitors and Bloomberg terminals

The only person I know who has a bloomberg terminal uses a remote machine and just a laptop at home and he works from home. However he is not involved in day trading directly so maybe those would need desktop computers just for the graphics.... although maybe even that can be done via external graphics card since the processing power I think is already there on powerful laptops.... now I'm curious.

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