I'm really really really not interested in computers getting more powerful.
I am super interested in them being more repairable and modifiable, drawing less power, lasting and being supported for way longer etc. That stuff still gets me excited

Computers are as fast as they need to be. I know that's an old thing we've been joking about for decades, but these days it feels software is just getting more and more bloated for the sake of selling faster computers and features for the sake of more=good capitalism

I've built a few really high-end PCs for people recently and nobody needs a computer that fast. It's like things load before you've even realised you've clicked on them. We don't need more than that! It's really silly

@Shrigglepuss hah I was telling someone today "computers peaked around Nehalem and SSDs"

@arrjay I've used a few PCIe 5 SSDs now, it's ridiculous

@Shrigglepuss @arrjay

The two biggest computer upgrades I've seen are multicore and SSDs.

@Shrigglepuss Are you really? I have 386sx here, needs replacing power supply, and it eats <5W without HDD. Repairable, modifiable, long lasting... but hard to run modern software on it. We had era where computers met your requirements, but most of the world decided we want powerful, and ... you know the rest.

@arrjay @Shrigglepuss It really was around that exact time, isn't it?

4-8GB of RAM was good enough for almost everything, we had multi-core processors for parallel tasks, we had GHz clock speeds. Our screens were all at least "high definition" LCDs. Nehalem was kind of a game changer, especially for laptops (lower TDP, good iGPU, some good modern features), and SSDs getting cheaper were the last bottleneck surpassed.

Everything since then was either minor, a huge cost/size/power increase, or actually inconvenient as fuck and less durable.

@eldaking @Shrigglepuss I'm still using a Xeon W3565 for "generic desktop stuff"

SSDs and a newer Radeon and it's...fine, y'know? totally competent day-to-day.

@Shrigglepuss I plan for a ten year lifespan on all of my new server/workstation builds.

Doing pretty well so far: I still have a rig from 2014 in service on one lab bench, the core router from 2014 or 15 is scheduled for replacement later this year. The storage cluster is from 2021 IIRC, and all of those nodes should be good into the 2030s although I expect to add drive capacity as my data grows.

My main office workstation is from '17 and still has plenty of life left in it: I do want an upgrade soon but it'll remain in service for less demanding applications, probably replacing the box from '14 on the microscopy bench (which is getting annoyingly slow working on massive image datasets).

Notably missing: laptops. Since those are so annoying to maintain/upgrade.