(Sharing a comment I recently posted on a similar thread..)

For last 2+ years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs). Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing.

New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g., new phones with Snapdragon Gen 6, UFS2.2). Meanwhile, features that were being offered in budget phones, e.g., wireless charging, NFC, UFS3.1 have silently been moved to the premium mobile segment.

Meanwhile the OSes and software are becoming more and more complex, bloated and more unstable (bugs) and insecure (security loopholes ready for exploits).

It is as if the industry has decided to focus on AI and nothing else.

And this will be a huge setback for humanity, especially the students and scientific communities.

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pureagave 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think we need "industry mandate". I suspect the electronics specs are dictated by the very efficient market and the consumer is being squeezed in many ways. So device manufactures are just meeting the pricing needs of the consumer and dropping the expensive things that are less understood like GPUs and extra ram.

	▲	walterbell 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> dropping the expensive things that are less understood If "old" devices outperform new devices, consumers will gain new understanding from efficient market feedback, influencing purchase decisions and demand for "new" devices.
	▲	vee-kay 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		RAMageddon is here.. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/ram-price-crisis-updates Summary: * Massive spikes: Consumer RAM prices have skyrocketed due to a tight supply. Major PC companies have issued warnings of price hikes, with CyberPowerPC stating: "global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%." * All for AI: The push for increased cloud computing, as seen in the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini, means more data centers are needed, which in turn requires High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Manufacturers like SK Hynix and Micron are now shifting priorities to make HBM instead of PC RAM. * Limited supply: Companies are now buying up stock of all the remaining supply of standard DRAM chips, leaving crumbs for the consumer market and price hikes for the limited supply there is. Good luck expecting "value for money" from this "efficient" market.