Zor

Ha the article I googled (was in French I think), called it something like ultra low range, apparently it was selling at 150€ in 2011. Subjective I guess Out of curiosity, do you need that many machines ? Looks like if you combined the price of all these, you could have gotten one more powerful PC ? Unless they were all hand-me downs of course

You say "upgraded Nvidia card" but your screenshot says Quadro 400, which is a 10 years old entry level card that was never meant for any gaming. So it's kind normal that the VCS would do better than that. The reverse would be quite worrying. Comparison with the Mac Book and Fujitsi mini pc are more interesting

There's the diminishing return factor and also a bottleneck issue. I updated to 32Gb Ram on my PC, more "because I can", and there was a promo on it then. Hasn't changed much of the Cyberpunk experience, except that maybe now I can leave Chrome running with 50 open tabs in the background ... (need to check if MS flight sim 2020 sees any gain, but even there, doubt it would be much) So, for gaming, debatable return on a strong computer with dedicated graphic card. On a low end computer like the VCS, what would be the point, gaming performance is limited by the GPU (or lack thereof), not by lack of RAM once you hit 16... (Except again if you really want to leave mutliple applications open in the background)

This isn't about speed, 4k video playback in browsers is not an issue, it's something about DRM management. In all browsers but Edge, Netflix caps videos at 720p. Does that web-assembly thing changes anything about DRMs management ?

who said anything about forcing a 4k signal to a non 4k display ? I think (if you have a keyboard) you can press "Ctrl" + "Alt" + "Shift" + "D" to see what quality netflix is playing at. But yes, Netflix in chrome is limited to 720p. For the full quality you need a dedicated app or the edge browser, so I guess that leaves windows ? (don't know if they have a linux app). I don't think it's really honest to advertise the VCS as being a 4k machine while the main application for it (movie streaming) is not available without a dedicated app which doesn't exist for the VCS. Same thing for Amazon prime. Also applies to sound I think; should you have a fancy Dolby Atmos or something setup. Only Sterero in chrome (I think). edit: just checked on a computer under windows, in chrome Netflix plays at 720p and 2.0 for sound. "Ctrl" + "Alt" + "Shift" + "D" will show that and a bunch more stats (bitrates, dropped frames count, etc .)

There is extreme bad faith on both sides here. You can't compare a tower that you have to build yourself to a miniature pc that fits under the TV. VCS at 300$ is not a full computer, you need at least to add storage at the very least to compare it to a PC. But yeah "console killers" at 300$ is BS. "VCS" killer at $300+storage cost prebuilt is debatable. if you want windows included, for a full "plug & play experience" then VCS really doesn't look so good anymore

You can be legally within your right and be a jerk at the same time. Not incompatible. Taking screenshots of anyone's profile for people on a forum to comment on their level of education is, imo, of very poor taste in general. In this particular case, this is beyond disgraceful. I'm sure you can differentiate between a troll and that guy. And anyways, other people having posted disgraceful jibes at individuals on previous pages hardly makes it ok.

it's not right pasting this guy's posts here, public profile or not

so, back to square one, it's a pc, and you can do that with any pc. Except you're forced to run your OS from USB, and it is at the same time too expensive/powerful to run retro games and too cheap to run modern games. I don't think you can find the same specs for that price with boot drive and OS already installed, however I think they're in a dead zone. Modern 2D games that can run on that can probably run on a 300 machine with OS and drive. Fore slightly more demanding games, you'll have to jump to 500 ...

exactly, it's way too expensive to run retro games. And way too underpowered to play any kind of modern games.

Sure, and you're probably not the only one, I doubt that's even a niche market for any kind of ecosystem to grow though. Again, for it to be a complete system, you need to add storage via USB and install your own OS. On average, people who think existing mini pcs are not plug and play enough will do that ?

Sure, but what kind of device ? I bought the PS3 back in the days, because my then computer wasn't powerful enough for proper gaming. Now I have a powerful pc and thus have skipped last and new generations of consoles. If really I wasn't satisfied with what I can play on PC, I'd buy a switch for the different gaming experience, or the PS5 for teh exclusives. The VCS would add nothing. If I still had a weak pc, and wanted more gaming, I'd complement it with one of the big three consoles. Again adding the VCS would just mean having another weak pc with no added value besides "cute box". If I had no pc at all, I would be better of buying a fully featured cheap laptop. Someone in working age with no pc and thinking of buying a VCS as an all in one machine would need some serious home economics education ... (I expect that the number of active people with disposable income and no PC in their home is pretty low)

They should have advertised it as a mini pc from the start, with a proper Linux installed, and the ability to install windows on the M2 drive instead of having to add a drive hanging at the back, vs selling it first as a console with sandbox/"pc mode" as a bonus ... and backpedaling to "but sandbox" when lack of games becomes apparent. It appears that many of the backers have very little PC experience as well, it's a bit sad to see many buying kits of 32G of RAM, and 1Tb M2 drives (which can only be used to store games from the Atari store, since you can't boot from it) as if it'd be of any use ... As it is it's a poor console, and it requires too much fiddling around to use it as a mini pc.

Ignoring the fact that getting the VCS serviced should anything go wrong will likely be impossible, that would be true if cheap HP pcs required you to buy your own OS licence and hang a USB drive at the back (which you'll have to buy as well). What cheap PC supports USB drives only ? ....

Im surprised nobody asked whether the M2 slot is nvme or not. M2 alone is just a space saver. Also surprised that nobody seems to react to the compulsory USB drive for other OS booting. Kinda defeat the small and sleek pc concept if you need to have a drive hanging from the back.