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Microsoft's Mission To Reignite the PC Sector (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Sales of personal computers have been declining for so long — 14 consecutive quarters — that it's hard remember a time when PCs ruled the tech world. Now Nick Wingfield writes in the NY Times that Microsoft is leading the way on a mission to re-ignite the PC market by taking the once-unthinkable step of competing with its hardware partners. This week, Microsoft dived even further into the business with a laptop device, the Surface Book. The stated reason that Microsoft got into the PC hardware business three years ago, with the original Surface, was not to put PC companies out of business — but to better illustrate the capabilities of its software, providing devices that would inspire PC makers to be more innovative.
One of the most remarkable things about Microsoft's growing presence in the hardware business is that it has not led to open revolt among its partners. Initially, many of them were not happy about Microsoft's moves, complaining in private. "It's positioned as a laptop, very squarely against the MacBook Pro as an example. But that could also be extended to a Dell XPS 13, or an HP x360," says Patrick Moorhead. One reason there hasn't been more pushback from OEMs is that Microsoft's Surface business is still relatively small. Another is that the money Microsoft has poured into marketing Surface has raised the broader profile of Windows PCs. While Microsoft obviously risks alienating its partners, it's doing so with a much bigger fight in mind. "Right now Microsoft really believes that it has to have a combined hardware, software, and services play to go up against the likes of Apple," says Moorhead. "That's why it's doing this. That's why it's taking such an aggressive stance now, moving to laptops."
One of the most remarkable things about Microsoft's growing presence in the hardware business is that it has not led to open revolt among its partners. Initially, many of them were not happy about Microsoft's moves, complaining in private. "It's positioned as a laptop, very squarely against the MacBook Pro as an example. But that could also be extended to a Dell XPS 13, or an HP x360," says Patrick Moorhead. One reason there hasn't been more pushback from OEMs is that Microsoft's Surface business is still relatively small. Another is that the money Microsoft has poured into marketing Surface has raised the broader profile of Windows PCs. While Microsoft obviously risks alienating its partners, it's doing so with a much bigger fight in mind. "Right now Microsoft really believes that it has to have a combined hardware, software, and services play to go up against the likes of Apple," says Moorhead. "That's why it's doing this. That's why it's taking such an aggressive stance now, moving to laptops."
PC sales are declining for a reason.
You make a statement, but don't give the reason.
IMHO, one of the biggest issues is that PCs have been "good enough" for some time now for everything but games, and even then they haven't been growing much.
Office 2016 doesn't run noticeably faster for 95% of what people use it for on a 6700K Skylake than it does on a Core2Quad Q6600.
Windows 10 also runs just as well on a Q6600 as it deos on a Core i7 whatever. Oh sure, it IS faster on the newer machines, but not by so much to make millions of people throw them out.
I have a dozen computers of various power levels, ranging from the above Q6600 up to a Haswell i7 4790K refresh, having recently retired the last Athlon X2 5000 machine a year or so ago (it was just so old that it wasn't worth testing against anymore, if you're using something 10+ years old, it is time to upgrade).
Windows 10 runs beautifully on all of them, and while I can see a difference when they are side by side, on a stand alone basis, they are all "fine".
That is the real problem, IMHO.
Even the laptops are giving way to tablets
If you want to type anything longer than a paragraph, you need to add a keyboard, which turns your tablet right back into (yes) a laptop.
Gaming has moved from the desktop to the laptop or game console. And at some point, it will be in the domain of the tablet/console.
Let me know when tablet or console games have (legit) mod support nearly as thorough as that in PC games. If your answer is Super Mario Maker, let me know when it has tools to create new block types or new enemy types.
> Compared to phones pcs suck!! 100 dpi in 2015 wtf . Bulky plastic, mechanical disks, etc
PCs are faster and bigger in all respects. That includes displays, storage, CPU power, and just app/gaming potential. Phones are terribly limited. The one key advantage they have is portability. They're ubiquitous. Beyond that, they're actually pretty crappy.
Phones are just (crude) terminals really and sooner or later you need a real machine of some sort to support it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The SSD is the last most "amazing" upgrade IMHO for PCs in awhile...
It brought back to life a number of machines that felt "slow".
Put a SSD in a Core2 machine and suddenly you've removed the major bottleneck for a lot of things.
My Mother-in-Law has a 2008 era AMD notebook, it runs some dual core something or other (I haven't looked at it in about 2 years). I dropped a 120GB SSD into it 2 years ago and she sees no reason to replace it, it is "Fast enough".
She uses Facebook, the web, plays solitaire, etc. She recently upgraded it to Windows 10, runs perfectly.
It is not a fringe minority on Slashdot by any stretch of the imagination. The Snowden leaks have had legal ramifications world wide and changed how US companies have to do business across the globe. Even the nanny State of California just had to sign a No SPY-ON-US bill because even the far left is afraid of the behavior demonstrated by the NSA. (And of course the turds holding office that are allowing and pushing this behavior.)
Because people were not out burning buildings and killing people you believe there was no impact? I'll give you that the legal process is not fast, but there has been some ground made. Not a lot, and not enough.. but some. Further, I'd almost consider what we see in politics as a mass riot. The entrenched are having a really hard time and I don't see it getting any easier for them (even though the media is pandering it's ass off)
What Google did and does is not the same as MS having a build in keylogger sending your Keystrokes to MS. I'll give you partial credit for that, but have to point out that you are completely ignoring how bad Windows 10 is. Why are they getting away with it so far? Well it's a few months in and it's a "free" OS. People have figured out how to turn things off already, and I'm sure this will get better over time.. That "better" has nothing to do with MS however, it's intelligent consumers circumventing MS.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Microsoft entering hardware business will lead to bad blood between HP Acer Asus Dell Samsung and the like and Microsoft. No matter how much it assures the partners, things will sour. The culture in Microsoft, the incentives it sets up, the way it administers incentives etc leads all the Microsoft employees to game the system and get any advantage they can get from other divisions to win over the competition. That tiny division will have some VP who would do things to get an edge over the rivals, and it would snowball. Microsoft does not know how to play nice.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No it doesn't. I assure you, your i3 with 4gb doesn't perform anywhere near the same as an i5 or 7 with 16gb. Are you stupid? Just because you use it for basically nothing and can't tell that its performing differently doesn't mean it isn't.
I imagine you meant Lexus
Okay, you are stupid. No I said Lotus, I meant Lotus. You're comparing bargain basement to high end. There are many other brands I could have picked from, but Lexus is Toyota which means you clearly are utterly failing to understand that you aren't buying the same thing. But even Lexus to Toyota is more appropriate t
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