Slashdot Mirror
Consumers Buy Less Tech Stuff, Keep It Longer
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The NY Times reports that there are indications that a sea change is taking place in consumer behavior as a result of the great recession: Americans are buying less tech stuff and making it last longer (reg. may be required). Although in many cases the difference is mere months, economists and consumers say the approach may outlast a full recovery and the return of easy credit, because of the strong impression the downturn has made on consumers. For example Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas — actually, a refurbished one. 'A week later, the old one died. We timed it pretty well,' says Hauseman, adding that it was not so much that she could not afford new things, but that the last few years of economic turmoil had left her feeling that she could be stealing from her future by throwing away goods that still had value. Consumers are holding onto new cars for a record 63.9 months, up 4.5 months from a year ago and 14 percent since the end of 2008, according one research firm. Industry analysts also report that people on average are waiting 18 months to upgrade their cellphones, up from every 16 months just a few years ago. 'We're not going back to a time of our grandmothers' tales of what they kept and how they used things so carefully,' says Nancy F. Koehn, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a historian of consumer behavior. 'But we'll see a consistent inching or trudging towards that.'"
The good news here is that the computer buying public is getting more educated about what they need and what's available, and starting to find better deals.
The bad news is that the tech industry has to compete more with itself which means its scrambling over a smaller total of dollars available.
Although I have an EyeTV for my Mac and can record TV shows when I need to... my day to day TV recording needs are still met with my VCR that I've had for the past 10 years.
(I also bought my first CD player in 1993...what's that 10 years after CDs started getting produced)
(and I have a twenty-year old VAX 4200 minicomputer running OpenBSD as my home firewall)
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
The bad news is that the tech industry has to compete more with itself which means its scrambling over a smaller total of dollars available.
The good news is that as the installed base of five-year-old PCs and netbooks increases, publishers of commercial software may finally realize that the common practice of increasing published system requirements rather than the efficiency of algorithms, commonly called Wirth's law, is costing them customers.
and keep it for years than have the latest and greatest every year. Sadly, it is getting tougher and tougher to find those quality products,
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The summary said " Americans are buying less tech stuff and making it last longer"?
No worry, manufacturer are making everything last shorter
When people have less money they keep their items for a longer period. They have functional items and don't have the money and there is less peer pressure to buy the latest since for many the money is tight. They dont waste their money by buying new items they don't need.
This more or less always happen when the economy are bad.
Just saying it like it are.
The environment will be happy.
From the perspective of the wealthy one percent--whose greatest concern is finding a bank of historical Swiss virtue with a fresh coating of wikicaulk--the Gini has delivered unfathomable riches.
In America, with the repeal of the estate tax, tau is better than ever. The majority of the population who tacitly supported the "death" tax revocation against their present interests--in favour of interests they wish someday to have--now find themselves pinching their threads. Who would have guessed?
Here's an interesting theoretical question. Under what conditions does accelerated inequity appeal to the majority of a democratic population? And how long can you keep the descending majority from figuring out they have more to gain by repealing the obsolescence tax (which they actually pay) rather than the death tax (as aspirational indignity increasingly far from reach)?
I think that, at least for the average user in their day-to-day tasks, five or six year old computers still perform adequately, and people really have no reason to upgrade. My uncle has an eight year old IBM ThinkPad which he still uses as his primary computer, and it runs Windows XP, Outlook Express and Office 2003 just fine - and that's all he needs. Given, it's more or less approaching the end of its life, the battery doesn't hold a charge and the HDD is as slow as a dog, but having seen his friends' bad experiences with new hardware and the bloated mess that was Vista, he's reluctant to upgrade.
And that bloat I think is causing a lot of this. New hardware isn't much faster than the old if it's dragged down by a bloated OS. And I think it's fair to say that most of these new 'features' aren't really necessary at all, so people don't see a need to upgrade. Why do you think XP still has such a large market share? Because people already have it, it does what they need it to, and there's no real need for them to upgrade.
I don't see this as a return to frugality - I see this as a warning shot for the industry.
Innovation in the electronics and technology industry is stagnating. What really separates a high-def TV, smart phone, or computer from one of 5 years ago?
Consumers seem to think not much.
As much as I love my new Verizon iPhone - it's not really leaps and bounds better than my old 3GS I gave to my wife. My company switched to Verizon, so I was forced to "upgrade". If I was paying for it, I wouldn't have made the switch.
I think TV manufacturers saw this trend coming a couple of years ago, so they scrambled to put 3D in to every TV they could hoping it would spur another round of upgrades - and most of the world said meh...
The low-hanging fruit is gone - the tech world will need to really think creatively to create the next round of stuff that people find useful.
-ted
vs deflation.
In a deflationary environment, money becomes more valuable over time, so when people spend some, they look for products which are going to last longer or which are higher quality items. As a result, producers who produce higher quality, do better than those who produce cheap crap.
In an inflationary environment the reverse is true, it is more important to get rid of the money, and in fact getting into debt also makes sense as well. The quality matters less because you can just buy another one using money which is devaluing anyway.
Deleted
"For example Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas"
Yep. I have a five year-old Mac Mini which I upgraded the CPU in (1.5 CoreSolo->2Ghz Core2Duo), a three-year old MacBook Pro, my wife has a five year-old MacBook (the original one). They are all doing fine for the moment, though ominously it looks like Lion is 64-bit only and so the original 32-bit MacBook will have to go.
This isn't a Mac-only thing either. I'm sure someone would be able to point me at their five year-old PC laptop and say pretty much the same thing - basically unless you're doing really demanding tasks or gaming, anything from the last five years is fine.
I have two applications where I wish I had slightly more modern hardware - Logic 9 (music production) stutters at times when I use a lot of audio effect plug-ins, and I wouldn't mind more than 4Gb so that I could run virtual machines a bit more smoothly. That's it - my day-to-day existence is more than catered for with this hardware, indeed it's pretty much overkill.
Cheers,
Ian
Welcome to the normal way of living America!
Am I the only one appalled by this part "Consumers are holding onto new cars for a record 63.9 months"?
Cars don't really go obsolete that quickly. What sense is there in buying new cars all the time? However, this figure doesn't account for the large demographic who buys used so maybe that duration would prove to be much higher? Basically the early adopters vs. the average consumers in the auto industry.
I think that the reason is much simpler : the advances is hardware are becoming less significant. When I compare my brand new iPhone 4 to my previous original iPhone, there are not so many huge changes. My wife is perfectly happy with the previous one :-)
And same for desktop computers : faster, cheaper, quieter, and that's pretty much it. If I compare today's iMac with the one I am typing this on (3 years old), the changes are only incremental ones.
I'm just a barista, and I don't make a lot of money, but even I manage to buy a new Apple device almost every month.
Each month, I put all of my first three weeks of earnings toward buying a new iPhone or an iPad or an iBook or an iPod. I already have 14 different types of iPods, and 8 iPhones. Next month I think I will save up for a new Mac mini (it will be my 12th).
It's my duty as an American to buy as many Apple products as I can, even if it means that sometimes I don't have enough money for rent, and sometimes not even enough money for food.
Well, to point one, I personally had a couple of relatives who lived during the great depression who would antagonize at length over the need for every little item and the relative costs down to the penny. If they had gone through the line only to find out they misunderstood a discount that means they would end up paying 2 cents more than the next cheapest bread, they would either hold things up while they traded bread, or even give up their place in line if the cashier would not wait for them. The obvious fact of the lengths they would go to over 2 cents is striking, but it also means they so carefully examined the alternatives that they *remembered* exactly how much the alternative bread was. I know not everyone was changed to that extent, but a non-trivial part of the population will be effected, depending largely upon the degree to which they were impacted or *felt* like they were impacted.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
too ...
(emerge is still running)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"I find it remarkable how they expect people to keep buying and buying."
But that's exactly what people do till they are trillions and trillions and trillions in debt.
Companies owe the banks lots of money, it has to be paid back or the thugs come rounds and break some legs.
You have to keep buying. There must be Growth!
Deleted
I still have (and use) my computer that I bought ten years ago. Sure, it might not be powerful enough to run the newest games (although, surprisingly, it can run quite a few games that I would expect that it couldn't), but it works for my needs. In this case, buying another computer just for the sake of buying one is rather pointless.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I don't know about you guys, but I try not to swap new gadgets all the time not just for economical reasons. It's also a hell of a lot less of a strain on the environment if you can use something longer.
.: Max Romantschuk
I'm sending this from a 2004 iBook. First computer I bought was a LCII. Had to throw it out ten years later. It still worked. Bought a Bondi Blue iMac to send to college. Gave it away ten years later, still working, replaced it with a MacBook Pro. Replaced the LCII with a Power Mac G3. Had to discard it ten years later. It still worked. Where it used to sit is an eMac bought for a student. It still works, and I am looking to give it away. It was replaced by a MacBook. Bought an iMac a couple of years ago because the eMac was too slow.
Only hardware problem I ever had was in the G3, which had a loose connection inside. While it was in the shop, I bought a used Mac Plus in a thrift shop for $5. Used it to word process. When the G3 came back, I put the Mac Plus in the garage and used it to write on when all the other computers were occupied.
I have tossed or given away a lot of retail value because they just got overtaken by technology.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I looked up "runaway1956" on IMDB, but only got this. Have you produced anything I might be familiar with, or was it all indie stuff?
The tendency to look down on "indie stuff" solely because it hasn't been reviewed by the mainstream media is characteristic of someone who accepts or even benefits from a divide between those who create works and those who "just consume". It is in the mainstream media's interest to downplay prosumption because it competes with products of entertainment conglomerates that own the mainstream news media.
When hardware is too *old* to run windows effectively any longer, it becomes a LINUX server in my house. While 2gb of memory or less may tax Microsoft applications, a LINUX fileserver (samba) and Openoffice for the kids homework is just fine. Tighter kernel, less bloat. We just got our Son starting College a new laptop, it came with W7. At 1st glance I see no great advantage to this new OS, all the other Windows systems we use are running XP, it it does what we need. W7 may be much better than VISTA, but unless forced I will use what works and causes me the less maintenance (we don't get paid for maintaining home systems now do we :-) ) I am a UNIX Admin and would like to let that sleeping dog just lie....
I had hoped to be able to replace the 3 laptops I bought the Fam in 2007 by now, but given the economy, not possible. Unless it dies completely (overheated cpu/gpu due to insufficient cooling) or another child starts College, I will have to limp along with what I have, and re-purpose from Windows to LINUX to extend hardware usage.
The only exception to this was my cell phone, now I actually have a Droid. Hard to imagine that hardware making technological improvements by leaps and bounds, for me the apps are what make it very useful for now.
We have computers that can, for all intents and purposes, replace the TV and stereo. We have phones that can, in some instances replace a computer. We have cameras that keep getting more megapixels but the noise issue is back-burnered. We have cars that, while styling has changed, haven't really changed. We have TV's that only seem to be able to play "reality" programs and sports. We lock into a game console that hasn't been updated in years. We have kitchen gadgets that sit there as we go out to eat. How much more do we need?
The problem is is that we've overbought and if we take a moment to look at it all, how much of it is important? The answer, my smartphone.
Seriously... 5 years and 3.9 months. People barely get them paid off and then go back to the loan well and buy a new car. Come on people cars are not that disposable 10 - 20 years in the life span of an average car. If you take care of it you can have it for 50 - 75 years no problems. Look at all those 55 Chevys still on the roads today.
Tools are the opposite. My father's jigsaw, which is about 20 years old now, still goes strong in my shop. My old childhood hand tools (going on about 40 years now) are still quite useable in my shop. My first sewing machine, which I bought 15 years ago still works and looks like new. I have a tektronix oscilloscope that is about 20 years old. It is still going strong. I have a friend who has a table saw that is about 50 years old. It is still humming and cutting wood quite well. My electric drill and skill saw are about 15 years old and they look and act like brand new.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I have at least two or three shirts that I made about 15 years ago. They have outlasted much stuff that I bought.
I have talked with someone who has one of the first clear raincoats that I made about 10 years ago. He uses it very heavily and it still looks like new.
I have a home made tote bag that I use *very* heavily (inluding carrying my laptop to and from work on my bike) and it shows no sign of wear.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
I've been living like that long before the "great recession" hit. Some call it voluntary simplicity. Frankly, I have tons of computer hand-me-downs, machines that are 1.0 Ghz+ that were running slow, but the people who gave them to me just went ahead and bought new PCs. Fine, I just upped the ram, put XP or Linux on them and the machines run fine. I still have CRT TVs in my house, the only LCD display that I have is the one that I got used from a friend who sold me his old 17" LCD for peanuts, and a couple of recycled laptops. I don't think I've spent more than a couple of hundred bucks on new electronics for the past 5 years. There's just no point. My car is a 1997 for Taurus Station Wagon with 200,000 km on it. Runs fine. I put maybe 500$/year of maintenance on it. Last repair (last week) was to change the muffler. The only big "new" thing that I bought in the past 10 years was a pop-up camper when the Canadian dollar was on par with the US dollar in 2008 which we pull with an old Jeep Cherokee. The money I've saved over the years doing stuff myself has made it possible for me to pay off my mortgage real fast. I bought my house in 2002. It's already payed off. No debt. Lots of savings. To me -- that's way more important than "Oooh, New! Shiny!".
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/more-on-the-future-implications-ibm-watson-technology/#comment-534
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Only in brick-and-mortar stores. I grew up with those, and avoid them now.
For oversized or heavy products, shipping can become expensive compared to borrowing a family friend's truck. And if a product doesn't live up to its review, or it ends up unusably unergonomic (especially screens, keyboards, and touch screens), you have to pay return shipping, and I've found that online stores are more likely to charge a 15 percent restocking fee for returned merchandise.
The great depression changed the people that lived through it for the rest of their lives. I knew a couple, and their saving and spending habits amazed me. For example that last scoop of potato's left over from dinner were put away for tomorrow, how dare they throw them away. As this depression was not as bad, what percentage of people will keep their thrifty ways, or perhaps what percentage of thriftiness will the population as a whole retain?
the devices and applications have already matured way past the needs of the everyday user. and even gamers. even in gaming, the leading edge of computing devices with its excessive demand for processing power and memory, the point which a normal person would notice any difference is long past. we are getting great realism with great visuals and in high framerates. most cards and games already offer framerates past a person's visual detection ability already. and the ones who are still pushing for more generally seem to be performance enthusiasts. people who aim for 120 fps and on. so, if even in gaming we have reached a saturation point in regard to devices - imagine how it is like for ordinary internet usage, office usage, and casual usage. we just dont need to replace what we have.
Read radical news here
even with many times in the bank that what he has I refuse to buy a "smart phone" or similar. Too me it seems that the name was a give away. Make the owner feel important, pretentious even, and fleece him behind his back because they know he will justify it to himself!!! I deserve it. We have a running joke at my work, the support people drive better (read : more expensive) cars than the programmers and admins. I do not understand the need to pick up a near 800 dollar lease, that damn car's MSRP is near the person's income who drives it.
Its like wandering into Starbucks and seeing all the expensive hardware on display. People are far to convinced that the items they are seen with define them. I will drive my little TDI and smile. Its a flipping car, just like its a flipping phone, laptop, etc. They are meaningless in a world when anyone can go in debt to have them.
Having expensive toys does not make you rich or special.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We truly have no idea what it will take to wow us.
Why should anything wow us? A hammer and a wheel don't generate much of excitement, but they are around for thousands of years. A product must be functional first and exciting last.
With regard to the OS, "less is more." MS is working in the opposite direction because they have to sell more bits to justify the sale price. But in general the OS doesn't matter because the OS doesn't produce any valuable output; it's like a janitor that keeps the office building clean so that highly paid engineers can come and do their work.