Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming
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My understanding is that Libre Office is the closest to actually being a good replacement to Excel. Having used Libre Office's Excel equivalent, it does not feel good to use (then again, neither did Excel).
I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to replace the Microsoft office suite - Microsoft owns the rights to those softwares' workflow paradigms IIRC, and people who have been taught those workflows are not going to abandon them. I mean, we've not even managed to move away from the staggered qwerty layout that was established for typewriters in the 1870's. I think the only options are for schools to either adopt new paradigms (using opensource software as teaching tools) over mass adoption in industry.
The main issue with Excel is that it is not multithreading in all operations.
But for a lot of things it is the only software that can fit the bill.Libre office feels a lot worse in to work in up to 8 hours a day compared to Excel and it is probably still missing some features like powerquery among others.
I do need to test it again, it has been a while.Then again I work as accountant so I am probably in minority of Excel users.
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handheld pc gaming
Sounds impressive until you see the qualifier
pc
Not that impressive.
Compare it to the whole handheld gaming market!
The whole handheld gaming market is pretty small. There's the Switch which outsold the last couple gens of Xboxes and PlayStations. Good luck beating that. Besides that you have smartphones which just about everyone owns and only a handful of brands being especially popular. Then you have dedicated Android having handhelds and handheld emulation machines which are extremely niche.
So either you're looking at extremely popular and widely owned handheld devices with extensive histories and customer loyalty or extremely niche devices. Not really a great comparison.
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I trimmed the bushes around it so it looks bigger.
Mfer really took "play anywhere" to heart.
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handheld pc gaming
Sounds impressive until you see the qualifier
pc
Not that impressive.
Compare it to the whole handheld gaming market!
If you mean the switch, then it has been thoroughly squashed. If you mean phones, well I think we can agree they are not really competing for the same customers, and if you think they do, most people are buying phones for reasons other than gaming. So you'd need a way to section the market for "gaming phones" (yes, that's a thing).
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They are, in almost every way, taking the console model approach. Updates when there is a significant generational leap and not just yearly updates because AMD made a slightly faster APU (though they did the switch to switch OLED thing but no one complained about that because they kept the LCD models for sale and the OLED really is nicer), selling at a loss (and making up for it in game sales) and of course, the ease of use that a console interface offers over a traditional PC interface.
Then they step it up beyond that by making it as open as possible (software/emulation, games from any source, it's really a PC) and making the hardware repairable (making parts available and easy to fix in the first place,) and of course, cheap games and practically every game you'd ever want.
What the other handheld PC companies are lacking is (with some exceptions) repairability, that console experience, and price. Us nerds that can do whatever with technology will do it, so a legion or an ally or a gpd will sell just fine to that demographic, especially for the frame rate chasers. But for most of the rest of people, they would just get a switch or a PS5 or Xbox because it's just plug in and game, and at least in the case of a Switch or Xbox S, the cost of entry is way lower than a PC, be it a gaming desktop/laptop, or even many of the handheld PC competitors. Yes you can build comparable cheap PCs to an Xbox or PS5, but that means building a PC, and most people don't want to do that (I'm not talking to you, I know you have a sweet rig.) Yes I know games on PC are usually cheaper especially Steam sales or key seller/bundle sites, but console gamers often don't consider that, and initial cost of entry is very important to non-enthusiast type people in any given hobby.
There's a reason why Nintendo consoles sell so well despite being behind the competition in raw horsepower. It's the console model (and in their case aggressive exclusivity of their famous IPs)
The things keeping Sony and Microsoft in the competition are basically the console ease of use, and their all you can eat subscriptions. Even they both realized that they can get more sales putting their games on PC, but that still means forking over MSRP for a single game, so those ps+ and gamepass subs are keeping them afloat at this point.
I'm a huge tech nerd and have been deep in related industries for over 20 years. I know how to do whatever I want with any pc hardware or software, I own a steam deck, and a rog ally, a proper beefy gaming desktop, a gaming laptop, a Switch, and a PS4. Despite all that, in the past 2 years, easily 90% of my gaming has been on the Steam Deck. It does everything I need it to and more, and it does it anywhere, anyhow. If I want to tweak and tinker with it I can, but more importantly, I can just PLAY GAMES with almost no friction. At home, on a break at work, at the airport waiting for my flight, cozy in bed, wherever, whenever, and fast, and easy.
The Steam Deck is the swiss army knife game device that childhood me always dreamed of, and now it exists. That is why it's outselling it's competition, and genuinely making PC gaming a viable thing for the masses. No it won't beat Nintendo anytime soon, but it's gaining steam on them and other consoles faster than any other attempt ever has before, and it will only get better.
The ease of use of the Steam Deck cannot be overstated. Yes you can tinker with it a bunch but if you just want to play your games, you download and play. The windows handhelds will never be as easy since windows is just crap for this (and MS is not interested in improving).
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I tried dworak for awhile and just like switching from windows it is a bit rough sometimes. Every game you play have to change keybindings as a person who play a lot of different games it became too much. But writing was so good. So much easier and intuitive. Only took like a week or something to get into it.
It is still a mystery to why no one ever created software that can automatically pull videogame input config files and rebind for other layouts. I guess it is somewhat niche. At the same time, input config files are all pretty similar and it sounds fairly straightforward as a project.
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Not most users, not even as Valve intended (on the Deck, at least).
They literally reserved the green "Verified" badge for games with full controller support and are the only ones eligible for the "Great on Deck" tab. Mouse and Keyboard games get the yellow "Playable" tag instead and a warning on boot.
See, that's the sad part about actually looking things up. It takes time, people get to nitpick it to death and then some guys will just... you know, say stuff.
Ummm... "controller support" does not mean what you think it does and it doesn't exclude touchpad use lmao
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It’s easy to dominate when you were only one in the market for so long time.
They're not, though. There's quite a few other offerings in this space, and the Steam Deck appears to outsell all of them combined.
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They got the formula right on this space:
- Linux, not Windows--Windows provides little that can't be done on Linux in this space
- AMD, not Intel--AMD just has better products at this level (any level at this point, really)
- 720p--going higher doesn't provide much at this size except suck battery life and requiring a more powerful GPU
- Price
Now, price is partially because Valve can afford to subsidize the cost and expect to make it up on Steam sales. I'd be remiss to ignore how they're making their money. Still, they're also able to have a good price because they didn't try to make it as powerful as it could be, but as powerful as it needed to be.
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Ummm... "controller support" does not mean what you think it does and it doesn't exclude touchpad use lmao
It means official full controller support with the default config. There are few games that provide official controller support over Steam Input in the first place, even fewer that have any touchpad custom inputs by default and I'm not even sure if there are any that are Steam Verified. At a glance it's... what, just Rimworld again? Maybe some first party stuff left over from the Steam Machines fiasco? Sims is only Playable. Civ VII, which you called out earlier, I suspect incorrectly, has official all-stick support, what with having launched on consoles day and date. I haven't checked it because I haven't bought it yet, so if I'm wrong let me know. Civ VI doesn't have default controller support, but it's only Playable as well. In fact, if you have a list of verified games with touchpad default support I'd love to see it. I'm genuinely curious.
Look, you get to live in this very specific alternate reality where the only difference is people love dual touchpads as a main input system. That's fine, you're not hurting anybody. I get hung up on it because blatant misrepresentations on social media are fairly upsetting these days and because I'm still not over having had to use the dumb touchpads on the Vive for a couple of years back there.
But man, is it exhausting to watch it act as a proxy of some much more important crap in real time.
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It means official full controller support with the default config. There are few games that provide official controller support over Steam Input in the first place, even fewer that have any touchpad custom inputs by default and I'm not even sure if there are any that are Steam Verified. At a glance it's... what, just Rimworld again? Maybe some first party stuff left over from the Steam Machines fiasco? Sims is only Playable. Civ VII, which you called out earlier, I suspect incorrectly, has official all-stick support, what with having launched on consoles day and date. I haven't checked it because I haven't bought it yet, so if I'm wrong let me know. Civ VI doesn't have default controller support, but it's only Playable as well. In fact, if you have a list of verified games with touchpad default support I'd love to see it. I'm genuinely curious.
Look, you get to live in this very specific alternate reality where the only difference is people love dual touchpads as a main input system. That's fine, you're not hurting anybody. I get hung up on it because blatant misrepresentations on social media are fairly upsetting these days and because I'm still not over having had to use the dumb touchpads on the Vive for a couple of years back there.
But man, is it exhausting to watch it act as a proxy of some much more important crap in real time.
"Touchpads bad! I did homework and it factually said so!! Stop having fun!!!"
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They're not, though. There's quite a few other offerings in this space, and the Steam Deck appears to outsell all of them combined.
Use a competitor like the ASUS ROG for 30 minutes and you’ll understand why the SteamDeck is king.
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The ease of use of the Steam Deck cannot be overstated. Yes you can tinker with it a bunch but if you just want to play your games, you download and play. The windows handhelds will never be as easy since windows is just crap for this (and MS is not interested in improving).
100% agree
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I almost always plug mine into my dock and run it with a controller lol, rarely use it as an actual handheld
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"Touchpads bad! I did homework and it factually said so!! Stop having fun!!!"
Hah. Man, you were fuming about that one for a while, huh?
I said at the very tippy top of this thread that
I know some people swear by them, I just don't think they're worth the space they take up as a pointer device
and later
People who like these do tend to be loud and proud about it, so they stand out more
It's no surprise that there are people swearing by them loudly and proudly. In fact, there are more people doing that than the opposite, because most people just... you know, ignore the whole thing altogether and haven't through about the Steam Controller in a decade.
The reason I was pulling quotes for you is that you denied the touchpad reception in the OG Controller was mixed and that Valve was presenting them as a stick substitute, which was demonstrably incorrect.
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Now that it has been three years, while I'd like to have one, I feel like I'll just wait until whatever the next version is - even if that means waiting another year or so.
I don't need one, particularly, and I don't want to be caught at the tail end of this hardware.
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Hah. Man, you were fuming about that one for a while, huh?
I said at the very tippy top of this thread that
I know some people swear by them, I just don't think they're worth the space they take up as a pointer device
and later
People who like these do tend to be loud and proud about it, so they stand out more
It's no surprise that there are people swearing by them loudly and proudly. In fact, there are more people doing that than the opposite, because most people just... you know, ignore the whole thing altogether and haven't through about the Steam Controller in a decade.
The reason I was pulling quotes for you is that you denied the touchpad reception in the OG Controller was mixed and that Valve was presenting them as a stick substitute, which was demonstrably incorrect.
What was I "fuming" about...? Wdym?
"Everyone around me says they have positive experiences with the touchpads! They're the ones that are wrong and I am right, because... the real people just ignore them and don't post about it!!!"
Lmao. Yeah, I'm the one in an alternate reality here...
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It’s easy to dominate when you were only one in the market for so long time.
Handheld PCs have been on the market for 20 years. Comparable to steam deck (x86_64) at least since 2016 GPD Win
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It is still a mystery to why no one ever created software that can automatically pull videogame input config files and rebind for other layouts. I guess it is somewhat niche. At the same time, input config files are all pretty similar and it sounds fairly straightforward as a project.
Lutris has an option to switch to US QWERTY. Also doesn't take much effort to do manually but it's buggy with X.org (sometimes it insists on keeping the previous layout for no reason).
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Steam deck is awesome.
With the Desktop mode, a monitor, mouse, and keyboard it's also just a computer.
Its been awesome playing games on it then flipping on my VPN and downloading movies and stuff that I can then watch on it.
The future is now
