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PC Sales Slump Over Economic Crisis

Posted by timothy on from the what've-you-bought-lately dept.

nandemoari writes "The damage isn't just limited to the United States. Shipments of PCs in Europe, the Mid-East, and Africa dipped to records posted around the turn of the century. It was even worse in Asia, which according to Gartner, posted its worst growth rate ever — just 1.8 per cent. Within the industry, desktops took the hardest hit, as was expected. Sales of non-portable computers were down about 16 per cent as consumers opted instead for the rising 'netbook' and similar hybrids. That fact alone is troubling for PC makers, given that $300-$500 netbooks offer a far lower profit margin than more expensive and more powerful laptops and desktops."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It is all my fault by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "$200 for a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM. It is the only way I can keep up a 25% turn-over rate and stay under budget."

    Alternatively, about $250 plus an hour to assemble it and install Linux will get you a dual-core Atom with 2GB of RAM and a 100+GB-ish hard drive; you'll probably save the difference in reduced power usage over the next couple of years, given how power-hungry P4s were.

  2. Re:Make the Egg so we can get the chicken. by horli · · Score: 5, Informative
    Two fundamental points are missing:

    4. There are computing-jobs that are inherently not parallel.

    5. Parallel programming is hard not because of bad programming languages but because of the logical problems that come with shared state and parallelism.

    http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-23.html#%25_idx_3598

    Therefore multicores do not bring a substantial performance benefit. Futhermore because the problems are fundamental logical ones, there is no big hope.