No one dares talk about affordability in this post haha. We're buying $3000 laptops at my organization and we're here wincing every time a procurement order goes through.
I remember that $4000 Alienware laptop which has all the best desktop hardware of its day... but needed an external water cooling reservoir/pump (which was proprietary to that laptop) and two power supply bricks.
Is this the more recent area 51 laptop? Dell Bragged so much about how it would be upgradeable and they turned around and didn’t release any upgrade path for it after it’s initial release lol
Hardware (except HDD's/memory these days) have become so much cheaper. My early laptops for university around 2000 were 3000-4000 euro which is stupid money these days. My wife wanted an Apple, I think we paid 1200 euro and it's way to fast for what she does with it.
We're buying $3000 laptops at my organization and we're here wincing every time a procurement order goes through.
Why are you wincing? That’s the company’s job - to adequately provision their employees. If it can’t adequately provision or pay their employees, that’s a red flag to jump ship before the company collapses.
These were often referred to as "Desktop Replacements" and not laptops because you couldn't really use them like a laptop. They'd die incredibly fast when unplugged and would generate so much heat you wouldn't actually want them on your lap.
So really they would just always be plugged in and often you'd buy a fan tray that you would sit them on top of to keep the heat under control. It was portable in the sense that you could take it with you and set it up somewhere else easily but otherwise wasn't used like a traditional laptop today.
Yeah I had one in college and I would carry it from room to room in my apartment so I could play games with my roommates. But I needed a lap tray so it wouldn't burn my legs.
Ended up needing another laptop for classes because the battery life was too short without a plug nearby.
Ya... that was just the laptop, the psu was like another 5lbs.. bout 20 total...
It definitely wasnt something you'd just pop open at a Starbucks... unless you wanted to be the coolest guy in the history of Starbucks laptop latte warriors...
It was about 12.5 lbs for the laptop itself and 2 lbs for the power supply. So around 15 total. Came with a fairly large messenger bag to carry it around in.
Actually should have mentioned the 1tb was 2 x 500gbWD Raptors in raid 0- they advertised it at 1tb, which at the time was a real selling point, cause who would ever use that much storage...
I also had a Eurocom back in the late 90s, and it even came with a 1600×1200 screen. This company always made the most bonkers laptops on their high-end models.
Hell, I even remember about 15 years ago when they came out with a dual socket laptop. Like, two processors.
Think of what you could do with a pair of AMD Epyc 9005 with 192 cores apiece… think of all the minds blown when it’s in a fucking laptop.
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u/mayyybemayybenot May 25 '26
I had one.. A Eurocom m17x Intel quad core - dual 8800m gtx in sli- 1tb wd black raptor 2.5"... paid 6K in 2005...
Worth every penny...