[laumars]

I noticed you've been downvoted. I find it amusing the expectations some people have about the hardware consumers should be running. While many on here, being a geek community and all, will have relatively decent systems; most normal people would rather keep a system as long as they can. Not to mention those in poorer communities or countries who cannot afford newer tech.

In fact it was only this year when I upgraded a work colleagues personal laptop from 2GB to 4GB.

[falcolas]

Meta:

Downvoting is an accepted method of disagreement on HN. It's a problematic stance IMO since downvotes grey out the text, making dissenting opinions impossible to make out if they're unpopular enough.

Back on topic, 4GB laptops are incredibly common, especially in retail stores. Getting a laptop with 8 GB of memory frequently requires looking online (most folks still buy their computers from retail stores) and customizing your order.

For example, I just visited both Dell and System76, and except for the gaming laptops, all of them default to 4GB of ram, and adding more (while not terribly expensive) requires thought and action on the consumer's part.

[hex13]

It's interesting. What browsers do people use on this machines? Though according to wikipedia most popular browser is Chrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

but it seems weird, because Chrome is such a memory monster (it usually takes almost all RAM memory you have on your machine and additionally disk space if you are running of RAM). I have 16GB ram and Chrome takes me 10GB of it and ~1GB of disk space.

[hex13]

I've been downvoted because HN has Dislike Button which encourages people to downvote things they personally don't like instead of making constructive arguments ;)

[laumars]

If it's any consolation I did provide a counterargument and got downvoted for it.

As for the 'flag', that's not the same as downvoting. Or at least shouldn't be used in the same way although I have lately seen a disappointing number of comments marked as "flagged" which shouldn't have been. (There's some guidance about flagging posts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Downvoting is something that's only available to members above a specific karma threshold (2000 IIRC).

[hex13]

I upvoted you.

[hex13]

BTW how to downvote comments on HN? I sometimes "flag" them to mark as downvote, but I'm not sure if flag is the same as downvote.

[semi-extrinsic]

You need karma > 500 to downvote. And even then, you cannot downvote replies to your own comments etc.