The Computer Chipocalypse

[olstyn]

Might be the time to replace that old TV too. From Ars Technica:

You made me curious, so I looked - Best Buy wants 16% more now for the exact same TV I bought from them ~6 months ago. Seems that story checks out.

[Chance]

From The Wall Street Journal:

Used-car prices, which have soared in recent months, are now defying economic gravity.

Once thought of as the ultimate depreciating asset, some car owners are finding their vehicles are worth as much as—if not more than—they originally paid for them, dealers and analysts say.

....

The recent jump in used-vehicle pricing is the latest in what has been a topsy-turvy year for the U.S. car business. Consumer demand for cars and trucks is near an all-time high, but car companies are struggling to keep up, slammed by a global computer-chip shortage that is curtailing factory production on the new-car side.

As a result, buyers unable to find what they want in showrooms are flocking to the used-car lot, where inventory is also being constrained by fewer people turning in leased vehicles and rental-car firms holding on to vehicle fleets longer because they are unable to find replacements.

....

Historically, it has been cheaper to buy a used vehicle over a new one, and overall that remains the case. But for some used models—mostly those with low mileage and bought in the past year or two—the differential is closing quickly.

For instance, the average price paid by a customer in June for a one-year-old vehicle was only about $80 less than the selling price of a brand-new vehicle, according to J.D. Power. That gap is typically closer to $5,000 or more, the firm’s data show.

[Hot Sauce]

I buy most of my gear used anyways. 12-18 month off corporate lease equipment is like 10% of the original cost in a lot of cases, and way more than adequate for the majority of people.

Where do you usually buy from?

[Sig_Fiend]

If a desktop works for anyone looking to upgrade, I'd highly recommend checking out an older Dell Precision workstation. They have Precision series laptops as well, but I don't have any experience with those. You'll often get server-grade hardware, super reliable, great performance, highly moddable (e.g. add performance and extend the life significantly), and a bunch of other nice features. $150-300 will get you one with a Xeon E3 or E5 series CPU and a motherboard that can likely take at least 32gb ram. There are still tons of these things for cheap all over ebay, for now at least.

Some of the Dell Optiplex series are also a good bargain, like under $200 bargain. For example, the 7010, 9010, 9020... those are from 2012+ and most wouldn't even consider something older than 2-3yrs old (lol). Despite the age, for a daily driver desktop, using the web, word processors, watching some movies, honestly those can work just fine. If you're into serious gaming or anything that takes a lot of ram or GPU, stick to the Precision series if choosing between the two.

Between these 2 Dell model lines, it appears the price/performance sweet spot is the models made between 2012-2016. You can find something well under $500 (unless you max out specs) that will honestly last you another 10+yrs of regular daily usage.

[Chance]

Phones and tablets are going up now. From The Wall Street Journal:

The chip supply struggles aren’t distributed evenly across the smartphone industry. Apple Inc., which accounts for about a sixth of the 1.3 billion smartphones sold annually, has stayed out of trouble given its supply-chain clout, according to industry analysts, as have most of Samsung’s premium devices. But that still leaves more than 80% of the smartphone industry reeling for parts.

....

Higher component prices brought on by the chip shortages are getting passed through for now by raising device prices. The average wholesale price for phones world-wide went up 5% in the April-to-June quarter, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics. That is a break from recent years when prices didn’t increase by more than 2%.

....

Much of the phone industry is struggling to procure a variety of semiconductors, industry analysts say, with pronounced struggles in sourcing power-management chips, display drivers, application processors, in addition to 4G and 5G chipsets.

As of June, the average lead time for semiconductors stood at 19 weeks, longer than 16 weeks, which is considered a supply-chain danger zone, said Duksan Jang, a research associate at Susquehanna Financial Group. A healthy lead time is considered to be between 12 to 14 weeks.

[Yung]

If we lose Taiwan, it'll get even worse.

Where do you usually buy from?

Yes, @hufnagel , inquiring minds would surely like to know.

[Hot Sauce]

If we lose Taiwan, it'll get even worse.

Losing Taiwan, which I assume you mean a PRC takeover, would be such a catastrophic geopolitical scenario that of all things, this would be really small potatoes.

It likely means we'd have engaged in a shooting conflict with the PRC and lost. It'd also signify to all local states that US defense assurances and alliances in Asia are worthless.

[Joe in PNG]

Losing Taiwan, which I assume you mean a PRC takeover, would be such a catastrophic geopolitical scenario that of all things, this would be really small potatoes.

It likely means we'd have engaged in a shooting conflict with the PRC and lost. It'd also signify to all local states that US defense assurances and alliances in Asia are worthless.

And I'll probably get to participate in a reenactment of Kokoda.

[Hot Sauce]

And I'll probably get to participate in a reenactment of Kokoda.

We'll send care packages, bro.

[Yung]

It likely means we'd have engaged in a shooting conflict with the PRC and lost. It'd also signify to all local states that US defense assurances and alliances in Asia are worthless.

Well, you are more optimistic than I am. I was thinking more along the lines that the administration would simply do nothing to intervene.