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No Need to Upgrade that PC?
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free reg.) has an interesting article about a developing trend in the computer retail business: People aren't buying new PCs. Why? Well, no suprise to those who read this, but grandma and Joe Sixpack don't need a screaming new P4 to surf the net and write letters. Are they just figuring this out?"
in our office, i hardly see the graphics guys upgrade their macs. after 2 years they always buy a complete new Gx. Do people actually upgrade Macs?
With a Celeron 400mhz and a Riva TNT 2 video card I can't play many of the games released in the last year. :(
Being a gamer I'm REQUIRED to upgrade or get left out of all the fun. At least Half Life still works...
...this is the only voice readers may hear to contradict the endless marketing hype by computer mfr who realized this a long time ago! This is a general audience pub., and they can repeat this message as often as they like.
To be honest, it only really occurred to me about a year ago, that there wasn't anything you might need for most folks that you could get for 1/2 price on eBay, and then I thought, gee, the industry is in trouble unless these things start breaking a lot. (Soon, we learn about the built-in SELF-DESTRUCT chip.)
I do all my home development on an old AMD K6-2 450. This way, I know that any software I release will run with acceptable performance on systems that most people have.
Microsoft and Intel are finding that while they have a monopoly, it is a monopoly on a durable good. As such "the monopoly creates it's down competition and must take that into account in its production decisions" (nicholson)
In the extreme case the products are perfect substitutes, only the competitive price can prevail in the long-run i.e. price = marginal cost.
Okay...
;-)
I guess this article states the obvious. Of course people don't need faster computers. The only reason they'd need fast computers is if they are playing high-end computer games, or using Windows (which for some reason or another always keeps on making it's software more dependent on speedier computers, even though it is completely unnecessary.)
Most family friends, and people I know who need computers just need a simple box that allows them to chat online, play a few simple games, e-mail, surf the web, and perhaps play "The Sims". Since almost all of this can be done on linux, I buy older cheap computers, and i have a special "personal distro" of linux that I give them, which always works, and they usually have no complaints, since everything they want is included, and it didn't cost them much ( I just charge the price of the used computer I bought. ) For smaller families without much money this is great.
As well, for those families with the little brat that demands more you can usually appease them with something that is sub 1-GHz and has a good graphics card, since most games don't require screeching speeds.
Just from my experience though. Right now I am running off a 750Mhz Laptop, and I have been considering upgrading eventually to a small tower, but nothing with the numbers I have been hearing lately (2.0+Ghz, with 1Gb+ of RAM, etc.)
Well, maybe something with those numbers.
~ kjrose
KDE and Gnome are both a little too bloated. They try to pull users away from Windows with even more useless junk than Windows itself has. ...), and it will be a lot faster.
Get yourself a decent Window Manager (like IceWM, fluxbox (a little more advanced), qvwm,
My in-laws are still using a PII and it suits them just fine. Same goes for operating systems - it's only due to forced obsolescence that they will eventually move off of Windows98. (ie/ when they eventually buy new hardware, no support for it in win98 will mean new OS)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
People: most computer users simply do not care about running the latest and greatest applications on their PCs. They are quite content with Windows 95, Office 97, and AOL. To them, this is all that a computer does. The PC is merely a way to send email, instant messages, and write papers. The sad truth is that it's the same way for many college students as well.
From the article: Robert Clemenzi, an electrical engineer who lives in Manassas, is still using an older model that runs Windows 95.
This is another surprising trend in the PC world -- many users don't care about which operating system their computer uses to manage hardware devices and programs. Whether or not their machine's underlying system code is an inherently secure model such as BSD or an inherently virus-prone OS, they simply do not care. They will go to Download.com, perhaps, and install whatever free virus scan is available. Of course, the virus definition files may be a year old and they'll never update them, but they just do not know how to do this.
It's the same way for many users of Unix-type machines. All these hackers care about is getting a command line interface so that they can run a couple instances of the Vi text editor and the Mutt email client. Simple. That's all. It's just that straightforward. Whereas the average Windows users just wants to write and chat, the average Unix user just wants to code and post to mailing lists.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Begs the question. For things that individuals use computers for, will there come a time when we will simply run out of things to use the computing power on.
I remember when I got a 200MHz machine for my mother and I could not think of anything that she would want to do that would require anything faster.
Unfortunately then came MS products which want more and more computing power and flash heavy internet.
So is it stupid of me to think that once I upgrate her machine to 1GHz she will not need anything more? Or will programmers be able to use even more power?
Currently I cant think what anyone using a computer for just writing and looking at the internet would need faster processors.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
I'm going to be content with what I have. The only reason to upgrade PCs is for the games, but I'd rather spend $300 every 2 years or so to have my next-gen console.
You know, developers sometimes need to compile stuff. It's a pain to code if half of your time is spent building the binaries for testing.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Call me a cynic, but the reality is that the PC industry needs a new reason to sell boxen. This is the next wave of marketing from the big three (two?) PC manufacturers along side of Micro$oft -- create fear, uncertainty and doubt among the majority of PC users who don't know any better and convince them that they need the new *secure* computers along with the latest generation of Windows crap.
Or create a Windows Media PC that allows you to plug your computer seamlessly into your entertainment centre and TV at home -- everyone knows we can't do that today (sarcasm).
The other huge push of course will be the .NET revolution that MS believes will snare all the unwitting mom&pop operations and casual users. And mark my words -- that 1999 Compaq PC that grandma has sitting on her desk at home just won't cut the mustard on the MS controlled .NET-enabled Internet.
It is truly sad, but the computer industry has sunk to the "whiter-than-white" marketing driven society that we all live in today. Intel, Microsoft, HP, etc. all step in line because they know that it's the only way they are gonna sell new computers. What's the world going to be like in 5 years? Hard to say -- but at the rate we are going now, it'll look an awful lot like today but with more widgets and gadgets than we ever need. And I'll still be typing away on my PII-400MHz and accessing the 'net via outdated software.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Or perhaps, eventually, console systems will feature word processors, email, and other such consumer grade applications, and the computer (in the classical sense) will again become something used at work and by hobbyists. If all of the major players (sony, nintendo, uhm... atari, etc
That's the kind of thing that could put a business like Microsoft *out* of business. Maybe that's a small part of why Microsoft is trying to break into the living room - the eventual combination of all the disparate technologies in an average users life.
(yes, I know console technically == computer, but I think everyone knows what I mean)
(Yes, I also know this has been argued to death - I'm not claiming to have come up with these ideas
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
People don't use high-end computers for game playing much anymore (slashdot crown excepted, I'm sure). Why would they when they can get a game console for a couple hundred bucks? It fills practically the same need, but much much cheaper, and also works extremely reliably.
There may be a few 3D game nuts out there who absolutely must have the latest PC in order to play the games they want and have the money to purchase that PC, but that is a tiny minority. For most people, spending 10X as much or more on PC game hardware (versus a console) does not result in 10X the fun.
Frankly, I have zero pity for the self-indulgent wealthy fools who purchase high-end PCs for the express purpose of playing games on them. It's their money I guess, but what a waste.
If all the content people want (songs, movies, games) come prelocked and only the right kind of Intel processor can unlock it, it will spur a new generation of replacing PC's. Good for Intel, good for MS who will get to re-license Windows yet again. Time marches on.
Or is J. Q. User expected to attempt a reinstallation of Windows? I shudder to imagine certain members of my family trying that.
(Disclaimer: I use OE, and have never suffered from an email virus)
I did this for a while when I had my P133 as my old system. And I agree with you in principle--there should be some *testing* done on multiple hardware platforms.
:)
However, your application should be OPTIMIZED for whatever people are likely to have. And if you just code your app on one machine and never try it out on anything else, it might be an order of magnitude slower than it should be because you unwittingly optimized it for the machine you were on. (trust me, I've seen this happen, for example when the bottleneck was the cache on the K6's vs. on the P]['s.)
And, as someone else said, P133's make a sucky development platform these days. Just as I wouldn't expect you to do graphics work on one, (although I did do a lot of work on one in The GIMP back in the day...) you shouldn't expect us to do our compiling on one... just some testing.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Software isn't growing in complexity as fast as the chips. Perhaps this a good thing... But I really do wish comercial software would start using some of the more cpu-heavy algorithms out there. I want a neural-net email filter and IM status indicator, a GA for determining disk load order in order to improve boot time, and huristic news gathering agents the output of which can be used on my PDA, my computer, or my website. Quick-launch menus should be generated from observations of my behavior, not manual labour or click-counts. For example, I want a quick-launch bar that can understand that when I start firing up web development apps, I may want other suchlike programs. Why must the icon for Warcraft III remain prominant if I am currently working in photoshop? If I use a certain directory constantly for a certain type of document, the agent should recognise the importaince of that directory to ME and promote the accessibilty of it somehow when I am working on such a document. My directory structures should be somehow understood, so that when I want to save a new document, the computer can recommend where it thinks I want to put it. Software is starting to stick in its current roles, and so chip speed is no longer the limiting factor. If we start building better software, the chips will resume their progress.
Sorry pad're ... I run 3 web-boxes : a k-6/450, Duron900 & XP2100+ on DSL and the performance difference among them is marginal. Excepting a few "flasher" pages, even the primative 4 Mb Jaton_9750 in the K-6 really makes little difference so I'm not pushed to upgrade one of the GForce2s in the other systems for the extra Vid .
It's not even worth getting the "official" NVidia drivers for my P4 RedFat_8 box. Yawn. Face it pad're, as it now mopes along - even for a performance slacker like me - the web is dead-of-boredom.
what people want and need are bandwidths upgrades, so that we can trade movies back and forth cheaply and easily.
The new upgrade trend for the general public will no longer solely be done for a faster PC with more storage space. Most users need only about 20GB HD for their MP3s, emails, etc... because the general public doesn't have a porn collection or tons of video games installed.
My prediction is that people will start demanding silent PCs that are power efficient, don't take up much space, and have a chasis, moniter, speakers, keyboard, and mouse that fit the fashion of the day.
Oh, and people will want a PC that is more easily maintained. For example, just last night, I help a friend fix his sister's PC. Turned out there were no hardware problems at all with this thing. Instead, she had a rotted out Windows 98 install with over 250 spyware infections, 40 virus infections, and about 50 processes running in the background and system tray.
It turned out that this girl's PC wasn't very old. It was about a 700mhz machine (can't remember exactly), which is faster than both my computers (windows and linux). Anyway, after removing all of the spyware, viruses, and unnecessary background processes, then 3 Windows Updates, updated drivers, a scan disk (tons of errors found), and a disk defrag later... the computer performed wonderfully!
I also cleaned the "broken" mouse, which now works wonderfully. Before I "fixed" this broken computer, it performed like a 386 with 8 megs of ram...
Basically, computers are like cars: people are going to have to take them in to a specialist every once and a while, to have them tuned. The problem is, I got to thinking that once this girl gets her computer back, in 24 hours, she will reinstall most of the spyware, and after a few months, she will reinstall most of the viri. So maybe people need to learn how to use their computer in addition to taking it to get tuned up by a specialist.
My point is that the average computer user only needs to upgrade because their computers are so un-tweaked and they are running so many spyware daemons and viri.
Back about 1985 I started saying that I hoped the software 'industry' understood their market had a very limited lifespan. Once Word Processors actually work, well, that's the end of the WP software industry.
What's more, people won't have to even buy one. Once the concepts are public literally anyone who wishes to take the time can right them and distribute them for free.
In fact, I went on, the single biggest problem Micro Soft (remember those guys?) faces is the fact that by the turn of the century even operating systems will have an effective market value of $0.
It was entirely predictable and, give or take a few years here or there, I pretty much nailed it.
Of course what I didn't count on was the sheer marketing power the big guys have been able to bring to bear. The average Joe is completely unaware that software has zero effective 'value' these days and continues to pay through the nose for it.
But they *are* at least begining to realize that what they already have works to their satisfaction. The upgrade cycle depends on customer *dissatisfaction.*
Well hey, if the car still runs make the customer dissatisfied with the size of its tailfins. Hence transparent widgets being hailed as a major breakthrough in 'technology.'
Well, I hate to tell the computer 'industry' this, but while this may work with a the younger crowd for a while your grandma already knows how to suck eggs better than you do. She remembers the invention of planned obselesence. She bought into it before you were born, and learned the folly of it, again, before you were born.
When your market consists entirely of people waiting with 'bated breath for the next release of the latest and greatest gee gaw you're ok, but when your market moves to Walmart and the nations grannies it's a whole new ball game. Granny just wants to buy it, take it home, and have it work, and if it does. . . well, that's pretty much it for her, she's done.
And so are you computer 'industry.'
KFG
The question we have to ask ourselves is where is the software? For sometime programmers needed better hardware to fill their needs for the processor hungry software they wanted to make. The industry sort of lost track. We use our computers mostly to do a few things. There isn't enough software to take advantage of the hardware. Games are as far as you get in the consumer market. This is not to blame on the hardware or software industry, but society. The processor intensive hardware lies in the hands of companies, organizations, and private individuals who can afford it. It is somewhat like the rich get richer poor get poorer phrase. The rich use this great tool to find better ways of making/designing old and new products, ways of marketing to the consumers, and computing environmental, physical, natural phenomona. When was the last time you used your computer to calculate weather patterns? or find places where oil might be found?
Question everything.
Because the monopolies on broadband aren't expanding speed and capacity, processor-pushing broadband internet-based apps aren't developing, such as a videophone, MPEG-4 video encoding/decoding, RARing of large files, or stuff I can't even think of. Yep, napster probably pushed processors and hard drives, and we need video/CDROM pirating to do the same.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
There is no compelling reason to upgrade because, heck, there's no new killer app out there. A killer app IMHO, is a software that pushes the existing hardware technology to the limits, and at the same is being wanted, no *LUSTED*, by an average computer user, to boost his/her overall computer experience.
For example, when Windows 3.1 came out, people realized out that their 286 is really old. Along with Windows 3.1 came unified industry standards (no need for third parties) like memory management, familiar look-and-feel accross the board, OLE, and working in WYSIWYG, among others.
Same goes for Netscape 1.0. When all those eye-candies (JPG,GIF,etc) started to load almost simultaneously, people noticed the difference between browsing with a 486DX versus browsing with a Pentium 133. So they upgraded.
Now that we have reached a point wherein the software cannot take advantage of cutting-edge hardware (except for games), people do not have one compelling reason to upgrade their old hardware. A PII-266 can run a browser with little or no noticeable difference versus a PIV-2.66.
Everyone (damn near?) has a computer in their home. This is a given. However, the new market is the second PC market. A lot of people have turned one room of the house into the computer room and share it amongst all in the family. Now that mom uses the computer for email too damn much and dad has found the joys of net porn and the kids cant get enough of downloading thousands of songs on kazaa that they will NEVER listen to, its time for two if not three PCs in the house. On top of that, there is cheap wireless networking which makes such a crazy cooky idea even more feasable. The sales monkeys need not to be saying trash your old PC and get a new one - they need to say, its time for PC #2.
PS - I have known people who have taken an entire PC, Monitor and all and thrown it in the trash when they got their new PC.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Consumers who use a computer to perform tasks, rather than because they're actually interested in the computer itself, won't have a reason to upgrade until their hardware keeps them from doing something they want to do. This applies to home AOL/browse/email users as well as to corporate and institutional users. (That's why there are still lots of Win98 machines in homes and NT boxes desktops.)
For many people, bandwidth and network limitations bound performace and capability more than chip speed. The slowest piece of the foodchain will determine overall subjective performace, and increasingly that bottleneck is the network.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
da_Den_man wrote:
<RANT>
Who the fsck are you to judge that? What is it with some gamers and this strangely arrogant attitude towards what a computer is supposed to do anyway? It seems that quite a lot of current computer users think the purpose of a computer is:
Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with using a computer for being entertained by your favourite entertainment industry, but it seems that quite a lot of current computer "geeks" can't wrap their minds around the idea that it could also be used for quite a lot of other things. The notion that someone could buy a computer to do Boring Things like drawing graphics, writing code and all that sort of creative hippie not-so-1337-g33k stuff seems to be absolutely alien to them -- or, even worse, that someone could even want to have a computer for useless things like writing documents or communicating with friends and family. In fact, the whole idea that people are using computers for something else than what they are using them for seems to be completely unfathomable to them.
Clue: One of the things that makes computers so damn cool is that you can use them for just about anything you want to. Whether you want to write code, read E2 nodes all day long, listen to music, make music, watch movies, play games, write documents, exchange emails with other people, or any combination of the above, you can build a computer that will do it. Which one of these is The Right Way to use a computer? They all are. No matter how much the hardware industry (in glorious cooperation with Microsoft and most of the game industry) is trying to make you believe that nothing short of a 3GHz P4 is enough for satisfactory performance in Notepad, the truth is that the vast majority of computer users don't need the massive power of current hardware. More power to them if they don't play the part of brainwashed consumers.
Now that I'm in rant mode and on the subject of gamers.....
simon@merlin:~$ dict -d jargon gamerNo definitions found for "gamer", perhaps you mean:
jargon: lamer
</RANT> -- don't say I didn't warn you.
Six sick
In order to drive sales of new computers, new applications are required. These new applications require companies that are willing to take a risk and enter the software market - but with Microsoft hanging over the market like a Godzilla waiting to tromp over any newcomer that might threaten Microsoft's cash cows funding for innovative software is going to be very hard to come by.
People don't forget what happened to Netscape - the web browser was the last real killer app, and look what Microsoft did to that.
The fact is that Microsoft is strangling the computer market, and the situation won't change any time soon. AMD realizes this, and is looking to make cpus for markets where Microsoft is not dominant. Markets where innovation and new technologies are possible.
The only reason I got a TiBook is that I knew that eventually the G3 would croak (it finally did this month,) and, even at that, I waited until the TiBooks could burn CDs and CD-RWs.
Backups (redundant data & hardware bought before a catastrophy,) take all the ugency out of buying a replacement.
I may not buy a new computer for a decade. Maybe some boards, more RAM and a new monitor (just picked a Nokia 4445Xpro for the Linux box,) some new bigger drives (I ripped ALL my 200+ CDs to Mp3s,) but I don't use Windows so I never got on the upgrade treadmill.
My client's a bank and their thousands of NT4.0 SvcPk6 boxen are definitely NOT multi-media ready (bad idea with the public doan'cha'no? You're supposed to be at work, not playing games and watching DVDs.) NO CD burners, no audio cards.
The apps that we write and that run on those desktops are client-server so they don't need more than a 200MHz pentium III, a 4GB drive and 64MB RAM (and even at that most of that foot print is the OS.)
Frankly, pitching DRM at these people is a waste of time. Pitching 90% of the software is a waste of time. Pitching 90% of the hardware is a waste of time.
The working world needs better security, better user authentication, better subnet management tools and 100% reliability. The rest is noise.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
but grandma and Joe Sixpack don't need a screaming new P4 to surf the net and write letters. Are they just figuring this out?"
Yes.
grandma sixpack is about in her second or third machine since she got interested in this internet thing.
the kids and advermedia had got her used to a cycle of newer faster parts. she's gone through several modems, a few harddrive increases, very probably gone from 95 to 98, needed usb when she decided she wanted a nicer printer, then needed real usb when she got that digital camera for christmas, and had to go atx for the latter, which she also had to do for modern large drives [the only thing available to her at the store] and modern large ram [the only thing available to her at the store] and if she decided she wanted a burner.
it hasn't been a software issue much. her Peterson's Bird Guide CDROM ran fine on the old pentium under 95.
now, for the first time in a while, upgrade doesn't buy her anything. so she isn't upgrading.
unless the industry finally makes graphically intensive entertainment for other than the current narrow definition of 'gamers', she doesn't have the hook to upgrade.
it's killer app time for the hardware industry. and they're investing in PDA and tablet devices instead of making more reasons for a P4 level box.
Celestia, which is as close as I can think of, doesn't need anything like a P4, neither does broadband, or OpenOffice. Most any atx level box will do, so non-gamers aren't buying upgrades, and the general populace already has their first computer.
'normal people' sales have pretty much stopped. so that is 'normal people' news; they *are* just figuring it out because it *is* just happening now.
if you're going to sell the new 'platform', you've got to have new 'games'.
It's great that you are recommending a nice wholesome Microsoft product in the Xbox, but your eulogy is premature, and in fact, the current or near future versions will never take over the game world. Why? Because a very large percentage of gamers are not children. Many are even over 30 and already have high end computers and can afford the latest Nvidia or ATI GPUs.
There is no need for a dedicated gaming box, and even if there were, the current crop of products are wholly inadequate. For the games I like to play I need a full size qwerty keyboard, a mouse, and a large, 1600x1200 or greater resolution monitor. A TV screen and a game controller are not going to cut it.
Also, I want control over my display options. There are somewhat affordable stereo (3D) monitors now, and some 21" monitors have high enough scanning rates to allow the use of shutter glasses with Direct3D or OpenGL universal stereoscopic drivers. Most high end virtual reality equipment like HMDs and head trackers are made to be compatible with PCs, not with consoles.
Note also that Black Isle Studios (Interplay), Bethesda Softworks, Bioware, Lionhead Studios, Arkane Studios, most MMORPG teams, and most other promising developement teams are primarily creating for the PC market. Have fun playing your simplistic arcade games, this years remake of Donkey Kong, Pac Man, and Space Invaders. I'll continue to rely on my Turing machine to accomplish the task of gaming or whatever else I want to do, including writing code and developing my own games.
The only console game I've ever wished I could play was Godzilla on the Dreamcast. It got bad reviews, but any remake of Crush Crumble and Chomp is a game I want to spend some time with.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
A lot of the *speed* of new computers is the faster hard drives and more memory.
Take that older PII/K6 era machine, throw 256M of memory into it, and give it a fast [IDE] hard drive. Congrats, you have a faster machine. Buy a nicer video card off ebay for $20 (someone recently recommended 8 Meg PCI Matrox Millenium II's for the 2D support), and you got a big enough vid card for a 17" or 19" monitor at 1024x768. Assuming it has around a PII 300 mhz or K6-2 400mhz processor, its fine for Mozilla, Open Office, and a few old games. For a lot of users, they don't need more.