The last bloody thing we want (to keep forking out on new kit).

The entire industry seems to have forgotten what IT is actually for (to perform tasks and run businesses painlessly and cost effectively). Forced obsolescence serves nobody except vendors. It's close to a protection racket -- "replace/ pay up or you'll be unsupported " (meaning of course no more than that the vendor will stop fixing its cock-ups, or worse -- " you need to upgrade [whatever] to continue using our service ", which, from the user perspective, performs exactly as before but demands the new tech to operate).

I'm still running xx70-series Thinkpads at home because, beyond that awaits the horrors of soldered RAM and, even on these, they're a shadow of the repairability of older Thinkpads. It's not so much getting them apart but the reliance on clips means they never go back together cleanly, no matter how careful my spudging. "upgrading" would mean ending up with a less repairable device.

It's also disgraceful that I used to be able to replace a keyboard with 4 screws but I now have to pop out the whole motherboard.

I had to upgrade all my DELL laptops but it wasn't a problem because ever since the upgrade issues I still see Windows 7 as running well on all the DELL systems.

"It's also disgraceful that I used to be able to replace a keyboard with 4 screws but I now have to pop out the whole motherboard."

Have Lenovo done that as well? It's one of my major annoyances with recent generations of Dell Latitudes - used to be a case of two screws, two or three clips, and a ribbon cable. Took five minutes max to to replace a keyboard. Now it's a complete dismantle job.

I believe it's the case for the X series from the X240 onwards but I'm not an expert on Thinkpads. I just went from an X230 to an X270. The only benefit I've really felt is better battery life (still not great) and being able to easily pop in nice third party IPS panels. If I could jam a modern CPU in an X230, I'd never want another laptop at that screen size.

The only thing I can say is that my P71 definitely does not have soldered-in RAM. So if you're OK with a surfboard that also doubles as a PC ( :p ) then that series is a good choice.

> Have Lenovo done that as well?

Need to look closely at specs as it varies between the Thinkpad ranges and whether the system is using DDR5, which tends to be soldered…

With my L series, keyboard etc. replacement isn’t as simple as it was with my T60… Also the increasing use of clips instead of screws, means you don’t really want to be taking the system apart too many times…

Soldered memory is not a problem. It's really easy to swap chips if you have right tools (they are not expensive today).

Problem is the access to chips and documentation. For instance if you need to solder some extra resistors or jumpers to let motherboard know that the memory has higher capacity if there is no automatic discovery.

I don't understand the surprise in all this, I said exactly this point a week ago

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/containing/4824008

The hardware upgrade cycle is driving the AI-on-the-desktop push. No if's, and's, or but's about it. The industry needs the next hot hype cycle to re-start large-scale PC sales, which has been in the doldrums for quite a while now, and "AI" will do nicely, thank you.

At the current time, I'd actually consider my computer not being able to locally run AI models as an advantage. To me, it's as enticing as putting an Amazon/Google always on, always connected microphone in my home.

> I'd actually consider my computer not being able to locally run AI models as an advantage.

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The incentive is by and for Dell marketing, and don't forget marketing is always totally disconnected from human reality (they are probably another species anyway).

For the average user there is indeed absolutely no point in having AI capacities: Even if your company or lab does use AI somewhere, it will be a limited team of specific people who use specific hardware for a very specific task. But that isn't important, what is important is that "AI" is something new the suckers deciders don't know very well (except that it is something new and supposedly magic which will help you lose weight, fix your thinning hair (and so on)).

Marketing always likes to find a (actually totally ridiculous) supposedly magic thingamabob and celebrate it loudly and repeatedly until weak-willed people are suckered into buying. Unfortunately it works as well for bogus nutritional supplements as for high-end tech, people like to be told what to think, it's so much easier.

Don't forget about user's ego.

It's better to boast about having AI capable machine (even if they don't use it), than about one without such capability.

It's like those people who drive large SUVs in the city to pick a bag of shopping from their local supermarket (where they could just as well walk and carry the bag home using their limbs).

> boast about having AI capable machine

Don't know, I for one wouldn't want to boast about that. There was a time one could boast about having the latest V12 bi-turbo processor with oodles of RAM and a combat graphics card, but those times are long gone.

My development workhorse is a 4" square cheapo intel thing with I think just 8GB RAM and nothing fancy whatsoever. It's 100s of times more capable than I need it to be.

Until I start slack, that is.

The incentive is I am likely to be getting some newer second hand laptops... (what? They don't run AI models? What a pity never mind.)

Obviously you can demand a big discount!

but we are going to convince you to buy hardware to run programs that may never even see the light of day.

(Wanted to put in a good last line, like "Yay, progress" or "Won't anybody think of the salesman's bonus?" but this attitude from Dell, compared to the old days and the heady rush of new kit that sliced the runtime of your real workloads, is just too disheartening)

My organization was running Core 2 duos not 10 months ago. DESKTOPS OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK at this point!

They shoved windows 10 on that poor thing and wanted it to run with 2GB of RAM. I was about to slap a sticker on it saying "I'm tired, boss".

I begged and pleaded to max mine out with 4GB (I said MAX IT OUT, 3GB available deal) so I had to wait 30 minutes instead of nearly an hour to boot it. I knew they had it in stock, yeah, DDR 2's were rusting away on the shelves and I knew it.

Soon after I was loudly heard by the upper management shouting expletives about how those machines were older than my teenage girl, to put it mildly, they upgraded the whole company with Ryzen 5600Gs, you know, the onboard gpu one, with 16GB, and 1080p monitors.

UPGRADED TO 1080p, you read that right.

I was using my phone to do most of my tasks, given how useless those desktops were at that point, before the upgrade, but now they are on par with even my old kit at home.

Using Core 2 duos in 2024 is not nostalgia, not when you have to work, it was downright punishing.

Fancy laptops to run AI ahahaha

""We've been in the longest digestion cycle … in the history of PCs, and so we know it's back-to-back years of double-digit decline, pretty amazing, never seen before results. "

It's not really difficult to understand, is it? There was a significant move to laptops in 2020 (or as soon as companies could get hold of them), and those laptops aren't yet five years old. Many companies will be going with four or five year refresh cycles now.

Can anyone think of anything useful that AI can do for them?

Obviously, write scripts for Dell sales. How else could they come up with this?

Why don’t you ask ChatGPT?

Some ideas:

Enhanced Surveillance and Productivity Monitoring : Use the AI to monitor employees' activities in real time, tracking everything from keystrokes to eye movements to ensure maximum productivity. It can also alert management if it detects signs of slacking or unauthorised breaks.

Automated Performance Reviews : Deploy the AI to write performance reviews by analysing the quantity and quality of work done by each employee. This system would be relentless, sparing no feelings and focusing purely on metrics, potentially ignoring the nuances of human effort and creativity.

Email and Communication Oversight : Have the AI monitor all incoming and outgoing communications to ensure corporate compliance, flagging any email that contains suspicious or non-work related content. It could also automatically draft responses to common queries, depersonalising the interaction process.

Well, they have been already capable of doing it for years, no need for AI here.

Besides, even if "AI" could somehow improve something, this wouldn't really require that AI to run on every individual computer. After all, all corporate computers are connected to a high speed network...

.....Shuddering with horror!...

Runs the latest version of Debian without any problem at all.

I had to replace the PSU a few years ago - but that is about it. Prolly good for a few more years yet.

"But I can tell you AI PCs won't significantly impact PC market growth in the next 2-3 years until more AI-powered applications run on devices, not in the cloud."

What they probably mean is that the application will use customer machine for computation, but will still require "the cloud". It's just to offload the cost of computation to the customer and to maximise profit.

I really doubt they will get rid of the cloud, as cloud is used to justify subscriptions. Without the cloud it will be harder to convince users to pay a monthly fee.

"I really doubt they will get rid of the cloud, as cloud is used to justify subscriptions."

And it's used for data slurping, so two good reasons for Big Tech to like it!

Short replacement cycles are not good for the environment, think of all that electronic waste that is being generated.

I just had to move to a new laptop due to a fault on my existing one. It took me over a week to re-install all my developer applications and a month later I'm still discovering that I'm missing stuff. I don't want to go through that pain again any time soon. Long refresh cycles for me!

Maybe there should be more focus on making existing software run more efficiently, so that it can continue to run on existing hardware.

Generally speaking profit is not good for the environment. That's why usually environment has to go (except of course in those breathless marketing speeches where it is fashionable to put it front and center).

What corporation would put environment before profit ?

As usual Dell is omitting a critical detail in it's proclamation of AI reducing PC replacements.

Unless the company replaces Microsoft windows 11 or rel 12 or whichever version, PCs will always need constant replacements because of failures in Operating System (OS) updates, severe bugs in OS code and other problems that AI cannot address.

esides, constant replacement of "hardware, even if still quite usable" is good for Dell.

Great, so that means new Dell PCs will fail even more prematurely than they already do too often than not (almost as bad as Lenovo)?

I think I'm going to plant the seed that this executive is on a six month refresh cycle.

Just, no. This piece of crap that I already have to work on through no choice of my own is an overheating and underperforming mess. Asking the GPU or similar to continuously be grinding AI recommendations (and no doubt, spying for advertising purposes) is not a sales pitch you are going to win us over with.

"But AI can help you write letters and reports". Maybe. But it isn't mature enough right now for anything but the most trivial of tasks.

The battered old 486 in my junk pile is a whole lot more enticing to keep ticking over.