Why The U.S. PC Market is On The Decline

conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on the recent woes of Apple and Dell. One possible reason according to the article: 'imminent price wars'." From the article: "'There's a softness in the market that's building,' says Richard Shim, a senior research analyst at IDC. In the past two weeks, IDC cut its 2006 forecast for U.S. PC growth to 5.7%, from 6.8%. 'In '04 and '05 there was tremendous growth. In a market that's as mature as this industry is, there's no way you can maintain those levels.'"

Comments

Stupid Title

[panaceaa]

The title of this article is "Why The U.S. PC Market is On The Decline", but right in the summary it says that IDC expects the PC market to grow 5.7%!! That's not decline.

Why quad?

[Shawn Parr]

My general use machine at home is a Blue & White G3 upgraded to a 550 MHz G4.

If you have been putting up with a G3 that has been upgraded to a G4 (so it still has an ancient memory/ATA/system controllers) then why are you under the impression you need a Quad to replace it??

Any current Intel machine will blow that so far out of the water it just isn't funny. I have a G4 933 (QS 2002) and just got a Macbook. The Macbook is portable, uses less power, and spanks my G4 around the block as far as performance goes. Even with Parallels running and 2 VM's going. Seriously a MB or Mini Mac Intel would more than be a super upgrade for you. Obviously you don't need wiz-bang if you have been living with the B&W that long. Especially since we have definitely entered the realm of most new computers being capable of way more then you will typically ever use. I even use Protools regularly, and on the Macbook it has plenty of power for most of the sessions I run. I'll never have a deskop again, except in very special circumstances (perhaps an installed machine in a studio, but that isn't necessarily considered a general purpose computer anymore).

As another note, I have no idea what you are talking about with the $30 discount for Parallels with Windows, and I have checked their site. Their typical $30 discount, however, expires Tomorrow. So if you think you might go Intel in the near future you probably should act on it.

Re:Old PCs Still Good and Net same speed

[Danga]

It's not a PC. PCs care about that stuff. Macs just work.

A firewire connection to the cable modem won't make a difference so I don't know why you keep mentioning it, any PC that has a network card for the last 10 years had at least a 10 Mbps card if not a 10/100 Mbps card which both will max out the cable modems downstream just as much as a firewire connection would. Cable ISPs just don't provide the bandwidth for a firewire connection to have ANY advantage. Firewire was great for bandwidth intensive devices before USB 2.0, but now that USB 2.0 is the norm firewire is just about pointless and I hope it disappears fast and we just have one standard port.

Switching to the Mac mini - same basic firewire, same cable modem.
No perceptible difference.

Comparing an 8 year old PC to a PC now on non CPU intensive sites will give you "No perceptible difference." as well as long as both machines aren't bogged down by spyware/adware. Trying both PC/Mac setups on CPU intensive sites will most definitely have the newer machines performing much better.

Anyway, you can keep paying extra money for your Macs and thinking they are the greatest things on Earth, I will keep spending my money on much cheaper hardware which has always been easier/cheaper to upgrade/custum build my own computer myself (I have heard Macs are getting better in this area, but I do not know for sure) and also "just work". I also don't have the pompousness that a lot of Mac owners (such as you) have which I think is much preferable.