But desktops with those specs are <$100, probably less than $50.

If they can't afford those specs then you're approaching the group of people who can't afford a computer in the first place.

Yes, that's about 3 billion people. They use whatever they can afford. Usually that's whatever is very old, because new software doesn't run well except on very new hardware which is more expensive.

I recently wanted an MP3 player for an art project. Local stores don't sell mp3 players anymore, they only sell smartphones. So I bought an MVNO smartphone for $40. When I charged it up and tried to use it, I thought maybe it was broken, because it would take 10-30 seconds to load a settings menu or app. Nope, all these bargain carrier-branded phones are that slow. The hardware is [somewhat] old, but the new Android OSes run like molasses on them. It was like going back in time. Remember how Windows 98 would make your hard drive screech for a good couple minutes as it struggled to juggle the swap memory so you could open MS Word? That's the experience with most software today with "affordable" hardware even a few years old.

So using Windows XP is often the only choice, if you don't have a lot of money, like 1/3rd of the planet. (And it's not just the third world. 59% of American households with K-12 school kids don't have a working computer, or it works too slowly to be useful)

This is simply so misleading thats its nonsense.

So you bought a new phone for $40, and it was a POS?

My kids use my old iPhone 7, which is in the same price bracket and is nothing like that. Its fast enough for Roblox, Minecraft, and certainly fast enough for a web browser.

I have an old Dell USFF that I use for server purposes, but its a Skylake (so newer than what was the original conversation), with ssd and 16Gb, and that was <£50. That can boot with systemd in under 5 seconds. It can boot to the full Gnome desktop in under 6 seconds. Firefox can start and get the Office.com site up in less than 3 seconds.

Because thats what were talking about.

> But desktops with those specs are <$100, probably less than $50.

I just checked eBay. Yes they still are.

I see you, but win XP was literally end of life 10 years ago.

So what?

Indeed, but still wrong.

In 2014 i got myself a second- or third-hand thinkpad X220, released in 2011, off eBay. It came with 8gb ram (two 4GB sticks) but it supported 16GB ram as well (two 8gb sticks).

The laptop (Asus A8Jc) I got when I was a teenager in ~2005 came with a dual core intel cpu and 1GB ram. So "512mb desktops" are way older than that.