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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Outside of Gaming or maybe training AI models, there's really no reason to get a brand new PC. I recently bought a Dell Precision T1700, about 5 years old (EDIT: from 2013) for $199. Besides throwing in a better video card to run my 4k monitors, I haven't hit a point where I wished I had bought a better machine.

And that's the problem for Dell in the consumer space, going to best buy and picking up a new Dell is no longer the best deal, the best deals are all on used hardware that used to be 5-10x the price when new. Really the only consumers they appeal to are those that aren't technically savvy enough to buy a used computer online.

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> I recently bought a Dell Precision T1700, about 5 years old (EDIT: from 2013) for $199. Besides throwing in a better video card to run my 4k monitors, I haven't hit a point where I wished I had bought a better machine.

IMO, the new Mac Mini is a pretty killer deal for that use case.

At $600, you get a modern CPU that:

* sips electricity

* is whisper quiet

* supports 2 4k monitors

* comes with a pretty good SSD

The price is pretty close to what you paid if you need to install a graphics card and an SSD (although to be fair you'd probably get a lot more capacity with a 3rd party device), and the modern CPU gives it a lot more longevity than a 10 year old machine.

Of course, a potential downside is that you have to run MacOS. But I've found that it isn't that bad.

Yeah I considered it, and TBH I might end up getting one at some point. Personally for me I just needed the cheapest thing that would get the job done (JS programming). And as far as electricity consumption, that's just something that wasn't on my radar.

macOS is pretty bad, IMO, coming from Windows or Linux, but the biggest problem with Apple hardware is the total lack of extensibility coupled with the highway robbery prices of extra RAM/SSD. You're either paying massive premiums or taking the risk that the machine will have insufficient RAM or storage and would need to be replaced sooner rather than later (compared to any random PC or even most laptops where upgrading the RAM or SSD to prolong the life is east).

> the biggest problem with Apple hardware is the total lack of extensibility coupled with the highway robbery prices of extra RAM/SSD. You're either paying massive premiums or taking the risk that the machine will have insufficient RAM or storage and would need to be replaced sooner rather than later

IMO, it's not nearly as big of a deal to use an external drive with a mac. But the ram thing - for sure. 8 GB seems like it should be pretty limiting.

In practice I don't find 8 GB to be very limiting - I think probably because the SSD is so fast and makes up for it. I suppose no one knows what the future has in store.

To be fair, I don't tend to run a lot of electron based apps, so I probably have less memory pressure than many people.

> Really the only consumers they appeal to are those that aren't technically savvy enough to buy a used computer online.

Funny, people said something similar decades ago but it was more like "the only consumers they appeal to are those that aren't technically savvy enough to build their own."

Wanting to use my 4K monitor rules out many old laptops. Desktops can be fixed with that video card, but not a laptop.

Maybe an external video card will work? But to really utilize that it would require a laptop with a Thunderbolt port which is out of the question for most old laptops.

I've run a 4k monitor and a 1080 monitor simultaneously on a 7 year old Thinkpad P50 (m1000m gpu; wasn't anything to write home about when it was new) for years. I think you'll be fine with an old laptop.

I've run a 4k off an x220. It had to run at 30Hz, but it otherwise worked way better than I expected (which was not at all).

I wonder if you'd have been better off in the long run with a new CPU due to energy usage. Especially if you're not gaming and don't really need a discrete video card.

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