Do they even still exist?

Along with anything else costing less than $500.

Sure, but they tend to be low-end mini PCs with older CPUs, very weak iGPUs, a tiny SSD and something along the line of 8 GB RAM.

Yes but it's likely going to be a 5600g and no dedicated GPU at that price point.

edit: 5600g + cooler, Asus a520, 16gb 3200 ddr4, 1tb m.2, 500w psu and case for £400 over here which isn't far off the target. Entry level at best but it's all upgradable which is the point.

Shits gonna suck when even this option dissapears :(

Holding on to stuff longer isn't necessarily a bad thing as the pc market was in a very wasteful state before all this. Still sucks though they way things have become :(

The new entry-level PC will be a cloud-based thin client subsidized by collecting every bit of data it can about you directly on a Microslop server where you will have zero user choice.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons the AI bubble hasn't popped yet is because it's being weaponized to remove consumer hardware from the market entirely. These companies want as much processing done on the cloud as possible so that they can control, monitor and mine data from every user.

Mac mini starts at $499 and has gone on sale for $479.

It’s not really for gaming, but for $500, neither is the Windows box. And the laptop is a lie, even with those bezels.

But let’s be real, you can get a decent PC for way less than $500! It won’t compete with the Mac, but it may yet be better for light gaming.

We can't even get reliable broadband across the full US yet (Hughesnet still somehow has customers), i don't see consumer-VDI being especially popular any time soon.

I predict that almost everything will be about 6% more expensive by 2028. That will push things costing around $472 today into the $500+ category.

And sometimes even 10/100 ethernet cards assuming they still have an ethernet port.

I can't imagine how many 1/10ths of a penny Dell was saving on those POS.

You're lucky if it's a 5600g. They still make systems with CPUs based on zen 2. (insert AMDs CPU decoder)

New low end laptops have always sucked. I hope more people become open to used and refurbished devices. A 3 year old used business machine kicks the shit out of a new similarly priced POS. New low end laptops are born e waste.

Here’s an 8-core N305 mini PC w/ 16GB DDR5 and a 512GB SSD for $400.

https://www.amazon.com/i3-N305-Desktop-Computers-Windows-Display/dp/B0DGGGQPH1

Similar build with the N305 swapped for a Ryzen 3500U available at the same price as well. Perfectly serviceable and capable of light gaming.

Absolutely this! I just lucked out on a secondhand Thinkpad E14 for $400. It’s basically the same as my X1 except I can add more ram if I want. My husband gave me the side eye when I grabbed it but I just said it’s only going to get worse, having a spare laptop is imperative. Which reminds me, I need to get some ram for it while I can…

At this point, I'm starting to go full luddite and hope people just give up on PC/console gaming altogether and go back to games that require you to actually be in the same room as other people. I just don't see any future where everything electronic doesn't just enshittify further and further.

besides discount pcs, you either have older desktop cpus being sold in a small package, or laptop apu mini pcs at sub 500.

phoenix/hawk point based mini pcs (8 core mobile zen 4 with 12CU rdna3, maybe around 1050ti performance) would be around the 500$ point

Yeah, what you had for 1500$ ten years ago you can for 300$ today

Adjusting for inflation, a $10 banana in 2003 would cost about $17.50 today. Probably a lot worse if tariffs are factored in.

The ones I've seen have "i5 processor", but hide the generation. Those are generally quite old, and were a bad deal back then.

Checking second hand for my SO.

Light gaming, like Pong, or Breakout. Time to rediscover the classics!

It’s probably all to plan, for controlling the masses. Subvert and destroy education. Control media.

Also. Remove unmonitored access to information (phones only, outside of work). Especially those Linux fuckers who build their own, can’t have that spreading.

I was restricted to my MacBook Air when I was in hospital, and that has the same specs as a 500USD Mac mini (m4, 16GB RAM). It plays 3D stuff like Valheim at 60FPS! The only issue is the more limited library compared to my Linux and Windows machines.

They don’t need to stream you a desktop

They just make all their UIs browser based, all the storage cloud based

The own everything, they rent it to you, and you can be cut off if you refuse to be exploited.

Capital’s wet fucking dream

Don't forget the rentseeking.

They don't care. They will literally throw people under buses at this point.

Mame and pre-2001 gaming FTW!

Hi, we (personally)'re various types of queer, and plural, and otherwise don't really have local """"""real-life"""""" community. The internet and such is crucial to our continued existence and we know literally nobody offline.

Don't throw out computers just because "oh Real Life is More Real".

(yes, you didn't technically say "throw out computers in general" but it feels like you're implying it with the "throw out games in general".)

Also singleplayer games exist and those are good too.

Games are not purely a means to be social to other people in the same room with you. They're still good for that! But societally we've moved way beyond that being the only reason.

(English could really use an inclusive and exclusive we, heh)

Games are actually among the LEAST enshittified regions of tech these days. And that's with all the shit Ubisoft and their ilk are pulling. Games are like the one category of proprietary software where you can update relatively safely and expect to not be screwed over. Most of the time.

-- Frost

(Okay, what the hell did Lemmy do to my quotes?? I used straight quotes for a reason! It just went and decided to guess opening vs. closing ones and totally scrambled them. If I want open/close quotes I'll type open/close quotes.)

For £500 you are doing a lot more than pong. I am kinda curious how far back you have to go at different price points to play the majority of games from that era. Pretty sure £500 is still doing a lot of games 10+ years old.

Retro gaming on a Pi comes in at £50 or so, depends on which one you get though as more RAM does cost more. Downside here is ARM might limit your options a bit for some things not quite so old but it probably would otherwise be powerful enough for. Box86 + wine exists but that looks too much like 2010 Linux gaming that I would rather leave in the past. Some open source games could be compiled on it too.

Pi Zero could run a few games too and that is like £15. But your choices are going to be very limited for anything beyond retro gaming. CDDA should compile and technically run, slowly. Got a pinephone which has similar specs and can do it but compiling takes about an hour and I found out the game had loading screens I wasn't even aware of before trying to run it on specs like that.

Might be time to make more browser games again. Doesn't have to be complex. Ohhh... If you get some old flash games, those might even run fairly well on a pi zero. And when they ban non ID verified internet we can trade games on SD cards.

Don't bet on used hardware. Increased costs will lead to companies using their hardware longer. Higher demand for used hardware with lower supply will lead to higher prices.

Can you even get one now?

PC today sold at 1500€ will be sold at 500€ in 2028, so... yeah, I don't know what people is thinking.

One could say "you're missing the whole picture, Alessando: in 2028 people would want to buy shiny new 2028 PCs capable of 2028-tripleA-gaming"

But this is also not the whole picture: if a brand new in 2028 that cost 501€ (500+1) doesn't, at very least, match a 1500€ from the 2025 PC... it simply mean that only rich idiot will buy brand new PC in 2028 (aka: OEM won't simply sell new stuff)

Snapdragon platform is already tailing PC gaming... if OEM won't sell new X86 PC, Snapdragon (and like) are coming to get that hole in the PC market.

(but my true hopes are in RiscV: ARM holding can easily dragged in the hardware AI hell as well as AMD and Intel were)

They don't care. It's a cost-benefit analysis.

If 5% of users can't access a VDI because of poor internet connectivity but it means the remaining 95% create an extra 10% of annual profit, they will just tell that 5% to get fucked. Individuals don't matter to them; only aggregates do.

That's true, but I'm also dreading the day my ram breaks down or I need more storage.

I will go back to MB of ram from a new company that wants to fill the gap at any cost and will not be surprised if that happens.

I ain't fuckin doin it

I predict this research firm will not exist by 2030

I hope that they just fail in their half-assed attempts and the prices fall again.

Lmao, no.

They don’t want users using this, it would be a mess. M$ would need to provide consumer facing OS support if they ever tried it, which is something they’ve vehemently refused to do for decades. It would also lead to their OS being blamed as the problem when the internet is having issues. Not to mention the consumer market isn’t really where they get their revenue from when it comes to OS sales.

They want enterprise subscriptions. End of story. Enterprise subs mean there’s an enterprise IT team involved, to at least a bare minimum extent.

They aren’t likely to want end users on this pretty much ever. It’s virtually all downside for them.

If you skip a GPU maybe, no chance if you want to include one

I built one back pre-christmas using ddr5 and onboard graphics. It wound out at about $500usd. Onboard Graphics which wasnt a dealbreaker for my wife but it was pretty ideal for a "rig now, gpu later" type plan.

I'm this close to just quitting society and becoming Amish or something. Technology is just getting worse and worse. Maybe I could be Amish but instead of being locked in the 1800s I just stay in like 2007 when technology was fun

Got myself a GTX 1660 for 460$ 5 months ago and I thought I paid too much for it, but now I'm glad I bought it
Edit: GTX 1660 laptop

Not really.

In the enterprise you run on a tight schedule which you're really not going to stretch that because your contracts are signed.

Even good SMB IT doesn't let you run too long as supportability becomes an issue. When rebuilding a machine costs as much in IT hours as half a new machine, it makes sense to simply upgrade rather than spend money on a diminishing resource.

Smaller businesses may hold on, but they're a tiny portion of what gets deployed.

Well you probably overpaid slightly, and refurbished are about half the price, but prices are only going up so the best time to buy anything is going to always be months ago.

Only due to basically one reason - oligopolies.

Frutiger Amish