Digital Dinosaurs - Who is still using DESKTOPS?

[studemax]

I am not interested in laptops at all. Screw smartphones - don't need the distraction (or the aggravation). Heck - the only internet device I own is my desktop, and my service comes in on a wire through a modem. No wifi, no router. I have a stupid phone (no texting or pix). Now I heard that new laptops don't even have an optical drive installed.... WHAT? I do own an external hard drive with 4 terra-bytes of storage and damn little on it. I've put new hard drives in my stack twice and I don't think 3 times will be any fun at all. What is a digital dinosaur like me to do before the coming apocalypse?

[squirrel]

Of course I use a desktop, I learned to compute on them, decades ago. I keep stuff on a couple of external hard drives, and there's one stored off site, too, that gets rotated in a couple times a year.

I use a desktop for most things. but I have a smart phone and laptop also, so I get to keep in touch with the world when away from home. They haven't got much use this year.

[RockJustRock]

Desktops will never die because gaming. Optical media died from streaming and USB sticks. I haven't installed from optical in years. Hard drives are on their way to extinction from Solid State Drives. They are fun. Will make even dinosaur computers faster.

[tardis454]

I have too many desktops, pretty sure I'm up to around 20 now..

Here's the most recent one I've been playing with this week. It's a Dell GX620 that I got from a coworker.
It rode around in the bed of his truck for a while, got rained on, had bad caps on the motherboard etc..
I was gonna use it for parts but I decided to buy some caps for it for $6 and resurrect it. It works great.
I put Linux 32 bit Peppermint OS on it and edited the theme to make it look like a Windows 95 computer.





Got a nice haul of retired PLC maintenance PC's & servers from work a few weeks ago.






One of them is a 486DX2 that I'm gonna turn into a DOS box.
Mr Squirrel is gonna help me with parts to get it running.
(I'm still waiting on the CF card Jim.. I'll keep you posted)



Got a proper 17" CRT monitor to got with it too (for vintage gaming) :o)



I like laptops too, but desktops are more better

Desktops will never die because gaming. Optical media died from streaming and USB sticks. I haven't installed from optical in years. Hard drives are on their way to extinction from Solid State Drives. They are fun. Will make even dinosaur computers faster.

I use CD's & DVD's almost exclusively to do operating system installs. We also use them at work to install industrial applications. SSD's aren't totally perfected yet, they're way better now, but they are almost impossible to recover data from when they die. HD's aren't going anywhere, they're great for onsite storage servers plus the vintage gaming community keeps them alive. Ask Squirrel how much a vintage 500mb HD is going for on eBay...

[squirrel]

A few of the old ones. This is almost all I have left, used to have close to 100....

from top to bottom: 300 mhz K6-2 in an XT case (my early 2000s computer), 1ghz P3 in an XT 286 case (my mid 2000s computer), Ambra 486DX2 (our mid-late 90s computer), PS2/30-286 (our early 90s computer), PS/255-386 (in laws 90s computer), 1ghz AMD (son's early 2000s computer), EDS-SMC 386 (my wife did the engineering for the contract for this $500 million Army purchase)

[DanStokes]

Mac Mini here. My old one died a couple of years ago and our independent Mac repair folks here in town suggested that I get a new mini at Best Buy as they are the cheapest in the area and had what they recommended in stock. The old one had a spinning disc drive that had finally crapped out (it was at least 10 years old) and it simply wasn't worth the repair though they were willing to do it.

So I transferred all my external stuff (keyboard, mouse, router for the rest of the house, screen, etc.) and now everything works way better. Laptops are better for me as the tiny keys on the iPhone (I recently got rid of my flip phone and got an iPhone 11) are useless for my big ol' fingers. ME sometimes uses her laptop but I don't care for it.

BTW - I wanted Disney+ so we could watch Hamilton and found out that my Firefox was years out of date. That, too, was a good upgrade and absolutely free. If you haven't upgraded your browser it's worth doing, at least for Firefox.

Dan

[tedly]

Ummmm... My computer's black and when I fold it in half it works when I open it up again.

[SuperBuickGuy]

touch screen desktop with 28" screen.... had optical drive... works for me.

[Beagle]

I have one of these on a desk, does that count?



Stock picture - too embarrassed to take a picture of this junk it in it's natural habitat without cleaning up first. My everyday use laptop drives 2 x 27" monitors, I have a hard time with the smaller screens any more. It's really only a laptop in name, the 17" screen broke a couple of years ago. I think it has an optical drive, but who knows. I can't remember using it... spoiled by 1 gig network.

I've used the phone tethered for wireless a few times. It's not all that bad. I've used it for file storage / transfer too. Between the 64gb internal and 128gb micro SD, you can store pretty much my entire life on it, which I won't because it's too easy to lose the device.

[pdub]

I'm on an old HP desktop. Sue Unit lives on an old laptop we got for me to take to race tracks.

What I'm not looking forward to is when my current Flintstone flip phone dies. I've had it many years and it was hard to get even back then. I asked the Verizon store guy if he had a flip phone, they had none on display. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "You mean you WANT one?" Yep. He took me back into a dark corner and opened a drawer where he had a few rat holed. He stood between me and the customers so they couldn't see what we were doing.

[silver_bullet]

Depends on where I am... might be desktop, laptop, or phone....

[Barry Donovan]

I am all desktop

build my own.

still running a xeon.. e3-1280, several years
ebay purchase.. owner dropped his new 3600 dollar lenovo.
I gave it an aftermarket board, my own box and smart power

just got my first external drive beyond a terrabyte.
never had one before.

I enjoy thrashing 4k videos into what I want..
but I do not do much recording.

the way the xeon does it...
good luck catching it

I browse the web while 8gb of video is getting chomped on like candy in the encoding

I just spotted the microsoft duo.. my mechanic hands might like that one
never had a modern phone.

[oldsman496]

Desktop for me. I have been doing computers and networks for about 37 yrs now. military installs, commercial installs, medical installs . all capable of high speed video connections... I have a refurbished Dell with Spectrum internet. More RAM/ROM bigger faster processor , 1 terrabyte hard drive with 2 externall hard drives for a total of 11 terrabytes of space. About half filled with pics. Plus I have another desktop with a 3 terrabyte drive full of more pics, but i only use it for storage....I don't do gaming but the boxes i built would have if i wanted it....Still want a dedicated playstation though...sounds like fun, but time consuming

[studemax]

He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "You mean you WANT one?" Yep

Reminds me of the time I took Dad to buy a stupid phone. The guy asked "What ringtone you want? And he rattled off a bunch of popular tunes. Dad said, "Reveille". Puzzled, the guy had to search for it, then played it. "You want that for a ringtone?" Yes. He asked about 4 times, every time the pitch of his voice got higher, and his face more distraught. Finally he caved, and loaded it for Dad. Now you can tell every guy who was in the services when Dad's phone goes off.... They snap to attention, and slowly a big smile spreads across their faces.

[BangShift McT]

Desktop when I'm home, laptop on the road, smartphone for FB cruising, email and the rare occasions when the laptop becomes a PITA. Also if I need voice-to-text.