Is the demand for Computer hardware hurting Quality?

[Vayra86]

Is quality hurt? No.

When it comes to the overall experience of personal computing definitely no. Back in the day you had tons of incompatibility, installation and stability problems that you needed to know about before even trying to build a rig. At the same time, that required and therefore also meant that the user had more control over everything. But control is also responsibility. Not everyone fancies that. In that sense, PC has definitely improved. Yes, we lose control over certain things (mostly advanced user territory) but the masses gain lots of quality of life features and ease of installation.

When it comes to the hardware, the same thing applies: these days you really have to be a bit stupid, clumsy, or unable to read to break your hardware. When things don't work its generally user error and only rarely an oversight in the product itself. What does happen with hardware is that while quality rises, the headroom shrinks. Back in the day components had more headroom just because there was a higher variation in quality. This applies in a big way to overclocking. Overclocking these days is in most cases a complete waste of time. Only CPUs are somewhat nice to do, but even that headroom is shrinking rapidly: look at Ryzen's OC headroom and how performance can even drop when XFR is enabled. Or look at the recent Intel gens that clock nearly to the max right out of the box. On GPU: Nvidia is doing the OC for you a little bit more, every gen. Now with scanner to dial it in automatically...

Another factor in hardware is the market is huge and demand is high, and this means there is a portion of it filled with cheap knock-offs and fake junk. That is common in every market, really, but also easy to avoid. This also applies to hardware that is overloaded with branding and marketing. You can safely say most of that falls in the same category of things to avoid, because expenses were made on nothing substantial and it means cutting cost on things that dó matter - or an inflated price.

 

[John Naylor]

When it comes to the overall experience of personal computing definitely no. Back in the day you had tons of incompatibility, installation and stability problems that you needed to know about before even trying to build a rig. At the same time, that required and therefore also meant that the user had more control over everything. But control is also responsibility. Not everyone fancies that. In that sense, PC has definitely improved. Yes, we lose control over certain things (mostly advanced user territory) but the masses gain lots of quality of life features and ease of installation..

Boy do I miss those days ....

a) miss using a boot menu to boot a box to 1 of 6 possible hardware configurations with 6 sets of autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

b) loved it that editing one of those 2 files fixed your problem and it stayed fixed and wasn't rebroken every other month w/ Windows update,

c) Loved never having "reisntall OS " as a common solution.

 

[OneMoar]

Boy do I miss those days ....

a) miss using a boot menu to boot a box to 1 of 6 possible hardware configurations with 6 sets of autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

b) loved it that editing one of those 2 files fixed your problem and it stayed fixed and wasn't rebroken every other month w/ Windows update,

c) Loved never having "reisntall OS " as a common solution.

if you do any of those things now days you have no business working on a machine
because none of those things are a issue

A. literally did this twice last month customer upgraded from a OG phenom running W10 to a new 8th gen intel I cloned the drive to a new ssd put it in the new machine
windows picked up the hardware change never skipped a beat

B: example ? I have yet to have a issue with windows update breaking something the same way twice ... or undoing some change I made

c: again Nope I don't think i have 'needed' to reinstall windows since windows xp people that tell you to reinstall windows because Of X issue simply don't know how to fix X issue

 

[OutThereSomewhere]

These days? I'm pretty sure it's always been about profit.

I'll rephrase that then for 'Greed'

 

[HossHuge]

I'll rephrase that then for 'Greed'

This I can agree with. Perhaps it has something to do with the world population?

 

[MrGenius]

I'm not going to reply/quote the statement a few posts up. But YES...YOU CAN BREAK AN OS TO THE POINT THAT IT NEEDS REINSTALLED! Even M$ knows it's true. If you click your way through their recommended fixes for many issues, you'll eventually get to their final recommendation. Which would be what you ask? That's right..."Perform a clean install of the OS". Which is not a fix. But it is what they recommend you do when all else fails.

I'm just about to do it for the second time(in the last 6 months) on Windows 10. So no. It's not something that hasn't needed done since the XP days. In fact I've never needed to do it with any earlier OS than Windows 10.

 

[OutThereSomewhere]

This I can agree with. Perhaps it has something to do with the world population?

I agree. It has everything to do with the ever increasing world population and constant demand. But of course we have those who will argue and say there is nothing wrong in having 20+ billion people on the planet as long as the money is rolling in.

 

[Bill_Bright]

c) Loved never having "reisntall OS " as a common solution.

Huh? It was in the good old days when that was commonly recommended. In fact, many ill-advised and uninformed felt reinstalling the OS periodically was just a matter of routine. "It's been a year so I decided to reinstall Windows."

I am glad those days are long gone.

I agree with OneMoar. IMO, reinstalling Windows is just a cop out - typically for those unwilling to dig a little deeper while troubleshooting and attempting to repair.

Yes, an OS can be broken to the point a reinstall is needed, but that is extremely rare, an exception to the rule, and often is associated with some hardware failure.

Reinstalling should always be a last resort effort. For one, it often does not resolve the problem! And if it does, nothing is learned to prevent recurrence. So what happens is the problem is re-introduced - often when the user re-installs the same corrupt data files, bad drivers, etc. that caused the problem in the first place.

I have not had to reinstall Windows on any machine I am responsible for since W7 came out in 2009. And for those customer systems where re-installing was necessary, it was always due to user error! That is, the system was so infested with malware, or the system was so cluttered with junk and the customer then ran every Windows tuner/optimization (We will make your Windows run better than new! ) program under the sun that they fixed it to death!

The only other time reinstalling has been necessary is due to drive failure with no viable backup. Which of course, again is a user failure.

Frankly, I think since W7, Windows has become very robust and able to take a lot of abuse. This is particularly true with W10.

 

[Frick]

It's all about profit these days.

This has always, always been the case.

Not sure if the designs are sometimes know to be flawed but as long as the tills are ringing they don't seem to care. Buy it now, RMA it later.

That had been known to happen, and the rampant "buy it and toss it" mentality is definitely a problem. No one fixes things any more, they just replace them. Even if it's expensive stuff (I speak mostly of consumer things). Example: a guy had problems with his windscreen wipers on his 2008ish Fiat. The workshop said a computer box had to be replaced, and just the box cost like €1000 or so. So the guy taked it to an electronics shop (one of the few existing) and the guy there fixed it in 15 minutes using off the shelf parts for €70. It's also a class thing, the electronics shop is run by an immigrant who comes from a place where they repair instead of replacing because it's cheaper. You have busted phones tou don't believe can be fixed? Donate them to third world nations where they fix damn near everything, whereas in the civilized world we replace stuff because we don't like color or because Facebook is slightly sluggish.

 

[OutThereSomewhere]

This has always, always been the case.


That had been known to happen, and the rampant "buy it and toss it" mentality is definitely a problem. No one fixes things any more, they just replace them. Even if it's expensive stuff (I speak mostly of consumer things). Example: a guy had problems with his windscreen wipers on his 2008ish Fiat. The workshop said a computer box had to be replaced, and just the box cost like €1000 or so. So the guy taked it to an electronics shop (one of the few existing) and the guy there fixed it in 15 minutes using off the shelf parts for €70. It's also a class thing, the electronics shop is run by an immigrant who comes from a place where they repair instead of replacing because it's cheaper. You have busted phones tou don't believe can be fixed? Donate them to third world nations where they fix damn near everything, whereas in the civilized world we replace stuff because we don't like color or because Facebook is slightly sluggish.

Agreed, and it also makes me sick to see goods that are perfectly usable tossed away. But I do see more and more people repair goods these days as they tighten their financial belts.