I still have that Mint Mate 16 disk...

If someone would design a decent box for a desktop around an ARM processor, I would buy it.

It would have to have the already on chip IDE interfaces available (you need storage not some cramped little solid state memory drive), an ample expandable memory section, and choice of either on-board or ad-in graphics.  Put all the ports where they are accessible, USB, serial, parallel, memory card i/o.  In general make a nice PC box using a high powered ARM. Maybe 2 octa-core processors in it at a decent clock speed and trounce all over intel.

Free OS (Linux) cheap processor, $150 to $200 PC that will do everything the intel will do. Except eat power, make lots of heat, and drain your wallet.

Thanks for the link.  Not impressed at all, though.

What I'm saying is that all these ports and stuff are available from the SOC.  All that's required is to just install the appropriate connectors on the hardware to get a complete, full system.  Why limit yourself to a small, featureless, little tablet thing unless that's all you need when for an extra $20 you can have a full featured computer?

I agree, we are dinosaurs.  I like to have a system that will do what is needed. If I wish to encode a video (H264 encoding is implemented on just about every ARM product as well as video in) I can't do it with a small tablet. There's no memory, no storage, no way to get the video in other than the crapply little built-in camera. Flash memory has a limited life of around 100,000 write cycles.  In actual computer use, that's not very long. What if I wish to make a DVD from a video I have on the tablet?  Can't do it.  What if I want to write my own programs? Can be done but not easily. What if I need to share data? No way to do it from the limited capability android stuff we are seeing.

There's still a very long way to go for the ARM camp to get around to putting out an actually useful computer although all the interfacing and capabilities necessary are already there.

If I were an electronics guy, I'd buy a nice ARM chipset and build my own board.  But since I'm not, I have to rely on someone else to do it.

It's really interesting reading all that's going on in the computer world.  I told somebody a couple years ago that they just about wouldn't recognize a computer in 5 years with all the stuff that was coming.  Looks like I was right in telling them that.

Thanks for taking the time to source all of this information and put it out here.  I've got too much other stuff going on these days to have the time to do it. But, I like to keep up with what's going on.

If the old 3-4 year old stuff (and some of the 6-8 year old stuff as well) is performance equal to the current new 14nm stuff, what should a PC person do?

I can give you my read on it, fresh this weekend.

I toasted the power supply in my little Dell box, by stressing it and letting dust bunnies build up over the air vents resulting in a classic thermal kill.   My bad, I killed it.   Simple carelessness, really.

My bad again, a new to me used power supply is $50 for the machine and please remember the machine complete only cost me $80 shipped to my door as a refurb wonder two Thanksgivings ago.   Plus, who can guarantee that the power supply was the only thing that was thermal killed?   Overheating is a systemic type issue, MB, Drives, Memory you name it can all be affected by excess heat to some degree or another ....

Oh, what to do, what to do ......

Guess what, them marvelously powerful dirt cheap refurb wonders are still out there if you go look a bit, a whole NEW generation of them dusty wonders are coming off lease right now with whole better generations of processors and memory and hard drives, etc. compared to my old cheapie box and they getting sold off by the thousands all over the place even as we speak.   For prices ranging from cheap to retail no less, depending on where you go to looking at them.

So, go to the larger refurb houses and look for tail ends and leftovers for the very best deals.

So, instead of paying $50 for a power supply, I bought a whole new larger machine with bigger/better everything for $87.95 delivered to my door.   (them ungrateful sods actually charged me sales tax, the gall of them boys !!!!)  and with a one year warranty included (wow, never had one of those warranty thingies before on a cheap refurbie unit).

And, I betcha I can take them two each 2 gig memory sticks out of the existing slightly dead Dell box and plug them into empty slots in the new box to give me either 6 or 8 gigs of systems memory (depending on slots and stick sizes) --- won't that be nice?

Now I will have me 8 full sized USB 2.0 ports on the new box, one of every other sort of I/O port that exists, a read write DVD drive and a read write CD drive and a 3.5 floppy drive plus a bigger stronger power supply and Win 7 pro already loaded on the 3x bigger hard drive just a salivating to be upgraded to Win 10 ....

--- and I will likely just run Linux Mint on it all the time except when gaming an antique Win only game that is not out on Steam yet.

THAT is what you do about Intel's current implosion --- you ride it like a little pony for all it is worth.



For me, FASTER/BETTER in the future will likely come from a change in OS, not from better stronger hardware.    The hardware I just bought for less than $100 is MANY times stronger than what I need to run Linux Mint --- 10 times stronger as a matter of fact.

Please Remember, Win 10 is NOT any sort of performance improvement to anything, it IS THE EXACT SAME AS Win 7 as far as speed and performance goes.  

So a mid generation Win 7 machine is still a fairly fast powerful Win 10 machine too.

In any case, dual booting the MUCH FASTER Linux Mint gives you the best of both speed and performance, while Win 7 (or Win 10 as the case may be) can give you "the same old Windows experience" you have suffered through for the last 15 years (but hey, you apparently have managed to convinced yourself that you "really need" to have it around, right?)

And yes, you really can buy what you really need in a 3.3 gigahertz Core 2 Duo rig with 4 gigs of systems memory in a full sized Dell business class tower (with the larger power supply)  from Dell Leasing or from one of the many other Ebay resellers of the huge mass of just coming off lease business level machinery.  

Remember, the Ebay guys are a lot cheaper ......  $87.95 delivered to my door.   (them ungrateful sods charged me sales tax though,  the gall of them boys !!!!)

Buy you a older model Rosie the Robot, they work out really really well and they don't cost you an arm and a leg in upkeep and if they break you just go get another one for dirt cheap.

(then you got spare parts already in the house)

 
http://liliputing.com/2015/07/microsoft-cuts-thousands-of-jobs-in-phone-divis...

Microsoft cuts thousands of jobs in phone division

"The company acquired Nokia’s smartphone division last year for over $7 billion. Apparently the company hasn’t really made back that money in sales… because now Microsoft has announced it’s cutting about 7,800 jobs, mostly in the phone business. The company is also recording an impairment charge of $7.6 billion in assets and up to another $850 million in restructuring charges.



In other words, a year after taking over Nokia’s smartphone business, Microsoft is taking a write-off for a figure that’s even higher than the acquisition cost, which suggests that revenue from Lumia smartphone sales hasn’t been stellar in the past year."


This also says to me that MS dumped a lot of "tech support" dollars into MS phones that went nowhere after they were built, and now MS is having to write them down/scrap them world-wide since they can't sell them at any reasonable price.

This also says to me that the level of people cuts being done right now equals the entire level of cuts from last year, which is sorta scary for the future of the company.

At the same time Intel is leaving PC space as their primary emphasis we got MS is dropping all pretense at having a Nokia based MS phone system, period.

BUT, remember MS is in bed with Qualcomm now to make something better ......

Coming this fall,  MS Win10 Phone !!!




..... yeah, right

 
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/technology/ibm-announces-computer-chips-...

IBM and partners build the first 7nm chip

Even the chip guru at Intel admits that Intel's 14nm is not going anywhere nor is their 10nm  nor is their 7nm "that really don't exist at all yet" products as they are currently brown vapor concept-ed at Intel.

So where did Samsung's successful 14nm process come from?   And where did the 10nm process come from that went into production several months ago at Samsung?   And where did this impressive super small, suspected to be very low energy "entire computer complete on a single die-set" 7nm delight come from?

It came from IBM research as reflected in the IBM Global Foundries Samsung Consortium Initiative.

Now IBM is releasing the newest generation of that consortium initiative which is a 7nm process. Remember, Samsung is already in possession of the 10nm process and is running it on Apple chipsets right now.



Things do not look good for Intel right now.   That is an entire computer balanced on that guy's finger tip, the processors, the memory, graphics, the whole shebang all on one chip.

And it is a current RISC Power PC design, you know,  the stuff Apple and IBM designed together -- you DO remember them, don't you?


         Shove that little finger-full of lube up where the sun don't shine, Intel.     It'll ease the pain of them 14nm 'roid attacks right off, it will ......  make it feel right insignificant, really.

Monsanto,Microsoft, Archer Daniels Midland, Coca-Cola, I'd miss them all like bunions.