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by Spooky23 3736 days ago
You represent the 5% of PC consumers.

The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325.

That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated graphics.
3 comments
slantyyz 3736 days ago
I still have my 2008 plastic Macbook refurb that I still use to browse the web.

I had the pre-release Win 10/64 on it for a while, and it actually ran faster than OSX did on that machine (in my experience, Windows runs faster on Mac than OSX itself, but ymmv). And keep in mind that my Macbook pretty much got left behind by OSX after Lion.

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Pengwin 3736 days ago
I was reasonably happy on my bosses plastic Macbook until OSX stopped supporting them, and I need xCode for my job.

I now have his non retina Macbook pro to compile apps, and i fear the day that stops working too.

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Merad 3735 days ago
Eh, probably more like the top 40-50%. All the people (and yes, there are more than a few of them) who bu anything better than the cheapest POS Walmart laptop. I built a computer for my parents at the beginning of 2012 - entirely lower midrange compnents - AMD CPU with built-in graphics, 4 GB RAM, etc. IIRC the total cost including monitor was a bit over $500.

The only thing wrong with that computer today is that it has a 7200 RPM mechanical hard drive. Even then it's not slow, it's just noticeably slower than a SSD.

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wlesieutre 3735 days ago
Don't forget the 1366x768 screen! They were selling those as standard on 15.6" laptops with the good old "It's a good screen because it has more inches" line.

Only in the last year or two has anything better than that become remotely common.

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Narishma 3735 days ago
"Were"? As far as I'm aware that's still the case for the vast majority of cheap mainstream laptops all the way up to 17" ones.
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wlesieutre 3735 days ago
I really thought this had gotten better with all the high DPI convertibles and Windows + 3rd party software finally being pretty reliable with it. But you're right, Best Buy's most popular 15" laptop today is this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-15-6-laptop-intel-celeron-4...

Specs claim '15.6" display, HD resolution.' with no actual screen resolution listed.

Digging around on Asus's website I see it's available with 1080p, but I'm guessing the 1336x768 base model is the common one. Since 720p is technically "HD", they can claim that in advertising and then dodge around admitting how crappy it is. If BestBuy's product listing were for the 1080p version, they'd be advertising as either 1080p or Full HD.

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/X540SA/specifications/

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Spooky23 3735 days ago
In computer spec alternate reality "HD" is 1366x768, HD+ 1600x900 and True HD 1920x1080.
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