Can Newegg Survive the Post-PC Future?

jfruhlinger writes "Upgrading your desktop PC's video card was once a rite of passage for many Slashdot readers — and could also be a gateway to building your own computer from the motherboard up. And more often than not, you bought the components from Newegg. But the tablets and ultrathin laptops that are today's hot sellers don't let you so much as swap in more RAM. What's a component retailer to do in world without user-serviceable components?"

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[Liamecaps]

That's probably why they advertise rice cookers in my inbox every morning. agh

Did the market really shift?

[Georules]

I doubt that those who purchased parts from newegg.com in the past are going to completely shift to ultrathin laptops and tablets. Developers, gamers, hackers who bought parts from newegg in the past are still going to want to make custom systems in the future.

Kids are still interested in this as well. I taught middle schoolers how to build a PC from scratch, and wanted nothing more than to work on their custom machines.

Re:Did the market really shift?

[ShavedOrangutan]

I built my custom PC with parts from Newegg - years ago. It still works perfectly and does everything I need.

There's no reason to upgrade every year or two like there used to be. That's got to hurt their business even more than tablets and netbooks.

Re:Did the market really shift?

[erroneus]

I'm pretty much with you on this point of view. In fact, there might be a SLIGHT drop in volume, but by my guess-timation, NewEgg's future demographic is pretty much the same people who have been with NewEgg all along. Is that "survival"? In my mind it is. But there are still a million MBAs out there who believe that if you're not growing, you're dying. It doesn't make sense to me, but plenty to those who believe growth means everything.

Re:Did the market really shift?

[ShavedOrangutan]

I think you're the minority at this point.

Most computer geeks I know are using years-old hardware because it works just fine. Take a 3 year old system and strip off all the OEM installed garbage and it's lightning fast. On the other hand, most normal users I know are buying brand new PCs that are way over powered and throwing them away when they're too filled with malware to run anymore. And they buy those at Best Buy.

$300 for the latest video card? It's probably not going to boost the frame rate much for Unreal Tournament. My 5 year old NVidia 6thousandwhatever works great. I'll spend my $300 on an Acer Aspire One.

Re:Did the market really shift?

[theArtificial]

Blame the consoles. Since everything nowadays is a port, the consoles have been holding the minimum specs waay down for quite a while. The next generation if and when it arrives should be interesting for the PC world too

True, however you can't blame them for wanting to make money as easily as possible and the returns from the console are apparently better. I remember seeing Deus Ex 2 and how small the areas were... and the general console creep in many level designs. Next generation stuff: Battlefield 3, Rage, Skyrim to name a few.

While these titles do have console ports, Battlefield 3 is developed specifically with a focus on the PC and uses the new Frostbyte 2 engine. Rage features the new Id Tech 5 (although not as quite as impressive as it was shown few years ago). Skyrim uses what they've dubbed the "Creation Engine". All of these titles are superior on the PC.

Re:Did the market really shift?

[MBGMorden]

I'm in the same boat, but sometimes I wonder if it's more of just an age thing. Back when I was in high school/college (ironically, when I had the least amount of disposable income), I had to have faster and faster stuff. It didn't matter if I was only getting another 100Mhz on a CPU upgrade - I had to have it. I also overclocked virtually everything in the box to get as much as I could out of it. I researched thermal pastes and heatsinks and spent weeks picking out a motherboard that had just the right flavor of features I wanted.

Now, I'm on the verge of turning 30. I still play games on the computer, but not as much as I used to, and I've come to a point in my life where there are a lot of other things taking my attention rather than keeping my computer spiffy. I still build from parts, but I typically buy midrange stuff. I typically don't upgrade things for a few years or until I run across a game that won't work on my current system. I pick out whatever cheapo thermal grease is on sale, typically use a "budget" Biostar motherboard, and run pretty much stock everything - I no longer have the patience to troubleshoot overclocking issues.

To put it into perspective - my gaming PC is still sporting a Core 2 Duo CPU 3.2 Ghz, a Geforce GTX 460, only 2GB of ram, and Windows Vista (yep, Vista). Also telling is that since I'm not sitting at that PC, I had to check my order history to be able to specify the video card and CPU I was using. Once upon a time I could have told you the specific stepping of my CPU without checking anything.

That said, there still seems to be a vibrant community of younger guys still doing all that stuff and having fun, and they will provide plenty of revenue for shops like Newegg.

Huh?

[DogDude]

Post-PC? "World with user-serviceable components"? I don't know what world jfruhlinger lives on, but it ain't the same as mine. Desktop PC's will be around for a very long time. It's pretty hard to do any kind of actual work on an i*.

Re:Huh?

[afidel]

The only place I've seen the device ID database is with WiFi cards and that is due to the way the FCC certifies a solution. You must verify that the solution meets emission standards, and has no user replaceable parts that may alter compliance. Obviously if you have an antennae array in the laptop and the user can hook up an arbitrary card you can't certify that to be compliant and so they lock the WiFi cards that will work to a known set of tested cards. It's the same reason mini reverse TNC cables were used for external antennas, prior to WiFi those connectors were not used in any widely available consumer product and so they met the FCC's compliance requirement.

Not post PC for businesses yet

[sandytaru]

I still manage about 500 desktops, and we're constantly ordering parts from NewEgg. While the consumer PC era is being described as ending (not true in my experience), the business workstation is going to be around for a long, long time.

False Premise

[nmb3000]

Hello, I'd like to introduce you to the False Premise.

Besides, people who are replacing their real computer with whatever the current "hot seller" is are not the primary customer of computer component retailers.

Assuming they don't do anything stupid to themselves, NewEgg is going to be just fine.

Can itworld.com survive?

[dreemernj]

Can itworld.com survive an obvious lack of valid topics to talk about?

Re:newegg should be ok

[hawguy]

tables suck ass for content creation

Are you kidding? Tables have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years for content creation, and even ultrathin tablets won't replace them

http://stores.paulsplaceonline.com/Detail.bok?no=389
http://snarkmarket.com/blog/snarkives/books_writing_such/the_codex_climaci_rescriptus/

If anything, a table makes a tablet more useful:

http://www.cnet.co.uk/i/c/blg/cat/laptops/2001tablets1.jpg

Furthermore, tablets have been around for thousands of years, and they still haven't replaced tables:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhmim_wooden_tablets

Re:wasd + mouse

[ArhcAngel]

I said that's why I bought it. I didn't say I was successful. ;)

Applications suppressed by device mfr

[tepples]

But what about when you can get a 15 inch tablet (which is basically a mb and a screen) for say 50 bucks. Would you *bother* to upgrade it?

That depends on whether I'd need to upgrade it in order to become able to run applications that the device's manufacturer has suppressed. Compare modding original Xbox consoles to run XBMC for Xbox (formerly Xbox Media Center).

Yeah, still waiting on that...

[sirwired]

When it comes to computer parts, Amazon's website is a freaking disaster zone. NewEgg's search engine has a few quirks, but it's still way better than Amazon's. And I don't find Amazon's pricing to be significantly cheaper, and their free shipping is WAAAYYY slower.

Interestingly enough, the local "CompUSA" store (formerly TigerDirect Outlet) has prices that are usually within a buck or two of NewEgg, and I can have my part NOW. The place is a poorly-organized dump, but as long as they have the part I need, I'm not that picky.

Re:Holy Wars ... the Punishment Due

[Timothy Brownawell]

Obviously there will always be some demand for high-end PCs. However, it is plausible that at some point in the near future, most people will be using "netbooks" or tablets for their day-to-day computing needs.

Won't those be the same people who currently buy preassembled machines at bestbuy or walmart?

Re:Holy Wars ... the Punishment Due

[bigstrat2003]

Exactly. The people who bought components on Newegg are enthusiasts; they aren't ever going to abandon their custom-built PCs in favor of some tablet. They might own a tablet, it's true, but that will be supplemental to what they already use.

Re:YES

[roc97007]

Tablets don't have to be a fad. But Windows may yet kill the perception of tablets as useful, in the public's eyes, and then we'd be back to only Apple fanbois carrying tablets. Which would be ok, I guess, except for those of us who need an SD card slot. Or a USB port. Or a replaceable battery. Or Flash support. Or a form factor smaller than 10". Sorry, I meant to stop at SD card, but I always get carried away. Parenthetically, do we know if Apple has shown any signs of relaxing any of these restrictions now that Jobs is gone? Just wonderin'.

I'd say that to us geeks, tablets are useful *in addition* to our other devices. I can carry a 7" Android tablet running Logmein Ignition and actually get work done on my home machine, or fix problems on customer's machines. (7" seems to be the optimal size for "always with you", as opposed to the cooler but more likely to be left at home 10" form factor) This is useful enough that I don't consider it a fad, but I am sure as hell not going to trade in my desktop PC just yet. As said elsewhere, tablets (*all* tablets) have barely usable screens and input methods, and laptops aren't a whole lot better. Their only real advantage is portability. For heavy duty work, PCs are still the way to go for a lot of reasons. (By "PC" I mean the hardware platform, irrespective of the OS, speaking as a Win7 user who's probably going to skip Win8, and who owns an OSX machine and finds it useful.)

Re:YES

[TheRaven64]

The problem is that this is largely incompatible with the nicest form factors. I've disassembled every laptop I've owned. I thought the parts in my 386 were crammed together, but my new MacBook Pro is almost a solid lump of hardware internally. You've been able to get more standardised components for a while, but the price you pay for these is that you need more space when everything is modular. With the trend towards smaller machines, the first thing you sacrifice is modularity.

Re:Holy Wars ... the Punishment Due

[icebike]

However, it is plausible that at some point in the near future, most people will be using "netbooks" or tablets for their day-to-day computing needs.

Most people who currently own netbooks and tablets do not use them for their "day-to-day computing needs", so what makes you think they are replacing current laptop/desktop machines?

Exactly.

The demise of the desktop is a long way off. It will probably never arrive.
Anyone who has ever used a tablet pc knows that doing any amount of real work on one is tedious at best, and impossible for the most part. Anything beyond email is a major hassle. Even with docking bays, mice, and keyboards, its a pain.
Corporate is not that interested in putting all its assets into the purse of the airhead intern to walk out the door.

Desktop's will change. But they are not going away, and the touch screen scaled up simply will not fly. People are not going want to fat-finger huge monitors with their whole arm when a simple mouse click will do.