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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."
The point remains, though, that barring some weird Finder-network behavior, Macs running OS X are faster and more responsive in perceived user feel than Windows Vista, Ubuntu, or Mandriva 2007--its primary competitors. Perceived feel goes a long way toward the average user's assessment of "speed." Obviously a Mac is no faster than a matching PC, objectively, and obvious a lightweight GUI in Linux is going to be snappy as well (but not a competitor with the others). I don't know what "claims of superior speed" you've been subjected to in order to produce your coin-sock, but there's an important one. Vista runs hot/cold--sometimes impressively quick, sometimes unbelievably slow. The "enriched" Linux UIs are generally less smooth and slow as well. Maybe part of that is an obsolescence by design thing, but likely it's just bloat (Windows) or bad drivers (Linux).
PC technology is getting more mature so I'm not surprised to see sales flatten out. Home computers were already far more powerful than the average person ever needed almost ten years ago. Today they're over-powered to the point the average user can get by years longer before there's compelling reason to buy a new machine.
I would consider myself a power user, built all my own PC's. Some of them are going on five years old and there's no compelling reason to upgrade them. I can work, play games, watch TV or movies...why do I need a new computer? Okay, they're not the hottest and fastest boxes on the market. So what? They're fast enough for me. The weak link in the PC interface is sitting in the chair. No matter how fast a PC is, absolute speed is going to be limited at some point by the user. You can only type so fast and take in so much information. Any mid-range machine today can stay ahead of the user in terms of information flow.
Another trend impacting white box PC sales is the proliferation of specialty PC devices like game consoles, mp3 players and appliances like Blackberry. Those off-load what were traditional PC tasks. Where did PC makers think the growth was going to come from? If they think they have it bad now, just wait until the $100.00 laptops (now $175.00 I think) start flooding the market.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Interesting huh? OSX and Linux, the two alternative OS's are not as sucessful because they are too far on either side of the road. OSX has the best OEM integration of any OS, but people dislike it because that OEM charges so much. Linux has few OEMs, but even though it is cheaper, nobody wants to set it up themselves. True, Linux doesn't take much effort to set up anymore, but it still scares the consumer.
I do hope this lack of sales produces a price war. I want to buy a laptop soon.
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