This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It’s not just desktops, it’s phones and laptops and consoles
Good thing I don't care about any of those things enough to pay the rip-off prices. I'm fine with my 4 year old phone and 10 year old PC. If they crap out then I'll replace them with some cheap old crap. I don't need high specs, there isn't much worth running these days.
Unfortunately it isn't just the high end stuff which is feeling the crunch. These AI companies have bought up all the production capacity, which means there is less low-end stuff being produced. We're still coasting on existing stock at the moment, but as that runs out prices will rise across the board.
And used prices will surge as more people make the same decision as you
As the article explains, you will indirectly pay.
Any product that contains RAM or any service that relies on the use of computers at scale, is going to pass the operating cost (the cost of sourcing RAM) onto the consumer.
And these prices will never go down again. Even when shortages end, costoners will be used to the higher prices, and companies will be used to charging them.
Our last, best hope for the subsidy model was Valve, a company that famously rakes in money hand over fist and launched the original Steam Deck at the unbeatable price of $399 through a “painful” amount of subsidy. If Valve did the same for the upcoming Steam Machine, it could have legitimately competed with the PlayStation and Xbox for your living room TV.
But Valve has all but dashed those hopes through a series of moves. In late December, it discontinued the $399 Steam Deck, raising the starting price to $549. In early February, it announced that the Steam Machine had been delayed due to the memory shortage and that the company would have to reset expectations on pricing. And now, even the $549 Steam Deck OLED is out of stock specifically because of the memory crisis.
I was pretty confident that Valve was not going to subsidize the Steam Machine from the start, even before Valve said that it would be priced comparably to a PC and even before it said that it was delaying determining pricing (which was a good sign that it hadn't locked in a contract price on components). I commented along those lines here.
Consoles can do the razor-and-blades model because they are a closed platform. If you buy a Playstation, it doesn't do you much good unless you use it to buy Playstation games. So each Playstation purchase is very, very probably going to be used to purchase Playstation games. Sony can crank up prices on those and make their initial loss back.
But the Steam Machine is open. I can go run whatever on it. I can just take the thing and, say, make it a media server or whatever. And if Valve subsidizes it, people will just buy it instead of a comparable PC and then run whatever they want on it. Doesn't make much sense for Valve, just because of the nature of the machine.
All that means is that I'll start caring about something else. It's RAM, not food or shelter.
Laughs in AC/DC Model Trains and Battletech
They are underestimating my willingness to run tiny systems. Say hello to Tiny Core Linux.
Running something meaningful on a $20 hardware is a pleasure like no other
