Sure, people can use the presets, but on a lower end machine, those aren’t perfect for getting the most out of your specific hardware.

If that’s the case then you could play around with individual settings to find something you’re comfortable with. I’ve been doing that since I was 12…

Sure, he could pay someone to upgrade it for him, but at that point it loses a lot of the benefits that come with being able to upgrade in the first place.

What? No. The main benefit is that you don’t need to throw anything away. You can even sell the comonent you’re replacing. Would it be more expensive than learning how to do it yourself? Yeah but it’s still cheaper than buying a new computer. It’s also not as wasteful considering that a broken cpu would mean throwing away the entire motherboard on a Steam Machine, whereas you would simply replace the cpu on a normal computer.

The Fractal Terra is actually larger than all modern consoles. The Fractal Terra is 11.4 liters. The PS5 is 7.2 liters.

Nope. Fractal Terra is 10.4 liters and the base ps5 is also 10.4 liters. I would even argue that the form factor of the terra is better. The series X is smaller, true but it’s only 6cm smaller in one of the sides of the top and 4cm shorter. I really don’t think that’s that different.

The steam cube is a lot smaller, sure. It’s also, like I already said multiple times, completely custom and impossible to upgrade. Not worth it imo. We also haven’t discussed the hardware. It comes with 8gb of soldered memory for the gpu. You can see here that that was not enough vram (even at 1080p) for some games over a year ago.

Knowing “how to use one” is different from knowing how to build and upgrade one.

Which is precisely why I specifically referred to people knowing how to use it, not build or upgrade it.

I don’t agree that it’s that hars to build a pc. Even if it was, saying that adjusting visual settings is complicates is waaay too much. You’d have to be straight up dumb not even be able to use the low/medium/high/extreme presets every game has.

Also saying that since he can’t build it, he can’t upgrade it, is false. Any “pc technician” can do that for him.

The size part is also kinda moot. A Fractal Terra is smaller than a console and it can fit an itx build with most gpus.

Stop normalizing incompetence. We use computers, people should at the bare minimum know how to use them.

No, you don’t need to do an introductory year. You also don’t really need to know what’s compatible with what. Tools like pcpartpicker already do that.

Finally, you’re comparing building a pc with buying a prebuilt, which is something people have been able to do since forever. The argument then becomes, why buy a steam machine with custom parts, which will be harder to fix and impossible to upgrade instead of a mini itx prebuilt with standard parts?

That really doesn’t make much sense. Valve creates steamos, donates time (employee time, i mean) and money to open source projects, they improve proton a lot and what you’re interested in is having steam installed? Ok…

It’s not repairable in the sense that it doesn’t use standard parts so whether you can get replacements or not depends on where you are, geographically. If it used a standard atx psu for example, you’d be able to buy that anywhere. Same thing for the cpu, if it used a standard cpu+gpu instead of a custom apu, you’d be able to replace just that if it broke, instead of the whole motherboard. Or even upgrade it if you wanted to.

Even motherboards themselves have different features. You might need 2.5g ethernet whereas someone else is fine with gigabit but wants better wifi. In my case, I always buy boards with spdi/f to use them with a dac. You lose that flexibility with a device like this.

Regarding the OS in prebuilts, it’s very common to have the option to order them without Windows. If you don’t know how to install Bazzite, just pay a technician to do it. It will still be cheaper than Windows. That’s not an excuse or impediment.

Not a fan of prebuilts tbh. As far as linux goes, Bazzite is free so create a bootable thumbdrive with rufus and literally just follow the installation prompts. If you can’t even do that, then maybe you ahould learn how to.

Why would you want “steam” installed? It’s just a normal program, you can install it yourself in 5 minutes.

That’s wishful thinking. Valve hasn’t even announced a price range.

It has a custom soc that is most likely soldered and most of the components (except maybe storage and ram) are custom as well. If you need to repair it, you depend on steam still providing the parts. I doubt the parts will be available in retail stores, so that’s another inconvenience. Upgrading (the cpu/gpu, etc) will also probably be impossible.

Also, building a pc is a lot simpler than you make it out to be. Not sure what you mean about that “support” bit either. People have always been fixing their computers getting help online. Either from forums or manufacturers.

To top it off, the “benefits” you’re mentioning are literally the same as if you bought a prebuilt pc.

In my case I just can’t see the appeal. If you want a small desktop computer, just build an itx machine that can be fixed and upgraded.

There are tons and tons of websites where you can create an account with just your email. I wouldn’t expect a third party account to be mandatory. Specially from a product like this one.

Maybe this is a pet peeve but it’s a vpn tool that forces you to log in with an “identity provider”. Yeah, no thanks.

you don’t need permission from the company to model your own replacement parts. It’s nice if they provide the models but it’s not necessary.

I’ve also had to replace phones for broken USB ports which in the grand scale is probably more wasteful than the extra power use.

On one hand, yes, your port can break at some point. On the other, why would you throw away the whole phone if the usb port can be replaced? Going even further, you could always use your usb port for charging until it breaks and after that you could start using wireless charging. For data transfer there are plenty of apps and ways to wirelessly transfer data so that wouldn’t be a problem either. At the end of the day, you’re barely using your usb port and you’re also wasting twice as much (or more) energy that you would if you used a wired charger.

Wired turbo chargers are bad as well. However, although I don’t know about iOS, Android lets you plan your charge cycle. That makes my phone take about 8 hours to charge while I’m asleep.

Or you could just not use a fast charger and not worry about that. Either way, you’re moving the goalpost. Not all phones support fast charging and not everyone has a fast charger. I’d wager most people charge their phones with lower power (15/20w more or less).

I’d be interested to see how you measure that. It’s also not really a matter of opinion. Even though you may not notice a wild difference, your battery did degrade more than it would’ve, if you’d used a wired charger.

Also, the inefficiency is bad enough for me to rule it out. You literally waste at least twice as much power compared to a wired charger (source). Although we’re not talking about a crazy amount of power, it’s pretty selfish to waste it just because you don’t want to plug in a charger.

You do realize that wireless charging is also very inefficent and reduces your battery lifespan, right? It’s also kinda weird that your port goes bad after such a short time. Maybe you should clean it more often and make sure not to put any tension on it when you use it. I even have a 10 year old phone and the port (micro usb) still works perfectly fine.

Maybe, just maybe, the context in which you use regex isn’t the same as everyone elses. But hey, who am I to deny you the disservice of thinking you’re the center of the world?

Maybe for your very specific use case that’s true. However, other use cases exist and for many of those RegEx is the better option.

You’re discussing a completely different use case from what I said. RegEx can be increidbly useful but it’s not always the only/best option.

Not even close. Sometimes you can have a large text file where you need to do a find replace with a pattern. For example, in the translation world this can be a common occurrence for translation files (.xliff) or translation memories (.tmx).

There’s a reason why this is widely used and it’s not because everyone else but you is dumb.