Slashdot Mirror
PC Makers May Be Left On the Shelves
An anonymous reader writes "With the problems posed by a new Microsoft OS, exploding laptop batteries, and changing technology, PC makers may be feeling this pinch this holiday season. Many consumers who are considering purchasing PC hardware are going to be holding off for next year, according to research analysts." From the article: "According to market researcher IDC, PC shipment growth slowed to 7.9 percent in the third quarter, from double-digit percentage growth in the prior three years. The battery recalls may cut into fourth quarter growth, IDC said. Bank of America on October 31 cut its 2006 PC growth forecast to 9.4 percent from 10 percent. All this suggests that consumers looking for bargain gifts may opt for less-expensive gadgets such as cell phones, digital music players, video phones or noise-cancelling headphones."
>But most of the software that came with my computer was designed for FAT32 windows and not NT.
Yeah I hate it when that happens. Oh wait, not. Do you mean NTFS? Either way this doesn't make sense.
>If I wasn't a relatively prudent computer user, I would have been completely stumped.
Yeah, good thing. Just upgrade to FAT64, man, haven't you heard that fixes all those problems?
-D
Boy you sure love to drone on, and about stuff you don't really know that much about. So you had a bad experience with an OEM deal. Well... that doesn't translate into all of the proposed problems people would be having if they bought a PC right now.
WinME was a piece of garbage anyway, getting that was a terrible decision on its own. XP to Vista isn't quite the same; it all depends on how you use your PC and what range it fits in.
You mention something about software being designed for FAT32. I have no clue what that is all about, but I am sure it is total malarkey. First of all, mentioning FAT32 and NT in the same breath is just a mistake, as they are completely different types of technology. There are two ways to take it, either dealing with hard drives or the compatibility between 9x and 2000/XP. Of course XP support was a bit spotty in the beginning, it was just recently released for home users instead of workstations/servers. Any fresh OS (or architecture, e.g. 64-bit) is bound to have some hiccups.
But despite these things, I hope you're not saying we should wait until Vista is over a year old. Waiting for the right moment is fine, but things change way too fast to really have that perfect timing. Just look at DirectX support; the technology comes out but then it takes a while before it is all that useful and has hardware powerful enough to handle it well.
I'd even be willing to say that now is as good a time as ever to get a new PC, especially with Core 2 doing so well. Then you have plenty of time before these new items really settle into the market. Plus who wants a POS OEM "Basic Vista" that only lets you run 3 programs at a time anyway.