The article's reasoning doesn't make sense
So Intel is "to blame" as it focusses on server CPUs, leaving warehouses of PCs with no memory...
The last PC I peeped into had 2 sticks; the last server had 16.
?
The cost of DRAM chips has seen its largest decline in nearly eight years, as global prices fell by nearly 30 per cent. This is according to DRAMeXchange, which estimated that so far this year, the price of contracts between DRAM suppliers and PC manufacturer took an even greater hit than the 25 per cent that had been forecast …
How long really till for most folks the desktop becomes an anachronism?
i.e. do work on your phone, when you need a keyboard and a bigger screen you either plug it in or if short range wireless speeds improve you put your phone down, and enable "desktop mode"
Could be quite advantageous for hot desking, sales droids on the move - do most of the work on a phablet and then for report writing at the end of the day, enable desktop mode and pull in what you've been doing all day with no need to transfer stuff
It makes perfect sense: fewer desktop Intel CPUs, fewer desktop PCs, fewer orders for RAM, more RAM building up in warehouses, prices drop as supply outstrips demand.
We're talking about the price of RAM, not the supply of RAM. Supply is outstripping demand. No shit you found RAM in your computers - it's cheap as, er, chips at the moment ;)
Hope this helps
C.
Well yes, but you and I are content *creators* (and/or content managers). The Desktop PC (in olden-days terms: "Workstation") will be relevant to us for a good long time yet, likely well after Apple and MS have given them up as economically viable platforms so support, even!
But the large majority of users are content consumers,with an overlapping small majority of content-adjusters, and a Desktop PC is already becoming an anachronism for the former and the latter isn't too far behind.
I'm not convinced.
Very few people I know[0] have gotten rid of desktops and still use them; in the case of certain oldies they prefer to use the desktop to the laptop (even though it has a higher specification).
They're certainly not sexy, and haven't really improved dramatically in the last 5 years (unlike phones). Frankly if you're not obsessed with the latest and greatest[1] there's no reason to replace a desktop until it breaks.
0: And they're not all hairy geeks.
1: And if you are, there's more fun toys to be had.
Serious content consumers really need multiple large screens, and having several virtual desktops can be very useful as well.
If all you are doing is watching music videos or reading twitter, then you probably don't need a good screen or superior speakers.
If you are researching, collating, analyzing, verifying, extracting, archiving, assimilating information, you need a big enough screen to read for long periods of time - minimum 27 inch, but for some uses 60 is better, good tools for manipulating data and images, good controls for those purposes - poking at a touch screen seems far to limited - and large amounts of local storage. And at a minimum you should have an input screen, an output screen, and a third screen for secondary input, cross-checks, chasing logical tangents, system monitoring, etc.
Recently I've been thinking four would be better.
And no, the cloud is not secure enough, and local performance will be better at a lower price point, as well as making backups easier and faster.
A steady decline for the last year or so, but prices still aren't down to what they were three years ago.
I read TFA and thought I'd maybe look at doubling the RAM in my home machine. The 16GB I bought in mid 2016 cost me £72, and that was slightly higher spec than the sticks you link to which are £90. (The RAM I bought in 2016 is currently listed for £240, but that's an outlier I'm sure).
Looks like we might have to wait for at least six months for RAM prices to actually drop.
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"The blame for the decline is said to rest largely on the shoulders of Intel, which right now is bent on churning out high-end processors for servers to the detriment of its lower-end chips..."
Ah yes, the famous "conquer the world" business plan.
1. Lock all your chips into radically, unfixably insecure designs for the foreseeable future.
2. Manufacture huge quantities of those insecure chips for use as servers, running government, businesses, etc.
3. PROFIT!