| From: Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | My 6 year old laptop has higher specs than that NUC, never mind what my | 6 year old desktop has in it. I guess they were a bit overkill at the | time and the reason I haven't had to upgrade anything in years (and | still don't). 1) yes they were overkill. I know your habits :-) A W-series ThinkPad! 2) processor speed improvements have plateaued. 3) computer-makers have trouble coming up with must-have innovations for desktops - UltraHD displays are new, but Haswell DisplayPort interfaces can support it at 60Hz. Haswell HDMI cannot. - NVMe is great and new. But SATA SSD is good enough for most of us (SATA HDDs are not) - USB 3.0 is much better than USB 2.x, but Haswell supported that - USB 3.1 is better, but I've not needed it. - WiFi has gotten better, I guess. I don't notice since my desktop is wired (it has WiFi but I don't even install the firmware blob). 4) for notebooks, there are more innovations, but not everyone cares - USB 3.1 (?) supports high bandwidth video - NVMe - touch screens - better touchpads (and worse) - higher resolution displays - IPS and other improved screen technology (my old ThinkPad's FullHD screen was disappointing in this respect) - worse keyboards - thin and light (and hard to service) - no ability to update RAM - no optical drive (or bay for an extra battery)