PC Shipments Are Slowly Recovering

mrspoonsi sends this news from TechCrunch: Over the past two years, the growing popularity of mobile devices has eaten into PC sales. A new report by Gartner, however, shows that shipments may continue to enjoy a very slow but steady uptick this year as tablet sales hit a peak. The research firm found that worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014 grew one percent year-over-year, the first increase since 2012. In the U.S., PC shipments increased 13.1 percent year-over-year, the fastest increase in four years, thanks to holiday purchases. Inexpensive laptops (about $200 to $300), thin and light notebooks, and laptops with a detachable screen helped drive growth. Lenovo continued to be the number one PC maker in terms of shipment volume, with a 19.4 percent marketshare.

Comments

Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Anonymous Coward]

People got over their abject fear of windows 8, and now they have to replace their XP machines.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[jedidiah]

Windows 8.1 is a result of the backlash against Win8. Subject the average user to Win8 and they will still manifest the same "abject fear" they always had. Microsoft just backtracked a little.

Enough apparently to make Win 8.1 much less despised than it's predecessors.

It's almost like they rediscovered the idea that you shouldn't treat your customer like sh*t.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Luckyo]

Microsoft made 7 available again, reversing earlier decision not to sell it.

That was the result.

8 is still pretty much a consumer repellent.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8.1 is a result of the backlash against Win8. Subject the average user to Win8 and they will still manifest the same "abject fear" they always had. Microsoft just backtracked a little.

Even if that's that case, that is a *good* thing! That means MS is actually listening when customers vote with their wallets!

It's almost like they rediscovered the idea that you shouldn't treat your customer like sh*t.

Good! Now if only the Linux distro development community could pull it's collective head out of its collective ass and do the same we wouldn't have to put up with the steaming pile of systemd!

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Gadget_Guy]

Microsoft made 7 available again, reversing earlier decision not to sell it.

Is that really true though? Microsoft have always sold the previous version of Windows alongside the current version - at least as far back as Windows 2000. I know this because I worked at a company that consistently standardised on really old versions of software and we would often buy copies of the previous version of Windows just before the current one got superceded.

It would not be unprecedented for people to notice something like that and just presume that it must be Microsoft getting worried about the sales of the current version. Then when enough people repeat the misinformation it becomes "general knowledge" that everyone "knows".

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[gl4ss]

would you pay more for such a thing than you would be paying for a 250 laptop? why?

or more than for a stick-pc(20-50bucks) + screen + kb?

if you want low latency proper applications then there's no avoiding the pc.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Luckyo]

It did not. There was a while, when PC sales crashed that Microsoft forbade OEMs that had deals with it from selling any 7 home licenses. Only noticeably more expensive pro version was available.

OEMs put massive pressure on Microsoft to go back on that requirement and eventually Microsoft relented. That's when PC market started to rebound from the crash.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Luckyo]

This is correct. MS forced OEMs to sell 7 only on business side as a "pro" version that is noticeably more expensive. "Home" versions of the license were only available as 8.

That is the period in which PC sales crashed. OEMs put massive pressure on MS after it and eventually MS relented and allowed sales of 7's "home" versions.

My guess

[Firethorn]

My estimate on the reasons:
1. People have limited amounts of money for computer gadgets. IE tablet OR new laptop/PC
2. Tablets were the 'new thing', but people who would buy them now already have one(lowering sales of them) and/or have gotten over the 'shiny' and are perhaps now looking for more functionality again. I know I hate typing on mine. What's one of the hotter accessories? Bluetooth keyboard, often built into the case itself.

So people put off buying a new laptop and such in favor of the tablet. Especially with the fun of Windows 8. Now that tablet purchasing is more or less down to routine replacement, people are picking up PCs again.

Re:My guess

[rijrunner]

Yeah, I think you are correct. Tablet sales are down, PC's are up. When tablet sales were rising, PC sales went down.

PC's have some really nice specs these days and 8.1 is usable.

Re:My guess

[nine-times]

I would guess that's a component, but I suspect some of it was also just an issue of timing.

I work in IT servicing a lot of small businesses, and from what I've seen over the years, it seems like most businesses had gotten into the habit of buying new computers every few years. Both the hardware and software were improving quickly and drastically, and it made sense to buy a new computer every 3 years or so.

And then around... I don't know, 2006, when it came time for the 3 year upgrade cycle, a lot of businesses looked at the computer they already had and said, "Meh... this is still doing what I need it to do. I don't see there being much value in spending another $1,500 for a new computer."

And that continued, one year after the other. In 2010, they were still looking at some of their computers from 2005 and saying, "I know it's an old computer, but it still does everything we need it to do. I'm not going to spend money I don't need to."

But then in the last couple years, we hit a couple of milestones. First, a lot of those computers are now getting to be around 10 years old. In computer terms, "7 years old" sounds bad, but it sounds to the decision-makers like something they can live with, whereas "10 years old" apparently sounds like it ought to be replaced.

The other big milestone was that Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP, which means all of the old Windows XP machines either need to be replaced or updated to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Upgrading an old, outdated machine with no warranty is often not really worth the trouble, and so the need to move to a new version of Windows was the last straw for all those old machines that should have been replaced a few years ago.

So honestly, if I had to guess, I'd guess that you're going to see an uptick in laptop/desktop PC purchases over 2014-2015, and then you're going to see it drop off again. Once most of those old 10-year-old Windows XP machines are replaced, sales will go back down. But I also don't see them stopping anytime soon. Tablets are not going to be a real replacement for business use-- unless you're talking about something like the Microsoft Surface, where it's really just a laptop without a keyboard.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gartner data includes tablet sales for all manufacturers except Apple.

The IDC data excludes most tablets from their data.

The IDC data shows PC shipments continuing to fall.

So I think it may be more complex - likely desktop/laptop sales continuing to fall, with some transition of laptop sales into the convertible/tablet category , which then means your conclusion depends on what you are counting. That doesn't immediately validate "most people are ok with 8.1" as a conclusion.

The different taxonomy used by http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/01/13/2110215/pc-shipments-are-slowly-recovering#the different analysis means these results are a bit like looking at an elephant through a keyhole.

Re:My guess

[sribe]

Hmmm. Some of my clients finally upgraded old Macs in late 2014, for exactly parallel reasons, need to upgrade to a supported/recent OS version.

Re:My guess

[mlts]

The tablet market is pretty much saturated.

The desktop (as in role... this physical machine can be a laptop, a desktop, a server, or a tablet with a dock like the Surface Pro) machine isn't going anywhere, and has plenty of room to grow.

As for a market, it is actually surprising nobody has made a LAN version of OnLive where the video commands are sent to a rendering server, and streamed video is sent back. This way, each device on the LAN can have a decent framerate for video without needing large amounts of GPU present.

Of course, backups, centralized storage, virtualization, IDS/IPS utility, and many other items have not even been scratched in the home LAN arena, so there is still plenty of room for a company to grow with basic items like that.

Re:My guess

[ShanghaiBill]

When tablet sales were rising, PC sales went down.

When the unemployment rate was rising, PC sales went down.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed a reason.
MS has dumped all support for Windows XP, lots of places would have been buying new machines. I know where I work we bought about 1000 PCs to replace XP machines , at the same time no Macs were able to be bought as the entire "budget" was for the XP upgrade project.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

2006 was the year that the PC motherboards changed in order to accommodate new graphics boards. For many, it wasn't worth paying out for a whole new PC just to upgrade a graphics card.

With laptops, even a 10 year old laptop can still download at 600K/second through Wi-Fi. The limit is usually the broadband connection or the remote server. And USB sticks can add new features such as digital TV and mobile broadband, even if the graphics card can't be updated.

Re:My guess

[Barlo_Mung_42]

How old were these old Macs? Probably not 7-10 years old.

Re:My guess

[Firethorn]

I work in IT servicing a lot of small businesses, and from what I've seen over the years, it seems like most businesses had gotten into the habit of buying new computers every few years. Both the hardware and software were improving quickly and drastically, and it made sense to buy a new computer every 3 years or so.

I've seen this as well. If businesses start going from a 3 year cycle to a 5 year cycle to a 7, or even a 10 year cycle, that's going to really depress the number of computers(or any other item) sold. Even if they end up replacing half the computers before 10 years due to physical failure.

You'll get bumps like XP machines being dumped en-mass, but for business purposes the machines still worked. Perhaps bad for microsoft, the concentration on 'tablet PCs' means that the newest versions of windows can actually consume fewer resources, also driving fewer hardware sales - most aren't going to bother upgrading, but I've seen quite a few actually do it, usually via ghost disks. Even a few percent makes a different.

Re:My guess

[Ravaldy]

In a work place I've rarely seen laptops remain useable after 3 years. Often the DVD drive is dead, the screen blurry, the battery life is significantly less and the keyboards starts becoming sticky (I know...). At the price the damn things are we usually just replace them and get another 3 years out of them.

Desktops on the other had appear to get about 6-8 years. The lucky guys are the one working in engineering since whenever the complaining starts, the computers get replaced and then theirs get passed down.

Re:My guess

[Firethorn]

The desktop (as in role... this physical machine can be a laptop, a desktop, a server, or a tablet with a dock like the Surface Pro) machine isn't going anywhere, and has plenty of room to grow.

Yeah, but nearly everybody who's going to have one already has one, and their abilities have leveled off substantially. My machine is pushing 6 years old and I still don't worry about not being able to play the newest games. Yes, it was a beast when I bought it, but the only substantial upgrades I've made is it's now(as of this month) on it's 3rd SSD. #2 is now the drive for my games. I'm considering supplementing the HD with another, but for now migrating data back onto SSD storage(applications, games, and such) is sufficient.

Re:My guess

[scottbomb]

Tablets aren't a replacement for home use either. Everyone I know who bought a tablet still use their full-sized (or laptop) computers daily. Some of them don't even use the tablet anymore.

Re:My guess

[scottbomb]

Wow, your people must really abuse their machines. My Lenovo laptop is 5 years old and in perfect condition. Yeah, the original battery is gone but replacements are a-plenty.

Re:My guess

[pete6677]

I wonder how many people who initially bought into the tablet hype realized it really sucks to type a paper on an iPad and switched back to a PC?

Re:My guess

[sribe]

How old were these old Macs? Probably not 7-10 years old.

7ish, IIRC.

Re:My guess

[rioki]

You know, many engineers actually use the computing power given to them. Granted not all the time, but if a project compiles in five min instead of one hour, that actually means something. The complaining normally starts, because they know that with a better system they would not wait that long. On the other hand MANY other office computer users topped their "maxing out" the machine at around 2005.

Re:My guess

[tlhIngan]

Tablets aren't a replacement for home use either. Everyone I know who bought a tablet still use their full-sized (or laptop) computers daily. Some of them don't even use the tablet anymore.

Why do people keep thinking this? Even Steve Jobs noted that there will always be room for a PC in a Post-PC world. He likened the PC to a truck - it can do practically anything you ask it to, and it'll do it, perhaps not efficiently, but it'll do it. The tablet was a car - good for a lot of things, but not everything. We'll always need trucks (and looking at a busy city street, trucks of various forms still occupy a large proportion of traffic).

Perhaps it was Android spreading that rumor as a do-it-all replacement.

Yes, a tablet can do a lot, they satisfy perhaps 80-90% of most PC needs, but there's always the little bit that's leftover. Instead of people getting rid of their PCs, they simply use them less, or not at all, but instead of everyone needing a PC for everyone, they are down to maybe 1-2 PCs shared by the whole family.

And yeah, my oldest PCs are beyond the 7 year mark, so it's time to replace them..

Re:My guess

[mdielmann]

...all those old machines that should have been replaced a few years ago.

Flawed thinking. Why should they have been replaced, if they were meeting all the user's needs, were functioning correctly, and were able to run supported software? For a few percentile performance boost where the majority of time the user is the primary bottleneck? Which is why they weren't replaced, until they should have been (or shortly after).

Re:My guess

[operagost]

Those are stupid, penny-pinching companies. A 7 year old computer indeed, does not, do what you need it to due to increasing requirements of new software and security patches. After 5 years, a computer is completely depreciated for tax purposes. While this doesn't make the new computer free, it now can be written off. Companies run by bean counters, instead, look at the costs of the new hardware and staff needed to deploy them and decide to give the CxOs a bonus instead.

Re:My guess

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

My estimate on the reasons:
1. People have limited amounts of money for computer gadgets. IE tablet OR new laptop/PC
2. Tablets were the 'new thing', but people who would buy them now already have one(lowering sales of them) and/or have gotten over the 'shiny' and are perhaps now looking for more functionality again. I know I hate typing on mine. What's one of the hotter accessories? Bluetooth keyboard, often built into the case itself.

So people put off buying a new laptop and such in favor of the tablet. Especially with the fun of Windows 8. Now that tablet purchasing is more or less down to routine replacement, people are picking up PCs again.

The article title is wrong. It should be "Sales of computers with Windows 8 are slowly recovering after it has been partially rolled back wih 8.1."

I'm still waiting for 9, or 10, or Decimalawwsome-O, or whatever the hell they're calling it.

Re:My guess

[Ravaldy]

I didn't mean that the complaining was negative just that their needs were taken more seriously than most other employees since what they do directly impacts the company's ability to make money and develop new products.

Re:My guess

[david_thornley]

How do you know what an arbitrary business needs its computers to do? Security patches, yes, but that would suggest that they should have transitioned off XP by last year, and Vista came out over 8 years ago. Old software often doesn't need to be replaced, and new software doesn't necessarily come with new hardware requirements.

It used to be that a 7-year-old computer was a creaking anachronism, but in fact computers got good enough for most purposes sometime during the XP period, and most non-game non-technical software doesn't need more.

Re:My guess

[Ravaldy]

Interesting you would say Lenovo. The 2 Lenovo laptops I purchased a while back are the only laptops worthy of staying in operation after 3 years

As for DVD drives, I don't buy laptops with them anymore. I just have USB drives on hand for when it's required.

Maybe I haven't been lucky with HP laptops but the problems I mentioned earlier plus the fact that they tend to overheat after 2-3 years makes it that we would replace them after 3 years. In their defense, these laptops were moving every single day. Laptops that remain on a desk 90% of the time are less prone to failure for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, all new laptops purchased have been Lenovo so we will see within 2 - 3 years how well they do. Hopefully as good as the two I already have in operation.

Re:My guess

[david_thornley]

And how many who decided that typing a lot on an iPad sucked and got a bluetooth keyboard?

Really, there's a lot of people who don't need more than an iPad with keyboard, and I'd far rather support my in-laws with iPads than real computers.

Re:My guess

[nine-times]

Not so fast. What you're saying is great for home users or even small businesses, but for larger scale situations (enterprise or MSP, managing thousands of computers), it creates a lot of extra work to manage and maintain a fleet of computers of all kinds of different models from different manufacturers, running different operating systems deployed from different images, with different levels of warranty support, purchased over a range of time between "yesterday" and "10 years ago".

It's just not really the way you want to run things. Old machines break more often and take more time to fix. You use scripting to manage computers en masse, and you find that you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get the scripts to run uniformly because different versions of the scripting language are supported on different versions of the operating system, and you have to support them all. Some things that you could easily do in a script, the old scripting language just doesn't support. The new imaging solution you've implemented because it saves your IT department a bunch of time, and therefore money, doesn't work on the computers from 7 years ago because the BIOS support is different, or you can't get the right kind of driver packages, or whatever bit of nonsense you run into dealing with old computers.

In short, when you're doing real IT work, "meeting the user's needs" is not the only consideration.

Re:My guess

[Firethorn]

and got a bluetooth keyboard?

Yeah, which is why I mentioned them.

I used my first word processor on a 286. I know the applications predate even that, but any device capable of streaming HD video and sending emails should be able to run a word processor application fully featured enough for all but the most demanding of users.

Re:My guess

[PRMan]

I've heard of a few companies that just upgraded all the old PCs to SSD and moved the old drive to D:. For $200 each, it's like they have brand new machines.

Re:My guess

[PRMan]

I prefer my company laptop to my tablet because it's much faster to type with a keyboard. The tablet is good for reading books or taking on vacation (because I wouldn't miss it if it got stolen), but that's about it.

Re:My guess

[mlts]

It would be nice to see a return to wired networking, just because it is a lot harder to hack (requires physical access), and it is faster. There is no way a Wi-Fi adapter can handle what even an eight port gigE switch can deal with.

Ironically, I'm seeing combined devices with newer SAN offerings. If you have a FC HBA, a CNA card, or even just a plain NIC, the SAN will be happy to do fiber channel, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, or WebDAV, all at the same time. Cutting the cord might be nice for tablets and smartphones, but for real speed, it requires a cord, even if it is a copper wire.

Re:My guess

[DarthVain]

Not so sure of all the influence of those milestones, however years ago our organization went from a 3 year lease cycle to a 4 year one, and over time that would slow the market, but ultimately it would level off again so that makes sense.

I'm sure that there were also a bunch of people that jumped on the Tablet bandwagon thinking that was all they need only to find out it wasn't quite as useful as they thought it might be. Everyone has already mentioned also how much of a drag Windows 8 was also.

Re:My guess

[nmr_andrew]

I did exactly the same with a Core Duo iMac at work. Just replaced a 2006 vintage Mac this past summer, so ~8 years old.

Not to imply that Apple has never released a less than stellar model, but Macs have generally held on better/longer than PCs, it's never been that uncommon to see them last at least 6-7 years, and at that point it's less an upgrade because the old computer stopped working than because the new ones are now "enough" better.

Not like IDC numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

IDC saw the worldwide PC market down 2.4 percent.

Which is it Sunshine?

Saturation

[Livius]

Very few people have any need to upgrade.

Some do, of course, and sooner or later there will be new breakthrough that will justify upgrades for most people, but a large number of people have all the computer power they need until something actually fails.

This is why software providers are trying to force upgrades for marginally better if not actually inferior versions.

Re:Saturation

[Anonymous Coward]

Very few people have any need to upgrade.

This.

The only really interesting thing to happen over the past five years or so is SSDs. And they're a drop-in, not a 'buy/build a new PC!'

I say this as someone who primarily uses my PC for gaming, and who just blew around $1k. Bought the entry hardcore-level video card du jour for $350. i7-4790K and new motherboard. New SSD and bulk drive, because my old drive was dying. It's cool and all, but worth it only because I'm living the life of an IT worker and making more money than I can spend. It isn't worth it because $1k has gained me very little performance over my previous three year old system. Certainly not the sort of performance boost that $1k (or even $500) would have bought you back in the old days.

PC tech is stagnating. It's been years, and Intel's processors have devolved into incremental upgrades rather than astonishing leaps and bounds of performance glory. AMD isn't innovating shit. DDR4 has been around forever, tech-wise at least - and nobody but the truly hardcore have been using it. Nor will they for another year or two. Video cards? Video cards are being pushed solely by crazy loons buying and overclocking panels from Korea. If you, like 99.9% of people, don't do that, you have no real need to Crossfire or SLI up half a dozen cards.

Now imagine instead of chasing frames at 2560x1600, we're talking about the average user on a - let's be generous and say 24" monitor at 1080p. They're Facebooking, Doing some word processing. Running shitty javascript in their browsers. Okay, that last one might be a reason to upgrade - but not really.

Not if you purchased a decent PC anywhere within the last five years.

As for mobile, it's a red herring. Laptops didn't kill the PC, and neither will mobile. Mobile compliments the PC. If anything, mobile is doing damage to laptops. And I know - technically, laptops are PCs - but nobody in the real world is talking about laptops when they say "PC".

Re:Saturation

[Lumpy]

Dropped an SSD in my 2011 quad i7 2.8ghz Macbook Pro, It is now as fast as the top of the line macbook pro you can buy right now. so I'll be not buying a new laptop for another 2-3 years.

Even with heavy programming, 3d rendering, and video editing, I don't saturate 4 i7 cores, the bottleneck was the hard drive and now it 's not.

Intel has not released ANYTHING that is worth upgrading to. I'm waiting for 8 core i7 processor with at least a 4ghz clock speed, bot nothing exists that is anything but a tiny fractional increase than the old one I'm running now.

Re:Saturation

[Ravaldy]

Agree and disagree. If you have a PC that runs anything newer than a socket 775 then yes. Anything before that is a waste of money. You will see an improvement but it's not as impressive as on the new socket. Maybe someone with more h/w knowledge can explain but we benchmarked a few stations to confirm our findings and found the disk performance was consistently 30% when comparing systems running on socket 775 to the ones running AMD AM2+. and Intel Socket 1150.

My guess would be that the increased processing power reduces the latency between requests enough that it creates a 30% difference in performance.

From a business standpoint putting a $180 drive in a 6 year old PC is nonsense. We would rather spend 1 man hour per PC + $700 in parts and upgrade the machines to newer specs (say i5-4570. If we had that many more computer to upgrade we would probably simply buy HP, Dell or Lenovo boxes but we continue to make good use or our interns by building our own :)

Re:Saturation

[lsatenstein]

As PC sales increase in volume, should we not expect the prices to come down? I for one recognize the 300% markup from the FOB factory price to the consumer. I am now looking at just buying the essentials, the mother board, memory, and CPU. All the rest I have (I have case, power supply, fans for cooling, keyboard DVD burner/writer, hard disks, SSD, mouse and monitors). From my perspective, what I have is should be more than half the cost of a new AMD or Intel computer.
And I really feel that the I-7 computers are at double the price of what they should be sold. Someone is going to oneday take a bunch of qualcom or other small processors and make a PC that will run circles around the existing bus architecture. Give me 8 independent processors doing what each can do best, and junk the single chip multi-processor systems.

Expected

[89cents]

Tablets came out. Many basic users who used to buy a computer figured a tablet was good enough for them now. PC sales rapidly declined and the death of the PC was declared. I'm sure Windows 8 had a part in that too. Now as the tablet market has stabilized, sales numbers should as well.

Re:Windows XP?

[AuMatar]

People don't care about support. Big business might, but small business and individuals only care about if the computer runs and runs fast enough to not be annoying.

Likely the promise of Windows 10

[unixisc]

I think that on the tablet front, even Apple has been aggressively trying to push iPad sales. When I stopped at Minneapolis Airport recently in transit, I was at the Concierge, and was shocked to see every table have 2 iPads, and at the bar, there being a whole row of them. Given that those ain't cheap.

As for PCs, they've been selling like they have to to replace older broken down ones. But Windows 8.1 is still bad, but now the news of Windows 10 improving things may well have gotten confidence back again. Add to that the fact that there are a few Surface Pro 3 like hybrids out there, and that takes away some reason to own a tablet. Here, at least, you have Wintel tablets w/ the usual legacy apps base, vs Android tablets and iPads.

The other reason may be that on the iOS and Android fronts, most of their apps run on phones as well, thereby reducing the need to have tablets to run them. Only place where tablets have the edge over phones has been on the Windows platform, and that's b'cos while there are a gazillion apps for Wintel, there are comparatively next to none for Windows RT or Windows Phone OS. I do think that Windows hybrids could pick once Windows 10 is out. As for tablets, both Apple and Google have to figure out a way to differentiate tablets from phones (in terms of functionality). Since tablets are lousy to type on, and there ain't any good ergonomic bluetooth keyboards that would make it comfortable, they ain't gonna replace laptops or PCs. That leaves them w/ only touch capabilities, which phones have as well, so barring a few applications where a bigger screen helps, I don't see how tablets can hold their own. Maybe if Apple & Google come out w/ ergonomic keyboards for iPads, Nexus and other Android tablets, they could not just make money on them, but also help their tablets sell.

Re:Likely the promise of Windows 10

[R3d M3rcury]

I [...] was shocked to see every table have 2 iPads, and at the bar, there being a whole row of them.

Not to mention cash registers. I see lots of iPad cash registers at hep restaurants and coffee/tea shops.

When it comes to businesses using tablets, I usually see them as a retail person's PC. If I'm interested in buying something and they don't have it in stock, the retail person can see if they have it at other stores without having to go over to a shared retail person's PC.

Re:Windows XP?

[Karmashock]

You run into XP machines all the time.

PCs are still awesome imo

[Morpeth]

1) Gods help me if have to type anything of substance on a phone or tablet (without a full keyboard)
2) I'm a gamer, enough said,
3) I like a nice big clear monitor to work on, no tablet comes close
4) Though it doesn't apply to people outside of the /. crowd so much, I love building/upgrading my own systems, it's fun and cheap.
5) Processing/GPU power and cost. If you're not worried about physical contraints, as is the case with PCs vs. phones/tablets, you can get SO much more power for less money. Yeah my desktop case is big, but you simply can't get the kind of graphics power I want for gaming in anything else.

I think people are starting to realize the PC is still very, very useful.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[iggymanz]

meanwhile, most adults aren't gamers; they grew out of it.

not looking down at you, I enjoy anime and I'm over 50. That's probably worse.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[by (1706743)]

3) I like a nice big clear monitor to work on, no tablet comes close

Yeah, I find it very annoying though that high resolution monitors are still very expensive -- my tablet has a 2560x1600 display, and the entire tablet cost the same as the cheapest 2560x1600 display from newegg. I know pixel count isn't the only thing that contributes to monitor cost, but seriously, if I can buy a 2560x1600 touchscreen display + ARM SoC + 2GB RAM + stereo speakers + wifi + bluetooth + ... etc., it would be nice if I could *just* buy the screen (albeit it a little larger form-factor) for, you know...less. But perhaps I'm just being picky =)

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[jedidiah]

My heavy tablet user still finds the form factor unsuitable for a lot of web browsing and that's pretty lightweight stuff by PC standards.

The form factor just isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Media hype and wishful thinking won't change that.

A $200 PC with useful inputs can still run circles around tablets.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[Kjella]

4) Though it doesn't apply to people outside of the /. crowd so much, I love building/upgrading my own systems, it's fun and cheap.

I think the excitement over finally getting a faster computer used to get me on a mental high that lasted through the assembly like a kid waiting for Christmas presents, but these days I just want to get it over with and the damn thing to work. I only do it because it's the only way to get the components I want, looked it over now and still can't find a PC builder that'll give me this GTX 970 SLI setup. I could almost get the same single card setup except they didn't have the SSD I want, which means they can't install the OS and I actually kept my 16GB of RAM from 2011, obviously to get an all new PC it comes with RAM. And when I bought it the 970s weren't in the builder at all.

I really thought the last PC I built was going to be the last one I'd bother with. Now I'm thinking the same thing again. We'll see in another 5+ years when this one is starting to sag, I suspect that I once again will want something that doesn't quite fit their semi-custom models. Not that this was my most successful build either, if I had to go it again I'd pick the Fractal Define XL over the regular one, with full size graphics card those extra 4 cm of depth would have made it so much easier to work with, now the graphics cards are basically snuggling the HDD cage. Still works quite nicely though.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[mjwx]

1) Gods help me if have to type anything of substance on a phone or tablet (without a full keyboard).

This alone has meant that a lot of people who went tablet only have gone back to PC. Even with a USB keyboard on my Nexus 7 typing out anything longer than a few sentences is difficult. Bluetooth keyboards constantly run out of batteries (or disconnect when they aren't running out of batteries) and both IOS and Android cant keep up with how fast I type (which is compounded by the terribleness of BT keyboards).

Don't get me wrong, I like my Nexus 7. It's good for movies and web browsing but its really become another whitegood like my TV. Not something I have an impetus to upgrade seeing as it works fine and has LTE. I haven't upgraded my TV in 6 years because it's still doing the job I need it to.

I'm going to say it, we're now in the post-tablet world.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[Luckyo]

Surprisingly many adults grew into being gamers though. That is why there are so many "gamer grade" hardware peripherals sold that are not making massive losses.

Imagine trying to sell 200EUR keyboards, 100EUR mice to the masses and being successful. That wouldn't happen. No wealthy adults willing to spend the money, and gamers like us were still in university or starting our careers. But there are now.

P.S. Nothing wrong with being in anime either imho. Whatever floats your boat. I know for a fact I enjoy it far more than hollywood trash that comes out these days.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[Luckyo]

The issue is that of popularity. 1080p is the sweet spot for desktop. Base sized fonts are just big enough to be readable without taking too much room, and monitors are just big enough to sit at a comfortable distance from the user without making him turn his head around to see the entire screen.

Larger monitors require either more distance from the user, which requires more desk space or head turning to view the entire monitor. As a result, advantage of going over 1080p is pretty low in comparison to going to 1080p from lower resolutions.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[Ravaldy]

I agree fully especially 1), 3) and 5). If you work on a computer, you need those 3 things.

Fact is that as we move our paper world into the computers, we need something that allows us to visualize the content the way we used to on our desk. This is true of many professions if not most.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[eharvill]

I think the excitement over finally getting a faster computer used to get me on a mental high that lasted through the assembly like a kid waiting for Christmas presents, but these days I just want to get it over with and the damn thing to work. I only do it because it's the only way to get the components I want, looked it over now and still can't find a PC builder that'll give me this GTX 970 SLI setup. I.

I'm in a similar boat. I'm even willing to pay a 30% upcharge for someone else to build it if I could get the exact components I want, but can't find a shop that will do that. I suppose I could buy everything myself and take it to a local shop for a "professional" build, but if I already have the components in hand I'll just do it myself.

Re: PCs are still awesome imo

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it is cool anime like Outlaw Star or Evangelion, not any moeblob shit...

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[TheDarkMaster]

I must admit I also build my computers largely for the fun of doing it and doing hardware experiments like any good mad scientist. And being able to build your own computer in my country in particular is very important, otherwise you become hostage to crooks who loves to sell shit as if it was a luxury item.

Re:PCs are still awesome imo

[TheDarkMaster]

I agree with the case of animes. They have a freedom of subjects and stories that American filmmakers can only dream of doing the same.

Re: PCs are still awesome imo

[iggymanz]

oh come on, it's more complex than that, there are plenty of anime where the Moe Blobs are psychos and stab or shoot people and blow shit up 8D

Will it work with Apple

[hierophanta]

Lenovo continued to be the number one PC maker in terms of shipment volume, with a 19.4 percent marketshare.

Does that include Apple PCs?

Re:Will it work with Apple

[mjwx]

Lenovo continued to be the number one PC maker in terms of shipment volume, with a 19.4 percent marketshare.

Does that include Apple PCs?

Yes, worldwide Apple doesn't ship that many units. The US is really an anomaly here with Apple selling 11% (as per table 2 of the article) but less than 5% worldwide.

Re:Will it work with Apple

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Yes. As much mind share as the Mac has achieved it is pretty amazing that it's still not selling much better than it was prior to the stupid "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads.

Bifurcated market

[BLToday]

There's always going to be market for "professionals" that require full blown PCs. The "casual" market is better served by tablets and Chromebooks, or anything that people basically can't screw up. Unfortunately that means "professionals" will pay more because there "casual" users aren't there to subsidized development of the latest CPU/GPU. My friend was shocked a couple weeks ago while customizing his ThinkCentre SFF, ended up being near $1,000 (w/SSD). To quote him "Damn for this kind of price, I could hook up a MacBook Air and call it day. Except I don't buy Apple."

Death of the tablet?

[erp_consultant]

Tablets seem to be peaking. Pretty much anyone that wants one has one (or two) already. For those of us that do actual work on a computer, the tablet is sorely lacking.

With Microsoft basically giving away Windows to manufacturers of lower end PC's, the prices are continuing to fall.

Case in point - at Christmas I got my nephew an HP Stream Notebook. $200 and it has an SSD. It's actually pretty good and a lot more useful than any tablet I have used. Small, light weight, expandable storage, great battery life. And you can type on it.

Is there a new game coming out?

[Maltheus]

I think PC gaming went first. So many of the genres I used to play disappeared or got dumbed down. And it was always the latest games that drove my upgrade cycle. Something simple like Minecraft doesn't require this.

If I were in the PC hardware biz, I'd look into owning a game company on the side that focuses on the most beautiful, resource intensive games I could muster.

Re:Is there a new game coming out?

[antdude]

Ditto. I used to be a hardcore PC gamer. Not anymore, so no need to upgrade. I still use WIndows XP Pro SP3, 2.5 GB of RAM, 512 MB PCIe video cards, etc.

Re:Is there a new game coming out?

[lexman098]

To answer the question in your title, yes. GTA 5 is coming out for PC pretty soon which I've been looking forward to playing on my sofa along with a bunch of other single player games. This along with having a new cheap 4K TV motivated me to get a new wicked powerful gaming box for the living room (about 600 bucks).

Desktop is still king of my devices

[gatkinso]

Tablets and phone, console, laptop, all pay homage to my bruiser of a desktop... either by syncing, backing up, hosting accounts... desktop rules them all.

Re:Well, DOH!

[PRMan]

And conversely, I've had good jobs and enough disposable income that if I wanted to replace my gaming PC, I could have. I did replace my graphics card with a new one a couple years ago. But I was surprised when I looked at the copyright dates on my BIOS the other day and they were from 2009!!! That's six years ago now, and I didn't even notice.

SteamOS and Shield

[tepples]

it is actually surprising nobody has made a LAN version of OnLive where the video commands are sent to a rendering server, and streamed video is sent back.

That's a feature of SteamOS and NVIDIA Shield products, which can stream Windows games and the Windows desktop. That's also what things like NComputing, RDP, and VNC are supposed to be for, but the cost of Windows licenses makes it not quite as much of a win to lawfully replace Windows desktops with thin clients that still display Windows applications.

Re:SteamOS and Shield

[Harlequin80]

Steams streaming capability changed the shape of my home arrangements. My loud, large, electricity eating gaming rig went into the garage where it sits off 90% off the time. What I use now is my laptop and I stream the games. It helps that the laptop I have is a latitude with a proper docking station so i'm playing games on a decent screen.

I send a WOL packet - wait 2 mins and away I go.

Wi-Fi-only tablets can be cheaper than phones

[tepples]

That leaves them w/ only touch capabilities, which phones have as well, so barring a few applications where a bigger screen helps, I don't see how tablets can hold their own.

That or for applications that don't need cellular voice or data. A tablet without a data plan can be cheaper than a similarly capable phone without a data plan for two reasons. One is no cellular radio on the BOM, and the other is that in the North American market, a phone is priced for carrier subsidy, not direct sales to end users.

Price per square inch

[tepples]

it would be nice if I could *just* buy the screen (albeit it a little larger form-factor) for, you know...less.

Go to any big box electronics chain and look in the TV section. Notice that TV makers charge per square inch because a display panel costs per square inch. It's so much cheaper to make a 1600p-class display at 10" than at 30" that the manufacturer can get away with squeezing a multi-purpose computer into the bill of materials.

Way to lie with numbers TechCrunch!

[Graymalkin]

If you actually look at the Gartner report the TechCrunch is based upon you'll see TC sort of dropped the ball here. While it's true that worldwide PC sales are up 1% 4Q14 vs 4Q13, year over year sales figures show PC sales total for the year down 0.2%. What the numbers actually say is the PC market would be far worse off if it hadn't been for a slew of super cheap Windows tablets (counted by Gartner as PC sales) and laptops sold around the holidays. These sales have only come from Microsoft and Intel basically subsidizing the PC market to provide some sort of down market competition to Android and iOS tablets.

If you look at IDC's numbers covering the same time period you've got a YoY drop of 2.1% worldwide. IDC does not count things like the HP Stream 7 or the Surface Pro as a PC in their reporting. However IDC counts Chromebooks as PCs where Gartner does not.

No matter what numbers you look at the PC market is seeing declining sales worldwide. Even if you believe the Gartner growth numbers for 4Q14, they're still a full 4% lower than 4Q12. It looks even worse if you compare the numbers to 2011 or 2010.

It's not a story about traditional PCs vs tablets. The real interesting story is smart phones vs everything else. A smart phone (unlike a PC) is useful for pretty much every demographic in mature and emerging markets. They are where the future growth is going to be. That's not to say the PC is going to disappear but I doubt the market will ever see growth like 2000-2010 and likely will never see another peak like that of 2010.

Re:No holiday last year?

[tepples]

Perhaps it's because people were still buying smartphone-derived tablets in the fourth quarter of 2013, which affected their available money for replacing PCs in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Shoddy journalism

[Tough Love]

The article only briefly mentions the fact that PC prices fell a lot while volumes only increased marginally. In spite of the click bait headline, the PC market still smells like one big load of wither. Oh I forget, Microsoft isn't sharing the pain because they didn't drop their per unit monpoly winnings... for now.

Re:Shoddy journalism

[petermgreen]

Microsoft isn't sharing the pain because they didn't drop their per unit monpoly winnings... for now.

MS recently introduced something called "Windows 8.1 with Bing". Basically they are giving away windows free for low end laptops and tablets on the condition that the PC vendor doesn't change the default search engine.

Re:Shoddy journalism

[Tough Love]

MS recently introduced something called "Windows 8.1 with Bing". Basically they are giving away windows free for low end laptops and tablets on the condition that the PC vendor doesn't change the default search engine.

Wow, it is hard to see how that one is not a blatant violation of the Sherman act that will land Microsoft back in court, let alone running afoul of the Eurocrats once again.

Tablets for Work failed!

[rhyous]

Tablets for Work failed! They are consumer devices.

Now, my Surface Pro 3 on the other hand. It rocks. It is a tablet, every bit as awesome as the iPad or Kindle, yet I can do my work on it too. Sure Microsoft missed the Tablet explosion, but now that it is over, everyone but Microsoft, and hardware manufacturers who put Windows on their devices, is missing the hybrid market.

Re:Tablets for Work failed!

[david_thornley]

A Surface Pro 3 is indeed a very nice piece of hardware. It also costs more than a reasonable iPad and reasonable laptop together, for a compromise machine.

Upgrading

[DarthVain]

Upgrading really hasn't made much sense in some time. About the only upgrades that make sense, is if you build your system wrong initially, you *might* be able to upgrade to fix it. i.e. you underestimated RAM usage, or gaming VS video card etc... The problem is players like Intel change their standards every 2-3 years. So if you are trying to upgrade anything beyond that, good luck as it won't be compatible anymore. It will use a different socket, it will use a different DDR, it will use a different power cable, etc... which would force you to replace so many things, you might as well just buy a whole new boxen.

Another reason I found out this year...

[DarthVain]

I had my house broken into this past year and was robbed a few months ago. I was only gone from the house for about 4 hours.

They took my 40" LCD TV. They took my Xbox 360 and all my games. Then even took my fscking Kelvin Kline cologne.

The one thing they didn't take? My desktop. It was easily worth more money than anything else I had, and in fact if you added up everything else they took, it wouldn't have equaled what my PC was worth (data and sentiment aside also).

Why? Because A) It is difficult and confusing for idiot robbers. There is a rats nest of cables plugged into everything that all need to be taken apart, and you need all the pieces. B) It is large and unwieldy (mine is even an ITX build!), big components, and multiple things to carry, and C) Ever bought a PC used or second hand? Not much of a market for it, and they are not worth much, particularly if you do not know what is in the guts.

If that was a Laptop, or a Tablet, or a Ultrabook (particularly anything recognizable as Apple) it would have been one of the very first things stolen. Easy to identify, easy to transport, easy to sell, worth money.

So there you go:
6) Theft Deterrent!

I think my next build will either be some super expensive system in a massive full tower case, or I'll find a nice bland beige box circa 1995 to put it in... Call it thievery camouflage...

Re:Well, DOH!

[Kargan]

Same here, I finally upgraded a few weeks ago from a system that (at its core) was 5-6 years old. What finally got me to upgrade were the recommended system requirements for some of the newer games.

Assassin's Creed Unity -
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz or better
CPU Speed: Info
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 290X (3 GB VRAM)
Free Disk Space: 50 GB

Star Citizen -
The Recommended system requirements are: i5 2500, i7 2600, 2700 or better with a GTX 670 or greater (DX 11 only).

And for a smooth experience at Maximum settings at 1080p, a R9 290x or GTX 780 will be required (a GTX 680/R9 280x will likely therefore achieve high comfortably). For a 4K experience, a pair of mid-high end cards (680/770 7970/280x or better) or a future high end card (GTX 1080 or R9 390x etc) will be required.

GTA V -

Processor: Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHZ (4 CPUs) / AMD X8 FX-8350 @ 4GHZ (8 CPUs)
Memory: 8GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD7870 2GB
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible
HDD Space: 65GB ..etc.

Re:Windows XP?

[Karmashock]

Yep, I deal with XP machines all the time. They've got legacy software on them and they run DOS really well. And lots of new hardware runs on DOS. Medical hardware for example very frequently is a DOS system It does one thing and only one thing and it does it reliably for years and years and years. No updates. No tech problems. You tell it to do something and if someone hasn't smashed it with a hammer... it does it. Every single fucking time.

I actually like DOS and any OS that is that simple. They don't waste your time once you've set them up. They just do their jobs... forever.

Re:Windows XP?

[visavillem]

Nope, i have some clients (i do small/medium business IT support for a number of clients) who still do keep alive xp machines. The top of the corporate food chain is getting new machines, old ones trickle down the corporate ladder, lowest positions are getting 5-7 years old desktops and notebooks (with Xp of course). Even had to upgrade a few of them - new batteries, 1GB RAM replaced with 2 etc. Those machines will be used until the hardware fails. And 1 client even has a few NT4 boxes still running, used as a Remote Desktop terminal. Another one uses XP and NT4 PC-s to run industrial machinery (CNC, Laser cutters). So XP isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Nor is NT4. And a few ghosts of the 98 have been reported too.... Legacy hardware is a bitch.

Re: Windows XP?

[visavillem]

Worst case that i saw personally: a vendor asked 7000 € (a bit over 8000 $USD) for a Windows 7 compatible version of their software. The software is used to program a laser cutter. What do you think the CEO of the company told me, when i asked if we could upgrade? Of course we are keeping the XP alive...