The current state of the desktop PC market is appalling.

[Oggy]

4 minutes ago, minervx said:

I'm going to end my comments here.  I made my case.  There's not much else to argue about.  The vast majority of this forum differ with me in their values, and that's fine.

Yo Champ, don't throw in the towel. You've almost convinced everybody.

[veli2501]

4 minutes ago, minervx said:

I'm going to end my comments here.  I made my case.  There's not much else to argue about.  The vast majority of this forum differ with me in their values, and that's fine.

just thought I would say that you've handled yourself very graciously in this thread for someone that was going up against a majority of people disagreeing.  So kudos for that

[App4that]

Not easy having an unpopular opinion, I agree good job in handling the conversation. 

 

 

[Razor Blade]

The more features something has, the more that can go wrong with it.

[Drak3]

10 minutes ago, Oggy said:

You've almost convinced everybody.

11 minutes ago, veli2501 said:

just thought I would say that you've handled yourself very graciously in this thread for someone that was going up against a majority of people disagreeing.  So kudos for that

6 minutes ago, App4that said:

Not easy having an unpopular opinion, I agree good job in handling the conversation. 

 

 

A visual representation:

[App4that]

@Drak3

 

 

 

 

[clean]

One thing that most people did not bring up is ram price fixing, as this is annoying, it is avoidable. The used market. I know, I know... used pc parts are iffy at best, but ram is one of the few parts that I buy with confidence on the used market. Just today I  picked up a set of 2 x 4gb ddr4 2400 g skill gaming desktop ram for $60 CAD! it was still in the packaging and worsk fine. Ram prices are high right now, but that does not mean we need to pay the crazy prices for new ram, just buy used. And too all the PC component hoarders out there (I sure know I am) sell off your old DDR3 ram, many people still use it and it is still expensive as well. This is a solution that some people may find "short term" or "sketchy", but from personal experience always works, just make sure you purchase from a reputable seller and that the sale is not a scam.

[Syntaxvgm]

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

Motherboards

• Still have PS/2 ports.  This was made by IBM in the 80's and discontinued in the 90's.  Why keep them?

   

There are legitimate reasons to do this that aren't backwards compatibility. USB is a bus, and PS2 is a more 'direct' input. Not only is it more secure as it can only accept HID devices, this means that in the case of ANY os you put in your pc, the keyboard will be detected and the layout will be correct regardless of driver problems. It's mostly compatibility with older peripherals though, and it's there because why not?  There's room. Note that most motherboards only give one port now instead of two. Not all have it of course, it's just offered on some motherboards for people who would want it. 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Have separate 3.5mm jacks for both the microphone and the headphones.  ($50 smartphones can afford a combined audio jack)

Why, oh why, is this a problem? Laptops and phones are portable, and need to save room. People would complain if they got a desktop and had to have a breakout cable to plug 2 separate devices in. Oh and there's usually 4 more ports you are forgetting about that come on pcs. Some pople have surround audio. Why the hell would you make it a three pole to bring that down to 5?

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

• Majority of them have no bluetooth or wifi integrated in (even though the lowest end laptop motherboards can afford to have them)

 

The next time I lug my desktop into starbucks I'll curse this one. 

This is purely cost. There is no reason or demand for this, and if you need a wifi card, you can add one. You can even drop a laptop one in some motherboards. Some itx ones come with it as itx boxes are portable. Why increase the price for everyone when most will just plug it in directly? In fact, a lot of motherboard have 2 lan NICs because that's more useful. 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

Cases

• Many restrict airflow for aesthetic reasons.

 

Aesthetic is what sells. Suddenly, there's a ton of RGB because there's a demand for it. Most PCs don't actually need a ton of air flow to be cool. If you're going for some crazy setup, you buy a case accordingly. 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

 

• Small form factor market is extremely limited

 

....no, it is not. It blew up as the new "thing" in 2012ish I think, but people moved away from itx as they realized it's doesn't offer them much for most people but takes away expandability and small things like a lot of itx boards have trash on-board audio. Even though its popularity has waned off, there's still plenty out there. More itx enthusiast cases than micro atx, a much more practical form factor. In fact, I'd say there are more itx cases today than there were enthusiast cases AT ALL some years ago. 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

 

Keyboards

• Almost no wireless mechanical keyboards exist

Very few people want this. Most people want a backlight of some kind these days, even if it's not rgb or whatever. There's very little use case as well. I don 't move my keyboard around the desk when I game. It'd be nice for my couch setup, but that keeb NEEDS a backlight anyway. 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Very few ultra-compact wireless keyboards exist

Ultra compact is a niche market. Most people have a hard time giving up the numpad if they have space for it, they're not giving up arrow keys or shit like that unless they're on r/mk. And there's plenty of options anyway imo

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

• Most of the mid-high end ones are focused on aesthetics and marketing to teenagers rather than quality for the dollar.

 

That's who buys them

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

 

Video Cards

• AMD and NVidia assumed cryptocurrency mining would just be a fad and it wouldn't be worth significantly increasing GPU production, and now the video card market is stagnant.

 

lol but it kinda is. The waves are so fast you can't actually predict how many you'll need, the production process is far too large. There has been gpu crashes before, they're not gonna risk loosing BIG to make a little more money. It just so happened to last longer this time. 
 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Are marketing 2-3x as much wattage than most people even need.
•  

This goes back to the days that multi gpu setups were far more common. And it's not a bad thing if they are good quality and they are not so underloaded that they are less efficient. 2 of my psus have never once kicked the fan on in their lifetime as I purposely made sure the draw would never be higher than the load percentage that the fan kicks on. They're not expensive, more ins't bad. Getting a bad psu is bad. 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Extremely limited SFX market even though most desktop machines don't need a big power supply.

 

But most desktop machines need an atx psu...lol

Seriously, you'd have to both get a bracket and cable extensions, and it'd look garbage and likely be louder in some cases. 
One manufacturer made these a thing, I think it was silverstone, and they did it right when itx was first starting to wane in popularity (itx was like a bubble) as R&D takes a long time. By the time these came out, it wasn't as big. Note htis for the GPU mining thing you asked. Other manufactures slowly started making more options, but this was slow as demand was small, silverstones were fine and not expensive. 

SFX isn't the only small psu form factor. We'd used atx for years as why not but itx demanded something smaller that wasn't like a 1u or 2u psus (those are typically loud). Previously, the compact PSU market was limited to servers. I'd go as far to say that SFX was completely unnecessary and they should have taken an existing form factor and make an enthusiast psu with it. 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

Pre-Builts

• Still have optical drives.
•  

People seem to want them. They're like less than 20$ and people literally list-compare when they buy PCs. This is entirely why intel switch to the i3-i5-i7 scheme. "i7 da best" when it may be a dual core laptop. "that one's a 5, this one is a 7. 7 is more than 5" thats seriously how people shop for PCs. Here's a 3 and a half year old thread where I shit on aliewnare for the way they market these things back when I wanted their 13 (the first gpu dock available in a laptop, ever) but they were only avaible in dual cores, so when people complained you could only get a dual core i5 with hyperthreading, they responded with a dual core i7 that was marginally  better. That's how dumb they treat their customers as they are that dumb

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/270810-mfw-alienware

Quote

"We listened to your complaints about a 1.7GHz dual core CPU and added a 2GHZ Dual core cpu option. Because it's that much better. It has a 7 instead of a 5 after all"

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Most of them are still massive despite not having the thermal footprint to require even half as much space.

They are mostly basic atx or matx builds. The demand isn't for small, though most offer a small option. Why make them harder to service and more expensive? Pre builts are all about marketing cheap shit like its state of the art. Bigger is better or whatever. And you can get small prebuilts, like smaller than itx lol. They just cost more because R&D, cost to make parts, assemble. And very few want to buy a non upgradable desktop. Might as well get a laptop and use it as a desktop like most people do that have space concerns.  

 

 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

• Many lack SSD's, despite the fact that upgrading them is a hassle, especially for less tech savvy people.

 

This one has 250 gigs and the other one has 1000 gigs and is cheaper! 

That's literally why. I've hated this for years with laptops. 95% of laptops i serviced were nowhere near even 100GB of space used, hell most had less than 10Gb of personal crap, most people dont actually store much shit if they are basic users. Laptops should have dropped HHDs asap for space they took up and more importantly keeping data safe when they are dropped. That's been changing recently. It's just prebuilt desktops are garbage and (almost) always have been.
 

On 5/12/2018 at 10:30 PM, minervx said:

 

It just amazes me how a budget laptop can do most of these things efficiently, yet desktop computers (even with big companies like Dell with the resources to do so) are still making horribly inefficient desktops.

You are so wrong about that. Laptop repair used to be my thing, and I also kept up with enthusiast laptops. I had a dual GPU 18 pound with brick laptop at some point. 
It was not until the 9xxm series that laptops were actually competitive with desktops. This is a fact. 7xxm was pretty good too, but 9xxm is when the jump happened. Before, the top end laptop gpus were equivalent to mid range desktop gpus. I'm talking 650ti, 750ti, those cards of each generation. A part that costs on its own more than most desktop pcs would get you just around the performance of a 100-150$ desktop part. It was laughable. This made gaming laptops not only a bad initial purchase for most, upgrading was near impossible unless you were lucky enough to dump money into an mxm laptop that by chance you were able to get new gpus in, flash the vbios right, and still have a compatible cooler. Gaming laptops were a hobby for the well off really.  
When the 9xxm parts dropped, the performance parity was unheard of- they were closer to the desktop parts because the dekstop chips were actually low power, and didn't have to be cut down that much, but they were still expensive. Eventually, we saw the first desktop gpu in the mxm form factor in a laptop in the 9xx series. A 980. This became the norm for the next generation and now you can even get midrange GPUs and even on-board. Not only were laptops now close to desktops, the price difference closed a LOT. 
We are just now getting true small form factor gaming laptops that are not trash, and I assure you most of them were hot garbage. I know, I fixed them. Now they are great performance wise, but they are still not upgradable if you dont want an external gpu, which btw is a very recent good thing. All of this is past couple of years. 
Why would you drop 1500$ on a laptop when you can build a desktop for less, get WAYY better performance, and drop in a new gpu for 100$ a few years later and keep gaming very well? Keep in mind that until recently, gaming CPUs were stagnant. You can still game perfectly on a i7-2600k and that's just now starting to change. For several generations quad cores where it for the main enthusiast sockets, with minor ipc improvements. Laptops were more practical when you had to upgrade every few years, but for quite a while, you didn't need to upgrade your base system unless you bought a laptop. You'd be stuck cursing the fact that the only important part to upgrade wasn't upgradable -  the gpu. I watched kids in college drop 2-3k$ or more (sometimes much more) on laptops for them to not even run games on medium settings in 2 or 3 years. 

 

So to take away anything from this all,

-consider that everything needs a market, and companies make what will sell. This shit ain't cheap to r&d.

-Getting rid of cheap extras features because they aren't useful to most doesn't apply to anything other than small form factor 

-adding expensive extra features with little demand isn't practical 

-consumers are mostly uninformed, and the marketing matches the audiance

-laptops sucked until recently 

[JoeCoke]

Know I'm late to this thread, but I just wanted to say something about the whole " the cheapest laptops give the user everything without them even needing to waste time supplementing its weaknesses " point. No, they don't. They're low quality pieces of shit. They have shit battery life, fail much sooner, usually run hot and loud, never have enough ports, have terrible performance, the screens are usually 768p garbage, they usually use slow ass 5400 RPM HDDs that fail in two years, etc etc etc. Let's just face it, things that don't have demand won't exist, you'll never have your cake and eat it too. Hell, even 700$ laptops suffer from most of these problems. But most non-techy people (AKA the vast majority of the population) have just gotten used to the idea of buying a new laptop every other year. People don't demand better, it's the same problem with the desktop market except WAYYYYY worse. So get your crappy laptop, or deal with the extra size of a PC, or spend more to get the best of both worlds. Sadly that's just the way it works.

 

I agree on one point though, SFX power supplies, mini itx boards and mini itx cases should be WAYYY cheaper. But again, even though I don't understand why, the demand is low. I REALLY don't understand why nobody wants those things. If they were cheaper, I'd be building every computer small besides my main rig.

 

Now a disclaimer, I do base all my criticisms on <1000$ based on my personal experiences being the family "IT guy". So take that for what it is. I've dealt with lots of shitty Dells, HPs and Acers, some of which weren't even that cheap. One that particularly pissed me off was a almost 800$ Dell. Even at that price, it had a shitty 5400 RPM HDD, a shitty trackpad that was a pain to use, it ran hot, its battery life was awful, had an FX CPU, had shitty specs for the money, felt cheap, etc.

 

You can also get pretty good wifi and bluetooth adapters for under 10 bucks by the way.

[Shreyas1]

- Optical drives aren't a bad thing? Many still use CDs

- PS/2 has some advantages (  like nkey rollover ) and there is no reason to complain about extra features

 

and budget laptops are much more expensive than a PC with same specs

[Majinhoju]

I'm late and haven't read the whole thread but I'd like to point out that I'm still using my old ps2 Microsoft Internet Keyboard.  It still works just fine.  I have no plans on replacing it unless it stops working.  I've probably had this thing close to 20 years now.

 

[Yoinkerman]

What you're looking for is called an aio, many companies make them.  It's a desktop that has everything

[Drak3]

On 5/13/2018 at 7:41 PM, clean said:

most people did not bring up is ram price fixing

Because at this point, it's literally nothing more than baseless conjecture.

 

On 5/13/2018 at 7:41 PM, clean said:

it is avoidable

The events that happened prior to and during the price increase were not avoidable.

[Space Reptile]

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Still have PS/2 ports.  This was made by IBM in the 80's and discontinued in the 90's.  Why keep them?

driverless , lagfree and legacy friendly imputs , even the highest end servers still use em because IT JUST WORKS

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Have separate 3.5mm jacks for both the microphone and the headphones.  ($50 smartphones can afford a combined audio jack)

 headphones w/mic have the cable split , you DONT want a combined jack for a setup where speakers/headphones and microphones are seperate (you dont want more adapters)

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Majority of them have no bluetooth or wifi integrated in (even though the lowest end laptop motherboards can afford to have them)

5$ dongle , most people have either that or a wired internet connection (ethernet)

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Small form factor market is extremely limited

bearly any demand , only for enthusiasts
and making things smaller is not cheap and not easy in most cases

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Almost no wireless mechanical keyboards exist

why would you want a wireless keyboard on a desktop where you almost NEVER move the keyboard 

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Are marketing 2-3x as much wattage than most people even need.

making higher wattage powersupplys are a byproduct from the efficiency race (80+ gold plat and titanium) and the server market

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Extremely limited SFX market even though most desktop machines don't need a big power supply.

see what i said about the SFF market 

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Still have optical drives

all the pc's i built and sell get a DVD drive , for the simple reason of many still using it for music , movies and programs/drivers that come w/ printers and stuff 
its just something that you dont need often but if you do you REALLY wish you had one 

On 13.5.2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Most of them are still massive despite not having the thermal footprint to require even half as much space.

allows compatibility w/ all Formfaktor components used by the end user or the OEM who sells said computer 
(Its just cheaper in the end and looks better) 

hope that answered all of em , most people already said these things and more before me 

[burnttoastnice]

On 13/05/2018 at 3:30 AM, minervx said:

• Have separate 3.5mm jacks for both the microphone and the headphones.  ($50 smartphones can afford a combined audio jack)
•  
• Almost no wireless mechanical keyboards exist
• Very few ultra-compact wireless keyboards exist
• Most of the mid-high end ones are focused on aesthetics and marketing to teenagers rather than quality for the dollar.
•  
• Extremely limited SFX market even though most desktop machines don't need a big power supply.
•  
• Many lack SSD's, despite the fact that upgrading them is a hassle, especially for less tech savvy people.

[snip]

1. The sound card or sound chipset used on the motherboard might not play well with the headphones and mic sharing the same ground connection. Personally I prefer them separate, as it allows me to use audio passthrough/aux connection
2. THISS! Its easy to find wireless backlit mice, but no decent wireless backlit mechanical keyboard. I definitely agree with the last point, which generally applies to almost all peripherals nowadays - too many stupid peripheral shapes and horrid logos all over the product to appeal to 'teenagers' who are probably gonna use them on a cheapo $100 desktop to play minecraft
3. prefer larger psus; more spacing between power components and more space for heat dissipation
4. SSHDs are also a very viable option for budget builds, but admittedly from personal experience after a few OS updates they go from 20 seconds faster to just 5-10 seconds faster (reconditioning negligible)

[Eaglerino]

The only thing you said that I can get behind is people still selling computers without SSD's

[Guest]

On 5/12/2018 at 8:39 PM, minervx said:

 The consumer has to spend more money to get a desktop that can do the same things as a laptop, and it just doesn't make sense.  

 

Laptops are much more expensive than desktops. You have this the wrong way round.

[Professor Dingledore]

I haven't used a PS/2 keyboard or mouse in a decade. I too would rather MB's ditch the port. That space could go to two more USB ports rather than having a external riser taking up a PCI slot.

 

I WISH all motherboards came with WIFI, although I'd rather they just supplied a wire that you can mount inside your case. I don't want an external antenna sitting on the desk.

[Syntaxvgm]

8 hours ago, Professor Dingledore said:

I haven't used a PS/2 keyboard or mouse in a decade. I too would rather MB's ditch the port. That space could go to two more USB ports rather than having a external riser taking up a PCI slot.

 

I WISH all motherboards came with WIFI, although I'd rather they just supplied a wire that you can mount inside your case. I don't want an external antenna sitting on the desk.

big metal boxes typically don't help wifi signals.

Those desktop antennas are optional, you can just add normal shorter antennas on the same plug- similar to ones that you'd see on an access point.

[Mihle]

I have a blu-ray drive because I buy and watch blu-ray movies.

[minervx]

8 hours ago, MariaA said:

Laptops are much more expensive than desktops. You have this the wrong way round.

Okay, I need to clarify this.  If we're comparing a laptop or PC for gaming purposes, yes a PC would offer more raw horsepower for your dollar, but overall, there's a problem that someone can spend $800-1000+ on a PC tower build, but still have to buy more peripherals because motherboards didn't include certain features which are even standard on $150 laptops.

 

With a laptop, the following things are included:

• Speakers
• Webcam
• Keyboard
• Trackpad
• Wifi
• Bluetooth

None of these, of course, are going to be top quality in a laptop, but they're included.  And there's no worries about part compatibility or whether Windows will even recognize them.  Even $150 laptops have these things, so these features all must be only a few dollars each to implement.  But they're all included in the price, and overall there's a cost saved in buying these all from one manufacturer together than buying them separately.  Of course, many of us already have these things, so it's not a consideration, but to new people entering the market, there's just a convenience factor of not having to buy 20 things.

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, minervx said:

but to new people entering the market, there's just a convenience factor of not having to buy 20 things.

People entering the market should either be aware or made aware that they can't just buy the tower and use it as a computer.

[AshleyAshes]

7 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

People entering the market should either be aware or made aware that they can't just buy the tower and use it as a computer.

Anyone walking into a big box store to buy a PC will have a helpful clerk who will not only tell them what peripherals are included with their desktop (And a LOT do come with everything except a monitor) and that the store ALSO has everything that is missing and they would LOVE to help them load up their cart.

 

But really, the 'Dollars' argument for laptops over desktops doesn't hold a lot of water, it's just nerds trying to make arguments.  The reason that laptops outsell desktops is very simple: Because they can put their laptop in a bag and carry it around with them.  A desktop is more of an appliance, you set it up and it sits THERE.  It is an EFFORT to move a desktop to a different location.  A laptop just turns off and goes into you bag and you can take it between school, home, work, on a trip with you, ect.  A lot of people, shockingly, really like that.

[Sauron]

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

 

 

Motherboards

• Still have PS/2 ports.  This was made by IBM in the 80's and discontinued in the 90's.  Why keep them?
• Have separate 3.5mm jacks for both the microphone and the headphones.  ($50 smartphones can afford a combined audio jack)
• Majority of them have no bluetooth or wifi integrated in (even though the lowest end laptop motherboards can afford to have them)

Why NOT keep ps/2? It has proven to be more reliable than usb and it supports more features. As for separate vs combined jacks, it all depends on what you're using - splitting a combined jack is just as easy as combining a split one and if you're using a separate microphone (which makes sense when you have a desk to put it on) it's more convenient to have separate ports. Including bluetooth or wifi would drive the cost up, why bother when the customer can just buy a usb adapter? On a laptop, ports are limited and permanent external dongles are a problem, but in a desktop neither is true.

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Cases

• Many restrict airflow for aesthetic reasons.
• Small form factor market is extremely limited

1. That's what we call a bad case, luckily there are plenty of options that DON'T do that.

2. What are you talking about...? There are 3.5 pages of mini itx cases on pcpartpicker...

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Keyboards

• Almost no wireless mechanical keyboards exist
• Very few ultra-compact wireless keyboards exist
• Most of the mid-high end ones are focused on aesthetics and marketing to teenagers rather than quality for the dollar.

1. There are quite a few on amazon.com, maybe not as many as I'd like but to say there are "almost none" is a stretch. Also, if it's for a desktop and it's going to sit on your desk all day why do you need a wireless keyboard? It's just one more battery to charge...

2. Again you seem to be looking for some very special stuff, if there is low demand for something then companies won't make it. Still, I own a couple of those myself for my media centres and finding them was extremely easy.

3. That's true, which is why I recommend middle of the road mechanical keyboards - there is virtually no difference in the typing experience and the higher end features are mostly aesthetics and macros.

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Video Cards

• AMD and NVidia assumed cryptocurrency mining would just be a fad and it wouldn't be worth significantly increasing GPU production, and now the video card market is stagnant.

Cryptos just plummeted and nvidia's new cards are around the corner. The market was stagnant since way before the crypto craze, simply because amd is struggling to keep up with nvidia at the high end and nvidia is under no pressure. We all want faster gpus for cheaper, that doesn't mean we can just expect them to drop from the sky.

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Power Supply

• Are marketing 2-3x as much wattage than most people even need.
• Extremely limited SFX market even though most desktop machines don't need a big power supply.

This might be a novel concept to you, but... you can just buy a 500W power supply if you don't need an 850 watt one... there are plenty of high quality, low/medium wattage options if you make the effort to just look for them. The reason there are marketing pushes on ultra high power models is that there simply isn't that much innovation to show off in the power supply field, and offering more power is one of the few ways to stand out from the crowd. Most high end models come in 650w versions too, and a little headroom is good for efficiency.

 

SFX power supplies are harder and more expensive to produce, there's no reason to buy one if you aren't building a small form factor build - and even then many small form factor cases have enough room for a normal sized power supply.

On 13/5/2018 at 4:30 AM, minervx said:

Pre-Builts

• Still have optical drives.
• Most of them are still massive despite not having the thermal footprint to require even half as much space.
• Many lack SSD's, despite the fact that upgrading them is a hassle, especially for less tech savvy people.

True, don't buy them and maybe they'll go away. I can't fault them for having optical drives though, plenty of people still want to watch their dvds on their computers and a dvd drive is so cheap that it doesn't matter.

On 13/5/2018 at 5:25 AM, minervx said:

That's the problem.  I can list 20 problems with the PC industry and people will say "just do this" or "just buy this for $10".  But first of all, these shouldn't be problems in the first place.

That's only true if you agree they are problems and not conscious design choices that make sense. Many of the "problems" you listed would require additional or more expensive hardware to be implemented and it would still impact your wallet - except it would also impact the wallets of people who don't need or want those features.

On 13/5/2018 at 5:25 AM, minervx said:

It's 2018.  Why should anyone HAVE TO buy a wifi adapter?  I agree dedicated wifi adapters are often better, but any wifi connection is better than none.

Why should I have to pay extra for an integrated wifi adapter if I'm just going to use lan? You keep forgetting that all hardware has a price, and if the cost is shifted from the dongle to the motherboard it makes no difference other than taking the choice away from you.

On 13/5/2018 at 5:17 AM, minervx said:

Would they be as useful as a USB-C port?  Or another USB port?

The cost of a ps/2 port is virtually 0, and again they offer features usb doesn't. I assure you, no usb-c port is being sacrificed to allow for ps/2.

On 13/5/2018 at 5:16 AM, aezakmi said:

try playing DOTA or LoL with a wireless kbd, someone on your team starts a fight and you die because you can't press more than 3 keys at the same time to land skill shots lol

a friend is still in 1k mmr and bronze league because he has a wireless keyboard & mouse and don't want to use wired because "it'd look old"

he'll die in that tier.

I disagree with this though, while good hardware helps it's the player that makes the difference. I've won a few sc2 matches at diamond level while streaming on a 7" tablet and using a bluetooth keyboard with no key rollover and ultra small keys. There will be a few situations where you lose a match because of a hardware problem, but on average if you have the skill to go up you will.

On 13/5/2018 at 5:10 AM, minervx said:

Wired keyboards have better specs on paper perhaps, but does it truly make a real world difference?  If not, then who cares?

The real world difference is that they are cheaper and they don't require charging. If it's going to sit at a desk all day, I ask you - who cares if it isn't wireless?

[App4that]

Laptops cater to those who would rather trade their ability to choose individual parts, for the convenience of buying something and using it moments later.

 

Laptops are the consoles of the PC world.