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PC Sales Slump Over Economic Crisis
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."
wait? so you're saying one must actually eat, and have shelter (clothing's optional), before they will use a computer? --Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
* Sales Slump Over Economic Crisis
* = Insert nearly anything here
Only the more expensive 8.9" and 10" models are available
Well, let's face it, it's not like it was 10 years ago where every 8 months you could buy a PC that was practically double the speed of your current PC. I mean how long have we been sitting at the same speeds?
No people are buying netbooks. The cheapest netbook on the market is more powerfull than the computer I had only a few years ago. Do most people need more for what they use a computer for.
My company only buys refurb PCs off lease. $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.
Bearded Dragon
Age-old alternative.
"posted its worst growth rate ever"
BFD. Contact me when it is in decline. A positive growth rate means that sales are still growing. That's just something that bugs me about economic news reporting. We're not in a !!CRISIS!!!..Oh, Nooo!...We're ALL gonna' DIE!! situation, and if we're headed in that direction, reporting how dire the situation is because the economy grew (but not as much as last quarter) doesn't help anybody...except maybe the newscaster.
So, reading the summary, the worst growth rate was 1.8%. That means, on average, the company that sold 100 PCs last quarter, sold 102 PCs this quarter. Boo-friggin'-hoo.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Given the lack of perceiveable performance improvements over the past several years, there really isn't a need to upgrade your home PC. Back before the XBox (BX?) the PC was still a considerable factor in gaming. Today, the cost of a single video card almost justifies the cost of an XBox by itself. The internet connectivity on the gaming consoles, the video and audio streaming and the game selection/quality means that the 'need' for a gaming PC ($$$) is reduced, because the XBox or PS3 can do the same or better for less money.
To the best of my knowledge, aside from the MS Flight Simulator X program - is there a 'killer app' that will drive PC sales? The only reason I caveat MS Flight Simulator X as a PC game "Killer App" is because hours spent playing this game can be applied toward actual Flight School (under specific guidelines, planes and conditions).
People are probably just buying laptops...
Possibly. But my desktop is 5 yo and Mrs Smidge's desktop is going on 10...! The reason? We don't game, just appliance the heck out of it. No need to upgrade. Same thing with our vehicles, we just fix 'em and take xtra care with preventive maintenance.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
These days, you can get a powerful PC with a decent GPU (if you're a gamer) for less than $1k, and a $400 netbook for when you're on the road. Why have anything in between?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yep, it works.
I mentioned this before but people scoffed. When VISTA is only running on 15% of computers and Windows 7 claims to be compliant with computers that can run VISTA, this mean that most consumers will need to purchase new systems to run Windows 7. What does this mean for the new Windows 7 launch?
Well if they do it within the next 8-10 months, the economy will most likely not yet be recovered and most consumers and businesses will still be wary of making the large purchases. This means a rough launch for Windows 7. Perhaps in 2 years they will have picked up but they will not get the initial response they wish for because it will still require a large number of consumers/businesses to upgrade from older systems.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
There is more than just the economy which is slowing the growth of PC market. Growth comes from two factors: 1) New buys 2) Upgrades. Recently, the PC speed have been good enough, that those who don't want to upgrade, don't need to. I have a 6 year old desk top with spec 2.6 GHz, 180GB HD 1 GB RAM, DVD-Writer, XP-Home, Firewire, TV Tuner. Is there any compulsion for me to upgrade? Now think back 6 years ago when I bought that machine. My older machine didn't have dvd player (let alone writer), didn't have USB and it was 200 MHz (really slow even for MP3 decoding).
However, as we can see, recently the laptops have become far more powerful than they were 5 years ago, so laptop has both the markets, the first time buyers and upgraders and that is why the growth in that segment is high.
These days, you can get a powerful PC with a decent GPU (if you're a gamer) for less than $1k, and a $400 netbook for when you're on the road. Why have anything in between?
Under $1000 new is asking to kill off quality. $1500-$3500 from a non-gaming laptop vendor (perhaps Lenovo and their Thinkpads?) won't make you wonder where the support went or why the thing was built shoddily.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The cheapest netbook on the market is more powerfull than the computer I had only a few years ago.
But it more than makes up for that by having such a small screen.
I think that my core duo running at standard clock speeds is keeping up with everything I need to do with the computer. I still have headroom to overclock it later if there is something I need to do in the future.
Unless some real pig of an application comes along in the future, I expect that I'll be keeping my current C2D configuration for at least 3 years or more.
Notebooks are getting smaller, and have longer battery life, and tend to break more often and often cost more than they are worth to fix, and WiFi is becoming pretty standard everywhere. Desktops are easy to fix (e.g. no need to buy a new one when I can just swap out the defective part), have been more powerful than the casual user has needed for a while now, and consumer confidence is very shaken with Windows Vista (which most users won't upgrade their 4-5 year old computer to use, or specifically is holding on to the old one to not "have" to upgrade), and linux tends to run very well on older hardware (sometimes even better than the latest and greatest if the driver support from the vendor sucks). I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, but has been slumping for quite a while now. The only one appearing to kick ass is Apple, and that is only because they are taking customers away from Dell/HP by having compelling features, Not Vista, more PC compatible, trendy, and if they have to upgrade anyway, might as well get what they want.
I read an article by Michael Dell (lost the URL) saying that the market is saturated in the US; as in there are no "first time buyers" except maybe for the kid going off to college and a lot are going Apple. Everyone who wants a PC already has one, and the manufacturers have done nothing to convince buyers they need a new box. Instead, they've made the machines suck more though inferior integrated parts, made them more difficult to upgrade, and loaded them with crapware to try to make a profit on a product that is already razor thin.
The second problem is that the "Windows" bundled applications like Windows Movie Maker are crappy compared to the iMovie/iDVD bundles on Macs, and the manufactuer ones like Dell-Movie Maker (or Dell DVD Player) are even worse than the Windows default ones. Users get "box shock" when they attempt to buy Off-the-Shelf software so they are really looking for a box that "does stuff" and is "known" for "doing stuff" not just being faster. On Apple, the bundled apps are either very simple to remove, or are fully-functional "free as in beer" includes; here PC manufactures to often include crippled, hard to remove, ugly, slow applications.
Saavy PC buyers remove all that crap and put a clean Windows install or Linux on there. The base consumer has no idea how to do that, and get a piece of crap for their hard earned money. The OEMs should really work to either make Linux ready for desktop primetime, or invest in OSS projects to produce, very good, very simple, portable to Windows if need be, very user friendly, very attractive, free desktop software rather than put together a crappy version, and get rid of all the crap running in the system tray for a clean, snappy system and stop blaming the economy for no one buying there stuff.
Netbooks are doing exactly this; running very efficent OS installs where if feels like the system was designed like a velvet glove over the hardware. Lowering the price and giving the buyer the features they want "size, power usage, WiFi, price." Not more GHz and more ram simply to feed a more hungry, more restrictive, more lackluster OS.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
There's more going on here than a simple drop in sales due to the current economic climate. The last desktop PC I bought (just over a year ago) was the last PC I will buy. There was a time when a computer was a thing that filled a room, then it filled a single rack, then a desktop box. We are (over)due for the next paradigm shift which will be to small mobile devices. My next computing device will be a Pandora, coupled with a head mounted display. Finally we will be free of the Wintel stranglehold that has been dominant for the past couple of decades.
So true. I have a Sun Sparc Station 5 running an vital role on my lan and it does its job day in and day out with no complaints. I also have a 2 dual p3 1.4 systems with 4GB a piece that same as the sparc run day in and day out. I got each machine for between 50 and 80 used. Why should I buy new when they work perfectly fine for use?
Unless I was unable to find a laptop that does what I need to do with a computer I don't see why I would go with a desktop. The price/performance difference is not what it used to be.
I could almost get away with using just my phone and a bigger screen and full size keyboard since most of what I do is ssh,email and web.
3 reasons why most consumer apps are not multi-threaded.
1. Before there wasn't a performance need to be multi-threaded, in many ways it was a performance hit.
2. Developing Multi-threaded apps take more considerations.
3. Languages don't have good methods for multi-threading.
So the Multi-Core CPU's when we start getting cores numbers that legacy apps start taking a theoretical performance hit, or stagnation. Then it makes demmand to create Multi-threaded apps.
With more demand for multi-threaded apps Programming Languages programmers, make their language more suited for making multi-threaded code, as it becomes a common function.
These new languages will help ease some of these considerations or at least make them easier, as well Computer Science Programs will teach Parallel processing more core to the Undergrad class, vs Master Level Classes, or an upper level elective for most universities.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That doesn't really make much sense. Laptops and notebooks are probably replacing desktops, but why would a desktop user go from a powerful machine with a big screen and keyboard to an underpowered netbook with a tiny screen and keyboard? It would be a whole different experience. The slow sales growth much more likely comes from the economic crash and a move to notebooks/laptops that finally compete with desktops on the price/power front. The article writer seems to be trying to latch onto the current buzz to make the piece more "edgy". If netbooks were the alternative of choice, we should be seeing the biggest bite coming out of notebook/laptop sales, not desktops. And what kind of hybrids are "similar" to netbooks?
You're not constrained by processing power. :) ) with uptime limited only by power failures. A somewhat better system was buried under Microsoft's Firewall (after more than two years of use, that is). The OpenBSD one worked as good in its last day as in its first :(
I've used a P4 1.4GHz with 128MB of RDRAM as an OpenBSD firewall - it worked beautifully (unless I was "improving" it
Now we use a dedicated appliance, with a much lower power use. I'm still missing that OpenBSD box
Doubling you speed was much more noticeable with lower speed.
I heard Dells aren't selling very well in Ireland at all these days.
It could also just be that people have their computers already and are being content with them. You would expect the numbers to dwindle as people buy less. If I already have a desktop, why do I need another?
I think this is a big part of it. I haven't noticed the laptop craze as much myself. Most people I know still use desktops (heck I have a laptop but don't use it unless I absolutely have to).
The lifespan of a computer has changed though. Back in the early days you basically got 2 years out of a computer and then it needed replacing (heck I remember almost busting out laughing when I was a teenager and a guy had me work on his daughter's school computer. He mentioned that "I don't know why it's acting up. I just had a guy completely redo it not more than 2 years ago!").
Today though, even a really, really old computer still gets onto the internet just fine. My parents are using a 1200Mhz system with 512MB of RAM. My sister uses a 700mhz system with 256MB of RAM. Both still work just fine for what they need. I know of countless other people who just use the computer as a web browser (and even most email is web based now so you can't really mention it as a separate app) and are dealing with computers 5 to 10 years old just fine.
I think we've basically hit that plateau where computers have become like cars. Most people have one. They don't really become completely obsolete for basic tasks anymore. I think new sales will gradually slip to hobbyists, rich people, and replacements for broken systems. With the increasingly harsh economic times it's only hastening the arrival of an event that was going to happen anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It wasn't modded down. He's just a habitual troll with such bad karma that he starts at -1.
While I'm sure the recession has something to do with it, the fact of the matter is, unless you're a hard core gamer, or trying to run Vista, any computer bought in the last few years is "good enough."
Heck, I game quite a bit AND have the money, but why spend it replacing a perfectly good machine (which I got over three years ago)?
PCs now are far more powerful than Joe Sixpack needs to read his email and surf the web, so most people are probably fine with the ones they have. I doubt there are many households left that don't have a computer, so they have to justify replacing a functioning one now.
why sir, oh why do you hate America?
This is a given.
I don't know why anyone would question it.
What happens is people begin to get their computers fixed rather than getting a new computer, which is something they should have done all along. Most computers of yesterday are more than capable running today's software (with the exception maybe of Vista--which should have been a no-go to begin with).
Always fix rather than replace unless the computer is far too old. Any honest technician worth anything will be able to tell you that.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Instead, toss a bunch of blade racks together, virtualize your userbase, simplify your desktop management, address many of your network security issues, keep all your data "safe" in the data center, allow better user experience for remote users... lots and lots of benefits (if you can get it to work).
In my company (a large bank), we are due to refresh 10's of thousands of PCs, yet instead, we may refresh NONE of them, go with virtualization (and the saved costs of keeping older PCs will fund the new infrastructure). With PCs bought in the last 3-4 years, acting as thin-clients, we can keep them until they break, and replace them with some cheap thintops.
If many companies are going down this route, then it would be no surprise, coupled with the economy, that PC sales in the corporate world would be dropping!
Lokatana
They also have VGA-out ports, so problem solved.
In fact, even with my "full size" 15.4 inch laptop, I had a USB keyboard/mouse and 17inch monitor for when it was sitting on my desk, which was 95% of the time.
I think the issue here is that the industry is up against the wall in compelling reasons to upgrade... when you hit a certain mark, most sales are from people who already have computers. Perhaps those people are finally realizing that MSWord is not going to be any faster on a quad core than it is on a single core, and they've stopped wasting their money.
The only people buying $500.00 video cards for $3000 quad-core powerhouse desktops are professionals or kids playing video games with more time and money than brains.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
that there is no differentiation. All that is needed is for new designs, not one offs. ANd yes, it is possible to create some interesting designs and new markets.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A new PC is at the top of my list, as soon as I scrape up the cash.. oh wait.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
WoW? Or more broadly, any social computer game that requires a keyboard to interface with.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
I know a LOT of people deciding not to buy new computers because they only have Vista. Most people come and ask me if I can put XP on it after they buy it. And frankly, doing that is getting increasingly more difficult because OEMs are changing their part numbers and PCI IDs so their XP drivers don't want to install on the same devices. If I were better at hacking the installers, I would just run a PCI scan and add those numbers to whatever files are needed, but getting them to install without modification is becoming increasingly difficult.
My sparc runs openbsd as well. I have a freebsd router behind it. I love how well pf works on the bsd's.
Hopefully, there will be something good to come out of the recession.
People will have to do without some of life's luxuries due to the shortage of money & when the flow of money increases again, they'll be used to doing without those same luxuries to the point where they'll start making more informed decisions before they start buying all that stuff again.
Perhaps we can look forward to people boycotting cheap imported goods in favour of slightly more expensive goods that are produced in-country. Take money from the pockets of the few fat cats exploiting third world labour & put it in the pockets of local workers who are paid a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.
It's just a shame our gutless Western governments didn't reign in some of the corporate power a couple of decades ago & start taxing heavily for outsourcing & on imports then. That would have kept investment a bit closer to home meaning that risky overseas investments that caused this problem in the first place might not have happened.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I think you misunderstand the significance of "outsourcing": outsourcing is a GOOD thing, hard as it may be for people to recognize it from a restricted vantage point. Outsourcing is money flowing to where the deepest economic low pressure zone is, trying to equalize the economic pressure (standard of living). Equalizing that pressure is something that MUST happen, not only within our own arbitrary borders but outside them as well. Economics doesn't respect those arbitrary borders any more than the climate does.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sensationalism is moving like hot-cakes!
_______________________________________
http://techdojo.org/
If only the omnipotent, benevolent dictator "macraig" were commanding our economy, we would have perpetual economic growth! Chew on that, capitalist pig-dogs!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Hooked an EEE to a 27 inch LCD. Granted I needed to turn off dual display to get the maximum (1920 X 1200). But it worked no problem.
Unless it's being used as a media pc
Media playback is I/O bound: you can't play 44 or 48 kHz audio faster than 44 or 48 kHz, and you can't play 24 fps video faster than 24 fps, without causing usually unwanted distortion. As for video editing, I can see how that would scale up, giving each core a separate job (decoding, compositing, encoding) or a separate minute of the video to process. But unless you're producing in high definition, you might not need a faster CPU; even an eight-year-old Pentium III can handle the sort of 240p LDTV that one finds on YouTube.
game pc
Gaming PCs are video card bound, unless you're trying to pull a Larrabee and integrate the CPU into the GPU.
file storage
Also tends to be I/O bound.
The internet connectivity on the gaming consoles, the video and audio streaming and the game selection/quality means that the 'need' for a gaming PC ($$$) is reduced
Reduced, but not to zero. If you switch from PC gaming to console gaming, you also tend to lose mods and indie games.
In unrelated news, Ubuntu popularity has skyrocketed during 2008.
Also, this just in, a Minnesota man claims to have found a way for computers from 2007 to keep up with computers from 2008. Microsoft has commented, "This claim is outrageous! Clearly this man is a lunatic, he keeps calling Windows 'Ubuntu'!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Thanks for the ad hominem. Did you learn that in school, or were you self-taught?
Don't know if you could call it "killer app" but "user generated content" rings my bell.
This year MS did pretty much nothing and there was very little motivation to buy anything new. Apple had not announced anything amazing for at least a year now.
Therefore sales drop off. Wow: who'd have thought that?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Hello, capitalists of the world, can you hear us? This is your wake-up call; you get at least one of these every century, in the form, of deep recessions or depressions.
Every century is effectively a once in a lifetime event.
Even once a century never seems to be enough to make the lesson stick, does it?
You make it sound like a regular occurrence! It's quite silly to spout self-righteous phrases like "making the lesson stick" when anyone who *did* go through it is almost certain to be dead by the next time, regardless of whether they'd learned from experience.
What you're seeing now is economic proof of your miscalculation of how much injury you can cause us without dealing a mortal blow.
You're making the mistake of viewing the capitalist world as a single mass with a single collective intelligence. With the exception of certain areas (such as oil cartels), it's the collective actions of a bunch of people behaving in an individualistic, self-serving manner.
This is why, as Lenin said "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Or more likely IMHO, they'll hang themselves because the individuals behave in a manner detrimental to the long-term collective interest. This is why I'm opposed to entirely free markets.
Also, the capitalists selling you computers aren't necessarily the same capitalists in a position to overcharge you for your electricity or natural gas.
We tried REALLY hard to ignore what was happening and keep spending like there was no tomorrow, but you just had to keep trying to raise margins, didn't you?
Yeah, because the margins on generic computer equipment are massive, aren't they? Seriously, say what you like about computers, but with some exceptions like Apple, it's not generally a large margin business.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Most of us have PCs already, and with reliability getting tolerable, thank goodness, most PC sales are upgrades, no? It is a luxury purchase; a good investment of some extra money. No extra money or a frugal conscience will lead to postponement of such purchases - especially for corporations.
I still disagree with the interpretation that sales are falling. Sales are not growing isn't sales decline... Maybe less than expected, but still, it is not a decline. 1.8% growth is not a decline. My height not growing doesn't mean I am shrinking.
That depends on a few factors, including your definition of "PC". I play WoW exclusively on a MacBook Pro, having replaced my last PC desktop a year ago with a Mac Mini, then replaced that with a MacBook to be truly portable. (Incidentally, for the first time ever I resold a computer, getting 2/3 of what I paid for the Mac Mini back out.)
Another factor is WoW's age and popularity. It was the best-selling PC game of the 2008, but it plays just fine on 2-3 year old hardware. It plays better on hardware running Linux and WINE than it does on the exact same machine running Windows, so even if a savvy user isn't satisfied with its PC/Windows performance, they could squeeze more life from that hardware with free software.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The best reason could be power savings. Depending on what you do with those machines, a small latest-generation PC could do the same, at a significantly-lower power requirement, for $100-200. If you plan to use the new computer for several years with it constantly active, you could easily save money in the long term.
That said, if you do the math and it just doesn't save you electricity to go new, then I readily agree there's no reason to upgrade just for upgrade's sake.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Maybe people just don't want a 100lb system when they can get something that fits in their pocket. I just got an iPod Touch to use as a pocket computer (it works nicely and I'll really like it when I figure out how to write programs for it), and now my wife wants one too. She'll probably get one of those cute Acer netbooks for $400 too as they look handy to throw in the diaper bag for times you need to run a Windows program on the go.
The vast majority of the time we just want web and email access or to make some notes and keep track of our check book, shopping list, etc. For those even a laptop is to much. The iPod is really optimal. To bad they made it such a pain to write apps for - I have to upgrade my OS and pay $100 to become a developer and use Apple's own pet language it seems (or jailbreak it which is also a pain).
The iPhone would be good but $80+ a month seems a lot and we don't like AT&T. If they could give it some competition then I'd be really interested. They need a 32GB model of the iPhone too though. 16GB just isn't enough.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
This is basically Linux's only chance. As we move on to 64-bitters, Vista, osX, and Linux will compete on a different landscape. The problem, and opportunity, is that THERE ARE NO 64-bit KILLER apps out there. No OS has a single killer app that needs 64-bit computing. SO I think Eric Raymond is wrong about the hard deadline being in 2008. As long as there is no killer app, all architectures are fair play.
Obviously, if the killer app is open source and is born in Linuxland, it will be ported...
Thanks for noticing, comrade! Yes, in Little Capitalist School, they teach about ad hominem right after the class about the importance of property rights.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I would go back and look at who own Alienware....I think it starts with D and ends with ELL.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/dell-buys-alienware-162317.php
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A 3.0GHz P4 w/512MB RAM and 40GB SATA. Intel 945 video. Performance is OK. Sleeps well. Wakes well. There are some video artifacts. Explorer is a little crashy, but it's a beta and I was surprised it ran at all with so little RAM. We shall see.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Joe Sixpack doesn't need the latest quad core i7's.
Of course not. But the i7... quad core and hyperthreading. 4.2GHz on air. Huge amounts of memory. Built in virtualization. Shiny shiny new box.
er, what were you saying? Hey! Gotta go. I just remembered something I gotta get on Newegg. Keep in touch.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just wait 'til you see what happens to Apple's market share now that "thinnest and lightest ceo in the industry" is away from the helm.
Will the board behave?
Will Steve Balmer apply for the job?
Will a new shiny thing emerge to take our minds off his absence?
These and other questions answered NEXT TIME on Rotten to the Core!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I'm not American, Why do you hate Western Samoa.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The 64-bit killer app is virtualization. As the owner of a hosting company, I can fit quite a few virtual machines (VMware or Xen images) on a 64-bit Dell Poweredge 2.5Ghz Quad Core box with 128GB of RAM and 3 1.5TB SATAII disks.
People are probably just buying laptops...
Possibly. But my desktop is 5 yo and Mrs Smidge's desktop is going on 10...! The reason? We don't game, just appliance the heck out of it. No need to upgrade. Same thing with our vehicles, we just fix 'em and take xtra care with preventive maintenance.
=Smidge=
Very sensible, and the economic crisis is pushing more and more people to be like you.
Tech-wise, this crisis is going to put the most pressure on those companies whose fortunes are tied to computer sales, as opposed to use. Microsoft and Intel are the best examples of the former - almost every computer sold includes a Microsoft OS (+Office) and an Intel processor (+supporting chips). Fewer sales means that, for the first time in the history of both companies (except perhaps their very early years) they may experience significant declines in revenue and possibly even losses (the latter might be avoidable through layoffs - which we have been hearing are in the works).
Google is the best example of the latter type of company, whose fortune is tied to use. Simply put, that people use an old machine as opposed to a shiny new one doesn't matter to Google, as long as that machine can show ads on google.com. Looking at it another way, even a steep decline in computer sales doesn't mean fewer eyeballs on ads - just that those eyeballs are using older machines to see those ads. It's not like people are going to stop using the web. Now, clearly the economic crisis won't be all roses for Google - ad budgets are down, which will hurt. But overall, I'd say the model of tying yourself to computer sales - which worked well through forced upgrades - is finally (and deservedly!) under serious pressure, and Google and Google-like companies will benefit in comparison.
Rubbish. It's just a method of increasing profit margins to put more money into the pockets of fat cats.
It's time for corporations to be forced, through taxation, to start having some degree of social responsibility. The fact is that if a company trades in a country then what it is doing is taking money out of the country & when it employs people in that country then it puts money back into the country. Therefore apply a heavier tax to the differential between the two, that's the solution.
Outsourcing just allows for exploitation of cheap workers in countries that have not yet developed minimum wages & employee rights and the money that's saved just goes straight into the pockets of shareholders.
How can this be a sustainable solution? What happens when most jobs in the Western World have been outsourced and because there's no money in those countries any more, the people there can't afford to buy the products? Outsourcing is short-termism based on greed, nothing more.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There you go again, thinking those arbitrary intangible borders between nations actually have any rational meaning. They don't. Most often they were invented by those same "fat cats" whom we both despise. Guess who those borders benefit most? You haven't been thinking conspiratorially enough.
Jesus wouldn't approve of your attitude nor your belief. I hope you don't also consider yourself a devout Christian, because that would make your delusion quite complete.
Your approach to living is a relic of a distant past that doesn't work very well in the present, and won't work at all in the future. Assuming you have very many decades left to live, perhaps you'll yet learn.
"posted its worst growth rate ever"
BFD. Contact me when it is in decline. A positive growth rate means that sales are still growing
You're confusing the first and second derivatives of PC sales. If the absolute 'growth rate' was, let's say for example's sake, 5% in 2007, 3% in 2008, and will be 1% in 2009, that is a "negative growth rate" i.e. -2% per year ... in other words 'growth rate of the growth rate' is negative, and this IS meaningful (in fact, MORE meaningful than the absolute growth rate percentage) because even though you still have a positive 'growth rate' of 1% in 2009 (looking at a static snapshot, so to speak), unless something changes you can predict that it will likely be -1% by 2010, -3% by 2011, and so on. In other words, that number, though still positive now, is dropping so fast that at the current rate it soon will be negative.
A car analogy might be, if you are driving on the highway and suddenly need to hit the brakes. While you are slowing down, your acceleration is *negative* (second derivative), and even though you are still *moving forward* at a positive rate (in absolute terms - first derivative), you WILL come to a stop at those rates of change.
If Netbook sales are actually rising roughly in correspondence though, then this isn't really a decline, it just means people are buying Netbooks *instead* of full-blown PCs when the former are suitable to their desired tasks - fungible commodity. This is *good* for the economy, especially if (as they suggest) margins are lower on Netbooks, as it means people are just seeking (and getting) better value, i.e. they are still basically getting the computing power they need, for less money ... economies are adjusting to be more efficient and leaner.
There are quite few possible apps that need use more than 2GB of memory alone. The couple that come to my mind are databases and, like someone already pointed, virtualization.
Now, some advances on interface research may lead to only 64-bit windowing systems, but the only way I can see that being need is for 3D, and well, I'm not a beliver on 3D interfaces taking over the world... Also, I can see some AI needing to be 64-bit only, but nobody is even near there yet.
It looks like that we'll need way faster memories before an individual desktop application starts using more than 2GB. That will probably take a long time.
Rethinking email
I fully agree with you on the AI part. It seems that some, if not most, of our difficulties in designing realistic, psychologically and neurologically plausible systems reside in small address spaces. It is quite possible that the address space of the brain is something like 2^128. That is NOT COUNTING its sparseness... then things could go as crazy as 2^1000 or even more, as some people have been proposing. Such huge addresses could never exist physically, of course, but if the brain is a sparse address space, the "most similar/closest nodes" could fulfill that without any hiccups. I have no idea what you mean by faster memories, though. I think killer apps will need something like 16GB or more to run smoothly. The first killer app that needs this will define the winning 64-bit platform in the long run.
Oh, I see YOU are Brazilian, and working in AI. Same here. Ever stop by in Rio, send me a message. Cheers!
You are one of the better trolls I've seen. I like you. You should start a movement: "Christian Crusaders for Communist Dictatorships." You can use all the other wildly successful communist dictatorships as shining examples that The West is a distant relic, it just hasn't had enough decades to learn why command economies are superior.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It is quite hard to conceive an application that makes use of an entire block of 4GB and runs smoothly on some 600MHz serial (ok, series of words, but still not massively parallel) bus. Needing a lot of data implies processing a lot of data, consequently, accessing a lot of data.
My bet is that massively parallel non-uniform memories will lead to lots of improvements on AI (I've already hit some problems that would stop being on such on architecture). That could be done inserting lots of small slow processing cores at the same chip that the memory comes, of course, that isn't easy, but theoretically could be done.
Rethinking email
Hey, nice to meet you. If you ever come to Brasilia, also, send me one.
Rethinking email
A 5y/o computer can still net decent p4 rig that is more than enough still for most people.
Hmmm, not sure I agree. I have a P4 machine (2.8ghz i think) and it is REALLY feeling it's age. For example, it can only take 1gb or ram, and it has PCI slot for a graphics card. I can't play Warhammer online because it doesn't meet the minimum video card specs...the cpu has nothing to do with it. Plus, it just runs worse than my 9 year old 800mhz PowerMac (which can't run latest versions of OSX).
Even without the Warhammer problem, the P4 machine really REALLY is an unpleasant computing experience and not worth the cost (measured in "most people"'s patience) of keeping it running.