PC Sales Are Flat-Lining

DavidGilbert99 writes "Gartner has released figures showing that PC shipments globally declined 0.1 percent in the last three months, making it the seventh consecutive month of little-to-no growth in the PC market. This was despite the launch a number of new Ultrabooks, the much-vaunted slim-and-light platform promoted by Intel. The decline has been put down to the poor economic situation around the globe, increased spending on tablets and smartphones instead of PCs as well as the imminent launch of Windows 8, making people hold out on updating their PCs."

Comments

Flat-Line

[ColdWetDog]

I don't think that word means what you think it means, Timothy.

(What a shocking thought...)

Re:Flat-Line

[jmorris42]

Nah, he used it in the modern corporate sense. If sales aren't going up, Up, UP every quarter then they might as well be dead. Smaller players will begin to pull out, big players will see their share prices tank, etc. Tech companies are structured on the basis of ever growing sales and profits so the idea of a nice stable market would be death to them and they probably won't have time to restructure.

Longer term, sales will probably go down. For a long time millions and millions of people who had no business buying a PC were buying them because of the Windows monopoly, to get access to basic things like email, word processing and basic web/media consumption. Those users are going to finally go away and stop demanding that the PC be turned into what they wanted all along, a simple device without confusing options, flexibility or programability.

But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah... "flat sales growth" would be the corporate term.

Flat-Line means dead.

PC growth opportunities are going to require a major hardware improvement or architectural change (i.e. HP/Hynix is working on something called "Memsistor" where RAM is replaced with storage that retains state when power is removed-- and costs less to make than Flash).

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.

People who need a PC already have one. What is going to make us wanting to upgrade? A brand new machine is hardly better than a 5 years old one, so why replace them before they break completely?

Re:Flat-Line

[jmorris42]

> A brand new machine is hardly better than a 5 years old one, so why replace them before they break completely?

If that is your attitude you probably are one of those people I was talking about who needed a tablet all along.

A PC built today is actually a lot better than one from five years ago, especially if you spend the same money. But if all you are doing is running Firefox on it you won't see much advantage. Or for that matter, if you are running Office you won't see a difference. But if you are pushing the edge you will. From a developer to a gamer, from 3d modeling to hi-def video editing to even sound mixing, a new machine will still improve productivity. And a new machine for a serious user now would almost certainly be equipped with multiple displays while five years ago that was still fairly uncommon.

Re:Flat-Line

[scot4875]

For a long time millions and millions of people who had no business buying a PC were buying them because of the Windows monopoly

How does this make any sense at all? People were buying PCs because they needed a PC; it had nothing to do with the Windows monopoly, unless you're one of those lusers who thinks that "PC" means "Windows".

Anyway, the writing has been on the wall for a while for the traditional PC industry; for the vast majority of people, their phones or a cheap tablet are all the computing power they'll ever need. My only concern with this is that traditional PC hardware currently enjoy economies of scale that could disappear if everyone moves to locked-down non-upgradeable tablet appliances.

--Jeremy

Re:Flat-Line

[KingMotley]

Nah, flat-line only means dead in the medical industry. Everywhere else flatline means exactly how he used it -- there is neither advancement nor decline.

Re:Flat-Line

[gstoddart]

Longer term, sales will probably go down. For a long time millions and millions of people who had no business buying a PC were buying them because of the Windows monopoly, to get access to basic things like email, word processing and basic web/media consumption.

Well, that's kind of what a PC is for, isn't it? What, exactly, makes that so those people had no business buying a PC? Because they can't field strip it or debug it?

Those users are going to finally go away and stop demanding that the PC be turned into what they wanted all along, a simple device without confusing options, flexibility or programability.

Why should they have to go away, and why isn't that a realistic expectation?

I was talking with my neighbor the other day. From what I can piece together, a Colonel since he mentioned a Major who works for him.

He was asking me why every other device in his house he plugs in, and then it goes. He doesn't have to dick around with the internals or know anything about it. He'd been through a lot of frustration with his Windows laptop, and said every time he tried to connect it to wireless it was a 30 minute job.

I've always thought it should be a perfectly reasonable goal that at some point, computers would need to reach a point of operating like toasters and televisions instead of something which comes in a kit.

Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous. The reality is, pretty much everybody in modern society wants access to email, word processing, and basic web stuff -- and they mostly just want it to do it without a lot of fuss.

There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that these people must be a simpering idiots who should just stay away from technology. Given my neighbor's rank and the other stuff he does, he's far from an idiot, but simply wants to use the damned thing to do some work. He's got more important things to do than worry about the technology.

In the end, I was hard pressed not to suggest a Mac -- because for all of those people who just want it to work and have no time to learn the ins and outs, that's kinda what it does well.

Having gotten tired of fiddling with PCs in my spare time to just make them work, increasingly what I want is something which is as easy to use as my TV.

Re:Flat-Line

[peragrin]

So what you are saying is maybe 10% of users have a use for all that power that modern PC's have and the rest basically need a dumb terminal from 1997 that can run the internet browser of their choice and office application?

Me I go about every 5 years between new machines mainly because i buy laptops and something goes and after 5 years it is better to buy new.

Re:Flat-Line

[jmorris42]

> unless you're one of those lusers who thinks that "PC" means "Windows".

For purposes of this discussion it pretty much does. Consider the other two options, Apple's OS X products are close enough in complexity to Windows to drop their tiny market share into the same bucket and traditional desktop Linux certainly isn't for the 'only needed a tablet' crowd.

People bought Windows PCs because they needed web/mail/Office and it wasn't permitted to sell an appliance because Microsoft wouldn't have allowed it. Thus most people bought a PC with Windows and yuppies with plenty of disposable income sprung for a Mac. But even a Mac was way more complicated and flexible than most people needed.

Re:Flat-Line

[beelsebob]

No, it really does – it means reading a flat signal, not changing. I.e. when a ECG is flat lining, it's recording equal voltage across the heart because it's not being stimulated to beat. It does not mean dead (though with ECGs it can be rapidly followed by death).

Re:Flat-Line

[SpryGuy]

This is why tablet sales are exploding. Most people don't NEED any more than to browse the web or watch a video or read an eBook or play a simple little game.

Beyond iOS and Android devices, new ARM and Intel Windows devices are coming on line. Lots of new hardware and form-factors (spurred by both Android and forth-coming touch-friendly Windows 8) are coming this fall and through next winter. I imagine a lot of people are "holding off" to see what the next generation will provide... far more touch, in far lighter/slimmer form-factors, with full USB3/Thunderbolt support, and probably even more stuff like NFC and the like.

Now just seems like a really bad time to buy new systems.

And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users. Casual users will basically abandon them (and already largely have) for laptops, tablets, and portables.

Re:Flat-Line

[geekoid]

"A PC built today is actually a lot better than one from five years ago, especially if you spend the same money."
not really.
That statement was perfectly true until about 2007.
In fact, to get onto an equivalent place on the curve cast more money now, for a variety of reasons. CPU prices aren't declining likwe they used to, Manufacturing issues over seas.

Anecdote:
4 years ago I bought a cutting edge PC. Top CPU and RAM. 800 dollars. 9I build them myself, natch)
Noew, 1500 min.

Also, I cans till play everything I get on steam, and CPU wise it runs fine. I Do upgrade my video card every 2 years.

caveat:
I don't do SLI, and the vid card is two steps down from the top. 600 for a video card? no thanks.

Re:Flat-Line

[geekoid]

good luck going to any main stream website on a computer and browser from 1997.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

do people watch porn on their tablets? i ask because i don't (own tablet)

the thought being would some one care to use a credit card(identity) tied machine to view porn? or leave messages on slashdot? that if lost/stolen (this happens) or used by a family member; would expose what happens in the dark recesses of the basement :)

Re:Flat-Line

[zlives]

not all tablets are tied to a CC...

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

No... zero growth means zero growth, and flatline or zero means zero.

(PS - nobody in the medical profession says "flatline" either)

Re:Flat-Line

[tripleevenfall]

I've been doing development for and administration of a high end, technical software suite for about 10 years now.

We aren't completely to the point where I can do my entire job on a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard (if needed), but we are getting very close. And, from what I have seen, the remaining issues are not with iOS (etc) or the tablet's capabilities, but with the last several vendors joining the 21st century and supporting it.

I think most everyone will be using tablets for everything a lot sooner than people realize, even things that neckbeards say will never be done on a tablet. (I used to say those things too.)

Re:Flat-Line

[jedidiah]

If your requirements don't change, then your hardware doesn't need to change. It doesn't matter if you are just surfing the web or doing video editing.

A new machine might make batch jobs finish faster. Whether or not that is important is disputable.

Re:Flat-Line

[jedidiah]

A computer is not a toaster. It can't be. It's inherently programmable. That's what it's for. A computer is not an appliance, it's a toolbox.

That's not elitism. That's just the nature of the beast.

Re:Flat-Line

[AK Marc]

Nah... "flat sales growth" would be the corporate term.

Never listen to an AC. The term you were looking for is "plateaued", but you would see "flat-lined" in such situations as well. People may think "dead" but they will not actually take the meaning to be such, they would, in the context of this article, take it to mean a plateau, which is what was intended, so it would be correct.

Re:Flat-Line

[Patch86]

And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users. Casual users will basically abandon them (and already largely have) for laptops, tablets, and portables.

Desktops aren't receding at all. Casual users aren't abandoning them. Didn't you read TFA? (I know, I know).

Sales have stopped growing. They've shrunk by 0.1%, but then we are in the middle of the longest and deepest global economic crash since the Second World War, so don't read too deeply into that. Tablet sales have sky-rocketed, but desktop sales haven't been touched.

PCs have had colossal growth over the last decade- that's partly because there were literally billions of potential users who didn't have one yet. Now that boom has finished, we're into a "steady market" phase- where people already have computers, and only buy replacements as needed. And even that is cooling off, as computers don't improve as drastically year-on-year any more- it used to be that a computer was obsolete 2 years after you bought it, now there are machines from 2007 which are still perfectly useful and usable.

That's going to hurt the forecasts of the Dells and HPs of this world- but it's not a judgement on the desktop/laptop form factor itself. That's here to stay.

Re:Flat-Line

[SQLGuru]

Yeah, even as a more power-user (even at home where I do development), I've pretty much determined that I won't purchase another desktop without a serious need. Laptops are as powerful (my main development machine is a 17" beast) with the benefit of portability. Even media PCs tend to be outdated laptops now that I'm on my second (and third) wave of laptop purchases.....I'm the only one at my house that does much gaming, and my XBox takes a lot of that burden.....with my development laptop taking the rest of it. There are still some people who need the desktop, but it's getting smaller and smaller as they have to be uber-power-users.

Servers, laptops, and tablets have a future. Desktops are nearing the end of the line.

Re:Flat-Line

[gblues]

Nonsense. Flat-lining is plummeting towards 0 sales. The term you're looking for is 'plateau.'

Re:Flat-Line

[AK Marc]

Don't forget, a $500 monitor from today is larger, but with worse resolution, than your 2007 benchmark. The explosion of HDTV has regressed monitor resolution, even as the screens grow. I want to go back in time to when 19" LCDs at 1600x1200 was "standard" and at 21" and larger, you got more.

Re:Flat-Line

[IntlHarvester]

So what you are saying is maybe 10% of users have a use for all that power that modern PC's have and the rest basically need a dumb terminal that can run the internet browser of their choice and office application?

I'd bet a lot of people here can remember when a "workstation" was completely loaded with custom hardware, specialized CPUs, highly customized OS, and could cost more than a Mercedes Benz. Then those users figured out they could free-load off the R&D going into the gazillions of mundane Office/Browser PC, and a modern workstation is probably about 90% similar to the cheapest box you can buy.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the legs under the stool get kicked-out. My guess is that "workstation" type computing will get much more expensive (at least in the relative sense).

Re:Flat-Line

[gstoddart]

Sorry, but a computer is a tool. Most of the people who have used them for the last few decades treat it as such.

That's not elitism. That's just the nature of the beast.

Then it's time to change the beast, and have us in IT stop acting like pompous asses about the fact that "das blinkenlights are nicht for defingerpoken".

Apple has been trying to do this at least.

Re:Flat-Line

[jo_ham]

A computer is not a toaster. It can't be. It's inherently programmable. That's what it's for. A computer is not an appliance, it's a toolbox.

That's not elitism. That's just the nature of the beast.

It doesn't have to be though, just because it can be.

There are many different types of cars that are good at different tasks, so why can't there be many different computers for the same sort of purpose?

Why not a computer that works like an appliance? If John Doe wants to talk to his kids on skype or surf the web why should he have to worry about more than simply pressing the "on" button?

Slashdot nerds seem to think that anyone who suggests such a thing must believe that *all* computers must be that way, though. That's obviously absurd, yet we hear the same arguments in thread after thread about it. "PCs are inherently complex, there's no way to change that".

Re:Flat-Line

[Hatta]

But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.

But we'll lose the economies of scale that have made PCs so cheap. That, and people who "need" a powerful PC are largely professionals, so they will buy expensive business class computers. This will, for lack of a better term, digitally disenfranchise a large fraction of computer users, and make locked down corporate controlled media delivery they only real use case for computers in the future.

Re:Flat-Line

[lgw]

IPS monitors are the new $500 monitors in the 20-24" range. They're quite nice, actually, I'd say as good as the old high-end CRTs, without the power, space, and weight (though they still take more of all of those than normal TFT monitors).

OLED will be a step above anything we had before, but currently those monitors are priced out of reach for anything but medical imaging, where they are getting competitive in the $3000 range.

Re:Flat-Line

[Yaa 101]

But depending on if PC's can be built with electronics from pads and mobiles, prices may rise again to XT and AT prices from the mid 80's.
These machines did not come cheap.

I hope that more projects like rapsberry pi will enable us serious PC users to continue while keeping cost at acceptable levels.

Re:Flat-Line

[Hatta]

Me I go about every 5 years between new machines mainly because i buy laptops

I'm hanging on to my laptop from 2006, and will do so for the forseeable future. You can't buy UXGA(1600x1200) laptops anymore, and WUXGA laptops are grossly overpriced, if you can even find one that's less than 17".

CPU and RAM have advanced to the state that it really doesn't matter what you get. The only component that actually matters is the display, and we have worse displays now than we did 6 years ago.

Re:Flat-Line

[MrHanky]

Bullshit. No one needs a tablet. It comes without a keyboard and can only be used for buying more stuff -- hence its popularity in the Old Media. No one who uses a PC for traditional PC stuff like typing documents or email would be better served by a tablet. Very few people currently buy tablets instead of PCs -- they buy them in addition, because they're already online practically 24/7, and need something more suitable for the couch. And still, despite everyone already owning a PC -- more people are buying PCs than are buying tablets, even though few people have tablets, and fewer yet need them.

Oh and by the way -- a five years old midrange PC is vastly more powerful than any current ARM tablet.

Re:Flat-Line

[Tridus]

That's not how it's used. Flatlining in corporate speak is a flat line. Sales aren't growing.

What you're thinking of is a death spiral.

Re:Flat-Line

[Tridus]

Most people don't do those things, which means that a 5 year old PC is pretty much the same as a modern one. Chrome loading in 0.2 seconds instead of 0.4 is not a significant improvement.

Now that'll change in October. Then a 5 year old PC will be better then a modern one, since the old one won't have that Windows 8 plague infecting it.

Re:Flat-Line

[Sardak]

I would disagree (to an extent). In ages past, I used to upgrade my computer at least once a year, if not more frequently. I've been a software developer and gamer for a very long time, and tend to try to stay on top of things.

That said, my last major upgrade for my main system was about 3 and a half years ago. I can still play just about any game that comes out on the highest settings with no issue. When I end up using a newer system with a "faster" CPU and more RAM, I would be hard pressed to discern a significant performance difference from my 3.5 year old machine.

The only notable difference is I have a (now "out of date") gaming video card, but for non-gaming related tasks, my computer is just as quick to perform anything the newer hardware does. I'm not going to drop another $1500 for such an intangible increase in speed.

Re:Flat-Line

[ChatHuant]

For purposes of this discussion it pretty much does. Consider the other two options, Apple's OS X products are close enough in complexity to Windows to drop their tiny market share into the same bucket and traditional desktop Linux certainly isn't for the 'only needed a tablet' crowd

You're still not making sense. People bought PCs because they needed the services a PC provided - mail, browsing, development, games, business and so on. Nowadays a lot of those services are available via other platforms - smartphones for mail and web browsing, smartphones and consoles for gaming, clouds for business, so, obviously the global sales of PCs will grow less or even stop growing. That has very little to do with the OS, and nothing to do with Microsoft. The fact that you felt compelled to inject Microsoft in the discussion shows a problem with you: either you're trolling or else your reasoning capacities are completely warped.

Re:Flat-Line

[serviscope_minor]

Why not a computer that works like an appliance? If John Doe wants to talk to his kids on skype or surf the web why should he have to worry about more than simply pressing the "on" button?

er... you know that's already happend, right?

Every single appliance you own is a computer that acts like an appliance. They all have embedded CPUs in them of some sort or another. And each of them can do only one thing.

That's why people want computers which aren't appliances. They like being able to do more than one thing on them.

Imaging if you had your document writing appliance. And a web-surfing appliance. And an email appliance. And a voice only phone. And a text only phone. And a video phone (or skype appliance). Oh and a photograph manipulation appliance. Oh whoops and a spreadsheet appliance. I forgot about that one. Better have a presentation appliance too.

At some point or another you've been able to get many of them. Many of those have not remained popular.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. What a single track mind you must have. The Windows monopoly? What difference did that make in who bought what and when?

Re:Flat-Line

[roc97007]

I'm not sure I agree. I do mostly video and photography work, and invested in a relatively high end system about five years ago (quad core proc lots of memory and a reasonably high end video card) and I don't see any reason to upgrade. My tools haven't changed much, (except for improved noise reduction, which I use a lot, and some rather esoteric tools I use rarely) and the work I do hasn't changed much, so the current machine meets my needs. I had a big (20 inch) glass tube from 2002 until this year precisely because the colors were more accurate than most of the flat screens available during those years. I had to go to a flat screen recently when the glass monitor died, and finding a color-accurate screen with the same vertical resolution (hint: 1080P is not the right answer) was not easy.

...and when I say "invested in a system 5 years ago" the "system" was purchased as components, built up in a case I bought around the turn of the century. Because I'm more interested in whether the computer can do the job than what it looks like.

To be clear, I am *not* one of those who just use a browser -- I do real work that needs significant resources. And even then, systems on sale today commonly have more resources than I need. I stipulate that the PC industry has progressed way beyond what most users need, and are trying to drive sales as "this is so much better than you have", which doesn't work for people who aren't shopaholics and already own something that's good enough. (Gamers are a different issue -- and even there I wonder if computer technology hasn't outrun what most games really need.)

In a roaring economy, the bar of when to upgrade gets lowered because people have more income to spend. Now? Forget it.

I've never understood the people who jump on a new platform just because it's better than what they have. I think that's the wrong metric. Rather, is what you have good enough for the kind of work you are doing? If yes, keep it and use the money for things to run *on* the computer.

I see similar things in photography. I have a friend who trades in his camera every time a new model comes out to "keep up with technology". I bought a high end professional camera several years ago, learned it thoroughly, and I'm still getting acceptable results from it today. My money goes into lenses and other accessories (as I need them) and software, as appropriate. Because it's not what you have, it's what you do with it.

Re:Flat-Line

[PerfectionLost]

Display and disk. Over the next couple years large solid state disks for home computers will become increasingly more affordable.

Re:Flat-Line

[Spad]

You know what a tablet with a keyboard used to be called? A Laptop. Sure it's all touchy-feely, but that's not exactly difficult to add to a laptop, there just wasn'hasn't been the demand for it. Let's be honest, the Surface is pretty much a laptop as it is, just with a furry keyboard.

Once you take a tablet and add a keyboard and maybe a mouse for fiddly things and a charger because you're going to be using it for hours at a time there isn't any good reason not to just buy a laptop and have a proper computer instead.

Re:Flat-Line

[jez9999]

He'd been through a lot of frustration with his Windows laptop, and said every time he tried to connect it to wireless it was a 30 minute job.

Then either he isn't as intelligent as you make out, or there is something wrong with his hardware.

Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous.

And I think that's a ridiculous characterization of techies' view of PCs. We want PCs to remain general-purpose computing devices which are programmable and open, yes. As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't fulfil those criteria, it isn't a PC. But do we want it to be arbitrarily "magical"? Erm, no. At least not most of us.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

I have a computer from 1997 that runs a browser from last week just fine, thank you.

Re:Flat-Line

[NoahsMyBro]

A simple example why the computer *can't* be as simple as the other devices:

Telephone - you buy a phone, plug it in to the jack in the wall. It just works.
*BUT* it isn't necessary to program your phone # into the phone to identify yourself, or enter a password to authenticate yourself.

E-Mail - You *must* enter your email address in to the computer so that it knows what e-mail to retrieve and display. You also must authenticate yourself, so you must enter a password. Exchange servers coupled with Outlook clients support autodiscover, eliminating the need for a user to configure server settings; I don't know if that is an Exchange thing or more widespread. If it is exclusive to Exchange than the server settings must also be configured before the email client will work properly.

Unless some single, monolithic & centralized email system ever comes into being I don't see how an email-device could ever be as simple as a toaster or wired telephone.

That right there is a reason why a computer simply can't be as simple as the other devices.

Fundamentally, any 'thing' that is multi-purpose will be more complicated than a single-task 'thing' for the simple reason that the user must somehow express what specifically the device should do.

Re:Flat-Line

[serviscope_minor]

I think most everyone will be using tablets for everything a lot sooner than people realize, even things that neckbeards say will never be done on a tablet. (I used to say those things too.)

In principle, you can do anything on a tablet. They have more grunt and more pixels than even top end workstations from 15 years ago. Stick a keyboard on them and you're good to go...

or not.

Yes you could do anything on them, and yes some people will certainly try. But tablets will always be low power, small screen devices so some tasks will always be better on more capable machines.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

The complaint wasn't refresh rate or color reproduction, it was resolution. It's damn hard to find anything over 1920x1200 in any size LCD.

Re:Flat-Line

[BenJeremy]

Don't forget, a $500 monitor from today is larger, but with worse resolution, than your 2007 benchmark. The explosion of HDTV has regressed monitor resolution, even as the screens grow. I want to go back in time to when 19" LCDs at 1600x1200 was "standard" and at 21" and larger, you got more.

A 1920x1080 monitor (HDTV) has more pixels than a 1600x1200.

Beyond that, we ARE seeing 2560x1440 in the widescreen form factor and larger, even - you just have to be willing to spend more than the $100~200 "sweet spot" price for monitors to get that additional resolution.

As for form-factor, it seems some people just can't stop hating on any computer monitor that matches up to HDTV's 16:9 display ratio. Why is this? I have no problem with convergence... it greatly reduces manufacturing costs, resulting in lower consumer prices for quality monitors. Don't knock the ability to buy additional monitors for your setup, and spend less than what a single good 1600x1200 21" monitor cost.

CRTs vs LCDs also have changed the space available on our work surfaces, too.... as well as greatly reduced eyestrain.

So... could you buy a 2560x1440 30" monitor for $500 in 2007? I can get it for less than $400 today. I don't recall being able to buy anything with 2 megapixels for less than $500 in 2007. /Just don't understand all the misinformation people are willing to spread in their hate on 1080p consumer monitors.

Re:Flat-Line

[Snaller]

He used it to describe a line which was not flat, so everybody uses it incorrectly it seems.

Re:Flat-Line

[jez9999]

And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users.

Well, if "business, developers, gamers, and power-users" counts as a niche now then I guess there will be a few businesses making quite a lot of money out of those "niches". That's probably a few hundred million people right there. By the way, you forgot image/video/sound editing and processing.

Re:Flat-Line

[Penguinisto]

Exact same story here.

I pushed my old-but-usable gaming rig and ancient-but-serviceable PowerMac into the closet a year ago, replacing them with a small shoebox desktop PC running Ubuntu... which I use as a home server/NAS/web box. It happens to hold laptop backup images and family photos, with occasional bittorrent-grabbing. It also charges my wife's iPod once in awhile.

My missus has a laptop, but she only uses Firefox, iTunes and Irfanview (basic photo thingy) on it - nothing else of note. Her usage patterns are typical for most of my neighbors.

My laptop is a bit of a fire-breather, but mostly so I can grind on CG modeling and artwork, type up my little book projects, and play the occasional game or two. I went to a laptop because I travel a lot, and I like bringing my tools and toys with me as I go. (Besides, I already typed the "A" clean off the key, and the "S" and "E" key decals are rapidly starting to dwindle.)

In my missus' case, I can get her an iPad tomorrow and she'd be set for life. In my case, I figure on replacing my laptop in about 6-12 months or so, but this time upgrading from a semi-shitty* 15" Samsung RC512 to a new 15" MBP.

Long story short - there's still a place for the desktop, though it'll be more relegated to a server role. In my case, I'll be using laptops for a long time (it's mobile, yet with a powerful CPU, real keyboard, and lots of screen real estate). My missus? A tablet would easily keep her happy from this point on.

*I say "semi-shitty" because the laptop has of late kicked the CPU thermals and shut down while rendering particularly complex scenes. That and the original 750GB HDD blew up six months ago; I replaced it with a 1TB disk.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 4 year old computer I bought from ebay for $600 used. Intel E6850.
It's amazing, and there is no reason to replace it.
I can play all the latest games perfectly.

Re:Flat-Line

[Penguinisto]

I'll take that challenge: Lynx + RedHat 5.0.

It wont be gorgeous, but I could damned sure get there. :p

Re:Flat-Line

[jez9999]

There are still some people who need the desktop, but it's getting smaller and smaller as they have to be uber-power-users.

Or people who want a decent keyboard, mouse, speakers, and screen. Oh, you plug all those things in? Well then I think you have to ask yourself whether you're using a "laptop" or a smaller form factor PC.

Re:Flat-Line

[drodal]

Sorry but this is silly. Comparing a computer to a fridge just is wrong.

Lets try more obvious examples......

Why isn't a computer more like a table saw..... I turn on a table saw and all my wood gets cut! (fingers too if trying to use a table saw the most "users" use computers).

Why isn't a computer more like an automobile, I don't need to get a license to use it. and cars, well you just turn em on and nobody dies of drunk driving accidents.....

Why isn't a computer more like an Oxy-Acetylene Welding torch...
just turn on the valve and wellll I'm getting dizy and tired......

Why isn't a computer more like skydiving... well

Yes computers can and will a lot more auto configuring..... but lets not forget you don't just plug in 'anything' and it works....

Except a fridge..... I plugin  my fridge and keep my pets in there, they auto configure............

Any thing can be bad when used wrong...

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I was once again reminded of the scene from Blade Runner on the roof in the rain, "time to die" : www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOW4QiOD-oc

but as you mentioned, it was not the medical term we are used to but used to indicate the lack of growth and possible decline.

I think it is also a sign that the medical usage applies since most PC companies only survive off of growth in the sector and that includes Microsoft. Start watching the layoffs begin this holiday season.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying the same thing about my videocard. I've got a Radeon HD4770 (Which AMD just dropped in the Catalyst 12.6 release. All R600/700 core parts.) I got it for I believe 129.99 at fry's when they were out of stock online (everywhere, for like a month.) Fast forward 3ish years and unless I buy used or find somewhere that's got last gen cards on clearance I can't find anything below ~150 bucks that tops it. And if you add in 'has competitive double-precision floating point' then you're looking at 250+. (Minding the fact that it's barely an OpenCL 1.0 card, so almost nothing being written nowadays would run on it unmodified, and you can't share scenegraph data between OpenCL/GL).

Point though is: You're getting less value out of the majority of modern hardware than you were a few years ago. You MIGHT be saving some power given process drops, but the performance envelope at anywhere below the 'high end' hasn't actually increased much in the past 4ish years (GDDR5 and DDR3 have been around about that long and neither has seen a dramatic speed jump like happened between SDR -> DDR1 -> DDR2 -> DDR3 or GDDR2->3->5). Stuff has gotten slightly faster, but not at the impulse buy level of the past.

Re:Flat-Line

[jedidiah]

The beast can adapt.

All your whining won't change that. Dishonest analogies won't either.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of flat line is not just the corporate sense, but also math. A flat line is one in which slope is zero, i.e. zero growth. The idea is a horizontal line.

Medicine uses flat-line for dead, which mathematicians would call a line that has (negative) infinite slope. (Assuming you are plotting sales on one axis and time on the other). That would be a vertical line, which even if linear, is not considered flat.

Re:Flat-Line

[jedidiah]

> But we'll lose the economies of scale that have made PCs so cheap.

Nonsense. With one notable exception, all of computer makers that choose not to follow Microsoft created affordable devices far soon than the PC cabal did. It took an extra 10 or 15 years for PCs to get as affordable as the other home computer platforms.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand people who jump in a new platform because its new, today. OSes and machines have matured...theres nothing all that new and amazing. Most of us have been doing this a long time. 20-25 years ago the new platforms usually did have enough shiny new features and capability that we wanted it because the last new machine was so cool, just think of the new stuff I can do with new machine.

Capability has far outpaced needs.

PCs aren't dying. Sales are stalled because the economy sucks and for the average person's needs, there is no compelling reason to upgrade. This is a problem for manufacturers, its a win for the user. Its awesome that the technology has advanced to the point that reasonably cheap boxes can do what most people need.

Re:Flat-Line

[TheRaven64]

A computer is not a toaster. It can't be

Clearly you never used a first-generation Athlon.

Re:Flat-Line

[Svartalf]

They're currently structured on that premise- about like every other publicly traded company. It's so they can keep their shareseller price inflated. If they were structured like publicly traded companies of years past, they'd be more interested in long-term sustainable business (which would be still doing **GOOD** right now...amazingly so...) and worrying about increasing dividends and a slower paced growth of the share value so people would be share holders instead of share sellers (A shareholder is intending on holding onto their shares for an extended length of time as a proper invesment that gains decently over time- along with paying out with dividends over time... A shareseller is intending on holding the shares only long enough to find a bigger bagholder for them to fob the shares off onto before the thing implodes on them...).

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, "acting like pompous asses" these days can simply be interpreted as "knowing something somebody else doesn't know". We have a society where people are PROUD of their ignorance and lack of education. Politicians run on it. People eat it up, and we all get a little dumber day by day.

But have it your way. A computer is a tool. Unfortunately, nobody knows the first damned thing about tool safety with computers, and constantly do things that are the equivalent of running around a room full of obstacles with an operating power saw in your hand.

Sorry, but some of this stuff is actually hard for a reason. It takes educated and trained professionals to do certain things right. Not all things. Maybe not even most things your average user does in a given day. So let them have their i-devices and their walled gardens, because that is what Apple has been really trying to do. Appealing to the uneducated masses sells product. That is an unfortunate fact of life.

I've just about had it with the "everything should be so easy to do that an uneducated twerp can figure out how to do it with no instruction" crowd. Now they have toys available that they can do some of their most important tasks with, like becoming mayor of whatever. I don't really care until their behavior starts affecting me, which unfortunately it does. I just wish ignorance was painful.

Re:Flat-Line

[bughunter]

If you take the 1st derivative of sales wrt time, then you get the flat line that you're looking for.

It's a clear sign that the product has fully matured. The vast majority of sales are upgrades and replacements, and first units for young'uns.

Just like with autos.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

And let anyone who wants to drive a crane and wrecking ball around town just hop in and do so? You see, some tools are better left not dumbed down.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

There are many different types of cars that are good at different tasks, so why can't there be many different computers for the same sort of purpose?

• Windows PC
• Linux PC
• OSX PC (Mac, for those still in denial)
• Smartphone
• PDA
• Tablet
• eReader
• MP3 Player
• Smart TV
• Game Console

The list goes on, but you get the point. Leave my PC the fuck alone, if you want an email box, you should have bought one of the ones that was on the market between 1998 and 2002. They went away because nobody bought them, because nobody wanted them. Now, people want them, but rather than demanding they be brought back, they want to dumb down the PC to that level? No, thank you.

Re:Flat-Line

[stefancaunter]

Lynx will also compile on DOS.

Re:Flat-Line

[ddtstudio]

I kind of take exception to a phrase and assumption used here: "pushing the edge" (if I will).

What makes you assume that someone doing work -- writing, editing, painting, thinking, developing, accounting, philosophizing -- can't "push the edge" on even outdated computer equipment? Sure, if you're are doing specific work that requires a lot of computing horsepower, you can be more efficient on a newer computer. You can also churn out more unimaginative, derivative crap.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but I'd like to point out that the quality of most (probably 99%+) thinking is not dependent upon, and does not require, faster and more configurable and more fun-for-you-to-build computers with multiple monitors. Again: _you_ may be more productive that way, and feel more deep thinkin' coming on when you have a hardware stiffy, but please do not look discount others who can kick all of our asses in thought with even a paper and pen (logicians, creatives, and too many examples to count).

(Just want to make clear the tone of this isn't an angry "you insensitive clod!" -- just want people to think about how tools do not make the quality of thought, but are, you know, TOOLS.)

Re:Flat-Line

[shutdown -p now]

Once you take a tablet and add a keyboard and maybe a mouse for fiddly things and a charger because you're going to be using it for hours at a time there isn't any good reason not to just buy a laptop and have a proper computer instead.

There is such a reason. Sometimes I prefer to have a tablet, so that I can conveniently surf or read or watch something on the couch or in a plane. And for a tablet, I want a device that has UI working well with touch input. But, ideally, it should also be the same device as my "work machine" (i.e. the one with keyboard and moue and charger).

Which, of course, is precisely what Asus first did with Transformer, and several other companies have now picked up for Win8 as it's designed for such use from the get go.

And no, it's not the same as Tablet PCs of yore. Those failed because they were 1) much more expensive, 2) still bulky/heavy (compared to iPad & the likes), and 3) sucked when used as tablets, i.e. primarily with touch input. Not because there wasn't demand for them. Or you could say that there wasn't demand for the combination of features for the price they were offered at.

Re:Flat-Line

[Oligonicella]

Can anyone who can type in the English language form a coherent analogy? No. Your analogy is ridiculous and you probably knew that as you typed it.

I was in IT my entire career. The computer I'm typing on now I purchased for home use - gaming and writing.

I plugged it, it found the wireless and connected and it was off and running with almost no crap needed by me. Would have worked the same way for my daughter who doesn't have any IT.

Explain in coherent terms why this is a bad thing.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

You simply missed the point and I'm not going to get in a pissing match with you trying to explain it. Someone else will come along and do so, I'm sure.

Re:Flat-Line

[Mike Buddha]

So what you are saying is maybe 10% of users have a use for all that power that modern PC's have and the rest basically need a dumb terminal from 1997 that can run the internet browser of their choice and office application?

Nah, it's fewer than that. 10% of users think they have a use for all that power. Most of that 10% don't need anywhere near that, or have to make up uses for it (mining bitcoins, running SETI blocks, folding @home, amateurish 3d rendering, etc).

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate that the vertical resolution has shrunk. I don't want more width, I want more height.

Re:Flat-Line

[Mike Buddha]

I think the old tablets failed mostly because of their bulk, because of their battery life, and because the OS they were running wasn't designed with pen or touch interface in mind. All three of these things are mitigated in the Surface.

Re:Flat-Line

[Solandri]

A 1920x1080 monitor (HDTV) has more pixels than a 1600x1200.

As for form-factor, it seems some people just can't stop hating on any computer monitor that matches up to HDTV's 16:9 display ratio. Why is this? I have no problem with convergence... it greatly reduces manufacturing costs, resulting in lower consumer prices for quality monitors.

Reducing manufacturing costs. Right. Because there are soooo many 15" and 22" 16:9 HDTVs being made and sold.

HDTVs are 16:9 (1.78:1) because it better fits the widescreen format of most movies which are 1.85:1 up to 2.35:1. That makes them good for watching movies.

16:9 sucks on PCs because of the way user interfaces have developed. Take a close look at the web browser you're using right now. Excluding the 5 pixel borders, from top to bottom we have:
the browser's title bar
the menu bar
the navigation bar
most people have a bookmark and add-on bar(s)
the tabs bar
then the webpage contents
a status bar
Windows' task bar at the very bottom.

Meanwhile going left to right we have:
the webpage contents
the scroll bar

PCs need more vertical space to better match the way user interfaces have developed. Instead, manufacturers have been doing the opposite and whittling away at vertical resolution to give us more horizontal resolution. 16:9 is the culmination of this backwards trend, giving us more width while keeping the height at the same amounts which were standard 10-15 years ago (1366x768 vs 1024x768, 1280x1024 vs 1920x1080).

That's why 16:9 sucks on PCs. I've resorted to installing the tree style tabs extension to move my tabs to the side, to free up more vertical space. And before Mozilla did it by default in more recent versions, I reconfigured Firefox's UI to combine the navigation, URL, and bookmark bars into a single bar. (Interestingly, they eliminated your ability to do this on later FF 3.x versions, but my config carried over when I upgraded.) In Lightroom, I have the top and bottom tool boxes set to auto-close, while the left and right remain open. All to free up more vertical space so I can see a bigger version of the photos I'm working on.

1920x1080 may be more pixels than 1600x1200, but they're not useful pixels on a PC. Vertical pixels are simply worth more than horizontal pixels. Manufacturers like 16:9 because it fits better with the aspect ratio of the keyboard + trackpad, so is easier to put into a laptop's clamshell design. About the only benefit of 16:9 on a PC is that you can open two apps/pages side by side. And even there I insist on buying a 16:10 1920x1200 monitor.

Re:Flat-Line

[knorthern knight]

> We aren't completely to the point where I can do my entire
> job on a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard (if needed)

Congratulations. You've just re-invented the wheel; or in this case a small-screen desktop. I'll keep my desktop and my netbook/laptop, thank you. BTW, what can a 10" iPad do that a 10" or 11" netbook can't do for a much lower price? http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=710_28 And exactly how much free open source software can you load up on your iPad without rooting it?

Re:Flat-Line

[roc97007]

Agreed. What I'd like to see is better integration (Have you ever tried to base an entertainment center around Windows Media Center? Or get DLNA to work in some reasonable fashion? Or try to integrate a half dozen media sources into a single box?) and quieter, smaller boxes. And I don't mean paying a premium for quieter and smaller -- I want the manufacturers to stop with "bigger and better" for a year or two and work on "smaller, cheaper, quieter, and not better, but not worse". It shouldn't be hard to do. And who knows, sales might pick up.

Re:Flat-Line

[jo_ham]

Ok, three major strawman arguments in your post.

Firstly, no one is saying that all PCs should be dumbed down. That is the Chicken Little argument I referred to before on slashdot that the "elite" come up with as an excuse to bash less technically literate people or products that they see as a threat to their nerd cred or whatever it is that has them up in such a flap about it.

The second is the "Mac for those in denial" comment. It's an obvious troll, but the product line has a specific name. What you're saying is "There's the Chevy car, the Ford car (Mustang, for those still in denial)..." Apple makes Macs. They happen to have much in common with PCs, but they do have some subtle differences - mainly in the EFI/boot department and in the firmware on the GPU - that do set them apart.

Although, I guess if you want to troll and lump all computers together because you can't differentiate them, or you somehow think that it's "denial" to consider a Mac to be anything other than a PC, then fair enough. Do you think PCs are inferior to Macs then? Given how you seem to want to categorise them. At some point you must have considered the Mac to be superior, given that users are now apparently "in denial" about them being PCs now?

The third is that just because people want an easy to use computer means they should have bought "an email box" from "1998-1992". This is clearly not what people want, hence the market for such devices going away. What people want is a device that browses the web, can do email, facebook, light gaming, messaging and skype etc and that does this without all of the downsides (malware, big software updates, anti virus software suites, etc).

This doesn't mean that they don't want you to have a PC that is as complex and annoying to maintain as humanly possible. The two situations are not mutually exclusive positions.

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

Honestly i don't think very many people will give up their PCs at all, here at the shop those with tablets or smartphones also have laptops or desktops.

No instead what is happening is something we guys in the trenches have been saying for years, and that is computers went past good enough and into insanely overpowered for the average user when multicores became cheap. I mean take my dad for an example, he is probably the perfect use case for the "average PC user" in that he emails, watches videos, uses chat, burns discs, just your bog standard basic stuff. Now a couple of years back when tiger was having one of their "ZOMG $199 quad!" kits I picked him up one. Now this is a 2.1Ghz Phenom I, 4Gb of RAM and a 500Gb HDD, that is about the slowest quad made, know what I found? He has yet to hit above 45% CPU usage! He simply can't come up with enough work to slam even that bottom of the line quad. hell my boys and I are gamers and we are playing on a couple of 2 year old Hexacores and a 3 year old quad and again, just can't slam that many cores for any length of time.

So it isn't that PCs are going away, if anything everyone and their cat and their cat's squeaky toy has one, its simply that everyone has multicores and they don't need to replace every 3 years like during the MHz wars. you'll see the same thing happen to ARM soon enough, there is already talk of "dark silicon" where ARM will have more transistors than power to run them, then we'll see the same thing happen there. hell i have plenty of business customers that are happy with their first gen core duos and Phenom I triples and quads, are they broke? Nope they simply aren't stressing those chips and see no point in buying even more insanely overpowered machines when they aren't using all the cycles they have. Heck I even sold my dual core full size laptop for an E350 netbook, and that is about the weakest dual core you can get above an Atom, because i found when i was mobile even i couldn't come up with enough cycles to stress the E350 out. We just don't need more chips right now, not when the ones we have run well. The machines will get changed out when they break, no different than washers and dryers.

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

But frankly friend even the bottom o' the line stuff is insanely overpowered. I mean you can get hexa kits for like $335 at tiger, fully loaded prebuilt i3s and i5s for less than $650, its just insane how much power you get nowadays for little money. hell just the other day they were selling AMD quad laptops with dual graphics for less than $450!

Its simply not like during the MHz wars where a 3 year old PC would struggle to do basic tasks, most of the PCs I was building 5 years ago were Phenom I triples and quads. I'm sorry but a triple or quad core PC can do every thing you listed just fine, in fact i have an engineer friend running solidworks on a Phenom i triple with no trouble at all.

So yeah, maybe if you are trying to make the next Gears Of War at home you'd need the bleeding edge, but then again if you were trying to do that you'd be running some workstation into a render farm. On the consumer side the boxes i've been selling for the last 5 plus years can convert DVDs, transcode, hell I'm working on multitrack audio mixing on my bottom o' the line AMD hexa now and I have cycles to spare. There just hasn't been a "killer app" that will force people to upgrade in quite awhile, and most of us aren't willing to spend $1000+ to go more bleeding edge just so we can get our videos converted 7 minutes quicker.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

Firstly, no one is saying that all PCs should be dumbed down.

The post I was responding to, as well as its grandparent, were both strongly implying just that. Whether or not that is what you meant to imply, that is precisely how it came across.

Apple makes Macs. They happen to have much in common with PCs, but they do have some subtle differences - mainly in the EFI/boot department and in the firmware on the GPU - that do set them apart.

There are PCs with EFI, and there are more of them coming to market as time goes on, so that's not really something that sets a Mac apart. As for the GPU firmware difference, again, no; you can pull a graphics card from a Mac and use it in a PC, no problem; and if it's a supported card, you can use the PC version in a Mac, just the same. The difference is in the drivers; software, not hardeware. A Mac is a PC with an Apple-blessed TPM chip that OSX looks for before it will boot, nothing more, nothing less.

You can call me a troll all day long, but read some of my other posts. Why would I be trolling? I'm coming out in support of Apple, overall. Were I not, I wouldn't be voicing my dissent over many of their recent decisions; rather, I would simply be bashing them like everyone else.

You, on the other hand, are responding rather trollishly. I never thought Macs were superior, nor do I think PCs are superior; they're tools, they perform tasks, some perform some tasks better than others, and they all have their place. PPC Macs were not simple PCs, Intel Macs are; ergo, Macs are now PCs. Get over it and get on with your life.

The third is that just because people want an easy to use computer means they should have bought "an email box" from "1998-1992".

People were clamoring for the devices back then, and when they were released, nobody bought them. You missed the boat, though, and my point. My point is that there already exist many classes of device that fill the needs of people who don't need the full power of a PC. There may still be a class of people who have needs exceeding what these devices are capable of, but who also don't require the full power and capability of a PC, nor want that; for them, we need to create a new class of devices, rather than dumbing down PCs.

Since you seem to think Macs are so different from PCs, and Apple seems to be heading that direction, anyway, maybe the Mac will fill that void? Pity, I quite like Snow Leopard (such that I use it 40+hr/wk, though it hasn't been a mandatory platform at my job for over a year). I also quite enjoy the PowerMac G3 and PowerBook G4 I have, running Leopard. But yes, I'm a troll.

This doesn't mean that they don't want you to have a PC that is as complex and annoying to maintain as humanly possible. The two situations are not mutually exclusive positions.

If you're talking about dumbing down the PC in any way, that's precisely what you're talking about. Further, I "maintain" a current Linux distro, a Windows 7 VM, and a Snow Leopard VM on this laptop, along with the abovementioned Mac systems, my wife's MacBook Pro, 2 Android phones, and a Win7 PC; I think I spend a grand total of 5 minutes actively maintaining all of these systems in a month. The average iPad user (my wife fits that profile) spends longer than that looking for their charging cable.

I didn't say you can't have your reduced functionality, "easier" to maintain and use devices, I just said you need to not try to make my PC one of them. If you really want to know why I feel that way, think about where the apps for your other devices come from.

Re:Flat-Line

[SQLGuru]

Docking station with everything already attached. Dock for the "desktop" experience and undock for the portability. I never said I didn't like th experience....just that I won't buy another true desktop without a serious need.

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

You can also use Kmeleon on win95 or Win98 and have a full graphical browser. mind you it does take awhile to render, i tried it myself with an old 400MHz win95 box i found at the bottom of a pile of donations and fired up for shits and giggles but it did actually load the Google News page.

But for something a little less painful I have a circa 2004 Sempron 1.8Ghz XP box at the shop i use for a nettop and with Comodo Dragon it surfs just fine, i can even watch SD video. I figure I'll keep it until XP is EOLed, hell i might even go ahead and upgrade it to Win 7 as i tried the trial version and with 2gb of RAM it ran fine except for Aero which i don't care about anyway. Hmmm...I wonder if there is a Win 7 driver for this 7600 GS or X1650 i have sitting in the spare cards box?

Re:Flat-Line

[treeves]

This.
I can't even find a laptop with a 1920x1200 display like the three year old one I've got now, so I don't want to replace it. Haven't looked for a while, but things seem headed in the wrong direction display-wise.

Re:Flat-Line

[epyT-R]

yes, and all that cheap pc hardware will suddenly become more expensive.. is that really what you want?

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

As far as your wondering about gamers, my boys and i love playing games and our HD4850s play games like Saints Row the third and Deus Ex HR just fine and look good on our native 16:9. We'll probably upgrade next year when the HD58XXs or HD68XXs drop in price but right now anything that is a real upgrade to what we have now is frankly more than 3 times what we paid so just isn't worth it.

So I have to agree that we just aren't seeing any reason other than "Hey its new!" to buy new PCs and with the economy in a slump most of us need a better reason that that when our stuff is working just fine.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

"I need 10gb of memory, STAT!!!!"

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

"We lost the BIOS"

"DAMMIT!"

[ Captcha bonus: "gagged" ]

Re:Flat-Line

[jmorris42]

I meant nothing more than that a more powerful machine allows you to do new things or old things faster. Nothing in a word processor is likely to see an improvement though so buying the latest smoking hot machine isn't likely to make you a better author. But even they can probably benefit from a dual display setup with their work on one and notes/webpages/search/etc. on another.

On the other hand a new machine that allows you to mix twice as many audio tracks in realtime is instantly better. Might even make your creative output better, might not. But having to stop and mixdown a few tracks to an intermediate just because your hardware isn't fast enough will certainly break your rhythm. And faster renders at higher quality is obviously better for a 3d animator working on the motion of an animated character. Pushing the edge of the latest available hardware can be an important competitive advantage. Being able to edit HD video vs SD instantly decides on an upgrade, most five year old machines will struggle with just playing back 1080p video, mixing multiple such streams with effects will tax even the fastest current production machines. Now forget consumer streams and deal with motion jpeg or raw lossless compressed frames. Yea you need more iron and will want to ride the upgrade train for years to come.

Re:Flat-Line

[epyT-R]

I've always thought it should be a perfectly reasonable goal that at some point, computers would need to reach a point of operating like toasters and televisions instead of something which comes in a kit.

unrealistic...unless your goal is to make a personal computer not a personal computer. I look at it like this: if all the consumer electronics of the future are basically mini computers, and all the intellectual work I do is done on them, I want the final say in the nature of the software for them, otherwise they're not really mine. without that control, my limits are defined by the vendor's software-defined interests and not the limits of the hardware I purchased. your utopian position would prevent me (and everyone else) from truly owning these devices.. your colonel buddy doesn't realize that computers are NOT fixed use, fixed function devices like his home appliances. their very nature allows the adding (or burying if it's consumer-hostile) convenience in any product they're in. while I don't advocate kits, the option for loading user-firmware on there should be a given. otherwise, the power these appliance computers offer will just feed back into strings pulled by the vendors/the state or anyone else who can gain access to the detriment of the consumer..

In the end, there needs to be a way for consumers to retain the control over the property they buy. Of course, this isn't what corporates or the state want, but they were never supporters of freedom to begin with. perhaps the colonel could understand it this way.

(yes I realize broken wireless isn't justified by this post, but broken software is broken software, this happens even on fake-fixed function 'appliance' computers, and open hardware allows the possibility of fixing rather than disposal)

Having gotten tired of fiddling with PCs in my spare time to just make them work, increasingly what I want is something which is as easy to use as my TV.

tools capable of complex creation are often complex.. your TV is NOT capable of the same things a PC is. The day it does become that simple is that day it becomes a TV, and thus useless for anything else.

In the end, I was hard pressed not to suggest a Mac -- because for all of those people who just want it to work and have no time to learn the ins and outs, that's kinda what it does well.

You mentioned wireless issues and then suggest a mac? OSX has long standing issues with its wireless stack. Often times they drop off the network for no rhyme or reason and apple rarely responds to bug reports, even those with logs. when called, applecare just asks if the user has a non apple branded access point, and blames that if he does. OSX is no better than windows, and shit happens with the latter as well.. they all have their quirks. That's the nature of dealing with complex tools and complex workflows that your TV, washing machine, or electronic range can't help you with.

Re:Flat-Line

[drinkypoo]

Clearly you never used a first-generation Athlon.

Uh, P54C anyone? Melty melty

Re:Flat-Line

[drinkypoo]

Laptops are as powerful (my main development machine is a 17" beast) with the benefit of portability

A laptop genuinely as powerful as a desktop is not all that portable. It's more portable than a desktop, but that's not saying much. And in any case, the most powerful laptops are not as powerful as the most powerful desktops, so your statement is outright false.

Re:Flat-Line

[drinkypoo]

I have a six-core AMD processor with about half the performance (for nice parallel workloads) of a really fancy i7. The chip cost me a hundred bucks and it was an upgrade to another chip that cost a hundred bucks, in a motherboard that cost a hundred bucks. Most of the time most of the power goes unused, but when I want it I really want it, for example to do a video encode or when running graphics filters. So I have a use for all that power, but not very often. I sure wish OpenMOSIX hadn't died.

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

As long as AMD exists you'll be able to get affordable chips, as that is their whole selling point, the "bang for the buck" which is why you walk into any B&M you'll see AMD logos everywhere. Now that Intel can't bribe the OEMs AMD has been cranking out the chips (last I read they were having trouble keeping some like the Bobcat in stock because the OEMs were using so many) and unless you are pushing the living hell out of the system there is nothing you can't do just as well on an AMD hexa or octo PC. As an added bonus they are opening up all their specs and going with Coreboot over UEFI so if you are one that loves to hack or supports FOSS you should be buying AMD anyway.

So don't worry friend, while the numbers won't hit the figures they did during the heady days of the MHz wars enough people kill their desktops and laptops each day to ensure that there will be plenty of sellers. I figure there will simply be some consolidation, you'll end up with 2 or 3 sellers instead of 8 or 9 but you'll still have plenty of selection.

Re:Flat-Line

[sootman]

I've never head "flatline" mean anything but "dead." (Note: I'm 39. Far have I been and much have I seen.) Yes, it's originally a medical term, but everyone outside of medicine knows it. If it was only used in medicine there wouldn't be 4.3 million matches for it. The term became very well known after the 1990 movie of the same name. The proper (though less exciting) term that should be used here is "leveling off."

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've just about had it with the "everything should be so easy to do that an uneducated twerp can figure out how to do it with no instruction" crowd."

Absolutely! The worst thing in the world was when cars went to being where ANYBODY could drive one. I mean, if you still had to set the choke, retard the spark, hand crank it without getting your arm broken, then gradually open the choke as it warmed up, advance the spark according to fuel and road conditions, why, cars would be INFINITELY better!

No, sorry - all these are just tools, and they need to work as easily as a toaster. If you're a programmer, sure, you need to be able to tweak what you will, just as a race car driver has more control over the innards of his car, but for 90% of the people out there, it's just a fucking toaster.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Wide screen monitors are a regression! The reason that the analog TVs are 3:4 height to width ratio is that research showed that height to witdth ratio was easiest on the eyes. That has not changed. Anyone that I know that has a laptop with a wide screen hates it! I will stick with my IBM Thinkpad, and my 3:4 ratio monitors.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

The rapid R&D of Intel CPUs and support chip sets as well as a host of competing motherboard technologies like memory and graphics cards and NIC's made the PC market diverse and dynamic. And while the performance gains and accelerated depreciation schedules as well as affordability of consumer systems made 29% annual growth possible in the PC world and supported a host of manufacturers, the market grew.

Now that performance, for most worker driven tasks is faster than the worker, and corporate profits are down on dwindling consumer credit, thanks to the ridiculousness in the banks' more questionable activities, and the PC market is being eaten from the outside by smartphones and tablets, it's no wonder the PC market is flat. Accelerated business depreciation schedules and secondary refurbishing efforts as well as the rise of Taiwan & China probably sustained the many PC manufacturers longer than they otherwise would have lasted without more takeovers like the Compaq/HP fiasco.

Ultimately it's a question of affordability and demand. Once the western markets matured, without wealth, desire and affordable infrastucture in place in developing countries, the PC market will have to go through the same shakeout that any new technology generates after the supply bubble inflates, especially when there's a downturn in the world economy.

Re:Flat-Line

[tripleevenfall]

True, but I think they also failed because there was nothing to differentiate them from a laptop, really. A stylus to take notes in a slower way than typing them... A fancy way to use PowerPoint... Those don't really change things.

A tablet that has enough power and compatibility to be my personal companion in all phases of life would change things. Those old tablets that were just laptops with harder to read screens were definitely lame

Re:Flat-Line

[AK Marc]

Beyond that, we ARE seeing 2560x1440 in the widescreen form factor and larger, even - you just have to be willing to spend more than the $100~200 "sweet spot" price for monitors to get that additional resolution.

I mentioned price. You are agreeing with me in a most disagreeable manner.

A 1920x1080 monitor (HDTV) has more pixels than a 1600x1200.

Yes. 8% increase in 10 years. We had the technology to keep up with "retina" level numbers at an steady pace. Instead, resolution stalls at ~2MP for 10 years, then takes a big jump when Apple says so (and the others will likely re-enter the pixel wars, now that Apple has thrown down the gauntlet, but it'll take a year or more to see how that goes).

So... could you buy a 2560x1440 30" monitor for $500 in 2007? I can get it for less than $400 today. I don't recall being able to buy anything with 2 megapixels for less than $500 in 2007. /Just don't understand all the misinformation people are willing to spread in their hate on 1080p consumer monitors.

The problem with posting at work and home is that I'm not at my home computer with two 19" screens to check out my resolution to make sure I'm not misstating anything. They were bought 5+ years ago for under $200, but I'll have to look tonight for the exact resolution of each.

Don't knock the ability to buy additional monitors for your setup, and spend less than what a single good 1600x1200 21" monitor cost.

If money was no object, I'd get a single 30" at 2560x1600 and two 1600x1200 (portrait), one on each side. Toss up documents on the side monitors, with the main real estate in the middle. 4960x1600 monitor array. Shame that 2560x1600 will set you back over $1000. I prefer my monitors in the $100 to $200 range.

I've spread no misinformation. From 1990 to 2000, I went from CGA to SXGA (more than 20 times the pixels) the 10 years since? I gained 56 lines, and some width (less than twice the pixels).

That sounds bad to me. Is there any misinformation in there?

Re:Flat-Line

[KingMotley]

Interesting, because the link you gave, the second entry was for merriam-webster that says the definition 2a is "to be in a state of no progress or advancement", and the next 3 articles not related to the music band of the same name (Worldwide PC Sales Flatline, Gartner Says by Sci-Tech, Flatline Or Decline? by Wall Street Sector Selector, and US Treasurys Hold Flatline After FOMC Minutes by the Wall Street Journal) are all using it the same way as the submitter did. I would suggest you get around more.

Re:Flat-Line

[KingMotley]

Oh, and for the record, I'm 42.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, mine's called an Asus Transformer Pad, and from your list the one big difference is that, because of the touch screen, you don't need a mouse. Believe me, that makes a huge difference. The problem isn't the form factor, the problem is Windows, it really is. It's days have passed and every new tablet purchaser very soon sees that as clear as day. They don't want to go back to computers, not because they don't like computers, but because they now realise just how shit Windows really is.

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

Ahh, so the fanbois DO have modpoints this week...

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

It's ok, I have plenty of karma to burn, spend another one on this post, too.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

> BTW, what can a 10" iPad do that a 10" or 11" netbook can't do for a much lower price?

Weigh 650 grams?

Re:Flat-Line

[t-wata]

I agree. And that's why I hate Ribbon UI which requires more vertical space.

Re:Flat-Line

[shiftless]

I've never head "flatline" mean anything but "dead."

Flat line means the line on the monitor went flat.

Coincidentally, in a hospital environment, on an EEG, this means your heart is not pumping and therefore you're dead.

It could also mean the line on some other monitor went flat.

Re:Flat-Line

[steelfood]

It's not the pixels. It's the aspect ratio and the dot pitch (remember that?).

The iPad's got it right. If Apple made the screen as stand-alone monitors, I'd buy several right now.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anne Thwacks]

I bought a 3 year old laptop off Ebay last month to replace my 7 year old one for this reason. I cant see why anyone would buy the current models, as the screens are significantly worse than 3 years ago. I assume there are people who actually want to drive their companies out of the market (Lenovo, I am looking at you!) NNNNx768 is so 1970's - today people expect their phone to do better! Why would anyone buy today's laptops?

Re:Flat-Line

[bloodhawk]

there are netbooks under a kilo but still slightly heavier, BUT a couple of hundred grams difference gives you a keyboard, significantly more processing power and connectivity options as well as far more options in what you can actually run and use it for. personally I don't understand the tablet market (but happy to take that as my failing as I personally have no use for one), I just don't understand spending more to get less (with the exception of weight).

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Pentium 4 was even worse. Well, it had protection against overheating, massively reducing its clock rate. But when well cooled, the airflow, well make it wind, coming out of the back of a dual socket P4 tower could be used as hair-dryer, with the noise level being similar.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anne Thwacks]

You might want to avoid the new Thinkpads though. they only offer x768 now (I looked at the website yesterday). If they don't fix this PDQ, I guarantee Lenovo will be dead within the year. (Owner of 4 Thinkpad T series)

Re:Flat-Line

[bloodhawk]

would love to find these laptops that are as pwoerful as a desktop, yet are actually convenient. As an IT consultant/Developer I use a top end laptop for most of my work (i7, 16gb ram, dual SSD's blah blah blah), BUT DAMN, the friggen thing weighs a ton and has a huge powerpack to add to that and as far as I am concerned it is really just a luggable desktop but lacking some of the processing punch of a desktop. For the most part I end up leaving the laptop where I am working for the week. Laptops are getting their but they are still some distance off replacing them, especially in the cost arena and you still need to buy large screens keyboard and mouse so they really are just a slightly more convenient way to lug around your environment, I would still take a well configured desktop over a laptop any day for dev work.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

How true, but maybe you're the target market for the latest MacBookPro.

Personnaly I don't mind widescreen, but the loss of vertical resolutionfrom 16:10 to 16:9 is where I drew the line. So I stick to my 1920x1200 desktop displays (24"), my 1680x1050 PowerBook G4 (old but sufficeoent for many things, running Linux) and a 1440x900 Dell laptop, plugged into the 24" (or 27" at one of my workplaces) as often as I can.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

With IE 6 many websites will work. Of course that is the max you can get and support for that ancient cursed browser is rapidly deteriorating. Surpringly out of most websites only slashdot and cnet fail terribly. Most mainstream ones work if you can block some of the ad networks.

Re:Flat-Line

[Grudge2012]

Nonsense. Flat-lining is plummeting towards 0 sales. The term you're looking for is 'plateau.'

Epic fail. If you want to use it in that sense, it would be "has already reached 0 sales, and stays that way". What you are looking for is an excuse.

Re:Flat-Line

[Grudge2012]

From Wikipedia; "A flatline is an electrical time sequence measurement that shows no activity and therefore when represented, shows a flat line instead of a moving one. It almost always refers to either a flatlined [ECG or EEG] Both of these specific cases are involved in various definitions of death."

So unless he wasn't actually talking about the German Wikipedia entry (Flatline was one of the top groups of the German movie piracy scene), his usage was perfectly valid, if not used often.

Re:Flat-Line

[Grudge2012]

A PC built today is actually a lot better than one from five years ago, especially if you spend the same money. But if all you are doing is running Firefox on it you won't see much advantage.

Unless you are using Flash (or some other heavy client side computations).

Re:Flat-Line

[Grudge2012]

BTW, what can a 10" iPad do that a 10" or 11" netbook can't do for a much lower price?

Play Infinity Blade. Or pretty much anything with a touch interface. How about Garage Band.

Re:Flat-Line

[Neil Boekend]

What you're thinking of is a death spiral.

No, it's the unthinkable. We do not think of it, let alone speak of it. It has no name, because it can not exist.
Growth will be eternal, there is no other way it can be.

Re:Flat-Line

[aj50]

Even if I wasn't gaming, I'd still buy a desktop over a laptop.

If I'm doing a reasonable amount of work, I'd rather be doing it at a desk, with a good keyboard and monitor. If I'm just entertaining myself, I can probably get away with a tablet.

I can see the need for a laptop in some cases (for example, I very rarely want to work on the move or need to work in different locations frequently) but it doesn't meet any specific need I have. For me, the increased cost, increased difficulty in replacing parts, worse ergonomics and shorter life expectancy of a laptop is too high a cost for mobility.

Re:Flat-Line

[Lokitoth]

Even a general-purpose computing device can be sold in a configuration that by default "just plugs in and works."

We (the techies) are not incompetent to be unable to switch to a more productive environment - just that environment does not need to be in everyone's face all the time. Rather than think of this as the PC being "dumbed down," think of it as a call to action to make all the other "appliance" computers be more full-features, but without the historical complexity of PCs, before we knew how to make them easy to use.

Re:Flat-Line

[Ol Olsoc]

Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous. The reality is, pretty much everybody in modern society wants access to email, word processing, and basic web stuff -- and they mostly just want it to do it without a lot of fuss.

Of course. The typical /. user is employed in keeping those mysterious boxes running, so their jobs need a machine that breaks fairly often, and users who are as ignorant as possible.

And a large part of the hatred for Apple devices is that they are very credible threats to their jobs

But given that we are 35 years into Personal computing, (using the Commodore PET as the base machine) there is simply no excuse for the sorry state of the Windows based machine, or the armies that it takes to keep them running. Coupled with the odd disdain of the support people for their customers, it's just nasty out there.

But that's where we are with those machines. There is no credible reason that PC's should not "just work" by this time.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's life jim, but not as we know it."

Re:Flat-Line

[Ol Olsoc]

Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous.

And I think that's a ridiculous characterization of techies' view of PCs. We want PCs to remain general-purpose computing devices which are programmable and open, yes. As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't fulfil those criteria, it isn't a PC. But do we want it to be arbitrarily "magical"? Erm, no. At least not most of us.

Okay, Now explain to me exactly why a device that just works for some people cannot be a general purpose computing device? One that just does what they want and doesn't require a lot of messing around. Or one that can satisfy our inner geek.

My Mac has a whole lot of things that I can do on it pretty much automatically. Setup has always been a breeze. Yet it has a nice old fashioned shell, (which I would be lost without) and I can run it very easily as a Windows machine and do on occasion. Now that's magical, doesn't insult the customer, and allows the best of both worlds.

Your either/or argument really doesn't hold water.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

And when was this? Oh, wait, never, 19" monitors where practically always 1280x1024 (there where a couple of very rare 19" 1600x1200 monitors, from sony maybe). 20" monitors where 1600x1200, but they where also $500+, for around $500 you can now buy a 27" 2560x1440 monitor.

Re:Flat-Line

[fa2k]

There are so many benefits to having a desktop! In arbitrary order: 1) No-compromise performance and responsiveness. With a laptop you are limited by cooling, and even if the laptop doesn't crash it gets uncomfortable to work on a hot laptop. 2) Storage: PCs can typically have 5 hard drives. 3) Ability to customise: Add graphics, TV cards, sound cards, extra network cards and more exotic components, using PCI or PCI express. For example, PCI sound cards have about a factor 10 lower latency than USB sound cards. If you prefer to suspend to RAM, you can get ECC memory to verify that there's no corruption, 4) Legacy connections: desktops can have parallel and serial ports at little cost. 5) Mobility: This is a big stretch, but moving a desktop can be easier than moving a laptop with 8 dongles hanging off it.

For me it's all about 1,2 and 3. I just have Phenom II, and I could probably get a laptop with a faster CPU, but on the desktop I can overclock and disable frequency scaling (while using it interactively), which give a 10 % boost in performance and 30 % better responsiveness, respectively. When I get the cash to upgrade, it will be cheaper to upgrade the desktop than to buy a new machine, and it's also a better experience, as I don't have to re-install the OS. I'm very sensitive to small delays, getting distracted if I have to wait for two seconds, and the desktops I use have consistently been more responsive than my laptops (my current desktop only after disabling CPU scaling). Maybe the new Intels are better in that regard, I haven't got to experiment with the second or third generation "iN"-processors.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

honestly, how are you guys even arguing about this? Do you think a single person out of slashdot's remaining readership of a few thousand read "pc sales are flat lining" and though "Oh no! not a single pc sold! how will i run linux after my current comput crashes?"

honestly, you guys are a bunch of whiny angry 70 year olds arguing with each other all day long.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree! I have a MacBook and an iPad at home. I find I prefer the iPad for most functions.
Still haven't figured out the best way to transfer photos from my wife's iPad to mine even though
Reportedly it's straight-forward using the "cloud".

Re:Flat-Line

[andy16666]

The medical term comes from the shape of the EKG when someone dies: it becomes a horizontal line. That seems to be what's being described.

Re:Flat-Line

[Grudge2012]

A computer is not a toaster. It can't be. It's inherently programmable. That's what it's for. A computer is not an appliance, it's a toolbox.

That's not elitism. That's just the nature of the beast.

I bet you are one of the idiots who made toasters harder to use just because "they've got a programmable chip inside".

Re:Flat-Line

[tibman]

I agree with you. This seems to be where a lot of gamers are divided between console and pc. The gamers who want an "it just works" type of appliance go for console.

Re:Flat-Line

[fuzznutz]

its just insane how much power you get nowadays for little money.

You are clearly not running the requisite 3 antivirus programs, 2 ad blockers, and 3 HP scanner/printer drivers along with all the other "free" software pre-loaded on a modern PC. We need MORE power!

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

Nope, just one AV, one adblocker, and one printer but I do have over 7 things running in the taskbar, from my Asrock AES (auto switching of phases) to TuneUp Utilities (does all the cleaning, defragging, gets rid of old reg crap, etc) and 3 or 4 more things all running 24/7 and still have more cycles than i could possibly use.

I know you are joking but that is actually a perfect example of what i was talking about, when it was the MHz wars and everyone had single cores you'd need faster to deal with all the crap people would build up over time but now? Now with machines so powerful frankly folks can have a LOT of crap running before it slows down the system. In fact the last system that was brought in because "its too slow" was an Acer Core2Duo laptop that the customer had managed to end up with over 200 pieces of malware running at the same time, thanks to his "must have teh tittiez!" porn obsession.

Wasn't anywhere close to the record, the record is held by a Toshiba laptop brought in to the last shop I worked where the guy managed to get over 2800 pieces of malware all running at once! My boss refused to just wipe it until we had the count as he wanted to see if it beat the previous 1600 bugs and oh boy did it. I swear that thing took over an hour and a half just to get to the desktop! with that many bugs it made that original core duo feel like a 386 trying to run XP, talk about a slog! come to think of it I bet the malware guys just love these new machines, you could probably have 50 bugs running on a core i5 or AMD hexa and not even feel it.

Re:Flat-Line

[fuzznutz]

Yeah, I'm joking. Kind of..

I was asked to look at someone's computer because it was "running slow." It was just as I described. After "booting" for 20 minutes (the disk was still thrashing and stuff was still popping up on the taskbar) it responded enough for me start killing autostart items and disabling virus checkers. I forced a restart at 30 minutes as it never finished booting. The second boot was a bit quicker, but I spent the next hour or two removing crap. He couldn't believe it was the same machine when I was done.

I couldn't believe he actually used it. Even with 3 virus checkers, Malware-Bytes found a couple of trojans.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a specialized tool, and if you're arguing that Windows 8 is a step in the right direction, I'd like to say you're wrong. Someone that wants a table or a smartphone can use a damn tablet or a smartphone, and let me keep using PCs for the tasks I need them for. I really don't accept the "it's too hard for some people, let's make it totally easy" as a reason to limit the functionality or effectiveness of a tool that is working just fine if you know how to use it.

But I'm not really sure what you're arguing here; I agree with you, what Apple is doing works for the general population; that's why they're so valuable. But I don't personally care about their products, because they are tools that I have no real use for. But that's fine; different strokes for different folks and all that. I stick to what works for me, and if you can find that, then why go any further?

Re:Flat-Line

[juhaz]

I don't know which pages you've been reading, but you might want to consult your ophthalmologist before craving for higher-resolution screens.

T430 and W/T530 have the exact same display options as the previous generation - up to 1600x900 and 1920x1080 respectively.

Consumer-level crap is perhaps limited to x768, but you get what you pay for. X-series is too, which is pretty disappointing, but still exactly the same as before instead of regressed, and it's somewhat more tolerable in such a tiny display.

Re:Flat-Line

[ilsaloving]

Oh, you mean RIMing?

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

He is right though. The computer itself isn't the tool, the applications and peripherals that run on the computer are the tools. The computer is the toolbox.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I am dumb, but why do businesses feel like they need to be constantly growing? If things are stable for a time, isn't that good too? Is the growth really needed to be a successful company? Is it possible that this push for constant growth can actually hurt a company in the long run?

Re:Flat-Line

[lgw]

But why would you want that? The same resolution works fine at any screen size if you're proportionally farther from the screen. Sitting 3 inches form a 36" monitor is great if you're trying to developmutant super-powers, but somewhat pointless for computing.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of a 5-year-old crapbox from Dell. The person you quote is not.

At home, I have a 4 year old system that I built myself. It's not the latest/greatest anymore, and it wasn't bleeding-edge when I built it. I have budget constraints, you know. It's got a Q6600 (4 x 2.6GHz) and 4GB of DDR2. I've had to replace the 8800GTX (it died) with a 560Ti, and the 750GB HDD (used as a backup now) with a 1TB HDD. And it still can run modern games just fine. Most games aren't terribly CPU-bound anyway, and the ones that are should take full advantage of those cores. Other than that, the only thing that uses all 4 cores heavily is a video transcode in Handbrake. Visual Studio doesn't even come close, even with multiple instances with large solutions loaded.

At work, I have a 3 year old Dell crapbox. It was a mid-range business class desktop when it was new. It has an E7600 (2 x 3.06GHz) and 4GB of DDR2. The video card is bog-standard business desktop crap, so games run horribly (duh). The real problem is that other apps can bring it to its knees too. Visual studio can max this thing out with no problem at all. Running two instances of VS2010, one instance of VS2008 (curse you, WM6.5!), SSMS, Outlook, and Firefox on it all at the same time puts a severe dent in its responsiveness. But I'd bet good money the bottleneck is somewhere in the cheap crap parts Dell used in this thing. A couple of cores should handle all of this with no problem, and 4GB of RAM should be plenty (yes, even for Visual Studio, for what I do with it).

So a brand new machine is hardly better than a 5 year old one, if the 5 year old one was well built (especially if the new one is a crapbox). But if the old one is crap, then the new machine (crap or not) is going to be way better.

(And just to clarify, yes, I do push my home PC as hard as my work one. Just not as often.)

Re:Flat-Line

[BronsCon]

because it's not screen size that determines how much information you can fit on the screen, it's resolution. that's why I want higher resolution... I had a 13" CRT that could do 1600x1200 (1.92MP) with no problems, and i loved it! Larger CRTs gave higher resolutions, even; why don't we see LCDs that can match the dod pitch offered by some old CRTs? The retina display is a step in the right direction, but I think it may actually be a step too far; give me a 17" laptop or a 23" monitor with the resolution of a Retina MacBook Pro and I'll be happy.

If I have to switch windows ahd hide one piece of information in orer to view another, i'm losing productivity. If I can fit all the information I'm working with on the screen at once, I'm gaining it. This is what higher resolution is all about.

To wit, there is no advantage to a bigger monitor, like there is with a TV, if the resolution stays the same. You get a bigger HDTV if you have a bigger room, because you're sitting farther from it, and yes, it will have the same resolution, and that's fine because you're only displaying 1920x1080 images on it; even if the panel itself was 3840x2160, the image would just be upscaled and possibly look worse due to scaling artifacts. For a computer monitor, there's a huge difference between a 23" display at 1920x1080 and a 23" display at 3840x2160; the latter can display 4x as much information and I damned well want to be able to do that.

Re:Flat-Line

[Lord Flipper]

(PS - nobody in the medical profession says "flatline" either)

That's right, the word they use is "coding."

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in the corporate world for decades and I've never heard the term 'flat-lining' to mean anything but dead. I've heard countless times from our CEO that "our numbers are flat" to mean that there is no growth but not the term 'flat line' in that context.

Re:Flat-Line

[Spugglefink]

But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.

The other side of the coin is that PCs have had enough capacity on every front for years now that the only unavoidably compelling reason to buy a new one is when something finally stops working.

I haven't really felt like my new computer was significantly better or faster at anything in maybe 10 years now. I don't play games. I do develop software, and it's always nice to shave a little bit off the compile time, but if a compiler is too fast, that just eats up my /. time anyway, so why spend the money?

Plus the economy has sucked for the past few years, and I'm perpetually broke. I guess that does factor in.

Re:Flat-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I did just replace my 2003 dual G5 mac pro.
I will install linux on that, and use the GPUs as a cheap cluster for some home compute-intensive playtime. It's just no use running Mac OS on it anymore. The thing is a rocket, otherwise, and bulletproof. I thought about ripping the guts out and building a new modern desktop inside the nice shiny aluminum case, but that was just a bunch of money and work.

I replaced it with a 15" Dell laptop. The thing's a beast. 8 cores. 8 GB RAM. Pretty decent ATI graphics. 1080p screen, USB 3, backlit keyboard. Linux Mint flies on it. Build quality is . . . well, it's really good for a Dell. (the built-in webcam is VISIBLY crooked, but everything else is pretty solid).
At about half the price of a comparable Mac, I know that the OS will outlast the hardware :).

The state of displays out there is actually pretty depressing. Maybe in 9 years, when I'm ready to replace this laptop, Apple's retina technology will be cloned around out there, and be in something more reasonably priced and configured.

Re:Flat-Line

[hairyfeet]

Next time you have a user like that put 'em on Comodo Internet Security. Its free and by default has both sandboxing and scan before load on web pages. Now it isn't as good as something like Adaware pro when it comes to cleaning up an already infected system, but when you put it on a clean machine barring the user actively ignoring any warnings and telling it to allow malware to run that machines will STAY clean. I have several customers that have been running it for years as well as myself and my family and its a good tool. Oh and the license is free for personal AND business use, which is nice if you have any users that run small businesses.

But I know what you mean, I've seen machines brought into the shop that were used daily and i go to fire them up and am like "WTF? Dear Lord I just hope they never used their CC on this thing" because it would be just thrashing away under all the malware. Just be glad it wasn't filled with clickjacker and porn bugs, those are THE WORST when it comes to gross shit. My former boss Doug used to think it was funny as hell to sneak in this one customer's box first thing in the morning, she had a SERIOUS ass fetish so not only when i first fired up the machine would i be greeted with a practically 3D shot of her hairy porky BF's ass in a thong as the fricking desktop but she would always get these clickjacker bugs so the second the desktop was loaded there would be a dozen IE pages filled with oiled guy ass, right in my face. Doug would laugh his ass off as i'd jump back when the damned thing popped up, really funny, at least for him.

But a great way to deal with those that are thrashing and full of bugs is to download the excellent "Ultimate Boot CD" which if you download the cost common version out there it has an XP Live CD built in, its great because not only does it completely bypass the infected drive and have several scanners of its own, but that XP Live option will let you boot straight off the CD and then use scanners like Trendmicro Housecall without having to deal with an infected OS. Really cuts down the time when it comes to dealing with a nasty infected unit.

Re:Flat-Line

[jc42]

And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users. Casual users will basically abandon them (and already largely have) for laptops, tablets, and portables.

You left out those of us running web sites. Yeah, I have a laptop, and I'm typing this on it. It's handy because it's portable (and I'm typing this on the patio ;-). But the web server on this thing isn't visible online. I could make it so when I'm home, but when I carry it even a hundred meters from home, its address would change or (more likely) disappear from the Internet, and all my sites would be offline.

So I keep a home "desktop". I can and do have a web server running on the laptop at http://localhost/, and I do a lot of development and testing on the laptop. Then I rsync it to the "real" server back home when I'm within reach of usable wifi, and it appears online.

If there's a way to make a laptop (or tablet or smartphone) permanently visible online as it wanders, with a reliable FQDN, I'd like to know how to do it. So far, all my comments along these lines have been answered with (1) insults to my intelligence/understanding/hackitude/whatever, and (2) no link to an explanation of how to make it work. I conclude that my detractors don't know, either, and they're just taking the opportunity to insult someone as ignorant as they are.

It's especially curious that Mac and linux users don't seem to be able to answer this problem with anything but insults, since they have the ability to enable a localhost web server by checking a single setting (buried deep in that maze of settings ;-).

Of course, I could be missing something. If so, does anyone have a link to the documentation?

Meanwhile, I'll keep my desktop running and connected to the local ISP.

Re:Flat-Line

[SpryGuy]

You're right, I didn't mention those... and should have.

And yes, those are some large "niches".

But they're still small compared to the size of the pool of consumers that will ultimately be using portable computers in the form of smart-phones, tablets, and light laptops/notebooks.

I didn't say the desktop was DYING. I was saying it was receeding. My parents won't buy another tower. Neither will my cousin. They're not technical people. Their needs are completely met by laptops, tablets, and/or smartphones.

I'm not even sure *I* will buy another desktop for my home. While I DO use one at work and will continue to (software development, multi-monitors, and terrabytes of hard disk), since I got my "ultrabook" at home, I barely use my desktop any more. I can't justify the price. Even my gaming has moved primarily to the XBox.

Re:Flat-Line

[shiftless]

In fact, to get onto an equivalent place on the curve cast more money now, for a variety of reasons.

What? I built a top of the line quad core 3.3ghz AMD, 16 GB system w/ 2GB GTX570 desktop for about $600. Totally and completely blows away my Dell Ubuntu laptop circa 2007 w/ 2.0 ghz dual core Intel, 2 GB, onboard Nvidia.

Re:Flat-Line

[shiftless]

Then either he isn't as intelligent as you make out, or there is something wrong with his hardware.

Or he's running Windows.

Re:Flat-Line

[AK Marc]

I'm on an E530 at 1600x900 right now (about 2 weeks old). Granted, I had to pay $300 more for this over the x768 because the larger screen comes with a 3G networking card, but you must have looked at the base configuration.

Re:Flat-Line

[bobbutts]

Why not launch rsync from the laptop? That way the desktop never needs to know the laptop's hostname for the sync to occur. The other option would be to maintain some kind of tunnel from the laptop to keep it on the lan. You could setup OpenVPN or even SSH server in the home, and setup the desktop to maintain a connection and drop all other routes. Final option would be to start from scratch and figure out a less awkward workflow.

Re:Flat-Line

[marcello_dl]

> and people who "need" a powerful PC are largely professionals

You never had to work with the result of your cheapo but HD video camera, did you?

You'll wish you had an 8 core and ssd after approx 3 minutes.

So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of buying computers built to last a year so you'll buy them over and over again, people are buying computers that actually have durability.
Hence, less buys.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Reverand Dave]

They are obviously not buying Dells then.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[rockout]

I don't think they're buying either. My wife had a laptop just to keep her from using my desktop. Once that became outdated, I got her an iPad, and she loves it. Email, websurfing, and a few games, and she's happy. Just no need for a PC. We can't be the only ones that replaced one of the full-featured PCs in the house with an iPad, or something similar.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[busyqth]

FTFA: Apple sales up 4.3%

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[realityimpaired]

Instead of buying computers built to last a year so you'll buy them over and over again, people are buying computers that actually have durability.
Hence, less buys.

More that computers simply *are* lasting longer.... unless your OS is festooned with viruses or you want to play the latest and greatest games on the market, there is absolutely no reason you can't do everything most users do with computers on a 8-year old hardware. And the first of those issues can be addressed by either reinstalling the OS or simply fixing it (or paying somebody to do so).

Couple that with a more "savvy" user who's more likely to be aware that viruses exist and Windows offering people free antivirus, and it means that the majority of PC users simply have no impetus to buy a new computer: their old one is good enough for angry birds and facebook.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[ackthpt]

Instead of buying computers built to last a year so you'll buy them over and over again, people are buying computers that actually have durability.

Hence, less buys.

Consumers are buying what they need. When you need a PC to do work (or play games) you buy one, when all you want to do is text, surf, share junk on fazebook, etc. you get a smartphone or tablet. Simples.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[BronsCon]

Apple as in Mac and iDevice, or Apple as in Mac? If it's the former, then include Android devices in PC sales. If it's the latter, well, damn.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple as in Mac. If you include tablets as PCs, then PC sales are on a slight increase. Of course, if you *do* include tablets as PCs, that increase is entirely the result of the iPad.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[beelsebob]

It's the latter.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The latter.

The reports did their best to put the PC companies in good light.

The report would look much worse if iPads were included.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[BronsCon]

We'll see if that continues for another 6 months. Their actions over the last couple of weeks, combined with the lackluster Mac lineup this generation, might put a dent in their growth.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[dsvick]

I agree, I only just recently replaced a 10 year laptop. I'd updated the OS on it once and maxed out the memory, but otherwise it still did 80% of what I needed it to do. I only replaced because the hinges on the lid broke and it would no longer stay up, that and it took 15 minutes to start the Android emulator. My wife works fine on her 6 year old laptop as well.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Games no longer drive the hardware market like they used to.

Everyone and their brother are developing for consoles now and many PC games that exist at all are simply ports of a console.
As a result, there really isn't much of a driving force to upgrade existing hardware. Other than specialty users ( 3D, Photoshop,
CAD, etc ) why bother upgrading ?

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[geekoid]

They aren't up
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/11/apples-mac-sales-fell-idc-or-grew-gartner-last-quarter/

I depends on if you count shipments to channels, or shipments to users, or both in your numbers.
Also worth noting the some manufactures who make more computers(PC and min notebooks) then Apple where left off the list.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[rgbrenner]

FTFA: Apple sales up 4.3%

Rigghht... when has Gartner ever been wrong?

Apple's Mac sales fell (IDC) or grew (Gartner) last quarter

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jbolden]

I doubt it. The rMBP shot up to a 3-4 week waiting list for preorders and haven't moved. Which means Apple has been steadily selling out every rMBP they can make. And they have been holding back in many markets. Which means that sell out continues for a minimum of a few more months. Generally Apple is ready for the initial surge (like with the standard MBP and the air). So my guess is their sales are going to very strong for this quarter. For next quarter they, if rumors are true, they release the 13" rMBP which is likely to sell much stronger.

4th quarter they focus on the iPhone 5, the 7" ipad.... so computer sales will be 'eh.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jbolden]

Which is what Windows 8 may fix. The hardware requirements there are substantial. A touch screen sensitive enough to be used with a finger and accurate enough for stylus work. A hinge to let this go into tablet mode (which is an expensive part). Largish SSD. If Microsoft starts pushing retina, they'll run into the same issues Apple is with driving retina.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[BronsCon]

If you include the iPad in the list of android devices, rather than iDevices, yeah. :)

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[bdabautcb]

I'm typing this on a 10 year old Dell XP machine that has served me nicely. I replaced a video card in 2006 and my monitor died during a move. (I actually think the pins just got bent and one broke, but I had a spare to replace it with so haven't bothered investigating). At some point I would like to replace XP with a linux distro, but I haven't been able to find one that will live boot. Any suggestions for a distro that will run on 10 yr old hardware that was fairly high end at it's time would be greatly appreciated!!

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jedidiah]

...or you just keep the same old PC you always had.

You don't need to buy anything else.

The fact that a smartphone is also some sort of computer is a red herring. People buy phones to have a phone, not to have a pocket computer like some hacker kid out of an 80s TV show.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... they are not buying Encyclopedias either.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[shutdown -p now]

Win8 doesn't require a tablet mode. As I recall, there were some Win8 devices which are traditional laptops with a touchscreen (i.e. you can't fold the keyboard back or anything), and even some without a touchscreen at all (hence why the new trackpad gestures).

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[realityimpaired]

http://bodhilinux.com/

Though Ubuntu should be able to live boot on it... I don't want to start *that* argument (personally I loathe all the crap that gets loaded with Ubuntu by default), but it's a good launch point for somebody who's new to Linux.

If you need something lighter, you can try Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jbolden]

I agree it doesn't require it, but it is designed for it. Hopefully Microsoft won't repeat the mistakes of Vista and to get the Windows 8 sticker OEMs will have to build systems that do support the entire range of inputs. Metro is likely a downgrade if you aren't using some kinds of touch.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Trogre]

More that computers simply *are* lasting longer

This.

I don't believe we have seen this before in computing history - an era where software written today can be reasonably expected to run on a personal computer manufactured a decade ago.

This was not the case in 2008, 2004, 2000, 1990, 1980...

In 2002 the state of the art computer was an Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD. Many of these are still running now, and so long as schools and grannies can use them to browse the web and watch YouTube (Flash-only of course) they will continue to run for years to come. Of course most will be 512 or 1GB now since extra RAM is most often a trivial upgrade these days.

In 1998 what did we have? The AMD K6 and Intel's Pentium 2, and 128MB if you were lucky. Not so many of those were running in 2008 I'm sure.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[rockout]

Your Apple-hating has gotten in the way of actual informative posting. Whoever modded you up either shares your views of Apple or didn't care to read the article you linked to.

Gartner and IDC are both right. FTFA: "Gartner reported shipments to end users and IDC reported shipments into channel (i.e. distributors)." In other words, two different sets of numbers, from which you can draw whatever conclusions you feel like drawing. For comparative purposes, the only use these numbers have are when you compare, say, Gartner's Dell #'s to Gartner's Apple #'s.

But never let facts get in the way of some good-ol'fashioned Apple bashing, I guess.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[MightyYar]

Yeah, I'd much rather be married to someone with a worthwhile pastime, like trolling Slashdot as an AC.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[shutdown -p now]

Reading the current requirements, it does not require touch for all types of PCs - only for tablets and "tablet convertibles" (see System.Client.Tablet.TabletPCRequiredComponents).

The official story with Metro so far is that "it works great with mouse and keyboard". I personally disagree with that, dealing with Win8 on my desktop every day, but it is what it is. Though, admittedly, it should work pretty well with trackpads when those gestured described in the article I've linked to earlier are made available - the main problem with mouse in Metro is the need to hunt for corners and edges to invoke charms, task switcher etc, and also the fact that you can only scroll in one direction with the wheel, and there's no easy zoom (you can do Ctrl + wheel, but that needs two hands). If the trackpad supports panning, pinch to zoom, and swipes from the sides to access the common UI elements, it should be pretty much as good as touch - I actually see myself using that over touchscreen when working on a convertible with keyboard attached.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[humanrev]

Interesting. I built my wife a desktop because he laptop died and she doesn't need a laptop for a primary machine anymore (if portability is required we use the netbook). Interestingly enough the power of a reasonably specced desktop is enough to warrant getting back into Sims 3, which I doubt she'd enjoy on a tablet given a large monitor and keyboard/mouse provides a far better experience.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jbolden]

The official story with Metro so far is that "it works great with mouse and keyboard". I personally disagree with tha

As does everyone whose tried it. So lets just say, it doesn't work with mouse and keyboard only.

If the trackpad supports panning, pinch to zoom, and swipes from the sides to access the common UI elements, it should be pretty much as good as touch

I use Lion with a MBP touchpad everyday. I own an iPhone and an IPad3. Touchpads are not as good as touch for touch interface. We'll have to see about Microsoft's implementation but so far it leans heavily towards touch. Which is why I think they should push for touch being mandatory.

All over this thread I'm defending Apple for not allowing systems that can't load 32 bit graphics drivers (i.e. need 32 bit KEXT in Lion) to not upgrade to Mountain Lion. I sincerely hope that Microsoft has turned over a new leaf and will do the same.

But if they do allow mouse and keyboard or some sort of limited implementation, then they repeat the mistake the made with Vista.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[jgrahn]

I'm typing this on a 10 year old Dell XP machine that has served me nicely. I replaced a video card in 2006 and my monitor died during a move. (I actually think the pins just got bent and one broke, but I had a spare to replace it with so haven't bothered investigating). At some point I would like to replace XP with a linux distro, but I haven't been able to find one that will live boot. Any suggestions for a distro that will run on 10 yr old hardware that was fairly high end at it's time would be greatly appreciated!!

Don't know about the "live" part (aren't there hundreds of live CDs?), but don't let anyone convince you you need a special Linux distro targeted for old/small/otherwise challenged systems. Any Linux will work, if you can tell it not to use Gnome, KDE or whatever the heavy desktop environments are called. Debian, for example.

The browser is then the main problem. Both Firefox and Opera are rather too resource-hungry these days. This will probably show on a 2002 high-end PC.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Grudge2012]

FTFA: Apple sales up 4.3%

Rigghht... when has Gartner ever been wrong?

Apple's Mac sales fell (IDC) or grew (Gartner) last quarter

Even IDC has Apple's market share growing over 1 percentage point.

But the more interesting thing about that comparison: while both have nearly the same total for Q2 2012, their number for Q2 2011 is almost a million apart.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Erikderzweite]

I'd recommend lubuntu -- vast repositories, reasonable hardware support (more so for older PCs), non-cluttered interface.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another vote for Bodhi and/or Lubuntu here. If you want something that closely resembles XP, you might also want to try AntiX or Swift Linux (both use IceWM by default) - they're both Debian based and include all codecs.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[scarboni888]

I'm writing this on a Dell Inspiron 531S purchased late 2007. It's running great haven't had a problem yet. Anectdotal sure but it does disprove that all Dell machines don't last longer than a year.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[Reverand Dave]

Dell Laptops are top of the line for sure, but the desktops are $hit.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[scarboni888]

Actually the Inspiron is a 531S:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/inspndt/topics/en/us/inspndt_531s_sv?c=us&l=en

And it has been used almost every single day since I took delivery of it. Sometimes it's on for days on end and has been for weeks on end on the rare occasion.

Also after having done phone support for both Dell laptops and desktops (from 2006-2008) my experience has been the opposite: the consumer line anyway tended to run too hot back then with what I considered to be a critical design flaw: ventilation for cooling systems being on the bottom of the unit right where the typical laptop user would have their lap - blocking the cooling process.

Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then?

[scarboni888]

Correction: That should have read "Actually the Inspiron 531S is a desktop"

But also I want to add that if you're referring to the Dell desktops manufactured in the early 2000's which are known to have been afflicted with a bad case of defective capacitors on the motherboard do know that this failure wasn't limited to Dell desktop motherboards but rather affected all manufacturers which used these bad caps on their desktop boards. I have personally replaced the caps on a machine from that era and it is still running just fine today.

Well...

[gabereiser]

If they would make pc's that I would actually buy, this wouldn't happen. "Ultra-books" are not sleek looking, nor thin (in most cases). They don't hold a candle to the Macbook Air despite a lot of windows users wanting something that does. The PC Market is flat-lining because there really isn't much innovation happening on the pc hardware front-end... I still have a brick of a desktop, a brick of a laptop, and no one seems to care that Apple is killing PC makers with their sleek looking macbook pro's and their fresh hardware... Gimme a Laptop Air that runs Windows or hell, Linux, and I'll buy it in a heartbeat...

Re:Well...

[Princeofcups]

Gimme a Laptop Air that runs Windows or hell, Linux, and I'll buy it in a heartbeat...

OK, it's called the Macbook Air, and it runs Windows and Linux. Now off to the Apple Store with you. Bring your credit card.

Re:Well...

[evil_aaronm]

In all seriousness, can't you install Windows or Linux on a MacBook Air?

Re:Well...

[pubwvj]

"Gimme a Laptop Air that runs Windows or hell, Linux, and I'll buy it in a heartbeat..."

It's called a Macintosh and any of them run Windows or Linux if you really want to downgrade to that. I'll stick to MacOSX.

As to sales, Apple is increasing market share while the others are flatlining. Why? Quality. I buy a Mac and it lasts a decade or more. We have 1999 Macs in our family that are still running fine. We just pass them down the line.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

That do what? Email? That's it.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to the Penguin Air. lol

http://www.thinkpenguin.com/

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Yes. But then he can't imply that he's "suffering" on OSX because he's forced to buy Apple if he wants a pretty machine.

Just more proof that Apple has become a vanity brand. Shame, Snow Leopard is a decent OS (I would know, I use it 40+hr/wk but it hasn't been a mandatory platform for me for over a year now), but Lion and Mountain Lion are playing into the vanity theme. When the updates stop flowing in for Snow Leopard, Apple finds themselves off my buy list; for now, they're just near the bottom.

Re:Well...

[SpryGuy]

I know a bunch of people that bought MacBooks or MacBook Airs, and upgraded to Windows 7 on them, and use that as their native system.

Re:Well...

[David Greene]

I'm getting an ASUS UX32VD. 10GB RAM and 256GB SSD should blow the Air out of the water.

Re:Well...

[geekoid]

" if you really want to downgrade to that. "

Just to let you know: You're a troll and a douche bag.

Re:Well...

[gstoddart]

Then why wouldn't you simply buy something from another company?

Seems odd to pay the premium for the Apple hardware/software combo if you don't care about the software.

That screams "I paid too much just to I could put Windows on it". But, maybe I'm missing something.

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

That do what? Email? That's it.

Run Ubuntu, in my case.

But yeah, you're right, that's shit. I should just throw it out.

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

Then why wouldn't you simply buy something from another company?

Seems odd to pay the premium for the Apple hardware/software combo if you don't care about the software.

That screams "I paid too much just to I could put Windows on it". But, maybe I'm missing something.

Because they liked the MBA?

It's a very attractive machine for a pretty decent price, and it will run whatever OS you choose. The thing you're "missing" is personal preference and that in the end, a minor price delta if you use the thing all the time will be quickly forgotten if you get something that really works for you.

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

" if you really want to downgrade to that. "

Just to let you know: You're a troll and a douche bag.

I know two wrongs don't make a right, but this is tame in comparison to vast amount of "Mac users are dumb idiots who can't use a computer" stuff that we put up with on here. Calling Win 7 a downgrade from OS X might be a little bit... flammable (I consider it more of a side-grade), but it's hardly worthy of being called a douchebag.

Re:Well...

[Thelasko]

It's called a Macintosh and any of them run Windows or Linux if you really want to downgrade to that.

I'm still using a Power Mac you insensitive clod!

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you should probably bring two or three credit cards..

Re:Well...

[jbolden]

Yes. Apple officially support Windows they created a free system for dual booting ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4818 ). There are a ton of good VM solutions http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/ being the most popular. If you just want to blow away OSX and install Linux or Windows that's easy as well.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lion is easily just as good as Snow Leopard. In fact, I bet you couldn't name a couple of regressions if you tried. On the desktop, OS X and Windows are so far ahead of Linux it's not even worth arguing about anymore you dumb faggot.

Re:Well...

[serviscope_minor]

"Ultra-books" are not sleek looking, nor thin (in most cases).

Yes they are and yes they are (though I don't have a particular fetish for thinness, myself, just weight).

This is a very nice machine, for instance. It's about the same price and weight as the closes Air, but the specs are higher. The build quality is excellent too. Basically you get a better machine for the same money. Runs linux beautifully too. It has amazingly good sound as well.

In basically every category it beats or matches the Air.

Ot there's this machine too. It's a little less slick looking, and feels a little flimsier, but comes with full-sized ports, so you don't have to mess around with very non-slick dongles.

That one doesn't beat the Air in every category, but certainly a comparable machine.

Re:Well...

[vux984]

They don't hold a candle to the Macbook Air despite a lot of windows users wanting something that does.

I dunno the new Dell XPS 13 and 15 look pretty decent.

Re:Well...

[serviscope_minor]

We have 1999 Macs in our family that are still running fine. We just pass them down the line.

You must have a quite strange definition of fine. I mean, I guess they still work, but have a 400MHz G4 processor. Given that clock-for-clock they're about the same as a Pentium-M, that would put it at under half the speed of my 4 year old Eee, with half the maximum ram (assuming you tricked it out). Unless you're using dillo or links2, that could get pretty tedious.

It might still run, but it's a pretty useless machine all in all.

And besides, there are plenty of ancient PCs that still run (maybe not 13 year old shitboxes), but certainly old quality ones. My inlaws' PC for instance recently passed its 10th birthday.

Re:Well...

[jedidiah]

Quite. If you believe all of the hype and propaganda about Apple hardware then there's ample reason to just buy the hardware and forget about the OS. I had 3 Mac Minis for this very reason.

They were the most suitable at the time. They were relatively cheap.

That changed in my case. I could see it still being true for someone else.

Re:Well...

[CanHasDIY]

All fanboi-ism is douchebaggery. Period.

Re:Well...

[mlts]

Maybe PC makers should start adding features home [1] users want/need:

1: Lots and lots of USB ports, on multiple USB buses. There are so many USB gadgets these days that the average 4-8 ports isn't enough.

2: Some standard for removable drives. HP sort of had this with the Pocket Media drives. Couple this with some decent backup software. That way, a user can unbox the drive, jam it in a slot, and let the backup software do the rest.

3: A beefier power supply to handle the USB stuff.

4: A read-only flash drive on the motherboard which has an OS image and recovery tools. This way, even if the HDD is replaced, the machine can boot to something and have some sort of OS available for the user. The key for this feature, is to have it be read-only, so that malware or other stuff cannot mess with it. If it has to be updated, have it be by a BIOS application. There have been so many times which the user has lost the CDs (if a Dell), or never made them (if a HP), which essentially forces them to re-purchase the OS. Having the OS permanently on the computer at least will get them up and running in some shape or form.

5: A hardware firewall NIC. Some older HPs had technology by nVidia which could allow the NIC to do the packet filtering, regardless of the OS. This was problematic, but it would be nice to see this revisited. Maybe even with full CNA functionality so a machine can be hooked up to a server, and use FCoE.

6: A built in hypervisor with automatic snapshot functionality. This way, even if the OS is compromised, the user can roll back the machine to before they got hit. This might even do for backups if snapshots can be saved off to disk.

7: Built in 3G/4G/LTE radio that the user can turn on. This way, a desktop machine could be anywhere and still have Internet access without needing tethering in any form. It also would allow for functionality like being able track or erase the machine from remote.

8: A way to lock the case other than the Kensington locks. I miss the heavy cases of yore which had a sturdy Medeco lock on them, as well as the ability to be chained down (not just cabled with a little "anti-theft" item.) Physical security isn't something to be ignored.

9: HP's low end desktops are really netbooks in a different form factor. Instead of a PSU, it has a power brick and a cable that plugs into the motherboard. Why not go all the way, and have a removable battery? This way, a user doesn't have to worry about a UPS.

10: Most importantly, have decent customer support. For consumers, the only game in town for decent CS is Apple. HP and Dell offer good CS if you go for the business line PCs and their upgraded support contracts, but the consumer level support isn't regarded very highly.

[1]: Home, as in the archetype who browses the Net, pays bills, maybe fires up a game or two. They don't care about replacing a video card, but just having everything working.

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Macs last a decade or more, unless you want to run Mountain Lion, then 3 years is about the limit. Meanwhile, I gave up on an HP 3 years ago that I got in 99 because I didn't want to buy a 3rd battery for it when the 2nd one reached the end of its life. It was still working just fine, running XP, fully updated. Your 10 year old (at the time) PPC Mac was no longer able to run the latest and greatest only a month after my 10 year old PC. Note that I'm ignoring Vista, which, while it was the latest at the time, was certainly not the greatest. It's also worth noting that Leopard stopped receiving security updates when Lion came out (about a year ago), while XP still gets security patches until April of 2014. Had I bought another battery for that PC, that would give the PC an effective useful (supported) life of 3 years longer than your Mac (15 years, vs 12).

Fast forward to today and Macs bought just 3 or 4 years ago, including $16k Mac Pro workstations, won't be supported just 2 OS releases later. Meanwhile, the Acer netbook I bought back in 2006 will run Windows 8 just fine when it's released. Its specs match midrange systems from 2001, so it's safe to say that those systems (now 11 years old) will run Windows 8 just fine, as well.

It gets even more interesting when you bring Linux into the mix, but I don't have time for that.

Full disclosure, I run the following configurations, currently: Linux-based laptop with Win7 and Snow Leopard in VMs; Android phone with lapdock; PowerBook G4 running leopard, PowerMac G3 running Leopard, Win7 desktop built in 2005.

Re:Well...

[je ne sais quoi]

I can name regressions: 1) "Save As..." has disappeared (an option that has been present since I can remember using a computer with a "file menu"). The "duplicate" function requires more keystrokes and is irritating to use. 2) Mail.app and every app that uses text editing has a bug that when you delete a block of selected text, the text gets deleted but the selection area remains. Just to be clear here: Apple can't even get a TEXT EDITING BOX correct now. 3) The Finder doesn't actually get selected sometimes when the Exposé is activated, 4) Faux stitching in iCal and a silly looking address book, need I say more?, 5) Stupid animations that take too damn long and don't convey any useful information and are sometimes impossible to turn off (including changing pages iCal, moving files with the Finder, etc.), 6) Resuming applications whether you like it or not, regardless of what settings you have selected.

I could say more, but I'm tired of thinking about it. I will give you that Lion does have one or two nice features, but for every nice thing, there's a step back or regression as well. I even went as far as to issue a feature request for Apple to issue a firmware update for snow leopard that allows it to be installed on modern macbooks. Jobs once said something to the effect that large companies stop innovating because they are run by their marketing and sales departments. I think what we're seeing with Lion and Mountain Lion is the truth of that statement. I also don't think it's a coincidence that once Serlet, the VP of software development who was responsible in part for OS Xes 10.4-10.6, retired and now there is no more VP of software development. It's all marketing and sales now (well maybe iOS too)...

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

Quite. If you believe all of the hype and propaganda about Apple hardware then there's ample reason to just buy the hardware and forget about the OS. I had 3 Mac Minis for this very reason.

They were the most suitable at the time. They were relatively cheap.

That changed in my case. I could see it still being true for someone else.

Why is it necessarily "hype and propaganda"? Can't it just be "product advertising for a product that doesn't work for me"?

Or can I call Samsung's advertising for the S3 or the Note "hype and propaganda" since it's equally as specious as Apple's?

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because honestly there aren't combinations of solid hardware like the macbooks out there. (Other laptops don't have the WUXGA display, don't have the nice touchpads, don't have the nice aesthetics)

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

All fanboi-ism is douchebaggery. Period.

You must hate it around here then, what with Apple on one side, Google on the other, and Microsoft on the third. However do you cope?

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

I use all three, so why don't you pull the cock out of your ass and quit projecting your personality traits onto others?

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Thank you. I only used Lion for 5 minutes when The Geniuses forced the upgrade on my boss last year (then he wanted his laptop back so he could get to work), and was very uncomfortable with it; I didn't get to play with it enough to draw any real conclusions. My boss bitches about it constantly, though, so I knew it wasn't just my perception. I've been asked to provide examples of what's wrong with Lion, and now I can.

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Ahh, more to the point than my last reply, where the goddamned fuck did I mention Linux?

Snow Leopard is a decent OS (I would know, I use it 40+hr/wk but it hasn't been a mandatory platform for me for over a year now)

Re:Well...

[treeves]

OTOH, I bought a Mac in 1992 and ten years later I could not use it, effectively, since OS X would not run on it and software I would want to use would not run on MacOS9.

Re:Well...

[Swampash]

This post coming to you from a 400MHz PowerMac G4. Perfectly usable for general net stuff.

Re:Well...

[Algae_94]

Why would you keep an old computer to "run" Ubuntu. I'm assuming there is something you do with the computer after Ubuntu loads, no?

Re:Well...

[jo_ham]

Why would you keep an old computer to "run" Ubuntu. I'm assuming there is something you do with the computer after Ubuntu loads, no?

Email, web browsing, listening to music, something to read when I can't be arsed to get up off the sofa and go to my "main" computer.

My point was to the brave, brave AC who doesn't seem to think old computers are useful for anything.

Re:Well...

[richard.york]

Where are these regressions you're talking about? I've been using Lion since it came out. I have 'Save As' in every application it makes sense to appear in. In a few apps that became 'Save a version', since auto save was implemented in those. Does the same thing. Duplicate? Right click, "Duplicate". I've had no problems at all with text selection, I've programmed many many thousands of lines of code using os x text editors, and I know every selection shortcut there is. You can turn off resuming applications. It's in System Preferences -> General. One of the first things I turned off. You claim the setting doesn't work, it works for me. Don't like the UI of iCal or Address Book? Use different apps. Never had a problem with the animations. I love Lion, I'm very much looking forward to Mountain Lion.

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Ahh, the joys of having excellent karma. You know what? I didn't get this karma by trolling. Does someone with some reading comprehension and a spare mod point want to fix this?

Re:Well...

[BronsCon]

Hmm... We're given 5 mod points at a time and exactly 5 of my posts were modded Troll today. Funny coincidence. Thing is, you don't build excellent karma by trolling and the majority of the moderating community knows this.

Re:Well...

[AK Marc]

So many here spend hours posting the edge cases, but for the most part, if you want *exaclty* the hardware configuration of the Apple, then get it from Apple. There exists *nothing* that beats the Apple in ALL categories (some cheaper with similar specs for grater size, others smaller with worse specs, some with more CPU and less GPU, or vice versa, etc.). Apple is not expensive for what it is, it's just not always what you want or need.

Re:Well...

[itslifejimbutnotaswe]

Except the trackpad sucks.

Re:Well...

[CanHasDIY]

All fanboi-ism is douchebaggery. Period.

You must hate it around here then, what with Apple on one side, Google on the other, and Microsoft on the third. However do you cope?

Namely, by egging it on.

Just because I think arguing about which OS is better is a douchbag thing to do, doesn't mean I can't enjoy watching it :)

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality. I buy a Mac and it lasts a decade or more.

You call that a feature? I had to endure a decade-old Mac in my former job. Damn slow machine that still worked despite the discolored CRT screen. Curse you, Apple computers for making such durable gear.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly never suffered with an office full of Dell laptops, which are nothing more than a tragic example of throwing good money after a bad investment. Busted drivers and unthinkably poor support certainly isn't a way to win the hearts and minds of customers. But the device pricing is fabulous if your needs are for a machine that was state-of-the-art 3 years ago.

Happily, the Dell equipment ultimately save us money - as a failed, dropped, or stolen laptop is an inconsequential hardware loss.

Re:Well...

[IntlHarvester]

Just curious. How long does it take to render this thread, filtered at -1, though Slashdot's Javascript interface?

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a beige G3 from 1998 that still runs fine. It even has a flashed Voodoo 3 card in it. I also have a 1999 B&W G3 and a 1999 "Lombard" Powerbook G3. All of them run pretty well, though they struggle with the last versions of Mac OS X they can each run. I dropped the beige G3 back to Mac OS 9 to keep a box that can run all of my old software "just in case".

I have two Mac Mini G4's. They also run admirably.

I have a Mac Mini (Intel). It still runs.

But there's that one MacBook Pro... An early-2006 model, Core Duo, battery problems, heat problems... I kept it cool, running it only on a laptop stand with a fan. And the battery problems were due to firmware in the batteries themselves, so I bought a new battery for it. The battery charged for 5 hours. And then... nothing. It just stopped. The PMU died, and it was out of warranty. To fix it would cost $900. So... I have a bag full of dead Mac laptop.

Re:Well...

[pubwvj]

You must have a quite strange definition of fine.

You're problem is you're expecting too much. Pass the computer down the line. A 10 year old Mac runs 10 and 15 year old software (even 5 year old software) just great. This way everyone in the family gets a machine to use.

My mother likes it, she doesn't need more computing power to type a letter, do a spreadsheet, email or browse the web.

My youngest daughter loves the older machine for most of what she does because she's using educational software that won't even run on the newer machines since Apple fails to support Classic and PPC.

Use the equipment at an appropriate level. Don't expect it to be more than it is. Just because a new model comes out doesn't mean the old model somehow instantly loses functionality. No, the same functionality is still there.

Re:Well...

[pubwvj]

Curse you, Apple computers for making such durable gear.

*grin* If only every manufacturer made such durable equipment. It used to be that way. I have power tools from the 1970's and 1980's that work great. I have hand tools that are over a century old. I have a cast iron skillet that is older than that. Still functions. This fad of making things only last a year or two is wasteful.

Re:Well...

[Algae_94]

Yeah, I was just being an ass. Funny how, looking at a post made just the day before can make you wonder why you wrote it in the first place. Of course there are uses for old machines. That AC probably has no idea how many systems in the world are still running on ancient mainframes.

Time to trade in my PCs?

[Drethon]

Honestly though, I bought an I7 desktop almost two years ago with 12Gb of memory and a pretty good graphics card. I haven't found any reason why that PC isn't still fast enough for about for of anything I use it for today. This compares to ten years ago when a two year old desktop simply cried with the lowest settings of the newest computer games.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[snowraver1]

I built my computer 3 years ago for $400 + scavanged parts. It dual core 4 gb of ram win7. I have no plans on upgrading.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Thelasko]

Heck, I've got a 6 year old Core2 and I don't see a reason to upgrade. I'm not a heavy gamer, so I don't require a fast machine, and everything seems to be running fine.

PC speed improvements just aren't that noticeable these days. They are also much more reliable than they were 15-20 years ago.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Freddybear]

I built a core-2 quad desktop about four years ago and with a recent upgrade to the video card (GTX 550ti) it's plenty of power for the stuff I want to do.
I looooove to window shop on Newegg for the latest fastest MB's and spiffy upgrades but it's just not something I gotta have. Maybe in a couple more years...

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[man_of_mr_e]

I bought an i7 PC almost 4 years ago, first with 6GB and I upgraded it to 12GB, recently added an SSD. There is no reason to buy a new PC when 4 year old PC's are just as good.

The only reason I intend to upgrade is to get Thunderbolt, also the RAID controller in my system is borked and I would like to do striped SSD's so I'm looking to upgrade that as well. So once the Thunderbolt boards become commonplace, I may upgrade.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[pegasustonans]

Honestly though, I bought an I7 desktop almost two years ago with 12Gb of memory and a pretty good graphics card. I haven't found any reason why that PC isn't still fast enough for about for of anything I use it for today. This compares to ten years ago when a two year old desktop simply cried with the lowest settings of the newest computer games.

Exactly.

With many PC games in recent years targeting DirectX 9 for easier Xbox 360 portability, any halfway decent hardware can run the latest games.

It'll be interesting to see if the next generation of consoles causes a ripple into the PC game market as well, bumping up the minimum specs new games.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[gman003]

Part of that can be blamed on a lengthy console generation. Most games have to sell on the PS3/360, consoles that are now around six years old. Developers aren't going to spend extra millions making a game that can really push modern PC hardware, because that gives them no edge on the more lucrative console market.

When the next generation of consoles comes out, I expect PC games to immediately jump in hardware demands.

It's not entirely based on this, though. Display resolution's another thing - we're getting close to "as good as a game can look in 1920x1080, 60Hz". If 2160p displays suddenly become universal, you'll see the rest of the computer having to work harder to keep up.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[TheRealGrogan]

Good point... games are no longer driving the computer hardware industry. They are mostly console ports, with, at best, a few DirectX 10/11 effects tacked on after the fact, for the PC. (Often added later with patches, at that).

Graphics card manufacturers (Nvidia and ATI) are cranking out higher numbered products that are mostly just minor design improvements over the same old shit. (The performance improvement, say, between last year's card and this year's iteration with a higher product number wouldn't justify an upgrade if you already had one)

I haven't needed a hardware upgrade in 2 years either. It won't be until some time after the game consoles get a hardware upgrade and game vendors stop writing for the lowest common denominator that there will be any incentive for further innovation.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Reverand Dave]

I'm in the same boat. There just have not been any huge leaps forward on the PC front to justify and overhaul. It's not like they've introduced a new form of hyper threading or multi-core processing and over all the industry trend seems to be leaning more towards leaner processing. which will only push the longevity of my current system even further. More than anything it's the general lack of major innovation that has kept me at my current level, and despite what the fanboys will say, Mac's haven't innovated anything truly useful lately either.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just got rid of my P4 400 last year...more because I WANTED to upgrade than the need.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[scharkalvin]

I've been building / upgrading my main computer when technology takes a big enough leap forward and prices are in a low point. Two years or so ago I build a new Athlon x2 2.8ghz machine with 4gb of ram. At the end of last year I gave that machine to my wife and built a new one with a Phenom II X4 @ 3.5ghz with 12gb of ram. The Bulldozer had just come out and prices on the older Phenom II's took a nosedive. Other than maybe adding some more ram or a larger disk I don't see any reason to upgrade anytime soon. Intel's Ivybridge looks interesting (but pricey), wouldn't go there unless I go all in with the I7 and 4 way memory interleaving. And why bother, my Phenom II is fast enough with Win 7 or Linux 64 bit OS's. I also still have a standby machine with a real old Asus socket 939 MB and a dual core Athlon-64 processor that can run the latest Linux. THAT macine only has 2gb of ram and won't take more (DDR-1).

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not entirely based on this, though. Display resolution's another thing - we're getting close to "as good as a game can look in 1920x1080, 60Hz". If 2160p displays suddenly become universal, you'll see the rest of the computer having to work harder to keep up.

As long as I can tell the difference between a game and a live-action movie, there's space for graphics to improve. I'll admit I haven't seen any recent computer games, but I suspect true photorealism is still pretty far off.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[sarysa]

Nice. I built a PC less than a month ago and I think Wirth's law is slowing down, which is why you can get away with that. Moore's Law, otoh, has kept pretty well -- power has stagnated in many areas recently (especially processor speed) but price is still going down. Aside from my ungodly fast desktop, I have an itty bitty $250 netbook (single core, atom processor, crap RAM) which I take everywhere and it gives me little grief.

I think some of the reasoning behind the change from the late 90's early 00's is:

• * Software developers want to port to mobile platforms as well, which is forcing them to be more than efficient enough for the PC market.
• * There are tons of great old programs that get the job done, and the average user is recognizing this.
• * We're all nerds so we definitely recognize the above, probably using a lot of the same software we did 10-20 years ago.
• * Weak laptops (like my itty bitty netbook) are still fairly popular...

I'm currently predicting 7 years for my custom, unless something really shakes the industry...

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Cornwallis]

I bought my Tandy Model 100 twenty-eight years ago and it still does what I need it to do.

Take that!

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's been my story too. Upgraded to 6970 ATI graphics card, only because my Nvdia 280 got broke when I shipped it home and I was interested in 3 monitor gaming. Bought an i5 processor and new motherboard and ram just because my Core 2 Quad core MD didn't have USB3 and couldn't use more than 8gb ram. I saw no reason to buy another sound card and dumped that. The only thing that has been even remotely interesting are SSD drives, a pair of those in Raid 0 are very reasonably priced and easily max out the SATA 3 on the MB. All the TBs of spinner HDs got dumped into a home server that is banished to the garage, so the SSDs have more than enough local storage. Sure you could run multiple graphics cards, but most games won't really put any of that hardware to any real use.

  Really what it's come down to is that PC productivity and gaming is more or less maxed out on budget or near budget hardware. Until games start giving us realtime lighting, very complex physics, advanced AI, an increase in number of simultaneous users (local and online), and wrap around 3d views there is almost no need for any real big bumps in hardware specs.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason to ever have to buy a new PC. I've upgraded my desktop from a Packard Bell P75 with 8MB ram and 850MB disk to a Phenom X6 with 16GB ram and 2.5TB disk. There were several motherboards, cases, power supplies, optical drives, etc. replaced along the way - enough to build several other desktops.

It's easier to buy something already built - if they use the right components that don't cut corners. Things like integrated graphics, having only 2 memory slots, having a power supply capable of just 200 watts, etc. really put a damper on buying any new desktops.

Apple's the closest to a good desktop, but they cost $500 too much for the hardware provided.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[avandesande]

Install a SSD for your boot disk and you will be good for another 6...

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[SpryGuy]

I think another limiting factor is how much of the "PC" sales space is actually on laptops, which use Intel Integrated Graphics. If you DO want to make a PC version of your game, AND you want a big-enough potential market, you have to run on these lower resolutions, lower power systems. The "Gamer PC" market just isn't big enough any more (compared to consoles, or the PC space as a whole) to warrent the investment, especially in these leaner economic times.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[JBMcB]

Here here. 5-year old Core 2 quad - all I really feel the need for is some more RAM as I'm doing more VMs these days, and a faster HD. Even my GTX260 plays new games fairly well.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[localman57]

Really, though, how much more fun is it? At some point, I don't think it matters. I play a lot of battlefield 3, and i run an HD6950. I can choose to run one monitor with all the settings turned way up at 1920x1080, or I can turn on all three at medium settings, and scale them back to 1366x768 (4098 x 768). The eyefinity setup is much more imersive, which to me says that photorealism doesn't matter as much as giving more of a sense that you're in an environment.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[sctprog]

There's a huge issue here with expense. Already games are incredibly expensive to make because the market simply won't pay for games that look like 3 guys at id wrote them.

It's so crazy now that only the really big boys who can throw millions on a title that won't be ready for 3+ years and may or may not break even, let alone make money.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm on a 6 year old thinkpad and I did just that. The 256gb SSD I put it in makes it feel just like a brand new laptop. It won't play the latest Crytek game but for everything else it does an amazing job.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[oakgrove]

I have a Core2Duo desktop and a Core i5 laptop and in a double blind there is no way I would be able to tell the difference in speed.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[geekoid]

"Moore's Law, otoh, has kept pretty well "
no it has not. If it had, I could get a CPU with 4 times the transistors for the same cost of a CPU I both 4 months ago.
While CPUs will get more powerful, Moore's law is dead, as is David House performance matrix.(Double in performance every 18 months)

I include both because many people confuse the two. And by 'Confuse the two' I mean have no fucking idea what they are talking about.

The reason has to do with Fabs and leakage. Leakage, I believe, is solvable. Fab expense for sub 10nm? A fuck ton for something most people don't need. Computer power is outstripping nearly all software. Yes, there are some exceptions, high end animation and video. But that level is pretty much a specialty field. And none of this even begins to address bandwidth.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[zlives]

It might even be a question of parity. Just like any new thing there is a boom period for growth. Perhaps software has matured enough that a 10 year old software (i am looking at you win/office XP) is perfectly useable and thus the market for ever newer hardware will experience shrinkage.!

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[zlives]

i recently (2 yrs ago) upgraded to core to quad (q6700 used for 25 bucks) on my old rig... keeps on going

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Thelasko]

all I really feel the need for is some more RAM

I upgraded the RAM years ago. I've found that RAM is really cheap shortly after a computer comes out. If you wait too long though, it becomes extremely expensive as the market dries up for the old stuff.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[man_of_mr_e]

The motherboard is considered to be the PC. Not the case. That's just stupid.

I highly doubt you upgraded your P75 to a Phenom X6 without replacing the motherboard.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Spad]

Take a look at Project CARS, it's pretty astonishing.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[sarysa]

Yeah, I pointed out processors being an exception, but you made a nice elaboration. But lets look at other areas (I'm on a ul/li kick today, anyway):

• * RAM just shot up out of nowhere recently. The only thing that was holding it back was Windows' ability to handle it. That said, 32gb desktop RAM cost me about twice as much as 1gb laptop RAM 5-6? years ago, which is pretty close to Moore's...
• * SSD's have been at Moore's or better for a few years. Shot up in the last year or so.
• * HDD's still aren't slowing down
• * Graphics cards are nearing the same walls as CPUs, but they are still growing with improved dedicated processing and the addition of physics processing.
• * Non-optical removable media.

.

Other things that have really just matured too much to need improvement:

• * Mice and keyboards. What's left to do?
• * Optical drives -- I actually agree with Apple when they say they're trending out, and I don't often agree with Apple.
• * Monitors: They're being held back by the industry push for making computers into media consumption devices, and the unreadiness of the TV/movie industries to support more standards. Business really held back industrial capability here.

.

That said, Moore's Law isn't dead yet. :) Like any rule of thumb, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when PC gaming was more than being a glorified console? The fact that PC games are held back by consoles says more about the state of PC gaming than the state of consoles.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[drinkypoo]

I built my computer a couple years ago for $600 + old HDD. It was a tri-core with 4GB and XP. $300 later it's got an 80GB Intel SSD, 8GB RAM, and a six-core. Cheaper than buying one good prebuilt PC and I can still run anything I've tried to throw at it. I'm not buying A-list games and everything computationally expensive that I run is quite parallel. So I did upgrade, but I didn't buy a new PC, and this ought to hold me at least two more years. Thanks, AMD! nVidia graphics though, I'm not a loon.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[xhrit]

>It'll be interesting to see if the next generation of consoles causes a ripple into the PC game market as well, bumping up the minimum specs new games. I doubt it - by that time developers will be targeting low powered devices like iPad and the Wii2.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[bemymonkey]

Heheh, same here, except I built mine half a year ago for $50 and scavenged parts. Even HD video encoding is fast enough on that thiing... why bother upgrading? More money left over for machines I actually use constantly, like laptops.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[bloodhawk]

There are 10's of millions of gamers that don't give a crap about the low powered low end devices. If you think game development houses are going to abandon a highly profitable market you are kidding yourself. a new market is definitely emerging for the low powered stuff but if anything that is driving even more people into the high end market not away from it..

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[jawtheshark]

There is a sweet spot, but it's not dependent on when the computer comes out: it's dependent on the memory technology used. In the beginnning, the RAM is quite expensive, especially the "biggest" modules. After a while even those become cheap. Then, they change technology and they come expensive again. Look at DDR2 and DDR prices: much more expensive than DDR3, especially when seen per GB. (And don't get me started on SD-RAM or EDO-RAM, which you can only find in specialized stores, but you pay)

As this moment I'm wating for 8GB DDR3 SO-DIMM modules to become cheap so I cam outfit my (2x2GB) laptop with 2x8GB which is its theoretical maximum.

That said, on a desktop motherboards 16GB can be had for extremely cheap in the form of 4x4GB. That's what I put in my moms computer. That should do. Even if the standard 8GB DIMM modules start to become ridiculously cheap, I don't think she would benefit much from 32GB or 64GB RAM (maximum supported by my moms computer).

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[jawtheshark]

While I agree (computer=motherboard), I have a problem with how Microsoft licenses that are pasted on the cases. You see, Microsoft also says "It's the motherboad, dummy". However, in my book, that means I should be able to gut a OEM computer, put it in a nice case and then use the OEM Windows license. After all, it's the same computer, right? Problem is: I can't transfer the OEM sticker. So? I think that's problematic.

Inversely -what I often do, but technically is piracy- is that I take an OEM computer, gut it, outfit it with better material (motherboard) and then install the OEM Windows. After all the sticker is on the case, right? Microsoft says, i can't do that.

The thing is: would you prefer to get a computer from me with damaged Windows sticker (any trial to transfer, immediately damages it) that Microsoft deems legal or do you prefer to get a computer with intact Windows sticker with different intenals from the original, which Microsoft deems illegal.

I go for option #2, because to the person who gets the computer, it looks to be legit.

So, assuming the "case" is the computer, isn't entirely wrong given your Windows license is physically "stuck" to it.

I'm a tech dumpster diver: I come across this situation way more often than you think.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[Galilee]

Don't forget about Windows XP. XP doesn't support DirectX 11, and a PC game developer would be crazy to ignore the entire XP base by making a game which required DirectX 11.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[gman003]

I'm not so sure about that - EA/DICE skipped XP support on Battlefield 3, which was almost explicitly designed to "make bajillions of dollars by taking on the Call of Duty empire". And at least one of Microsoft's PC games is DX10-only (Halo 2), although that was more to push Vista than to push the game.

PS: XP doesn't support DirectX 10, either - DX9 is its limit. Doesn't significantly alter the argument; just clarifying.

Re:Time to trade in my PCs?

[gman003]

I recently got a new laptop (Asus G75 - but do NOT buy from Asus, because their customer service fucking SUCKS).

The first time I'd gotten it, it broke within hours (have I mentioned Asus sucks?), so when I got it back, I wanted to stress-test it to make sure it wouldn't fry itself again. So I loaded up Crysis. Set all options to maximum.

ALL options.

Some scenes *are* photorealistic, at least at 1920x1080@60Hz. It's not perfect - sometimes the shadows are too sharp, or plant textures too repetitive. Fire particles don't look at all right. Water reflect/refract is too perfect, too clean. Any any scene with a person's face visible up-close is right out, especially if they're talking (Crytek can't seem to synch audio and animation perfectly).

But holy crap, when it works, it works. It looks as good as any movie I play on the same display.

I'm not naive. I know we're nowhere near hitting the maximum graphics can reach. And even once we hit photorealism, we'll keep making progress at making better non-photorealistic graphics. But it definitely seems the limiting technology today is more "display" than "processor".

Or maybe:

[Anonymous Coward]

We've already all got computers?

Re:Or maybe:

[alexander_686]

Or Tablets (which are not PCs)

Or Web Services (I know the cloud is hyped, but I know I have delayed in buying a new desktop because I am doing more work online.)

Re:Or maybe:

[geekoid]

"Or Tablets (which are not PCs)"
On what metric is a tablet not a personal computer?

Re:Or maybe:

[alexander_686]

From the article, “Including mini-notebooks but not media related tables such as the IPad”

Re:Or maybe:

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the metric used by the study that says PC sales are flat-lining? Tablet sales aren't flat-lining. Don't be so pedantic.

Re:Or maybe:

[Lawrence_Bird]

after 30 years is it shocking that pc growth will depend upon replacement cycle and population growth?

Re:Or maybe:

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same metric that puts you at the position of 'utterly devoid of common sense but hugely endowed with arrogance and stupdity".. typically re-confirmed whenever you open your fucking stupid yap.

Not suprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they getting better or cheaper?

I hope windows 8 fails

[Anonymous Coward]

I really thought it would be the rise of the linux desktop this time, why do people want a crappier start menu?

So?

[Animats]

US Car sales are down. House sales are down. Employment is flat. Why should PC sales be different?

Re:So?

[dc29A]

Why should PC sales be different?

Ask Apple, they went through the 2008 financial clusterfuck with flying colours. Same for some Android makers.

Re:So?

[alexander_686]

Because in past recessions (~30 years) spending on technology has held up pretty well. Most of the time IT growth only slowed – it did not stop. That implies that technology generated a lot of productively gains. Now – today – maybe not. It may be that we have reached a level of technology where productive gains level out. Does a office worker need a 2nd computer?

I don’t think that is the answer – I think consumers are moving to tablets and Business is moving towards servers.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you say that US car sales are down?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but we WANTED their products.

We don't want Microsofts.

Btw I worked at Microsoft for a decade as a software engineer and I don't even want their products, except maybe Visual Studio and Office and DirectX and Windows 7 (Windows 8 is like Vista/Millenium all over again, never can they do TWO good windows releases in a row and even Office is now feature rich enough we don't have to upgrade thats why they keep making new file formats to force us to lol and why they don't let us forward upgrade.Net into Visual studio so we have to buy it every 2 years), that is about it and the only things they done right.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your talking about technology yet the article is about PCs. Is there any proof that technology didnt continue to grow?

Re:So?

[trifish]

You cite completely unreasonable religious fanatics purchasing habits as a model for the PC? What a crazy man you must be, dude.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

PCs are expensive enough that I wouldn't put them in the same category as tablets or smartphones.

I think they're not quite the same as a car, but closer to that territory. They're larger investments, closer to "durable goods."

Part of what the original poster was referring to was the change in larger purchases. When the economy is poor, people are less likely to make big purchases.

In some sense, in fact, you could argue that people are replacing their PC purchases with tablets and smartphones in part not because they don't use their PCs, but because it's a way to increase their standard of living without as much cost. E.g., if your salary is cut in half, you might not be able to make that down payment on a house, or spend 7.5-25k on a car, or even 1-1.5k on a computer, but will treat yourself to a 200-500 dollar tablet.

I do think some people are realizing they can be happy with less than a laptop or PC, but I also think part of that for some people is "I don't have to buy a new laptop or PC" rather than "I don't want a new laptop or PC" or "I wouldn't use a new laptop or PC." All of those things are also different from "I don't need or want a laptop or PC at all"--as many have pointed out, PCs and laptops are having longer lifespans for various reasons.

In this regard, a PC or laptop is becoming more like a refrigerator. It's something that costs a decent amount of money and something that you expect to have for awhile.

Re:So?

[geekoid]

Yeah, subtract iDevices and only leave their PC in the numbers..oh, not so well now, is it?

Re:So?

[geekoid]

"never can they do TWO good windows releases in a row"
98 then 2000.

And 8 is fucking awesome, I have no idea what your whine is about there.

Unless you have a mouse in your pocket, keep the "We" to yourself.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Visual Studio IDE is very good. Not sure how I feel about programming in the .NET Framework though

Re:So?

[rgbrenner]

No one wants Microsofts products? Really.

Revenue grew 12% and profits 23% over the past year
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT+Income+Statement&annual

Granted Apple has had an phenomenal past few years. But that doesn't mean MS is Nokia.

Re:So?

[jbolden]

Technology != PCs

The spending which is large is on networking and that's being born by consumers. Take a look at smartphone sales and the concurrent spending on over the air bandwidth.

Re:So?

[alexander_686]

Fair question but one that is hard to answer. For the US, reading the tea leaves, I would guess stable.

For example, a company that shifts from high end desktops to servers might be increasing IT spending but it would show up as a decrease in this survey.

Gartner takes a survey of leading PC sells and complies the numbers. Fast – but it misses a lot of data. They excluded tables and servers – but that distinction can be fuzzy. They miss smaller manufactures, etc.

Backward looking numbers are more accurate but they take up to 2 years to compile. You need to dig though national accounts and annual reports.

Re:So?

[NoahsMyBro]

Yeah but we WANTED their products.

We don't want Microsofts.

Btw I worked at Microsoft for a decade as a software engineer and I don't even want their products, except maybe Visual Studio and Office and DirectX and Windows 7 .....</p></quote>

So, even *you* don't want their products, except for their flagship products that they are best known for? Heavens!

I'm reminded of the scene in The Jerk when Steve Martin explains that he doesn't need anything, except the paddle-ball, and the lamp, and the.....

Re:So?

[SlashDev]

There's a homeless man in my neighborhood, he pushes a cart, lives in people's garages (don't ask...) and carries a laptop.

Re:So?

[Swampash]

US Car sales are down. House sales are down. Employment is flat. Why should PC sales be different?

Gartner says Apple Mac sales are up. And that doesn't include iPad, which I hear has sold a few units lately.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, subtract iDevices and only leave their PC in the numbers..oh, not so well now, is it?

Nope still good.

Consistent year over year growth.
Growth faster than the PC sector.

Re:So?

[TemporalBeing]

Because in past recessions (~30 years) spending on technology has held up pretty well. Most of the time IT growth only slowed – it did not stop. That implies that technology generated a lot of productively gains. Now – today – maybe not. It may be that we have reached a level of technology where productive gains level out. Does a office worker need a 2nd computer?

I don’t think that is the answer – I think consumers are moving to tablets and Business is moving towards servers.

There's also the issue that depsite the academics of it, the recession from 2000 never really ended, and after the dot-com bust then employers did a lot of improvement through technology/productivity gains, and then didn't really pick up in hiring when the recession academically ended. So why is there a surprise when the academic definitions says that the recession returned and technology isn't picking up? Perhaps because they've already done as much as they could, and they're just holding fast through the end of the real recession (despite what academics call it at any given point in time).

Flattening, not flat-lining

[rbanzai]

Yes, on a graph it will be a flat-line. But "flat-lining" is when someone's heart is no longer beating.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[KiloByte]

Flat-lining means exactly a graph becoming flat, no matter if it's a sale chart or EKG.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[mystikkman]

Flatline in an EKG means zero electrical activity.

Flatline in a sales graph would mean zero sales, not just sales being steady.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[jthill]

Flat-lining in every use connotes death. Things that have leveled off "have stopped growing", "have reached a plateau", "have leveled off", "have saturated their market segment".

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[geekoid]

Never in any business meeting I have been in has anyone ever said "Sales are flatlined"
The all say "Sales are flat."
Which makes sense since it's fewer sylLAbles

Granted my sample size is small.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[Robert Zenz]

In the modern era, I think those two are equivalent.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[Anonymous Coward]

The OED begs to differ: http://oed.com/view/Entry/249411?rskey=FO0mYn&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid . Flatline meant "to maintain at a constant level" four years before it was used to refer to EKGs.

Re:Flattening, not flat-lining

[phantomfive]

It's a good thing it's on a graph then, and not someone's heart, right? Otherwise someone would have died!

windows 8

[Joe_Dragon]

Many consumers thinking of upgrading will no doubt be holding out until October when Windows 8 is launched, before upgrading their PCs. This obviously means that the Q3 results are likely to be similarly flat, though Ultrabooks, the second generation Ivy Bridge versions of which are being launched at the moment, could have more of an impact by then.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/362375/20120712/pc-shipments-fall-ultrabook-flat-hp-lenovo.htm#ixzz20RKdxqyA

WOW I thing it's better to buy windows 7 now.

Re:Windows 8

[Jesus_C_of_Nazareth]

I wonder how many shoppers even ask for something with Windows? I imagine it'd be more a PC, and it's expected they can browse the web and buy stuff for it. Anybody with experience in retail who can fill in some blanks?

Re:Windows 8

[SpryGuy]

I know a lot of people in this mode... myself included. The reason is that Windows 8 enables/encourages some advances in hardware design, and new form-factors. There is a LOT of new (and sometimes innovative) hardware coming down the pike this fall and winter. Look at the "Tai-Chi" device, or even Microsoft Surface... similar to an iPad in form-factor, but with a complete OS so you don't need to have a "real PC" to sync it with (though that's slowly becoming less and less true of iOS devices). Flippable screens, laptop-tablet convertables, and vastly smaller devices that match the capabilties of current laptops and even desktop towers.

And whether it's realistic or not, there's a lot of "Don't want to buy now for fear of missing out on the cool new stuff right around the corner" feeling.

Re:windows 8

[maestroX]

I don't think anyone is waiting on Windows 8. Vista is still fresh in the memories and 7 does the job just fine.

Re:Windows 8

[jbolden]

Because if they believe in Windows then they believe in the whole idea that their work environment and their home environment should be similar. I.E. they want Office. And they want Office documents which are casually browsable (i.e. touch screen), always on, syncing with the cloud (Microsoft365...). That's Windows 8 and Windows 8 hardware. Their current system can't do that.

If they don't want Office then they often have no reason to be part of the Microsoft eco system.

Re:windows 8

[serviscope_minor]

Many consumers thinking of upgrading will no doubt be holding out until October when Windows 8 is launched, before upgrading their PCs.

Seems unlikely. Most people I think replace their machines when they (a) break, (b) get so virus infested that they may as well be broken or (c) become too slow for some task that they want to do or run out of space or something like it. I think if you asked the average PC purchaser when the next version of Windows was being released, you might be met with a blank look.

Re:windows 8

[Shag]

Many consumers thinking of upgrading will no doubt be holding out until October when Windows 8 is launched, before upgrading their PCs

I don't know that I fall into the "many consumers" category, but I've certainly already made the decision, based on what I've seen of Windows 8, to "hold out" on upgrading. But I don't mean this in the sense of upgrading in October when Windows 8 is launched - rather, from what I've seen of Windows 8, I know I do not want it, now, in October, or ever, and will "hold out" to see whether Windows 9 or whatever it's called is more palatable.

I think people just got smarter

[Schwhat]

I think people probably found out that you don't need a super computer to watch porn.

Re:I think people just got smarter

[locopuyo]

You do to watch on 9 monitors.

Re:I think people just got smarter

[Robert Zenz]

Who needs nine monitors?! Just use three beamers!

Re:I think people just got smarter

[treeves]

But you do need one to watch nuclear weapons simulation porn or atmospheric modeling porn.

I bought a Raspberry Pi, does that count?

[chispito]

Otherwise, my desktop and laptop are around six years old and going strong.

Disposable income is what's flatlining

[mholve]

What little disposable income people have in this economy these days is going to cheaper, more mobile devices. Not so much smartphones, but clearly tablets - and the largest percentage (60% or so IIRC) going to Apple's iPad.

Re:Disposable income is what's flatlining

[gbjbaanb]

I doubt that - a non-high-end PC is cheaper than a iPad in most cases.

Its more about utility and desirability of the things, no-one wants a PC anymore, they want "consumer computing devices" that require much less admin or expertise, less viruses and malware, they just want things that works, even if the uses they put them to are fewer than what you generally use a PC for.

Article missing a minor point

[Anonymous Coward]

Other web sites are also reporting on the Gartner survey, but making hay of something that barely got mentioned by IBT: Apple's sales are up. That's ignoring iPad and iPhone sales - Apple's sales of desktop and laptop computers is up 4.3 percent.

Re:Article missing a minor point

[Anonymous Coward]

With a few exceptions, PCs became very commoditised. They all do the same thing (run Windows), except some have nicer plastic or are dirt cheap. It was a race to the bottom. The companies doing well are those with decent corporate sales, appeal to niche high spending markets (perhaps gaming, but even that isn't as ivory tower as it used to be), or those who can work PC sales nicely in to an ecosystem of shit to sell. Companies like HP and Lenova don't have the brand recognition that Apple's built up, and they offer variations on the same thing. This was inevitable for any hardware companies who didn't successfully distinguish themselves from the hundred other companies selling pretty generic I'm guessing we'll see similar in the world of Android as generic hardware manufacturers plonk out gear that runs a system available from many other companies. That's not knocking Android, or for that matter Windows. It's up to OEM vendors to do have a good strategy, whether that be adding value or by racing to the bottom of the price lists.

Re:Article missing a minor point

[rgbrenner]

Yes, Apple had a fantastic quarter, with either growing or falling Mac sales.

It's stupid to use 3rd party sales projects when we can just wait a couple of months for the quarterly report from the actual company.

Re:windows 8... Fantasy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantasy.. no one wants windows 8 except a few crazy windows phone people and a couple of developers.

I don't know if they'll even go down

[Sycraft-fu]

They'll just stop going up much. New computer technologies don't seem to kill off older ones, just make new markets. I mean it turns out that we have more mainframes today than when we had only mainframes, however that still isn't very many and there isn't any growth in the market. But it isn't dying.

Same deal with PCs likely. We'll reach saturation and they won't really drop, they just won't grow.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

No PC numbers will go down. Most people who use PCs are using it for just one or two tasks. They bought PCs because the dedicated machines were not available then. The hardware prices have fallen so low, it is possible to create dedicated machines for the few tasks most people use. Web, store & view personal photo collections, store and listen to music, covers 100% of use by 90% of the people, and 90% of use by the remaining 10%. So they all will go away from Desktops and laptops.

Once that large base leaves, they would not be subsidizing the cost of Desktops/laptops. This will increase the price of PCs and it will drive more people away. Eventually Desktops will go back to be workstations used by engineers at work. I see very few hobbyists doing video editing and such stuff needing Desktops in the future.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All my foes are spelling or grammar Nazis.

I am a splleing and grammer Nazi, yoo insesntvie clod!

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's mainframes aren't the massive machines of old, they're generic PCs running linux using distributed process, i.e. clusters.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[lgw]

Same deal with PCs likely. We'll reach saturation and they won't really drop, they just won't grow.

Depends how you define "PC". Current workstation-style boxes are on the way out, and will e the realm of build-it-yourself hobbyest boxes again before too many more years. Even for gaming and CAD/CAM, nVidia and AMD are working frantically to move high-end graphics rendering into the cloud, so you'd only need a terminal at your desk.

There will surely be contiued growth of devices you can use to browse the web or play a flash game, and no drop in home-build gaming PCs, but mass-market fullsize general purpose computers are on their slow way out - there are just better answers now for most non-geek needs, or will be soon.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[IntlHarvester]

New computer technologies don't seem to kill off older ones, just make new markets. I mean it turns out that we have more mainframes today than when we had only mainframes, however that still isn't very many and there isn't any growth in the market.

They might not be literally "killed", but as soon as growth stops in the technology industry, the strategy shifts to cutting development and squeezing profit out of the legacy users. Then younger people stop learning the tech and it recedes further and further into dusty corporate corners.

That's fine, because PC is pretty much "done" technologically, we have all the hardware and software features anyone every wanted. But its unlikely there will be any great advancements that capture people's imaginations. Investment will flow into more interesting spaces such as mobile, where there's great potential for future upgrade cycles because shit barely works.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[BronsCon]

Cray begs to differ.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[jedidiah]

Cray is a supercomputer vendor. Entirely different animal.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[TheRaven64]

I've seen some strange spellings on Slashdot, but spelling IBM c-r-a-y is probably the weirdest.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[marcosdumay]

Web, store & view personal photo collections, store and listen to music, covers 100% of use by 90% of the people

Current portables aren't good enough for "store & view personal photo collections", and after you include all the functionality that is missing for that use case you'll get a PC in a new form factor.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[epyT-R]

yeah wonderful, so they can bill by cpu time, memory use, and storage.. I just can't wait..

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[epyT-R]

yet these mobile devices don't come close to what can be done on a desktop. unfortunately we're dealing with marketing morons who think that tablets can replace desktops for the average productivity admin employee.. it's just not true.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, because desktops from Dell are more expensive than the custom-built ones you get from newegg, or NCIX, etc. who are currently doing quite well. Enthusiasts are the ones paying for the premium, high-margin parts. The mainstream is paying for the low-binned cheap stuff. Besides, I can't complain about Dell and HP going away. ASUS has grown massively though over the period. What we're probably seeing, at least in part, is people identifying and moving away from the garbage and seeking the higher quality manufacturers. Obviously there is also a segment who will buy iPads are android tablets and use those exclusively, but most people still prefer to use a PC because it can store all their photos and videos.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[hairyfeet]

The problem with your logic is thus: that is the same argument used right before the dotbomb with the "we're all going to the net!" thinclient stuff and then as it is now the "dedicated boxes" cost MORE than simply buying your average Dell. Look at the price of the Chromebooks and prepare to choke, these things are Celeron duals with a tiny SSD and they want MORE than an i3 or AMD quad laptop for the things.

In the end even with people only replacing when they die the economies of scale when you are talking about millions of toast PCs a year means those dedicated devices will simply cost more to do less and most will say "Why would I want that instead of a laptop or desktop?" and just pass them by.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[sjames]

No, they don't. The XE6 and XK6 both ship with Linux and have a distributed architecture. The difference from commodity clusters is in the interconnect.

Besides that, Cray sells supercomputers, not mainframes. A supercomputer emphasizes computation and parallel processing. Mainframes emphasize I/O speed and uptime, often sacrificing raw computational power to do so.

More or less, If you want to perform millions of computations over a few data sets, you want a supercomputer. If you want to perform a few computations over millions of data sets (records) you want a mainframe.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean they sell Gibsons? Awesome!

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Ol Olsoc]

yet these mobile devices don't come close to what can be done on a desktop. unfortunately we're dealing with marketing morons who think that tablets can replace desktops for the average productivity admin employee.. it's just not true.

I forsee the day when there will be no content creators, only consumers. Now settle down and drink your Brawndo.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Lokitoth]

Er... not quite. Yes, clustered distributed systems exist, and are growing much faster than mainframes, but there is still a lot of stuff that is done on mainframes, if only because it is a lot more convenient to have a really beefy box for that large, mission-critical multi-user database/application, without having to figure out how to partition it and without being subject to CAP.

Distributed clusters are generally better for non-real-time processing. Real-time HPC stuff is still the realm of supercomputers (not to be confused with clusters, even though both generally tend to run Linux or some other embedded POSIX OS)

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[tibman]

PC Games will always keep the computer popular in the home. Also, no, you can't play things like DayZ, LOL, EVE, and many others on a console or phone. Not that console or phone gaming is bad, because it's great. Just that there are a few areas where PC gaming cannot be beat. Like MMOs, RTS, and games needing 30 keys to even play.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

You grammer is correct, only you spelling is bad.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[lgw]

Why does that matter? Only total cost matters, and it would be hard to match the cost of keeping current with high-end video cards (though I'm sure the'll try). There's nothing special about paying a lot up front vs pay-for-use.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

Web, store & view personal photo collections, store and listen to music, covers 100% of use by 90% of the people

Current portables aren't good enough for "store & view personal photo collections", and after you include all the functionality that is missing for that use case you'll get a PC in a new form factor.

you can view them on a TV screen, either using microUSB or HDMI.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but at THAT time, people bought PCs in order to access internet. They do longer need to do that.

An important thing that hasn't been mentioned is that most people who want PCs already bought them and upgraded them to current spec, which is more than adequate for general use.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[marcosdumay]

They are good for vieweing. It is for storing that their limitations show.

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[shiftless]

That's fine, because PC is pretty much "done" technologically, we have all the hardware and software features anyone every wanted. But its unlikely there will be any great advancements that capture people's imaginations.

LOL

This reminds of an anecdote I once heard of a chemist, back in the 1920s or some such, saying "all the big discoveries had been made" , there's nothing more to be discovered, etc.

LOL

Re:I don't know if they'll even go down

[IntlHarvester]

Way to miss the point. The advancements are going on in mobile space. Look at Windows 8: the "windows" side is largely stable & finished, while all the sexy new features are retrofitting mobile features onto the OS.

Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

The results are hardly surprising. Ultrabooks cost more and weigh more than a Macbook Air. They're noisier, hotter, less durable, and don't look as good. If PC makers want to compete with Apple then they need to do so with a product that improves on the Air in some way. All they can offer is faster performance, which is NOT what this market segment is looking for. I want a good ultrabook very badly. I own no Apple computers and have no plans to get one, but neither am I eager to buy a PC which is so markedly inferior to what Apple offers.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to feel the same about apple computers. I dare you to walk into an apple store, play with a 13" mac book air and walk out without wanting or having bought one. (if you really insist you can put windows on it, you'll never find a more stable and reliable laptop with windows than a mac book air).

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[NatasRevol]

So, by your own words, you think Apple has the best computer. But you won't buy one.

I really can't fathom why.

If you don't like OS X, put Windows or linux on it.

The Air is the same cost (or less) as other ultrabooks, so it's not price.
The Air is just as upgradeable as the other ultrabooks, so it's not expandability.

I guess I'll just scratch my head and look at you oddly.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

So, by your own words, you think Apple has the best computer. But you won't buy one. I really can't fathom why.

I have a Galaxy Nexus phone. Apple has sued (successfully) to prevent this phone from being sold in the US. I will not financially support a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system. It's true that the patent system in the US is broken and that lots of other companies abuse patents, but Apple takes abuse of the patent system to a whole new level of evil. No other tech company has gone as far as trying (much less succeeding) to outright ban the sale of competing products. Even Oracle in all their evilness did not order Google to stop making Android; they simply said "pay us 6 billion dollars".

Basically, competition is good. Choice is good. I have no problem with anyone choosing Apple products. But when Apple says Samsung may not sell this phone, I have a huge problem with that. If Apple feels that their patents are being violated, the correct remedy is monetary compensation, not a sales ban.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[NatasRevol]

I will not financially support a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system

Your shopping must be pretty limited.

when Apple says Samsung may not sell this phone, I have a huge problem with that.

The courts said that.

But thanks for showing your blatant biases.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[DaveWick79]

For one, Intel's ultrabook as mentioned in the synopsis, is just being released this quarter, so that has no bearing on sales.

I can put together an Intel 14" ultrabook for $900 with twice the RAM and nearly identical size, weight, speed, warranty, SSD, as a macbook air that sells for $1200.

Lenovo, ASUS and others all have sub $1000 13.3" notebooks that compare favorably to macbook.
The macbook does probably look the best and has the sharper screen.

I suggest you check around and see what has been released in the past year before making the judgment that there are no comparisons to Apple, in some cases you may find a better product for less money.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

Oh, I definitely want one, but there are non-technical reasons why I will not purchase Apple products (see my reply elsewhere in this thread).

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

I will not financially support a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system

Your shopping must be pretty limited.

Name a single other company that has obtained a pre-trial sales ban on a phone.

when Apple says Samsung may not sell this phone, I have a huge problem with that.

The courts said that.

But thanks for showing your blatant biases.

The fact that the legal system permits such abuse, does not mean such abuse is legitimate. There are dozens of other companies that do not abuse the legal system in the way that Apple does.

Actually, I understated the case. Every other company except Apple does not abuse the legal system to the extent that Apple does.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

I can put together an Intel 14" ultrabook for $900 with twice the RAM and nearly identical size, weight, speed, warranty, SSD, as a macbook air that sells for $1200.

14" is too big. I want 11" or 12". Portability is a huge consideration. Can you do the same in the 11" size range? Also, how's the battery life and thermal profile? Bonus points if you can include dedicated page-up and page-down keys (which the Air does not have).

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're okay with Apple suing for the profits, but not for a sales ban. Gotcha.

(You STILL don't make sense)

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

So, you're okay with Apple suing for the profits, but not for a sales ban. Gotcha.

(You STILL don't make sense)

I am not OK with Apple suing for damages either, because I feel the US patent system is broken. However, every other company in the world also uses the patent system to sue for damages, so I can't blame Apple in particular if they were to do that.

Sales bans, however, are uniquely destructive. They destroy free-market competition and free-market choice in a way that monetary damages do not. I do not support such legal actions and I certainly won't pay anyone to act in this way. Are you somehow suggesting that I am not within my rights to boycott Apple?

I'm not asking you to boycott Apple. I'm not biased against Apple. I've said nothing but good things about Apple products. But I certainly am within my rights to make my own purchasing decisions about my own money, for whatever reasons. I have given numerous very legitimate reasons for not purchasing Apple products and not a single one has been factually rebutted.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[NatasRevol]

Now you're moving the goal posts.

First, you said ' a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system'
Now, it's just phones.

Seriously? You won't buy a laptop that you said is the best laptop for your needs because of a phone?

Then you say that Apple is the worst offender of the legal system.
You might want to go check out Monsanto.
Then try not buying any food they touch.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

Monsanto is indeed a bad actor and I do try very hard to avoid buying Monsanto products, just like I try to avoid buying Apple products. I don't always succeed, because Monsanto designs their genes to aggressively contaminate nearby farmfields and then sues the neighboring farmers for patent infringement. Nevertheless, I do try. The fact that I do not succeed perfectly is, I think, irrelevant.

Your argument as far as I can tell is something along the lines of "You can't avoid Monsanto haha so why bother even trying to avoid Apple." This argument is so ridiculous that I don't even know how to begin addressing it.

I have not moved the goal posts. I avoid companies that egregiously abuse the legal system. It is indeed impossible to avoid every company that abuses the legal system, but I certainly try to avoid the most egregious abusers. Apple and Monsanto are both in the category of egregious abusers. I notice that not a single one of your counter-arguments involves any factual rebuttal of any of my claims. Do you actually have any legitimate counterpoints or are you just going around accusing me of false bias while ignoring your own obvious bias?

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[serviscope_minor]

Ultrabooks cost more and weigh more than a Macbook Air. They're noisier, hotter, less durable, and don't look as good.

Erm no they don't. They're the same price or cheaper. Lighter, the same or heavier. They're sometimes quieter and sometimes noisier. They generate exactly the same amount of heat since they use exactly the same stock intel parts. Some of them are more durable some of them less so, and some of them look as good as well.

Basically, in all numeric categories, you're ignoring the ones that don't fit your incorrect assumptions.

The design thing is a matter of taste. I think the Asus Zenbook looks nicer, personally.

The ones that aren't as nice are generally a lot cheaper. The ones that are comparable are generally a little bit cheaper.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

I'd be very happy to be wrong. Please recommend some specific examples of 11"-12" ultrabooks that I should consider. The one model that you mention, the Asus Zenbook, is quite a bit heavier and slower than the Macbook Air. The newly released Asus Zenbook Prime is indeed very nice but it's not available for sale yet as far as I know.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[serviscope_minor]

The one model that you mention, the Asus Zenbook, is quite a bit heavier and slower than the Macbook Air.

Quite a bit heavier hardly seems fair. It's 1.1Kg to the Air's 1.08Kg. I would say that's marginally heavier.

The i5 model is 1.6 GHz versus 1.7GHz. It's within 2% of the weight and 6% of the speed.

The Air's had a refresh since the UX21 was released. When I was in the market, the UX21 was better across the board and cheaper to boot. The manufacturers have pretty much reached parity so whoever has the most recently released model probably has better specs.

If you can wait a couple of months (if that) then the new Zenbook will (according to benchmarks) be within 2% of the weight and generally faster.

A friend of mine recently got a Toshiba of some sort. I can't comment other than that it has full-sized VGA, HDMI and Ethernet ports, which is very useful for some people.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[NatasRevol]

Apple is an egregious abuser for blocking a phone.

Just like Monsanto is an egregious abuser for damaging the entire US food infrastructure.

One of these is not in the same category. If you can't see that, then your bias is blinding.

I get that Apple uses the legal system to its full extent to remove competition/copycat products. But that's nowhere near the same level as what Monsanto/Big Pharma/WallStreet.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

The thing is, I'm already doing everything I reasonably can to punish Monsanto as a consumer. Your logic is somehow based on the preposterous assumption that boycotting Apple somehow means that I'm not doing enough to avoid Monsanto. That presumption is plainly, laughably, false.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[DaveWick79]

ASUS UX21E

11.6" LCD, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Better battery life than the Macbook Air. Weighs 2.25 lbs.

And it's under $1000. Probably the only drawback vs. Apple is poorer graphics performance, which is only a factor for gaming.

If you really want cutting edge, the UX21A has a higher res 1920x1080 LCD and a touchscreen option. And matches the macbook's backlit keyboard.

There are other options, but ASUS probably has the best right now.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[NatasRevol]

No, my argument is that blocking a phone isn't that big a deal, yet you're making it out to be equivalent to harming the entire food industry.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

To be honest, my own personal purchasing decisions are not a big deal either in the grand scheme of things, so I don't know why you're making such a big issue of it. I have every right to boycott Apple for whatever reasons. Since you asked for my reasons, I gave them. End of story.

Re:Ultrabooks suck

[David Jao]

According to my version of the internet, the UX21E weighs 2.43 lbs. The previous-generation Macbook Air was 2.34 lbs. Fractions of pounds matter here.

The UX21A is a strong contender. But is it available for sale yet? I can't find it actually for sale anywhere.

PC's are like dish washers

[alen]

you buy it and expect it to last for years no matter how cheap it is

for most of us the value is in smart phones and tablets which are much better at most tasks than PC's. i use my MBP to hold some photos and that's about it. between my wife and I most computer use at home is on iphones and ipad

Re:PC's are like dish washers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, but just like a PC my dishwasher is always nagging me, update my shoes, my wardrobe, we need a ....

Re:PC's are like dish washers

[serviscope_minor]

i use my MBP to hold some photos and that's about it. between my wife and I most computer use at home is on iphones and ipad

If all your computing needs are served by such small, low power devices, I wonder very much why you ever got a MBP in the first place, rather than a cheaper model.

I am reading this on a 3 year old PC

[Anonymous Coward]

That I will probably never replace since I use my ipad for light browsing, my kindle for reading, my phone and corporate laptop for work/email. My XBOX and Wii (yes, still play it with the kids) for gaming...

Re:windows 8... Fantasy.

[alexander_686]

I think you are both right.

The market has been flat for the past 7 months – so it’s just not people waiting for Win8. And I have heard nothing dramatic that makes Win8 a must have (Unlike the jump from XP to 7).

But it could explain the last quarter or 2. I know people who are on the fence about replacing an older computer and have decided to limp along for another 3 to 6 months or so until Win8.

Re:windows 8... Fantasy.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Chinese. They love buying anything with an 8 in it. And before you mod me down, look into it. Addresses and Phone numbers in China with lots of 8's in them are highly prized. It's also likely that your local all-you-can-eat chinese buffet has an 8 in the name.

Maybe

[Flavius Iulianus]

everyone is waiting so they buy Windows 8 on a PC, Tablet and Phone. Or maybe their iPad, iPhone/Android are all doing just fine.

No market for mainstream, complete PCs

[DL117]

There isn't much of a market for prebuilt, complete mainstream PCs. Enthusiasts and gamers either build their own from parts or order a custom. Mainstream/consumers just use the same internet/word processing computer for years and for entertainment use gaming consoles and tablets.

Admittedly anecdotal

[93 Escort Wagon]

I don't know of anyone that's holding out on updating their computers because of Windows 8. Heck, I hardly know anyone that cares at all about Windows 8.

I do know several people who, over the last year or so, decided to buy an iPad to replace their aging computer rather than buy a new computer.

As others have noted, there are a lot of people that own computers but really have no need of one.

Re:Admittedly anecdotal

[fast turtle]

I found it funny you mentioned that several people have replaced older systems with iPads as I've seriously been looking to join that crowd. What's changed is my actual usage patterns over the last couple of years. What I'm doing now is pretty much limited to browsing/email and some word processing along with light gaming and media playback and all of those can be easily filled by one of the Win7 tablets such as the Acer Iconia. What's holding me back though is the lack of storage space on the damn thing (32GB). What I need is a decent solution that offers 2TB of storage and no, a single 2TB external doesn't fill it (single point of failure).

Re:Admittedly anecdotal

[Lokitoth]

2TB NAS? Preferably one that is cloud-storage aware (or has its own clients for tablets/phones) to be broadly accessible even when not on LAN? (I guess I could settle for SkyDrive's Fetch feature, but would rather not have to go through that route).

Windows 8

[QuietLagoon]

I doubt if the "waiting for Windows 8" effect is as strong as is suggested. Windows 8 is not really a PC OS, it is more of a touch-screen OS. So why would PC users wait to buy a PC with Windows 8.

.
I would think that PC users would be hurrying to upgrade before they can no longer get Windows 7 pre-installed.

Re:windows 8... Fantasy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we will have a lot better idea about windows 8 sales next year at this time, after it has actually been available for 6 to 8 months, don't you?

2 main reasons i see

[nurb432]

1 - is the economy
2 - people have finally figured out that they don't really need to participate in the upgrade treadmill.

Windows 8?

[TankSpanker04]

The decline has been put down to [other reasons, and] the imminent launch of Windows 8, making people hold out on updating their PCs.

It seems more likely the imminent launch of Windows 8 would cause a rush to purchase Windows 7 PCs before you can't (without going custom).

4 PCs in 14 years

[Leo Sasquatch]

1998, 2002, 2007, 2011. Some upgrades - 1998 was 400MHz CPU and 64M RAM with a 12M Voodoo 2. 2011 was 6-core Phenom 2, 8G RAM and 1G 6870. All built as gaming rigs in their time. But if you build it right, it lasts a while. They're not impulse purchases. Once every 4-5 years, just replace everything. Can't be arsed trying to do partial upgrades and squeeze another few fps out of a system that's just not up to it.

And if you just want to read your email, a smartphone will do in a pinch, but a tablet will do fine. Practically anything on the market will do it - doesn't need to be a top-of-the-range iPad. So only gamers are buying PCs. Businesses aren't - we have 5 year old machines in the office that still run XP and Office just fine. We don't need multi-core setups and uber-gfx cards to do Powerpoint and Excel. We have no upgrade plans for at least 3 years and we'll probably completely leapfrog Win7 when we do. PCs got 'good enough' a while back - no wonder the market's flattened out.

not surprising

[ILongForDarkness]

Computers are cheap enough now that people in the developed and near-developed world already own them. So you just get baseline replacement sales. Developing countries people can't really afford a PC and a tablet/smartphone but they "need" a phone so they just buy the one device and use if for everything. I realize I'm overly generalizing but I'm a physicist +- an order of magnitude and I'm happy :)

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You're 0.1 to 10 physicists?

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep close enough. Since natural phenomena we deal with varies on roughly 10^-35 (plank length) to 10^1026 (universe) ~1041 orders of magnitude getting your estimate within 1 us usually close enough for government funded work.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Mental mind fart 1061 orders of magnitude somehow I thought 1061 but typed 1041 probably my habit of using base 2 too much :-)

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just that people already own computers, the incentive to get a better computer is just not really there anymore - as many posters have alluded to, nearly anything with a dual core processor and 2 gigs of RAM is enough for many common uses. Even for gaming, a dual core, 2 gigs of RAM and a video card equivalent or better to a 5-year old bleeding-edge $600 monster will play nearly anything acceptably well.

Re:not surprising

[ILongForDarkness]

Not just compute performance either. There was a period from 1990-2000 or so where the way you got more storage was buying a new computer (well not really but it was a part of the justification IMHO). You'd say oh 5GB just isn't enough anymore I need that new 20GB HDD + new processor plus better screen resolution. Now pretty much any desktop bought in the last 5 years will have a HD screen, 1TB+ HDD etc. Heck I dual boot at home off of a 1TB harddrive split evenly and never even feel the need for more than 500GB of space. Get low on space I just delete content I've watched already. Even if I was one of the paranoid people that never want to delete season 1 of the simpsons just in case external drives are so cheap and relatively quick (you can stream HD content off them no problem so for media storage you don't need anything better) you no longer upgrade for anything you need anymore for the most part. Now work/dev machines are another thing but home use don't need much.

Yup, I'd still have a 3-gig Celeron...

[Anonymous Coward]

if it weren't for Skyrim. Other than games and a few other high-end apps, there's no reason to upgrade a 5 year old machine. since most home machines are just accessing the web, why upgrade?

The fans need cleaning

[Anonymous Coward]

People realized that they need to clean their cooling fans every few months

The real answer is...

[Archeopteryx]

...that PCs no longer become obsolete at the rate they once did.

I had an iMac die the other day, one I bought in 2004. I was still using it, and it was still useful for the things it was purchased for.

It used to be that manufacturers depended on a 2 year obsolescence cycle.

Market *saturation*, Timothy! Ever heard of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently he hasn’t.

Watch, how they will panic, causing a big loop of self-fulfilling prophecy that will fuck everything up.

Maybe. just maybe

[Morpf]

Could it be Joe and Jane Somebody don't need a quad core CPU with 8 gigs of RAM, 3 tb HDD and a 3 tflops CPU to read mails, facebook, or use office tools?
People seem to be okay with their PC hardware? You don't say...

Its software's fault

[joss]

I'd buy a new PC if I could be bothered installing everything and getting my environment/drivers/etc right, and that's on Linux... for windows it was 3 times worse (except thunderbird which is worse than anything windows threw at me. I genuinely found it easier to move continents than cleanly migrate thunderbird.)

These days, its not the price but the pain of migration that stops most people from buying a new PC.

I'll bother when the speed etc improvements are worth the grief. Dumb software slows hardware upgrades.

Re:Its software's fault

[marcosdumay]

On Linux you just connect your hard disk, and, if you have more than 1 network interface, change the MACs that are hardcoded at the udev rules (they couldn't keep it simple, could they?).

I must be in the minority.

[neiras]

After years and years of using a laptop as my main machine, a year ago I built myself a no-compromise workstation.

The logic was simple: I realized that when I was out and about with the laptop, I never did much heavy lifting. When I got on the Android bandwagon, the need to use a laptop as a browsing/ssh/mail device just went away.

Now, when I anticipate being a loser and writing code at Starbucks for a change of scene, I grab one of the cheap netbooks we have lying around, VNC into my desktop, and off I go. Bonus: if it gets stolen, there's nothing of value on it. Double bonus: disapproving glances from Apple users due to the anti-apple stickers on the lid.

We have a tablet for the coffee table, and it mostly gets used for recipes, Facebook, and controlling XBMC. That's it.

It's just horses for courses. No one wants a general purpose PC for round-the-house drudgery, people with smartphones don't need laptops to communicate.

It all seems to come down to two questions. "Do you need a keyboard?" and "Do you need actual CPU power?" For many folks, it seems the answer to both is mostly no.

I wonder if my kid will ever build a PC.

Because they sell dreams. Not products.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dreams of a better world, where everything is easy. (And extremely utterly limited in a tiny tiny jail... but easy.)

Or would any sane person buy an Apple product out of purely rational reasons (like price/performance ratio)?

New ultrabooks...

[kikito]

... which cost as much as a mac book air. Do I have to spell it out?

not enough screen real estate

[Chirs]

While it may work for some things, it's certainly a non-starter for me.

A tablet has nowhere near enough resolvable screen real estate to compete with someone using a decent desktop monitor, much less a dual or triple monitor setup.

Doing any sort of serious development on a tablet pretty much assumes you've got a backend server somewhere doing the compiling, whereas my 4-core laptop with 8GB of RAM is actually a pretty reasonable compile box when I'm away from an internet connection.

Lastly, tablets don't have the connectivity. In particular wifi (even at 5GHz) doesn't compare well against gigabit ethernet and eSATA.

Re:not enough screen real estate

[tripleevenfall]

We aren't at the point - yet - where you can carry your BYOD tablet into work, dock to a monitor for the screen real-estate if desired, and use the keyboard integrated into the case if desired. We aren't too far away from those.

Computing power and wifi speeds will continue to increase.

Like I said, we aren't there yet, but we aren't far off.

Re:not enough screen real estate

[atlasdropperofworlds]

> Computing power and wifi speeds will continue to increase.

Wifi speeds can't increase indefinitely. They need ever higher frequencies in order to keep PSNR down. There is a limit on the frequencies they can use.

Also, computing power will increase, but even today it takes a good amount of time to compile a large library such as boost, or a large project. For developers, there is no such thing as enough computing power. For gamers and enthusiasts (some 5% of the market, or 50 million), same thing.

I don't see tablets going the direction of being serious work machines. Can they drive 2 30" monitors? What about a couple of the upcoming 4k resolution ones? I'd be willing to bet that the number of people doing serious work on such a computation hampered device would be so low that no tablet manufacturer is going to bother.

Re:not enough screen real estate

[blackest_k]

My latest Monitor is also a TV. It's pretty much the same as my last monitor with the difference that it has Hdmi instead of DVI as well as the usual svga, Scart and others the sound output is 5.1 and there is a built in dvd player which will read mp3 and divX and a usb port too.

So basically i can use it with my tablet my netbook or other device that requires a reasonably high def screen.

My Desktop systems have largely gathered dust for the last 3 years, they are power hungry and not worth the cost of keeping powered up. My Nas has taken over the job of bulk storage a single 2tb drive is enough most of the time. There are other drives but its been a long time since they got powered up too. A single DVD burner using USB takes care of any disk needs, thou a usb stick tends to replace the pile of DVD's and CD's i used to burn once and use once.

The Tablet is getting more useful but there are short comings that are hard to address. It can't print directly to my nas which is also my print server it needs to use my netbook as a gateway to the android cloud printing service. Skype is awful on android it is difficult to be say using a web browser and skype at the same time. its much better integrated on Linux or windows or...

There is plenty of need for a pc in my life but not that much need for a desktop. I used to run myth-boxes but my satellite boxes record to hdd the files are transferable and transcodable and in sync. I can't series link but that only worked for me in the uk on digital terrestrial tv anyway and in ireland the Tv channels suck.

So now i am a low power (watts) computer user and it makes more sense that way.
There are only small niggles that need resolving like my multifunction printer scanner cant scan connected to my nas so i have to plug it in to my netbook. maybe i need to return to service my old EEE701 and use that instead of my nas.

Re:not enough screen real estate

[Ol Olsoc]

While it may work for some things, it's certainly a non-starter for me.

A tablet has nowhere near enough resolvable screen real estate to compete with someone using a decent desktop monitor, much less a dual or triple monitor setup.

Very very true. Your point is also why I howl at people trying to watch movies on their smartphones

But I think that a lot of people here seem to have a monoculture outlook. We argue about what people should have or not have as if we have to decide what is best, and then have that one device only.

OTOH, I have a iMac, a laptop, a netbook for the car, and a tablet. Why not? The iMac sits in the office, and is used for power computing, I do videos, a lot of photographic work, and it does that very well.

The notebook, which is a dual boot Linux/Windows machine, has enough horsepower to do a fair amount of the stuff I can do on the Mac, and I use it to run my Amateur radio hardware.

The netbook is used mostly in the car, and to browse and email at the coffee shop. Just carries like a small book. Also take it traveling and in the RV. It's almost disposable,

The tablet sits on the coffee table, and is used for miscellaneous stuff, mostly entertainment, to look up familiar actors that we might see on an old TV show or movie, but aren't quite sure who they are.

The best tool for the job is job one, IMO. And I get to play with a lot of different toys without trying to shoehorn one intodifferent purposes.

Can't justify the cost of upgrading.

[BLToday]

To the average person the only recent perceptible level of improve comes from SSD, and most computers don't come with SSD. So most people don't buy new machines every 2 or 3 years like they use to. I remember back in the mid '90s to early 2000s, I would be building a new machine every 18 months because the level of performance increase could be seen (Rendition and 3dfx :( RIP) or felt Celeron 300A (oc to 464Mhz). Now, I'm hard press to see real improvement between my old Core 2 Duo and Sandy Bridge computers under daily operations.

Computers are now just appliances, if it ain't broke they're not going to be replaced.

"PC"

[Quiet_Desperation]

It has an actual etymology: "PC" is a relic of the original "IBM PC" in 1981. The "IBM" got dropped when the first clones appeared about a year later. It was already just "PC" when the first Mac was sold in 1984. It became "PC" and "Mac" to differentiate.

I don't recall anyone referring to the (pre-Mac) Apples, Ataris or Commodore machines as PCs. Some might have, but it was IBM's box that popularized the acronym, and it has stuck ever since. "PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.

The street (society) determines what terms mean. See the lost hacker/cracker war for another example.

Re:"PC"

[BronsCon]

"PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.

So, a Mac, then?

Re:"PC"

[Divebus]

Wrong. You do know that "PC" stands for "Personal Computer", yes? The first deliberate use of the term I can find referred to the Altair 8800 around 1975. Apple used "Personal Computer" in their Apple II print ads in 1977, years before the IBM PC came out. Earlier than that, the very first "Apple Computer" was "the First Low Cost Microcomputer System with a Video Terminal and 8K Bytes of RAM on a Single PC Card". That, of course, referred to the printed circuit card.

Re:"PC"

[Grudge2012]

"PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.

So, a Mac, then?

No, only something that still has a ISA-Bus hidden somewhere, just in case you need it. And that cassette tape interface.

Re:"PC"

[Udo Schmitz]

It has an actual etymology: "PC" is a relic of the original "IBM PC" in 1981.

Nope. Apple at least since 1977 referred to their Apple II as a ”personal computer“:

http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds2/AisFor1.jpg

Check out the rest of their ads from the late 70s, for many more occurrences of the term, here:

http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/gallery1.html

In 1974 HP published this:

http://www.hpmuseum.org/journals/65a.htm

Dig a little bit more in history and you may find who used the term first:

http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml

Re:"PC"

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yes, but it was the IBM PC that put it into much more common use.

Look, I'm not saying it's correct, but that's what the culture has decided. You can trot out geeky pedantry all day and night, but it doesn't matter to society at large.

Re:"PC"

[Quiet_Desperation]

And like I implied, absolutely none of that matters to anyone outside geekville. The IBM PC was what finally and fully put the acronym into popular culture. That's all I'm saying.

Re:"PC"

[Divebus]

Am I trotting out geeky pedantry? It's a lot to ask on Slashdot, but if someone is going to quote "It has an actual etymology", it should at least be somewhat accurate or cite references. To put "PC" in a trade name was a brilliant marketing move. IBM co-opted and immediately owned the application of a catchy abbreviation already in common use, but they didn't make it up.

Re:"PC"

[Quiet_Desperation]

Am I trotting out geeky pedantry?

Yes, in spades. Etymology is also the study of how words evolve and change in their usage over time, not just origins.

I never said IBM invented it. I think we're actually in basic agreement.

Re:"PC"

[Divebus]

True, dat. It just seemed that the origins were being misrepresented as coming from IBM when saying "actual etymology". They certainly popularized the term PC as a trademark but the actual meaning covers all "personal computers". I just had a bad reaction to "actual".

Who let the English Majors in here?

a computer is not a single-purpose appliance

[Chirs]

The whole point of a computer is that they're general-purpose machines. There's a lot of flexibility, which creates a lot of complexity.

A single-purpose computer is basically a kiosk...someone has programmed it to do one thing.

Modern TVs are basically kiosks...under the hood they run linux, but they're generally limited to media consumption. However they're much more complex than they used to be, with built-in netflix, youtube, HDMI-CEC, ethernet connectivity, etc.

Most tablets/smartphones are a bit further along on the complexity curve...more complicated than a single-purpose device, but less complicated than a full-blown computer.

Ultimately you decide what you want the device to do, then pick the device that fits your needs.

Improvements.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they ever want sales to go up some more. They better go help third-world countries or something.
THEN the need for better computers will arise there.

Oh well, I guess they need to invest the money in some way so it won't be done because they might lose money.

makes sense to me

[Chirs]

I think Apple makes awesome hardware, but it's more expensive than I want to pay and the lower-end ones don't have nearly enough screen resolution.

I'd be perfectly happy with a less-expensive i5-based 15" chunky ugly laptop with a crapload of memory and a super high res display. But nobody makes something like that--only the ultra-high-end stuff gets the high res display.

Re:makes sense to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple doesn't make any hardware. Most of it is made by Foxconn, which is where tons of other companies outsource their hardware production. What Apple does is design hardware, and they occasionally come out with some good ideas, but by and large it's the same junk that everyone else has.

Re:makes sense to me

[NatasRevol]

To paraphrase an old saying:

Good or cheap. Choose one.

Cancer

[Snaller]

Constant growth, in the human body is what they call cancer. Yet strangely modern business is expected to grow grow grow forever - this is clearly not possible, and is a cancer on society.
What we need is move towards a balanced sustainable society in homeostasis.
Something that will probably take many decades of debate among the electorate, so have at it.

It's the Economy, Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

reason number 305 to vote Obama out

NEWSFLASH - Sales of Refrigerators Flatline!

[eepok]

The desktop computer is less disposable than it used to be. Average software resource requirements are not increasing so quickly relative to hardware capabilities as compared to 1995-2005. A computer purchased today with a modern (non-budget) processor, 6+GB of RAM, a $25 low-power discrete video card, and a Blu-ray drive will carry you for multiple years now.

Just like refrigerators, desktop computers are approaching "appliance" lifespan. This is a good thing for consumers and a secure thing for bearish investors.

Re:Fat Pipes to Nigeria

[hoboroadie]

I smell a market.

US Sales 16M per quarter

[DanielRavenNest]

The Gartner data shows US sales of 16 million units in the latest quarter. That is 64 million per year. There are 117 million households in the US, and 139 million employed people. So that comes to replacing a computer every 4 years for every home and job in the country. That does not sound like a dire situation, that sounds like a saturated market.

My computers last about 10 years on average

[WillAffleckUW]

My computers last about 5 years on average, and monitors twice that.

I bought my last PC last year, and there's no reason to replace a perfectly fine 6 core 64GB 2TBHDD Win7 machine just to line somebody's pocket. This go round I even bought a new monitor, so until the 3D monitors drop to around $100 for 32 inch sets, ain't gonna be no money spent on a PC.

And my iPad2 works fine, thanks. I'll buy the iPad4 when it ships, or maybe get an iPhone5 to sync to my Win PC, but not sooner.

ok?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? It's happened before.

Remember all that crying about "the desktop is dead!" some years ago? We were all going to stop using towers and switch to Netbooks and Laptops, now it's Smartphones that are doing the "killing." How'd that work out?

PCs will survive and continue to grow.

Flatline = constant

[Anonymous Coward]

This means PC sales have stabilized. It's pretty good news, I would say. Ah, but investors would have us think that it's really bad if a company sales don't increase every year. How about employee salaries in these companies, do they also undergo double digit increases on an annual basis? I doidn't think so. There is one and only one thing that undergoes unlimited growth in nature -- cancer.

Really?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm pretty sure that the lack of growth in PC sales has to do mostly with the fact that nobody has any freaking money. Seriously, it boggles my mind that finance pundits argue over the slow consumer economy when consumers are broke.

I just read an article about how a huge percentage of consumers in the UK have the equivalent of about $25/week to spend on anything besides necessities. That doesn't leave a lot of room for upgrading the household technology.

And still, the "serious" people all think the solution is more austerity, because having more broke people is somehow going to stimulate the economy.

Re:Really?

[TemporalBeing]

And still, the "serious" people all think the solution is more austerity, because having more broke people is somehow going to stimulate the economy.

Austerity is about making the government do what people are already doing - watching what and how it spends money a lot more closely, making sure the necessaries get spent on, and not the luxuries. You know, like making sure the Tax man can collect the taxes but that the GSA doesn't go to Vegas for the weekend.

Once the government finances are in order, then there will be more money to spend on the people - either thru reducing taxes or through paying out more services. Either way, it ultimately is more money back in people pockets.

On the other hand, those that advocate government spending would take the $25/week that the person has, and say that the government is wiser about how to spend it, and thus the taxes increase, the service decrease, and the government is still broke. The person may or may not see more services - as in all likelihood that $25/week taken now goes to pay for new computers so that the government workers can have Windows 8 on a brand new computer come November.

If government had money, then austerity wouldn't be necessary. And sometimes you have to cut spending in order to save before you can spend big again. The same applies to governments - even during prolonged recessions. Spending is not always the answer.

Re:Really?

[PopeRatzo]

Austerity is about making the government do what people are already doing - watching what and how it spends money a lot more closely

You mean "watching what and how it spends it's money" the way the banks are doing? Or do you mean "watching what and how it spends it's money" the way the Wall Street firms are doing?

Does it mean having the government "watching what and how it spends it's money" when it comes to the bank bailouts or the bailouts of the investment cartels that get to call themselves "banks" through a perversion of language? Or does it mean having the government "watching what and how it spends it's money" on things like the Olympics? How about having the government "watching what and how it spends money more closely" when it comes to military adventures and purchase of new, ultra-expensive defense systems that are nothing but giveaways to corporate donors?

No, I didn't think so.

For certain people, "austerity" is only meant for anything that doesn't benefit directly, or tickle the fancy of the Right.

Shame on you for even suggesting that there is anything at all about the kind of "austerity" we're hearing from our corporatist overlords that has to do with the way actual working families run their budgets. It's an offensive lie.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Austerity is about making the government do what people are already doing - watching what and how it spends money a lot more closely

You mean "watching what and how it spends it's money" the way the banks are doing? Or do you mean "watching what and how it spends it's money" the way the Wall Street firms are doing?

Neither. See a Debt Counselor for what I mean.

Does it mean having the government "watching what and how it spends it's money" when it comes to the bank bailouts or the bailouts of the investment cartels that get to call themselves "banks" through a perversion of language?

It would mean not bailing out the banks, but helping them shutdown gracefully, and helping people with the insured assets at the banks. Yes, people would have lost money as the banks shut down, but not everything, and the financial system would have adjusted faster and recovered faster as well.

Or does it mean having the government "watching what and how it spends it's money" on things like the Olympics?

First, the Olympics is held only by one nation - this year its U.K for the summer Olympis, and they're financially solvent, unlike Spain, Italy, and Greece. Second, if the finances are not there to send a team them they should not participate.

How about having the government "watching what and how it spends money more closely" when it comes to military adventures and purchase of new, ultra-expensive defense systems that are nothing but giveaways to corporate donors?

Military spending is very low for the U.S, and changes in military spending will not affect the budget by much. Comparatively changes in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up 60+% of the budget, and changes there will dramatically impact the budget. ObamaCare - which adds expenditures to those programs - does not help.

Europe is not much different. Their military spending is nothing compared to their social welfare programs.

So you don't need to touch the military spending to resolve the budget issues.

Now, does the military spending still need to be monitored and adjusted in a similar manner? Yes. We need to get rid of programs that are costing money that will not produce any results - tangible or otherwise - that will not progress the state of the art of warfare, have no intelligence benefits, etc.

For certain people, "austerity" is only meant for anything that doesn't benefit directly, or tickle the fancy of the Right.

Shame on you for even suggesting that there is anything at all about the kind of "austerity" we're hearing from our corporatist overlords that has to do with the way actual working families run their budgets. It's an offensive lie.

As you notice, I leave no portion of the budget untouched for Austerity. But when you start talking about Austerity you also need to have a realistic view of what in the budget is taking up the bulk of it, and what can be changed to provide a real change that can work towards reducing the budgetary problems. If you fail that - as the Democrats do the in the US by insisting that the 4% of the budget that belongs the military must be cut when the real problems are in the other 96% of it - then you are not contributing to the solution, only the problems.

Seriously, if you really want to understand what Austerity means, then you need to look up what a Debt Counselor does, and what the Courts do under a Reorganizational Bankruptcy to help one get out - Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 in Bankruptcies in the U.S. It's the same principles.

Yes - it's the same account, just didn't log in - TemporalBeing.

Re:Really?

[PopeRatzo]

Military spending is very low for the U.S,

Yes, he said that.

One important factor is being forgotten

[JDG1980]

Yes, a lot of casual users are going to conclude (or already have) that a full-fledged PC is more than they need or can safely handle, and that a tablet makes a better computing platform. For Grandma who only surfs the web and checks her family's Facebook pages, a tablet is a better choice: more intuitive, good enough for the tasks at hand, less likely to catch a worm or virus. It's for more complicated tasks that a PC is required. (My mother, for example, does most of her web-related stuff on the iPad, but she still needs to use a PC to get photos off the camera, edit them, and post listings on eBay – the iPad apps are grossly insufficient for this task.)

But one thing a lot of people are forgetting in their haste to announce a "post-PC era" is the HUGE installed base of existing systems. Up until about 2006, the PC market was still evolving fast enough that users had to upgrade on a fairly regular basis. An average 2001 PC would be pretty bad at running 2006-vintage applications. But for most home and office users, PCs from the Core 2 Duo era onward have been good enough. They can do all the usual stuff (surfing, email, videos, Office, WoW and other simple games) without too much trouble, and multitask reasonably well since they are multi-core. Given that economic times haven't been that great recently, why would home or business users want to switch out perfectly good hardware that still does what they need? This in no way means that the PCs are going away, just that their upgrade cycle has substantially slowed.

I do think that the utter low-end of the PC market – the $300 shitboxes formerly epitomized by such stellar brands as Packard Bell and eMachines – is going to go away. And good riddance. Those users will mostly be better off with tablets. But high-end desktops, gaming PCs, and workstations are here to stay.

It's worth remembering that most of what people here on Slashdot usually actually buy is already niche hardware to some extent. Full ATX motherboards are a niche product. Intel K-series CPUs are a niche product. Discrete graphics cards are a niche product. But despite their low-volume status, we can still get this stuff at fairly reasonable prices. The only exception is the top-end flagships, which are substantially overpriced to lure people with more money than common sense.

PC vs Handhelp

[SlashDev]

Considering the explosive population growth in developing countries, I say that's a very bad sign for PC manufacturing and a good sign for handheld devices manufacturers.

Cherrypicking data

[Swampash]

I guess the PC industry can be made to look bad... if you deliberately omit all references to Apple.

Don't forget market saturation.

[__aaltlg1547]

subject sez it all.

Sure you can, even higher res on a 15" screen.

[Brannon]

www.apple.com

Your welcome.

Re:Sure you can, even higher res on a 15" screen.

[Killjoy_NL]

Nah thanks, I prefer to run Windows natively for gaming etc.

Re:Sure you can, even higher res on a 15" screen.

[Grudge2012]

Nah thanks, I prefer to run Windows natively for gaming etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Camp_(software) - heck, you can buy a MacBook Pro and just use it for Windows (or Linux).

Re:Sure you can, even higher res on a 15" screen.

[Hatta]

Not for a reasonable price. I can get a faster processor, more ram, more HDD, and better everything else than my current laptop for $600. Everything else, except a better screen. I can get a better screen if I buy Apple, but not at a reasonable price.

Re:Sure you can, even higher res on a 15" screen.

[Killjoy_NL]

Didn't Bootcamp didn't work anymore under the newer versions of OSX?
I'd rather not take the chance.

Actually it has less USEFUL pixels

[SuperKendall]

A 1920x1080 monitor (HDTV) has more pixels than a 1600x1200.

Technically yes, however because most humans are looking at things that are taller than the screen the 1200 pixels tall are far more useful than the 1920 pixels wide.

Yes you will - you already have

[SuperKendall]

I will not financially support a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system.

And yet you buy a phone from a company that purchased Motorola in an attempt to attack Apple using the Motorola patents.

If you really mean what you say there is literally nothing you can buy.

Give it up and just buy the best products you can, and shake your head at the stupid legal wrangling of giants.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[David Jao]

If you'll read the rest of this thread, your points have already been discussed at length. All companies abuse patents. The system is broken. We should try to fix the system. However, that said, some companies abuse the system more severely than others. Motorola never managed to obtain a pre-trial sales ban like Apple did.

You are correct that there is literally no way to avoid buying from all abusive companies. But it is possible to avoid buying from the most egregiously abusive one or two companies. That's what I'm doing.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[Grudge2012]

Motorola never managed to obtain a pre-trial sales ban like Apple did.

Patently false. Even if we ignore the sales ban of XBox and Windows 7 in Germany, as well as dozens of attempts to get injunctions (failing because they didn't have a good enough case), that still leaves us with (at least) the preliminary injunction in the case of MOTOROLA, INC. v. ALEXANDER MFG. CO. - about a design patent.

Yes, Motorola is one of very few companies ever getting a "pre-trial sales ban" over a design patent (for a case for a cell phone battery). 20 years ago. So don't give me that holier-than-thou shit.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[David Jao]

Fine, I admit it's false. But you had to stretch back 20 years to prove me wrong? This is the best you can do? 20 years is an eternity in tech time. I'll happily agree to reconsider my avoidance of Apple products in 20 years.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[Grudge2012]

Fine, I admit it's false. But you had to stretch back 20 years to prove me wrong? This is the best you can do? 20 years is an eternity in tech time. I'll happily agree to reconsider my avoidance of Apple products in 20 years.

Only because I said you could ignore the sales ban of XBox and Windows 7 in Germany - which was just a few weeks ago.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[David Jao]

There is no sales ban. The injunction in Germany has not yet taken effect and cannot take effect until the US trial concludes. In stark contrast with Apple's injuctions, which not only did come into effect but in some cases are currently still in effect, the XBox/Windows 7 "sales ban" was never in effect at any point in time. And this is the way it should be! Of course we all agree (I hope) that a trial is the appropriate legal apparatus to settle patent claims.

Re:Yes you will - you already have

[Grudge2012]

There is no sales ban. The injunction in Germany has not yet taken effect and cannot take effect until the US trial concludes

If you think that an American trial has any influence on the decisions of a German court, you are even more delusional than I thought.

Success is the POOREST measure

[SuperKendall]

However, that said, some companies abuse the system more severely than others. Motorola never managed to obtain a pre-trial sales ban like Apple did.

Apple having success means the arguments they are making in that case actually have MERIT, merit enough that a judge agreed with them.

Meanwhile in the Motorola/Apple front, the arguments from both sides were so poor the judge told them both to go to hell (basically).

And yet you are claiming Apple is the worse company, when they are the only ones that have some legal ground to stand on at times. That makes no sense, to me a company that lost every case would be the most egregious - if I thought such judgements even made sense.

As you said, the patent system is broken. I don't even think any company is "abusing" them, they are using them as designed. Once we agree the design of the system is broken why get upset at ripples outward from that stone?

Here's a thought - Samsung and Apple and even Google continue to work together despite patent disagreements. The companies treat this whole nonsense as a separate thing outside normal business; why can't some users?

Re:Success is the POOREST measure

[David Jao]

I disagree with your assessment that Apple's claims have more merit. I admit that such an assessment is subjective, and I am not asking you to agree with me. I would like the same amount of respect from you. I am not asking you to avoid Apple products. But likewise surely you cannot force me to buy Apple products against my will.

well, to be honest ....

[Skal Tura]

Perpetual and infinite growth is impossible

The economy sucks, what do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

In these economic times, people aren't going to throw that kind of money around on luxury upgrades, the good ol' few year old machine is just fine, fine, just fine.

So... Duh?

Re:I'm hanging on to my laptop from 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree! My six-year-old thinkpad w500 which has a screen size of 1920x1200, dual-core, 6meg L2, processor wattage of 25-watts, capable of 10-hours of battery life, is able to simultaneous run 5-virtual machines of {xp, win7-64, Freebsd, Fedora 17} on a fedora host. You think i would down-grade by purchasing a new laptop now, not a chance. I figure at the rate the industry is putting out crappy machines my w500 will have to last at least another 4 years. Minimum requirements for a new laptop are L2 of at least 3M for each core, processor wattage under 20 watts, screen size minimum 1920x1200, capable of running more virtual machines then my w500. I've seen the new thinkpad W530, yet the processor i7 uses 45-watts thats way to hot, and the L2 is 2M. Nope! I'll wait four more years for the thinkpad W540.

Re:misinformation people are willing to spread.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF! is 1080p ars-h*le?

Buy now to avoid Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Now is the time to buy a new desktop or laptop just so you can avoid getting that monstrosity of an operating system called Windows 8.

No they aren't

[Sycraft-fu]

They are mainframes. IBM zEnterprise, look it up. Mainframes are not just a bunch of commodity hardware. Those are called, well, clusters. Mainframes are for when you have different needs, more I/O in particular, but stability and redundancy as well.

This stuff hasn't gone away, it just isn't something most computer users encounter.

Re:still running fine

[Anonymous Coward]

PowerPC G3{180nm} and G4{130nm} low wattage procesors under 13-watts, so your components don't slowly fry. Now do you really think that that 45-watt i7{22nm} procesor in your crapple is going to last ten years? No, its going to slowly burn out every component in your lovely MBP.

Change for the sake of change in 3...2...1...

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict another round of chage-for-the-sake-of-change coming. Probably about time for a new memory standard. And a new CPU socket. Throw out your USB cables and buy Thunderwhatever cables! Throw out your VGA and DVI cables and buy the new connector! Remove the dvd drive and ethernet from the new MacBook! None of this improves anything. And people are reluctant to buy? Go figure.

Failure to think

[Anonymous Coward]

"If that is your attitude you probably are one of those people I was talking about who needed a tablet all along."

Obviously, you've never used a PC or a tablet.

Other problems:

5 year old PC: Single or dual core (maybe HT) at 2.5GHz, 2-4GB ram, GTX7800 level GPU, 500GB HDD, 19-21" LCD monitor.

Modern tablet: Single or dual core running at equivalently to a PIII 1GHz. i945 built-in GPU level graphics, maybe HD1000 level on Tegra2. 7-10" LCD screen up to 1024x600. 1GB Ram, 16GB storage.

Kilobyte said flatlining, not flatline.

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone's flatlining, they are BECOMING dead. Flatlined (past tense) means they ARE dead. Flatline is the evidence for them being dead.

But flatlining IS NOT "a flatline". It's the process of BECOMING a flatline.

Jesus, how bad is the edudation system in the USA today? Or even 30 years ago *assuming you're in your 30's-40's*.

It's the economy stupid.

[jvillain]

Every one is cutting back on every thing. Once every one especially buisnesses start buying again PC salews will be on the up tick. They are just to useful for people who actually need to get work done.

if corporate sales are a barometer

[gelfling]

Yes. Corporate refreshes are nonexistent now. If you work for a big company like IBM your primary workstation is probably 4+ years old and not slated for replacement for another year.

so

[KingBenny]

despite the whole world crashing, unemployment rising dramatically across the globe and people in general having way less money to spend they practically still sold the same number as before ... it just didn't increase, and that's a bad thing considering everything? Something is really wrong with the perception of reality in these people me thinks.
i should ofcourse not make too much noise about it since i didnt even have to skip economics class, i just never had one. After all, whatever wisdom the ancients shared with us has to be right, it seems to be working perfectly for years and years, and probably for years to come

Uh, our entire society is built around this....

[rsilvergun]

it's not just corporate. You can't retire without your investments paying off. I know we have this funny idea of 'Retirement' but for most it's the time when their bodies are too beating and old to work anymore. Without constant growth it's the gutter for 99%...