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the · Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:24 am

just brew it! wrote:
JustAnEngineer wrote:
Real PC:
http://www.oldcomputers.net/amiga2000.html

That's not a real PC...

THAT's a real PC.

</Crocodile Dundee>

Shall we play a game?

odizzido · Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:56 am

I use a 9inch netbook with only a gig of ram and one of the early atom processors. It's extremely slow, but good enough to type things on, watch video, surf the interwebs, etc.

The thing I like most about it is the portability. It's light, has good battery life, fits into places that no other laptop I've owned has. I really like it and for the things that matter most to me with a laptop it's superior to anything I can buy today despite its shortcomings and age.

whm1974 · Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:55 am

just brew it! wrote:
Where are you seeing all these "dirt cheap" notebooks with 1080p screens?

Sorry I was talking about desktops in this case.

EndlessWaves · Fri Feb 19, 2016 12:45 pm

whm1974 wrote:
I have been noticing that dirt cheap Windows 10 PCs and notebooks have been popping up with low performance parts that cost less than $300. The specs on these machines are so low they make my jaw drop:

Only two gigs of memory.
Cherrytrail based CPU.
32 gig eMMC.

Just what can we do with such low specs?

CPU-wise they're as good as a Core 2, or one of AMD's single module chips.

They're fine when they're cheap enough, as a computer for two or three years. The trouble is they're often not clearly marketed as such and priced as a good percentage of the cost of a mainstream desktop.

Concupiscence · Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:10 pm

whm1974 wrote:
I have been noticing that dirt cheap Windows 10 PCs and notebooks have been popping up with low performance parts that cost less than $300. The specs on these machines are so low they make my jaw drop:

Only two gigs of memory.
Cherrytrail based CPU.
32 gig eMMC.

Just what can we do with such low specs?

That depends on what your use case is. If it's mobile, treat it much like a tablet with some extra flexibility and you won't be disappointed; if it's a small form factor desktop, think of it much as you would a hotel business center PC, and it'll do fine for basic use. The hardware would also be decently specced for old hardware emulation, from just brew it's old learning platforms to Apple // systems, game consoles of yore, or MAME, or dozens of others. For more creative or esoteric purposes it'd be a fine little low overhead server. Paired with a decent capacity external hard drive (or two) it wouldn't stack up badly against the hardware of vintage sites of yore like ftp.cdrom.com, and it'll sip power compared to old server gear.

Will it run new games? Maybe some casual titles, but I wouldn't buy it for that purpose. Will it run old games well? Debatable, and dependent on whatever those games need (though DOSbox should be A-OK). Is it ideal for even light workloads for distributed computing? Probably not, unless your other tasks for the system don't demand much of CPU time & memory, and you don't need it to be very performant in absolute terms. But if you're creative in your approach, there are a lot of possibilities for such a low price point.

Mr Bill · Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:20 pm

just brew it! wrote:
I learned to program on several systems, all within the span of a year or so back in the late 1970s:

- CDC 6600 mainframe (FORTRAN, via 110 baud Teletype) [definitely *not* a real PC!]

- SOL 20 (8080 machine code, hand-assembled and keyed in as hexadecimal opcodes at first, then later in assembly language after there was enough RAM installed to actually run an assembler) [internal architecture similar to the IMSAI, but with more stuff integrated on the motherboard, way fewer expansion slots, and without the iconic switches-and-LEDs front panel]

- An IMSAI cobbled together from parts out of the spares bin at the computer shop where I'd landed an after-school job (assembly language) [had to mail order a bunch of chips and discrete components from Digi-Key for this project, since most of the boards I scavenged were missing components; IIRC I got them to sell me the pile of scavenged non-working boards for like $150]

I was messing around with a lot of S-100 gear, back when pretty much everyone else was oohing and ahhing over the Apple II. So my "DIY PCs" ethic goes back quite a few decades.

I got started on FORTRAN in highschool because our algebra teacher would take our programs and run them and bring us back the results. But I got into it for real in late 1974 when I got my first account for the IBM 360 on campus at UTEP. At U of CO Boulder, they had a cluster of CDC 6000 series at the main compute center, linked across the campus by infrared laser. The link went down when the weather was bad. I spent a lot of nights at the computer center. Later back at UTEP they upgraded to an IBM 4100 series and we actually had terminals instead of card decks. I wrote my MS using those terminals and I was the first at UTEP to print my MS using a high quality line printer. The graduate school wanted professional typing. But I took the line printer output and xeroxed it onto bond paper and they decided it was actually good enough. I bought my first PC in 1983. It was a Compaq Deskpro 8086 with a 7.14 MHz 8086 processor, 720x350 monochrome and two 5 inch floppy drives. Upgrading from 512 to 640K of 120ns DRAM was a $256 option. IIRC the total came out to around $2750. I bought my first hard drive in 1986; 20Mb for $500. I still have it for sentiment.

whm1974 · Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:22 pm

I don't deny that there is a use case for some people with hardware with these low specs, but I just think that the memory should be 4 GB and the eMMC should be 128 GB instead of a measly 32.

localhostrulez · Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:54 pm

EndlessWaves wrote:
whm1974 wrote:
I have been noticing that dirt cheap Windows 10 PCs and notebooks have been popping up with low performance parts that cost less than $300. The specs on these machines are so low they make my jaw drop:

Only two gigs of memory.
Cherrytrail based CPU.
32 gig eMMC.

Just what can we do with such low specs?

CPU-wise they're as good as a Core 2, or one of AMD's single module chips.

They're fine when they're cheap enough, as a computer for two or three years. The trouble is they're often not clearly marketed as such and priced as a good percentage of the cost of a mainstream desktop.

Eh, maybe a slower Merom (T7100) or ULV Penryn.... http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... Hz&id=2388 and http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... GHz&id=975

For what it's worth, a P8700 still feels zippy (IMO) when surfing the web (with enough RAM and a decent HDD), but my E350 machine (x120e) felt sluggish no matter what (4GB RAM, SSD). Win7 felt sluggish on it, Chrome felt sluggish on it, though 8.1 felt better (and I imagine Win10/Edge would've run fairly well, if I'd tried it). Though it does score a bit lower than the N2840.

Still, we're talking borderline/barely enough power. I was worried about this when I bought the x120e, but people figured I wouldn't need any more power. Which turned out to be totally wrong - web developers still haven't stopped adding more crap to their sites, Youtube lost hardware acceleration (on most hardware anyway) as they moved to HTML5/VP9 for Chrome users (and basically, you can either hog the entire CPU and barely run 1080p on that machine, or use H264 acceleration and have silky smoothness and the CPU idling), and Chrome has bloated up over the years. Firefox hasn't been exactly light and nimble in quite a while either. Though IE11 runs well on those machines (but addons?). What's to say this won't be an issue again with the particularly low-spec SoC/2GB machines?

the · Fri Feb 19, 2016 4:06 pm

The problem with low amounts of memory is that basic applications can take a shocking amount of memory. I'm not taking about web browsers which are horribly memory hogs. For example, my backup software right now is consuming 400 MB of RAM and I've seen it peak over 600 MB. That's outrageous for what should be non-intrusive background application. MS Office and similar applications like LibreOffice eat tons of RAM. I miss the days of Word 5.1 which could run in 2 [b]MB[b/]. NotePad and its glorious do nothing attitude consumes more memory now than an old school actually useful application. Then again back in my day I used to walk up hill to school in the snow both ways. Now get off my lawn!

whm1974 · Fri Feb 19, 2016 4:15 pm

localhostrulez wrote:
Still, we're talking borderline/barely enough power. I was worried about this when I bought the x120e, but people figured I wouldn't need any more power. Which turned out to be totally wrong - web developers still haven't stopped adding more crap to their sites, Youtube lost hardware acceleration (on most hardware anyway) as they moved to HTML5/VP9 for Chrome users (and basically, you can either hog the entire CPU and barely run 1080p on that machine, or use H264 acceleration and have silky smoothness and the CPU idling), and Chrome has bloated up over the years. Firefox hasn't been exactly light and nimble in quite a while either. Though IE11 runs well on those machines (but addons?). What's to say this won't be an issue again with the particularly low-spec SoC/2GB machines?

I think we are starting to reach the point where we need 8 GB of memory, an i3 level CPU, and a 256 GB SATA SSD for basic use with reasonable performance. Or am I full of crap?

SuperSpy · Fri Feb 19, 2016 4:32 pm

It's more RAM than anything else. Although since I installed Windows 10, my old Clarksfield i7 laptop is suddenly feeling slow, just with the amount of background garbage that runs randomly.

Which brings me to my real problem with super cheap PCs: they are fine if they are just vanilla installs of windows running 1 app, but those computers are also the ones loaded to the brim with shovelware which turns a working-ok-but-only-just machine into a slow pile of crap.

EndlessWaves · Fri Feb 19, 2016 4:59 pm

localhostrulez wrote:
Eh, maybe a slower Merom (T7100) or ULV Penryn.... http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... Hz&id=2388 and http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... GHz&id=975

*calls up the local biocontamination unit to report an infection of passmark*

Not only does passmark have all the usual problems of trying to quantify widely different CPU designs with a single number but it uses user submitted results. As of writing in the last five submitted results for the N2840 the fastest one if 43% faster than the slowest!

As we're talking about desktops I'd expect it to typically be towards the upper end of the range as there are less cooling restrictions than on netbooks. Additionally, the N2840 is an older design, Bay Trail instead of Cherry trail*, and is one of the lower end models with only half the cores on the silicon enabled.

*Actually Braswell, Cherry Trail is only the Atom-branded platform, the successor to Bay Trail-T.

For a broader perspective have a look at the Techspot review of Braswell and their article on ten years of Intel processors:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1014-int ... page4.html
http://www.techspot.com/article/1039-te ... page3.html

Compare with the G3220 which is featured in both.

For what it's worth, a P8700 still feels zippy (IMO) when surfing the web (with enough RAM and a decent HDD), but my E350 machine (x120e) felt sluggish no matter what (4GB RAM, SSD). Win7 felt sluggish on it, Chrome felt sluggish on it, though 8.1 felt better (and I imagine Win10/Edge would've run fairly well, if I'd tried it). Though it does score a bit lower than the N2840.

localhostrulez wrote:
What's to say this won't be an issue again with the particularly low-spec SoC/2GB machines?

Oh it will. But if it's half the price of a Haswell/Skylake Pentium system then there's nothing wrong with that. It's when people buy them because they're 20% cheaper without realising they'lll have half the useful life.

whm1974 wrote:
I think we are starting to reach the point where we need 8 GB of memory, an i3 level CPU, and a 256 GB SATA SSD for basic use with reasonable performance. Or am I full of crap?

Halve those requirements and that statement would be reasonable, but there are people who never open more than one tab on their web browser and who are currently fine with 2GB of ram and a 64GB SSD.

Although 'i3 level CPU' is pretty meaningless. Some of the earlier ULV i3s were pretty slow. I'd take a fast Braswell over an i3-330UM any day.

localhostrulez · Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:05 pm

Uhh, even my grandmother complained that her Mac, with 2GB RAM, felt slow once it was upgraded to 10.8 (Sandy Bridge i5, 2GB base config, hard drive). A little RAM upgrade alleviated that one. Of course, that's modern-day Mac RAM use for ya. Let's ship a minimal amount of RAM at a premium price point when we know we can't resist the urge to demand more RAM later on (and suffer hard if we don't have it).

Interesting bit on Passmark. I just mentioned the N2840 because that's what the cheap Toshiba I had recently used.

I'm also going to say that IMO, 4GB is fine for an existing machine, but I want 8GB for a new office machine. Web browsers (and GPU memory use) are continuing to grow/get bloated (it's getting ridiculous, regardless if you run 7/8.1/10) and RAM is really cheap these days. As in, 8GB DDR3 is $30. At that price, why skimp? That, and an SSD is what the average user will notice (so naturally, OEMs refuse to use them in anything but an expensive machine). CPU? As long as it's comparable to a Core 2, who cares?

anotherengineer · Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:11 pm

A REAL PC
http://i.imgur.com/boB6bJS.jpg

Waco · Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:15 pm

whm1974 wrote:
I don't deny that there is a use case for some people with hardware with these low specs, but I just think that the memory should be 4 GB and the eMMC should be 128 GB instead of a measly 32.

I have almost exactly what is described in the OP (except 64 GB of eMMC storage) in my ASUS T100TA.

You'd be surprised how quick they are. CPU speed is almost never an issue, and I even use it for Steam gaming (obviously older stuff and/or indie games). Outputting 1080p video (even high bitrate) to a TV via the HDMI out is flawless.

whm1974 · Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:25 pm

localhostrulez wrote:
I'm also going to say that IMO, 4GB is fine for an existing machine, but I want 8GB for a new office machine. Web browsers (and GPU memory use) are continuing to grow/get bloated (it's getting ridiculous, regardless if you run 7/8.1/10) and RAM is really cheap these days. As in, 8GB DDR3 is $30. At that price, why skimp? That, and an SSD is what the average user will notice (so naturally, OEMs refuse to use them in anything but an expensive machine). CPU? As long as it's comparable to a Core 2, who cares?

This is why I rather build my systems then buy one off the shelf. OEMs either cut corners or charge you an arm and leg.

localhostrulez · Fri Feb 19, 2016 8:48 pm

Waco wrote:
I have almost exactly what is described in the OP (except 64 GB of eMMC storage) in my ASUS T100TA.

You'd be surprised how quick they are. CPU speed is almost never an issue, and I even use it for Steam gaming (obviously older stuff and/or indie games). Outputting 1080p video (even high bitrate) to a TV via the HDMI out is flawless.

I mean, if the software's designed to use its resources well, you don't need much at all. Hardware acceleration and simple/targeted software, for one. The computers in a car, the computer in my old printer, etc are pretty low spec'd but do their job just fine. That's basically the only reason I used metro apps when I had Windows 8.1 on the x120e (the Netflix app runs really efficiently compared to the Silverlight website).

Chuckaluphagus · Fri Feb 19, 2016 9:59 pm

whm1974 wrote:
I think we are starting to reach the point where we need 8 GB of memory, an i3 level CPU, and a 256 GB SATA SSD for basic use with reasonable performance. Or am I full of crap?

Crap all the way

In all seriousness, that system is massively overpowered for what most people want to do with a computer: check e-mail, Facebook, watch Youtube/Netflix, Skype/Hangouts for video calling. Some light word processing/spreadsheets. Very basic games, mostly played in a web browser.

What we, as computer enthusiasts, consider baseline is vastly more powerful than what most people actually need in a computer. It's very, very easy to lose sight of that as we discuss 8-core processors and $500 (or even $200!) video cards.

bhtooefr · Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:18 pm

That is one factor that I forgot about - atrociously bad preloads.

Then again, Microsoft Signature is a way around that. (And, the WinBook tablets were largely crapware-free - just shortcuts for PogoPlug service, Office 365 installation files, and NOD32 (which, when you first went to the desktop, it'd ask if you wanted to keep it or not, and it'd promptly uninstall itself if you told it no).)

In any case, I think we're getting to the point where a SSD is more important for performance than a lot of RAM and a fast CPU. A big core (Haswell/Skylake) dual Celeron or a small core (Silvermont/Airmont - think Bay Trail and Braswell) quad Celeron/Pentium, 2-4 GiB RAM, and a decent SSD is plenty for normal users.

whm1974 · Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:46 pm

Chuckaluphagus wrote:
In all seriousness, that system is massively overpowered for what most people want to do with a computer: check e-mail, Facebook, watch Youtube/Netflix, Skype/Hangouts for video calling. Some light word processing/spreadsheets. Very basic games, mostly played in a web browser.

So what if it is overpowered for most people? That will be way better then being underpowered.

Chuckaluphagus · Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:57 pm

whm1974 wrote:
Chuckaluphagus wrote:
In all seriousness, that system is massively overpowered for what most people want to do with a computer: check e-mail, Facebook, watch Youtube/Netflix, Skype/Hangouts for video calling. Some light word processing/spreadsheets. Very basic games, mostly played in a web browser.

So what if it is overpowered for most people? That will be way better then being underpowered.

The only problem is cost - they're paying for capability they'll never use. Your suggested minimum specification was "for basic use with reasonable performance", but that's exactly what can be handled fine -- for the majority of people -- by a Cherry Trail device with 32 GB of storage and 2 GB of memory.

BobbinThreadbare · Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:33 pm

A real pc is something you can install an OS on.

/adjusts eye glasses
/adjusts pocket protector

odizzido · Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:40 pm

There are advantages to having an underpowered CPU as well. Battery life/weight being obvious potential benefits, and having the ability to go fanless. I personally never want to own a laptop with a fan ever again.

Mr Bill · Sat Feb 20, 2016 12:53 am

I was just thinking last night that Facebook was starting to resemble AOL online. I think I see a marketing opportunity for Zuckerberg here. He could market "Facebox"; a PC built exclusively for checking facebook and optimized to play all the silly videos. The box would be just a couple hundred dollars, partially subsidized by Facebook advertising. Microsoft would promptly sue for infringement of the 'box' trademark and Zuckerberg would follow up with advertisements making fun of "ex-box".

biffzinker · Sat Feb 20, 2016 1:44 am

Mr Bill wrote:
I was just thinking last night that Facebook was starting to resemble AOL online. I think I see a marketing opportunity for Zuckerberg here. He could market "Facebox"; a PC built exclusively for checking facebook and optimized to play all the silly videos. The box would be just a couple hundred dollars, partially subsidized by Facebook advertising. Microsoft would promptly sue for infringement of the 'box' trademark and Zuckerberg would follow up with advertisements making fun of "ex-box".

Did you forget about WebTV later renamed to MSN TV from the late 90's.
MSN TV

Also the Facebook Phone that flopped like the Amazon Phone.
HTC First

localhostrulez · Sat Feb 20, 2016 2:39 am

odizzido wrote:
There are advantages to having an underpowered CPU as well. Battery life/weight being obvious potential benefits, and having the ability to go fanless. I personally never want to own a laptop with a fan ever again.

For what it's worth - I stuck a hard drive in my laptop earlier today, which has always been run with an SSD (installing 10 as a test, didn't want to mess with my main/working install). Feeling even that slight vibration from the palmrest was just strange. I'm used to silence, plus the fan on this stays off during most light use. No moving parts (most of the time :wink:

).

BobbinThreadbare wrote:
A real pc is something you can install an OS on.

/adjusts eye glasses
/adjusts pocket protector

Seriously though, this is one aspect of PCs I like (but young software devs seem to hate) that mobile lacks. Need a little legacy compatibility/last year's software/OS? Or the new OS is just buggy, and you don't want it? (I'm not just talking Vista/8/10... I've also seen versions of Android, and even had occasional reasons to downgrade a Mac.) On a full PC, you can have it, whether it's just one of the versions they released that's now outdated, or if the OS predates the machine itself (business PCs anyway, Macs and phones not so much). But on mobile, nope. Not good if you need to run control systems or other oddball stuff that moves slowly, and the older (but not that old) hardware is no longer available.

dragmor · Sat Feb 20, 2016 3:02 am

When I got my ASUS Vivonote 8 tablet in March 2014 I ran some benchmarks on a bunch of PC I had around. Lots of new vs old hardware.
It turn out the specs your complaining about aren't that bad, at least when compared to 3-5 year old hardware (which is what most people are upgrading from).

btw this is posted from the Asus tablet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:58 am

BobbinThreadbare wrote:
A real pc is something you can install an OS on.

/adjusts eye glasses
/adjusts pocket protector

It isn't real unless you needed to use a soldering iron when you put it together, and hack at least one of the device drivers yourself.

Now get off my lawn!

bhtooefr · Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:54 am

It isn't real unless you've donated blood to it while building or servicing it.

Which means, by total volume of donated blood, this 533 MHz VIA Eden-based thin client (well, it was thin, before I stuck a hard drive in it) that I'm posting from is the most real PC I own. Even more real than the Apple-1 clone that I soldered together (a tiny amount of blood loss making the keyboard cable), even more real than my i5-6600K box (a bit of blood loss cutting myself on the heatsink, trying to get one of the pushpins engaged).

Deanjo · Sat Feb 20, 2016 10:17 am

just brew it! wrote:
It isn't real unless you needed to use a soldering iron when you put it together, and hack at least one of the device drivers yourself.

Now get off my lawn!

In my day we called device drivers "hole punches".

Now get off my lawn!

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