JustEnoughDucks

It has absolutely stagnated. Earlier transistors were becoming literally twice as dense every 2 years. Clock speeds were doubling every few years.

Year 2000, first 1GHz, single core CPU was released by nvidia.

2010 the Intel core series came out. I7 4 cores clocked up to 3.33GHz. Now, 14 years later we have sometimes 5GHz (not even double) and just shove more cores in there.

What you said “it’s just that you don’t need to upgrade anymore” is quite literally stagnation. If it was a linear growth path from 1990 until now, every 3-5 years, your computer would be so obsolete that you couldn’t functionally run newer programs on them. Now computers can be completely functional and useful 8-10+ years later.

However. Stagnation isn’t bad at all. It always open source and community projects with fewer resources to catch up and prevents a shit ton of e-waste. The whole capitalistic growth growth growth at any cost is not ever sustainable. I think computers now, while less exciting have become much more versatile tools because of stagnation.

Well it is literally not going as fast.

The rate of “technology” (most people mean electronics) advancement was because there was a ton of really big innovations at in a small time: cheap PCBs, video games, internet, applicable fiber optics, wireless tech, bio-sensing, etc…

Now, all of the breakthrough inventions in electronics have been done (except chemical sensing without needing refillable buffer or reactive materials), Moore’s law is completely non-relevant, and there are a ton of very very small incremental updates.

Electronics advancements have largely stagnated. MCUs used 10 years ago are still viable today, which was absolutely not the case 10 years ago, as an example. Pretty much everything involving silicon is this way. Even quantum computing and supercooled computing advancements have slowed way down.

The open source software and hardware space has made giant leaps in the past 5 years as people now are trying to get out from the thumb of corporate profits. Smart homes have come a very long way in the last 5 years, but that is very niche. Sodium ion batteries also got released which will have a massive, mostly invisible effect in the next decade.

To be honest. I had a similar question for my girlfriend for drawing with krita. A drawing tablet + a traditional laptop is better for almost everyone except students who will be taking notes in class and people who have to be drawing in a chair or meeting room with no desk setup.

Otherwise a drawing tablet is more accurate, faster, and with better features than a 2-in-1. Much better sensitivity, generally better pressure and tilt functions, and a much better feel (more like paper)

You don’t even have to spring for a Wacom. They have been resting on their laurels for over a decade and have become completely uncompetitive in the past 5 years (kind of the Intel of drawing tablets).

An XPPen Deco Pro Gen II (as an example) has good ergonomics, rotary knobs for zooming, rotating, and scaling, and works over Bluetooth. Their Linux drivers (4.0.x) are pretty great at a fraction of the price of a Wacom or the price difference between a traditional laptop and a 2-in-1.

It ends up being way more ergonomic also to look at a screen and not having to hunch over a tablet. It just takes a week or so to get used to not looking at your hands.

Depends on what your usecase is for what is “essential.”

I think keeping household documents, taxes, medical bills, etc… In a local only paperless-ngx instance is quite essential to the organization of a household where everything is searchable and able to be organized on multiple levels compared to a simple document folder on 1 computer.

Having a document or self-hosted wiki with an in - case - of - death document that gets backed up in an encrypted, but accessible by family place is probably the most “essential” thing.