PC Market Still Showing Few Signs of Life (axios.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It was another rough quarter for the global PC market, as fourth quarter unit sales dropped 2%, according to preliminary results from Gartner. In the U.S. things were even bleaker, with sales down 8%. HP was the only big name maker to post a sales increase in the U.S. and globally. It also passed Lenovo to grab the top spot globally and increased its lead in the U.S. over Dell. Apple saw Mac sales globally up 1.4%, but in the U.S. sales were down 1.6%. Dell gained less than 1% globally but fell more than 12% in the U.S. Lenovo sales dipped slightly globally, but its market share increased slightly, to 22% of the worldwide market.

Comments

Is this unexpected?

[jbmartin6]

PCs have mostly hit the 'good enough' point, there is no value in replacing them as frequently as in the past.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[atrex]

Just like cars. Doesn't stop the industry execs from wanting people to buy new ones every two years though.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[sdinfoserv]

In the corporate office we have PC's on 5 year replacement cycles. Try telling your CAD operator he has to use ipad... ya, then tell me again "THE PC IS DEAD"... for thousandth time since 2005...

Re:Is this unexpected?

[DaTroof]

There's also the fact that PCs as a mainstream product have lost traction to tablets and phones. Consumers who used PCs strictly for web and email don't need them anymore.

Nonetheless, "few signs of life" seems like an exaggeration. It's more like PCs are getting relegated to a smaller market consisting of businesses, hobbyists, developers, and creators.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[nnull]

The power users will still remain with PC. I donâ(TM)t think that is going to change. But for most people, an iPad is just more than enough for their eveday tasks.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Archangel Michael]

PCs have migrated to your pocket as a Cell Phone with all sorts of advanced technology. Not corporate work, but average daily work for most average people.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

The PC won't _totally_ die, but if the 99% of the populace stops buying them, there won't be the economy of scale you are used to. They will go back to being $10K high end things for the CAD crowd, and the masses will move to mobile.

That is already heavily in progress. The masses ARE moving to mobile, as fast as they can.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this unexpected? ... PCs have mostly hit the 'good enough' point, there is no value in replacing them as frequently as in the past.

This is unexpected to morons -- you know, CEOs and the entire stock market. Apparently this fact has caught them all by surprise.

Somewhere in the last few years the irrational notion that every company needs to sell 10% more than it did last year, or it's back-sliding. Or your stock needs to grow by 10% or you've "missed your targets".

This, of course, is mathematically impossible and delusional, and has nothing at all to do with reality. But this is how the collectively stupid market behaves these days .. by making irrational assumptions weighed against impossible expectations.

So, yes, for all of these consumer things .. TVs, phones, computers, cars .. there comes a point where a rational consumer says "what I have is just fine, works, and meets all of my needs". The new features and gimmicks aren't compelling, and people simply don't have the money or desire to replace everything they own every year or so.

But that doesn't satisfy the irrational 'market', and unfortunately as reality asserts itself, companies, stock holders, and the 'market' are all panicking. They're in full blown zomg teh company didn't grow teh skis is teh falling. This despite people saying for over a decade this is simply not possible.

For example, nobody really wanted 4K TV .. sure, it's the next geometric evolution, but nobody needs it. Those 8K TVs which came out? Doomed from the fucking start because nobody cares. Someone is busily making 16K TVs, and still, nobody will care.

They want to reinvent the hype of the HD transition, but people aren't interested in shelling out the money or replacing their entire TV infrastructure on a timeline which suits the manufacturers.

This is the PC market suddenly shitting their pants .. not because they've had an especially bad year, but because people have said "what do I need a faster PC for?"

The entire stock market has become infected with this bit of crazy, which tells me that collectively Wall Street are greedy, and stupid, and likely delusional if they have believed you can sustain a 10% growth forever. It's simply not possible, and consumers don't have that kind of money.

Let the 1% buy more shit with their fucking tax breaks to prop up shareholder value. The rest of us are tired of being treated as cattle who are expected to buy shit to pad out the bottom line.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Hal_Porter]

One thing Apple have got going for them is that if I buy a Mac I can use XCode to build code for iOS devices. And I can build for Android devices. And I can run Visual Studio in Parallels Desktop to build code for Windows. Or I can run a Linux distribution in Parallels. And a lot of stuff that builds for Linux and BSD will build for macOS too - Homebrew probably already has a port.

If I have a Windows machines I can build for Windows and Android.

And if I have a Linux machine I can build for Linux and Android.

Windows still rules for embedded stuff though - most embedded vendors only support their tool chains on it. Only hipster stuff like Arduino supports Mac. Still if I have a Mac I can run Windows in Parallels.

So for a developer machine there's a case for buying a Mac over, say, an Asus Zenbook. In fact that's what I did.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[DarkRookie]

Work? No.
Still a pain in the ass to work on it except for emails.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Junta]

So far, I'd say the masses are augmenting with mobile, but as possible like to go to a full laptop experience because the mobile platform and form factor is just too limiting. This includes teenage relatives and my own child and their friends, they *all* wanted to have laptops *and* phones.

The problem though is that a 10 year old device (if it still works at all) is adequate for pretty much all casual usage, and the hardware update cycle is driven by hardware breaking, people mistaking software problems for aging hardware problems (or just not caring), and fashionable changes more than it is need to actually get new levels of performance.

I do however expect that volumes will never dip below say the mid 90s or so, even proportionally to the general population. The market for PCs exploded, and then for those less purely enthusiast customers, computers became good enough and their money got rerouted to extending their experience to their pockets.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[datavirtue]

The internet is facebook and the local news station to most people. The normies do not need any power.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Calydor]

Or do any kind of serious text work. Can you imagine typing a twenty page report on an onscreen keyboard on your phone?

Re:Is this unexpected?

[b0s0z0ku]

You could do it on a Chromebook. But why bother, when non-crippled PCs like refurb Thinkpads can be had for the same price, and don't steal your data by default.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing Apple have got going for them is

I think you mean "One thing Apple have artifically restricted is..."

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just build the Mac version of my software in an macos virtual machine. As long as that's all you do you don't really need a Mac.

If you actually use the Mac, I agree you need one.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[DarkRookie]

DOS? I thought that was truly dead. I know that the other 4 are not.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[slickwillie]

Every 5-7 years I go to Ebay and buy whatever was hot like 5 years ago. I just graduated to an i3 with 2 cores!!! last year.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Joce640k]

There's also the fact that PCs as a mainstream product have lost traction to tablets and phones. Consumers who used PCs strictly for web and email don't need them anymore.

Yep. People used to use PCs for that because they had no real choice. These days they simply don't want the pain of installing/maintaining a PC environment.

(and why should they?)

Re:Is this unexpected?

[omnichad]

There are also now alternatives to people who don't really even need a PC. Which is a lot more people than most of us would like to admit. And unfortunately, that means the PC market is shrinking and our prices are going to go up.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Tempest_2084]

Unless you're doing gaming or some serious design work, even a PC from 10+ years ago is still good enough. I'm still using my Core i7 920 based PC that I built 8 years ago as my main PC (Linux/Win 10 dual boot). The only things I've added were more memory (bumped it up to 12GB from 6GB) and a SSHD because they were cheap and added some decent speed up. I'll probably continue using it until it dies as I haven't seen any reason to upgrade. Hell, I finally just got my wife to replace her ancient HP Celeron desktop PC with a new one. She had that PC from long before we even met (10+ years).

Personally I can't stand laptops or tablets, I've never liked them. I have one just because I'm required to for work and I never use it other than for work. Anything other than killing time on my iPhone is done on my PC. I have no idea how anyone gets anything beyond basic email and web surfing done on a phone, but I guess they do. To each their own I guess.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Anne Thwacks]

An iPad is clearly more than sufficient to keep inserting "Ã(TM)" every few words, but not much use for even simple talks like posting on /.

- so not much use at all!

Re:Is this unexpected?

[prefec2]

If you replace your machines every 5 years, there will be zero growth in sales, as you are just replacing each machine with a new one for most likely a similar price. Growth would be if you would buy more machines every 5 years. For example, if you buy 10 computers this year and then 11 computers in five years then you have an increase in sales of 10%. A saturated market is not dead. For that global sales would need to retract every year (which is not the case). It is going sideways. In an growth oriented economy this is bad for the economy, as manufacturers will still increase efficiency and need therefore less employees to produce these PCs. Actually, this is the path for every product until it becomes obsolete through some innovation. For example, notebooks reduced the need to desktop PCs so desktop sales made a dive in the past, but there are still scenarios where they make sense. So they are still in production.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Emails are a pain on a cell phone compared to a laptop. But even a laptop pales in comparison to a desktop setup (or laptop in a docking station) with more than one monitor.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[sdinfoserv]

Here's what I find to be the practical demarcation:
Consumers - those who consume tech services; read email, surf/browse, watch video, have a specialized app.... etc. work just fine on a tablet.
Producers - programmers, CAD operators, AV content creators, critical office document users (word/excel/powerpoint), use PC's/MAC's/laptops.
Security - need secure environments controlled by active directory and group policies. BYOD not acceptable. Governments, security organizations -all use PC's.
Sure there are "inbetweens" like a writer who can get by with a tablet, but that's infrequent.

The IPAD has been out almost 8 years. That's a life time in tech and they just a fraction of the corporate work space - like 3%. And Yes, a ton of tablets have been sold, but sales are slowing as saturation is close.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Anne Thwacks]

Meltdown and Spectre will have made second hand machines completely worthless unless there is a clear path to a fixed CPU. Sure you would stick with the one you have with a performance cut, but you are not going to spend real money on a system you know is duff if you can hang on and see how this mess pans out.

While Intel are compensating us, they can compensate us for killing the second hand value too.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Ramze]

Exactly.

Also, it's a bit unfair to break out the "desktop" as being just a tower system when there are all-in-one PCs and laptops with docking stations that have all the peripherals of a PC. I've worked several places where everyone had a laptop on a dock and would then take their laptop home if they needed to do more work via VPN. For the user, the difference between a docked laptop and a tower were slim to none while at work. Even with the internals of a "desktop," we're starting to see new form factors for parts for PCIe and SATA that could fit inside a laptop. The lines are blurring.

I've got a laptop, a desktop, and a tablet (Nexus 7 2013). That desktop is about 11 years old, but it still plays Netflix, Youtube, and other streaming media just fine. I'm about to replace it with a new gaming PC because while my 4-5 year old gaming laptop can play most games just fine, I want to also stream the games on Twitch and/or do other things in the background while gaming plus have my laptop up for other things. (plus, it'd be nice to have a 6+ core PC for video transcoding).

I'm atypical -- most people I know have a 5 to 8 year old laptop and a cell phone. (I just use my tablet and have an ancient flip phone b/c I like the battery life and lower monthly fees).

So, yeah... the "desktop" is dead in the sense that all but power users moved to laptops with multiple monitors and the same peripherals as their old desktops. I even know gamers that use just a laptop. But mostly, the life cycle of the devices just lengthened because there is no killer application to motivate people to buy a newer one. I doubt VR will be that killer ap -- maybe AI.

Unless you're in CAD/design/animation/special effects/video encoding, etc... laptops are fine... and even the monstrous tower PCs are good for a decade unless time is an important factor. Even some of those high-end jobs can be offloaded to a supercomputer / "cloud".

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Hal_Porter]

To be honest that is looking like a better and better option given the price difference between PC and Mac laptops is getting larger and larger.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Cro Magnon]

Heck, I got email right after buying a new car, telling me that next year's model just came in!

Re: Is this unexpected?

[gravewax]

which is why iPad sales are down far greater than the PC market? the bullshit that an Ipad is good enough for even most home users is exactly that..bullshit. very few want to interact with a ipad or similar tablet as their way to access the internet, it is a fucking awful experience. My mother loves her iPad for games, crosswords etc but she will get up and walk to her PC to use the internet or mail before using that thing to try to do anything even remotely productive.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Pezbian]

PCs have mostly hit the 'good enough' point, there is no value in replacing them as frequently as in the past.

It's true. At the moment, I'm using my ThinkPad W500 from 2009 and all I did to it was upgrade to 8GB RAM and a 480GB SSD.

My desktop machine has the same Core i7-940 CPU as it had in 2009. Granted, I overclocked the RAM by 50% and overclocked the CPU by 30%.

All I've done to it since is upgrade the 2009 Radeon HD 5870 GPU to a GTX 1080 Founder's Edition and add a pair of 960GB SSDs in RAID0.

I won't need a new one until it croaks. And that won't be anytime soon because liquid cooling.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[gravewax]

the negative growth is the increased gap between purchases, previously people were buying every 6-12 months, then it was every 2 years, then 3 to 4 years, now it is every 5 years or more. The simple maths on that will show a massive reduction in sales even with a growth of users.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[ruir]

And that is an entirely new conversation. The industry seems to be mostly stagnated, and aside from faster disk/RAM and support for better virtualisation, there seems to not be much evolution on the perceived CPU speed from top tiers equipments from 4 years ago. I just bought a new machine because I found a big Black Friday promotion entirely by chance (being in the right place at the right time), otherwise I would keep using my 4 year-old notebook for 2 or 3 more years.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Cro Magnon]

Nope! My phone's fine for watching cat videos, but for anything serious, and a lot that isn't, I use my laptop. And my tablet is basically an oversize phone that can't make calls.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Darinbob]

The economy of scale will still apply to many of the parts that can be expensive. RAM, Flash, high density displays, etc.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Maxo-Texas]

I stopped buying new PC's frequently about 8 years ago.

My current mode is to buy a cheap computer with a good processor and add the best reviewed $200 graphics card.

I store everything long term on removable drives.

With increased streaming options, I stored less locally for a while but that's turning around as the streaming market fragments into a million $10 channels so I'm storing more locally again.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[ilsaloving]

I think it's worse than it ought to be, and Microsoft is to blame.

Generally, people have only really upgraded their machines when they needed to. Why replace what isn't broken?

But thanks to Microsoft screwing the pooch on every single version of Windows after Windows 7, people are now actively averse to upgrading, because they will be forced to use whatever shit-tastic Windows Microsoft forces upon people.

Needlessly modified UIs, OS-level spyware, updates that you cannot stop and have better than even odds of hosing your computer. IMO Microsoft is directly responsible for the collapse of the PC market.

You'll notice that Apple is basically stable. And that's despite their bad press and questionable hardware design choices.

If I had to buy a new machine right now, I would get Mac. As much as Apple pisses me off, I can at least mitigate their poor design choices with a couple of additional purchases. A frustrating hit to the pocketbook, sure. But a consumer has NO way to mitigate what Microsoft is doing without permanently disconnecting your computer from the network, so you pay for that lower price tag by needing to be eternally vigilant and having to constantly worry about whether you computer will still boot the next time you turn it on, through no fault of your own.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Areyoukiddingme]

The entire stock market has become infected with this bit of crazy, which tells me that collectively Wall Street are greedy, and stupid, and likely delusional if they have believed you can sustain a 10% growth forever. It's simply not possible, and consumers don't have that kind of money.

There's a good reason why Dell was taken private again. There's an ongoing need for desktops, laptops, and servers, which yes, is getting smaller, but it's not actually gone yet, but the stock market would have beaten up Dell's stock tremendously over that 12% reduction in sales.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Economy of scale works like that only on a very small scale. It's often cheaper per-item to make a thousand of something than it is to make one of it. But that doesn't mean it's cheaper per-item to make a billion of something than it is to make a million.

The main causes of economy of scale are (1) that fixed costs per-item approach zero as volume increases and (2) at higher volumes you are able to negotiate a better rate from suppliers, who trade a lower profit margin for a higher total profit. But suppliers never sell at a loss, and fixed costs per item never become negative, so as your volume goes up the benefits of economy of scale become negligible.

Additionally, fixed costs aren't as "fixed" as they seem. Any manufacturing infrastructure is ultimately limited in capacity, so fixed costs are actually a stepped superlinear function. This means there is an optimum volume beyond which scale actually increases per-unit costs rather than decreases. Even now, I believe the PC market overall is far beyond that point.

Also don't forget that PCs are affordable even at the worst case of individual custom builds. That shows that economy of scale even at its maximum was never terribly important. For components that's a different story, but the same components are made for things that replace PCs anyway, so that isn't being harmed.

Finally, there are market forces other than economy of scale which are more important. For example, high demand tends to drive up price and low demand tends to drive price downward. Your scenario is highly unlikely.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Jetstream]

I agree 110% with pretty much everything you said. And it probably holds true for almost every industry out there.

I've always been a bit of a moron when it came to understanding economics, but it seems to me that the stock market is based on the principle of "forever expansion". After all, how can investors make money if profits & stock prices don't go up all the time? But how can this be anything but a ticking time bomb? No market can expand forever. The American (Western?) business model is built on an unstable foundation.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Immerman]

Oh? What VM do you recommend? I've looked repeatedly over the years, and have never found a decent MacOS supporting VM that runs on anything other than another Mac, which kind of defeats the point.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[gravewax]

once you grow up you will find adults actually use the internet and email for more than just porn browsing and social media, especially if you own or run a business.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[drinkypoo]

Im pretty sure a 5 year old amd is still going to be slower than a parched intel.

An i5 maybe. It's not hard to find an AMD CPU which will beat the pants off an i3

Re:Is this unexpected?

[fox171171]

people have said "what do I need a faster PC for?"

To compensate for the Meltdown and Spectre mitigations.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Hognoxious]

Of course, the only people who believed him were the now unemployed workers.

And they'll probably vote for him again.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[goose-incarnated]

Oh? What VM do you recommend? I've looked repeatedly over the years, and have never found a decent MacOS supporting VM that runs on anything other than another Mac, which kind of defeats the point.

If you find out please post a link; I've been looking for a non-rubbiush way of running macOS in a VM as well.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TechyImmigrant]

>Unless you're in CAD/design/animation/special effects/video encoding, etc...

When your compute needs far outstrip a PC, you revert to a laptop, since it's plenty sufficient to SSH or VNC into the server farm you plan to force to 100% load for the next week.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[TechyImmigrant]

DOS? I thought that was truly dead. I know that the other 4 are not.

It's used plenty in embedded applications. FreeDOS of course.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TechyImmigrant]

What is the connection between the physical world and information processing?

Well silicon chips perform the information processing.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Hal_Porter]

I'd be interested in this too.

Looking at this for example it seems like Apple are trying to stop people doing this

http://www.macbreaker.com/2015...

If I could build iOS stuff in a VM reliably I'd stop buying any Apple hardware quite frankly. Problem is Apple know this and they are probably actively trying to make sure macOS in VM, or at least XCode inside macOS in a VM, isn't reliable. There are obviously many ways they could do that.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[jouassou]

Also, casual users are satisfied with browsing the internet using their smartphone and playing games on a console, and therefore don't need a traditional computer. Desktops and laptops are now for work and hardcore gaming.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

And virtualization has become a commodity even in the home. You can get decent used VMWare servers for a few hundred bucks, add a regular desktop setup with big disks running FreeNAS, an inexpensive 10G networking setup, and you got enough resources to serve the family. Keep a decent gaming PC around and the rest is inexpensive Raspberry Pis that are good enough for casual stuff and can remote into a beefy VM any time. Plus...more and more stuff moves to tablets and phones, the need to have an array of PCs for various tasks is just not there anymore...and most users never had that in the first place.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

There are not enough CAD operators to sustain the entire PC market.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

The only reason why you need a Mac of iOS is license restrictions. There is no technical reason why a Windows box could not compile an iOS app.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

If you do that you violate the end user agreement!! Look it up, you have to compile on Apple hardware, not on a virtualized environment. You may want to keep quiet on that part.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

Folks, running Mac OS X in a VM is against the license agreement you need to accept. Nevertheless, there are ways to run OS X on VMWare Workstation using a patch that gets distributed in a popular Mac forum....use Bing to google for the rest of the info. ;)

Re: Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

The HUGE difference is that any tablet lacks a decent keyboard and mouse input. For even light office work a tablet on its own is useless. Some are powerful enough to operate a desktop setup, but then the argument that a tablet can be used is no longer accurate.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

Yep! I use it to test hardware that then gets used in different systems. FreeDOS is the fastest way to get an OS on any PC hardware.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

Look at what the demo guys pull out of a C64 or even the original IBM PC! If coders would code that efficiently and with more focus on performance we'd all be in a much better place.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[MoarSauce123]

Another aspect is that the majority of households no longer has the cash to spend on toys like a new PC. Cost of living and especially health care expenses grow drastically while real income is flat or even declining. If the PC makers want folks to buy more stuff then they should start and make a point by not paying their C level chair warmers millions in salaries and even more in stock. Do I like to have a rocket with a Ryzen CPU and a kick-ass graphics card paired with only SSDs and 10G Ethernet? Sure...but my focus is getting food on the table and pay the mortgage. After that not much money is left.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Junta]

Even as networks have improved, remote graphical interaction has continued to suck royally due to at least the latency, if not generally the compression artifacts and general reliability issues.

Over the years I tried that again and again as I had access to servers with hundreds of GB of ram, 64 cores, but it just wasn't the same.

Now I have a 20 core workstation with 64 GB of ram and couldn't be happier.

The disk content I use seafile to synchronize, and I'm grateful for the server in that regard, but for running GUI applications, I just can't stand it.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TheRaven64]

In the corporate office we have PC's on 5 year replacement cycles

How long have you been doing 5-year replacements? We used to do 3-year replacements, but that's been gradually extended. My work machine is now over four years old and is eligible for replacement, but there's nothing really compelling to replace it with. The same is true for everything from laptops to our big build servers. On our old one, I tried running poudriere and rebuilding the entire FreeBSD ports collection. It took 24 hours, but the last 4 hours were spent downloading the Vega Strike game data files from a very slow upstream source. On the newer machines, it's closer to 16 hours, but that's not really a compelling upgrade - for most things, we get a bigger return from buying more machines, rather than replacing old ones (we can never have enough continuous integration machines, for example).

Re: Is this unexpected?

[TheRaven64]

I remember shitty laptop keyboards. I remember ones with so little travel that your fingers hurt after 20 minutes of typing. I remember ones with a spring right in the middle and a really crappy mechanism so if you hit them slightly off centre they'd bend and not register a key press.

I haven't seen a shitty keyboard on any laptop for about 10 years. There are a few really nice ones but most, including the Macs, have been good enough for a long time.

I haven't used a Mac with the OLED bar, but some of my colleagues have them. If you're in the terminal, they'll show the function keys (though that's configurable and a few command-line apps do modify the display). For most other things, they show context info that is more useful than having to remember what F5 does in this particular application (for example, in XCode they'll show things like 'run' and 'debug').

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TheRaven64]

On the other hand, remote terminal usage has become a lot better. When I first used vim over ssh, its tendency to completely redraw parts of the screen made it noticeably slow, even with a machine not far from the other end of my dial-up link. nvi was a lot more useable. Over Christmas, I was using vim on a machine in a different country via SSH and even with pretty crappy WiFi at my end it was fine - and the rebuild times on the 24-core machine with 256GB of RAM that I was ssh'd into made it a much better experience than working on my laptop.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TheRaven64]

No, but I can imagine doing it on a bluetooth keyboard and a phone. I wrote about 20-30 articles on my old Nokia 770 and ThinkOutside folding keyboard. The 770 is pretty limited, but was able to run an xterm and vim quite happily. For a couple of summers, I'd wake up, stroll across the park and along the beach to a cafe overlooking the sea, read and drink coffee for half an hour to an hour, and then get out the keyboard and machine and write for an hour or two. The keyboard and 770 would fit in my pockets, so were more convenient for me to take than my laptop. My phone is vastly more powerful than my 770, and smaller.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[info6568]

Talking about conspiracy theories ... could be necessary to replace our machines (although they continue doing their work apparently well) because some obscure mistake was performed?

It is not realistic to think that Intel will replace all CPUs with the problems. Not only because there are many, but also because sometimes they are soldered, inside production systems that can't be so easily serviced or, because the machines users have no idea how to open and replace the CPU. This is a sensitive operation that must be performed by somebody knowing what he/she is doing. So ... in the sake of security, new machines need to be made, and this will boom the PC markets for a while.

OR

This is the Katana that will pass through the hearth of the PC and a lot of people that really don't need it, will stop using it. Mobiles and Chromebooks or similar devices will acquire a little more functionality and PC sales will drop even more.

For the people that really need a stationary, secure and powerful machine, for development or gaming, a new brew of PCs will arise. And in the office environment, other options, different from PCs (let's call them OC for Office Computer), could accomplish the task. The days when the PC was all almighty for everything and everybody really are over.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Hal_Porter]

I've got a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro which has a decent keyboard and function keys. The new, disposable, Macbook Pros have a low travel keyboard though. And the Touchbar version lacks function keys. Plus there's the 'everything component soldered' problem.

The new Macbook Pros are basically glorified tablets.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[Hal_Porter]

True - they make you buy a Mac because they want to sell you a Mac. Nothing stops them doing a Windows or Linux port of their compiler and signing tool.

In fact they could get GCC to build and just document how to sign the binaries and people would write tools for Linux and Windows. Of course Apple being Apple they make you buy a Mac to run the signing tool.

Re: Is this unexpected?

[dAzED1]

Mobile devices have a restricted UI because of the way they are used. Then one day, people at Microsoft got the stupid idea to make desktops look like restricted mobile devices. Wanna know why PC sales are down? Because the overall productivity goes down with the change to the gadget BS. It's great that someone decided it was the future and decide to shove it down everyone's throats, but until the future is now...it makes people slower.

touchpad devices will never be for content creation, sans maybe drawing. Consumption? Fine. Great! Ostensibly better for content consumption (so long as you're the type person that can only consume one content stream at a time). But content creation? No.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Bengie]

Regardless, if an industry does not have exponential growth, it's considered "dead". The housing industry is dead and so is transportation and food. And many times when they say "declining" sales, they mean "declining sales growth". A bit of mental gymnastics allows them to say that selling the same amount one year as the last is a "decline".

Re: Is this unexpected?

[drinkypoo]

it is very hard to find an AMD from 5 years ago that will beat it while still being cost effective and energy efficient, an old i3 is a very decent desktop device while being very cheap due to its age. remember it is only recent (last 12 months of so) that AMD had anything worth a pinch of shit.

It is only last year that there was an i3 faster than even my old FX-8350. If you're comparing an Intel CPU from last year to an AMD CPU from 2012, that doesn't seem very fair. You need to compare an Intel CPU from 2012 to support your premise.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[Tough Love]

My work machine is now over four years old and is eligible for replacement, but there's nothing really compelling to replace it with.

You mean, besides Ryzen, or better, Threadripper?

Re:Is this unexpected?

[lsatenstein]

PCs have mostly hit the 'good enough' point, there is no value in replacing them as frequently as in the past.

I guess you have never priced what a new CPU costs, or the DDR4 ram, or the GPU? Any decent Desktop computer today is around $1000 to $1200. GPU costs for mining (bitcoin, etc) are in the $400 range.

All money is in US Dollars. What happened to the desktop where ram was $25 for 4 gigs. Today, 8gigs fast ddr4 ram is around $150.
The only saving grace is the fact that AMD has re-entered the market with very competitive offerings for motherboard, and CPU. Hopefully they will also bring to market a GPU that is under $200.

Re:Is this unexpected?

[TheRaven64]

Where are the laptop variants of those?

Our big build machines have been 24 or 32 core for quite a few years, so neither of these gives us a huge performance improvement. We'll evaluate them when we get around to buying more, but from what I've seen they just mean that our next upgrade will be cheaper, not significantly faster.

Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[Hadlock]

Growing up in high school in the late 90s/early 2000s I was one of "those guys" (if you're reading this, likely you were too) with several used PCs living in their bedroom running various hobbyist tasks, sometimes tinkering with linux etc.
 
Then in the 2010s I was down to a single "vm lab" server and desktop for games, plus a single laptop for travel. As time has gone on, priorities have changed, I use my laptop more and my desktop is somewhere under a heap of old things in a storage unit an hour from my home. The laptop is my primary machine.
 
With the advent of Thunderbolt 3 you can finally get enough bits across to outsource your GPU to a box on your desk, and Lenovo's selling a "graphics dock" with a midrange GTX 1050 for $400 not much larger than an Apple TV or VHS cassette tape.
 
My last "new" computer was a 2012 era Thinkpad x230, and I'll probably be upgrading to the x280 pr T480 when it comes out in a month or so, and also a graphics dock. Then when I need to upgrade the graphics, just plug in a new TB3 graphics dock/eGPU. My i5 from 2012 is still plenty fast, the only shortcoming is that it can address a max of 16GB memory and moderately weak graphics (although I did play Skyrim on it over Christmas for 40+ hours without an issue). I also upgraded the drive from magnetic to SSD for maybe $100 and replaced the battery for $50.
 
If power users can hold on to their laptops for five years, I can only imagine how long the average user keeps their computer these days. Being able to extend the graphics on a laptop indefinitely is going to extend the life of the device quite a bit.

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[DarkRookie]

I have had the same system for 15 years now.
(Theseus's paradox)

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[doconnor]

A VHS cassette table is a lot bigger then an Apple TV. My 5 year old MacMini is about the size of an VHS cassette tape.

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[Pezbian]

Growing up in high school in the late 90s/early 2000s I was one of "those guys" (if you're reading this, likely you were too) with several used PCs living in their bedroom running various hobbyist tasks, sometimes tinkering with linux etc.

I have a picture somewhere that my mom took of me crashed out on my bed in 1997 while Windows 95 was installing on one of my 486 machines. At the time, I had something like five machines in my room. The main one handled almost everything. The secondary one was almost exclusively for Autodesk Animator Pro. One was a Windows NT 4.0 machine. Another was a Novell Netware server I was messing with. The fifth machine was mostly just for data recovery because of the time required. I didn't mess with Linux until 1998 when I bought a RedHat 5.1 package (yes, bought; all I had was dial-up at 28.8k).

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[Dorianny]

Being knowledgeable about computers does not automatically make you a "power user" same as being a mechanic doesn't automatically make you a drag-strip racer and playing Skyrim over Christmas most definitely doesn't make you a gamer.

Seriously thou, I can't fathom why anyone not living in a shoebox in NY or SF would not prefer to use a desktop with a big screen(s), comfortable keyboard and plenty of power at least some of the time?. Especially a "power user"

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[jittles]

Growing up in high school in the late 90s/early 2000s I was one of "those guys" (if you're reading this, likely you were too) with several used PCs living in their bedroom running various hobbyist tasks, sometimes tinkering with linux etc. Then in the 2010s I was down to a single "vm lab" server and desktop for games, plus a single laptop for travel. As time has gone on, priorities have changed, I use my laptop more and my desktop is somewhere under a heap of old things in a storage unit an hour from my home. The laptop is my primary machine.

I travel frequently and do not trust hotel WiFi. I actually have an extra machine that i keep running 24/7. It's a low TDP fanless Xeon (ivy bridge) machine that runs VMs. Averages less than 10W of power consumption but can go as high as 35W. Allows me to VPN onto my home network and, if necessary, also provides a RDP option. It runs two host OSes at all times. I also have a desktop for transcoding video and playing games that rarely gets used. Laptop is the primary machine that I use as well. But with VMs you really don't need all that hardware anymore. It is very nice.

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[blind biker]

I'll probably be upgrading to the x280

The X280? No self-respecting X230 user would even look at the X280, let alone buy it. The X280 has soldered RAM, sealed battery, no ethernet port, and can't be expanded with a 2.5" SDD or HDD. Even beyond all these, it's much harder to service than all the previous X2** laptops. It's a fucking dumpster fire shit-on-a-stick excuse for a ThinkPad.

Re:Laptops and Thunderbolt 3

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Yeah, it's a bad design choice, the X270 is a much more appealing machine. Hopefully the T-series will keep the easy serviceability and user-replaceable batteries.

Re:Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[sdinfoserv]

dead drives and bloated OS updateds that turn older slower machines into paperweights.

GPU shortage

[Tailhook]

Those who build "desktop" machines for gaming are in a bad place right now; mining has doubled the price of new GPUs; a GTX 1070 is ~$900+ right now anywhere that actually has them in stock. You can sell a used 970 for more than you paid new. Then you have GPU manufacturers sending a huge chunk of their foundry capacity to big ML cloud operators. The key piece of hardware for Desktop machines, a GPU, has become a costly and difficult to obtain part.

Re:GPU shortage

[Anonymous Coward]

$900 is a bit of an over-exaggeration. There are listings on Amazon for less than $700, and the average listing on ebay is $550. Granted, both of those are beyond the $380 I paid for my 1070 on Black Friday in 2016, but the only places charging $900+ are 3rd party sellers on Newegg and amateur eBay sellers thinking their used gear is absolute gold.

Also, you can't ignore the whole RAM price fixing that's been cranking up the price of DDR4.

Re:GPU shortage

[NettiWelho]

a GTX 1070 is ~$900+ right now anywhere that actually has them in stock.

Oh wow I really snatched a deal when I bought one for 399 euros on black friday last month.

Re:GPU shortage

[Kjella]

Not just the GPU.... SSD prices have been flat for like ~2 years. RAM prices are actually way up. I think for the first time in history you don't get a significantly better PC by waiting. It's not like last year's Ferrari is this year's BMW and next year's Kia anymore. I have a GTX 1080 TI, bought at roughly MSRP at launch because apparently it wasn't a very good mining card and for some reason the most expensive card I've ever bought is the one to stay the best in value. I'm just really sad that I didn't take the opportunity a while ago and bought 4x16GB RAM. Right now I see some of the value RAM has literally tripled in price. The CPU market is a little better but only because Ryzen has been pretty disruptive. But even there the poewr/watt, power/$ don't change as much as they used to. Basically it's becoming a normal market where the car from 10 years ago is roughly as fast in practice as the one you buy today.

Re:GPU shortage

[Xenolith0]

I didn't believe you, who would pay $900 for a 1070!? Turns out, you're very correct and the world is a stupid place to live.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/EVGA-GeForce-GAMING-Support-08G-P4-5173-KR/product/B01KVZBNY0

Re:GPU shortage

[thegarbz]

SSD prices have been flat for like ~2 years

Except for the part where they are literally about 40% cheaper now than they were 2 years ago. Oh don't get me wrong you can still happily find 128GB drives for the same price as 2 years ago, but then you're looking at about double the performance. But let me guess you don't want to compare model for model.

RAM prices fluctuate with smartphone manufacturing and release dates. Right now they are higher than they were 6 months ago when I bought 32GB, 6 months before that they were up again.

As for GPU prices you have to be a special kind of stupid to pay $999 for a GTX 1070 Ti extreme gamer walletrape edition when you can pick up a normal and equally performing model for close to half that.

Yeah prices bounce around a bit, but it's no where near as bad as your posts claim.

Re:Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[Nutria]

Dead (or soon to be dying) drives can be replaced, and RAM and CPU upgraded. That's why I haven't bought a new mobo in 5 years (Feb 2013).

My desktop computer is 4 years old

[MpVpRb]

...and it still works fine

I did upgrade some stuff, like switching to an SSD, but for the stuff I do, performance is fine

The main reason I don't upgrade more often isn't price, it's pain

With restrictive licenses, activation, patches, drivers..etc, it's a MASSIVE PAIN IN THE ASS to upgrade. If I could just pop the hard drive in a new box and have everything adjust itself automagically, I would love to have the latest and greatest, even if I don't really need it

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[bjdevil66]

Like your experience, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," applies more than ever.

I'm not the hardware enthusiast or early adopter I was 20 years ago. I finally just upgraded my custom built, 6-year-old desktop's primary hard drive to a Samsung 256GB SSD (kept the other HDDs for storage) and swapped out the 32-bit OS for its 64-bit version (in order to increase the Kingston RAM to 12GB).

Nothing else in the rig needs an upgrade. The on-board network, sound, and video hardware on the motherboard are holding up fine (no more $$$$ NVIDIA video card purchases or Soundblaster updates.) My 1600x1200, 20" DVI Dell monitor has been a champ for almost a decade (only replaced one bad capacitor over that entire time). Yeah, yeah, no 4K, not widescreen - but who cares? I'm not gaming on it, and my sons' games run great for them.

The only real pain in the upgrade was software-related issues. The OS update, activation, licenses, drivers - "Where can I find a driver for my 22 year old but reliable HP laser printer?", etc.

Admittedly, if there WAS an OS where one could do what you suggested - swap the SSD (and its OS) out and simply hook it up to a new set of hardware and the installed OS just updated its drivers seamlessly... Wow. That would be a convenience/dream come true and worth the $$$$ upgrade. Until then, however, my total cost was $200 and the desktop is again good enough to last at least a few more years so why spend 2-3x that for a new, commodity-quality Dell instead?

Hell - Why even buy another desktop at all? I'm not a phone- or tablet-only honk yet, but my next computer will likely be a lightweight laptop that I'll plug into a new huge monitor with a BT keyboard and mouse - at most. Maybe an external storage device (NAS, portable HDD, etc.)?

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[hdyoung]

This might draw a lot of hate, but Mac comes pretty close to what you want. Old mac, swap to new mac. Time machine actually works as advertised. It's like cutting and pasting your environment into the new machine. If you're sensitive to a few hundred bucks, then mac isn't for you. For me, I spend literally thousands of hours in front of my machines. The few extra hundred bucks my imac cost were well worth it. SSD swap-in and it's very snappy.

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[Jetstream]

I have an XP machine right now that would be totally usable for pretty much all I need - browsing, email, budgeting, music production/editing. Absolutely the ONLY reason I can't (or rather, don't) use it is because it stopped getting security updates. It's frustrating to have to junk a perfectly good machine (or use it strictly offline), for no good reason.

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[hambone142]

Buy a copy of Windows 7 and upgrade it.

That's what I did to all of my PCs.

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[Jetstream]

Good idea, except that I never have cared for Win7 either. Its interface is only slightly less sucky than Win 8/10. And 7 refuses to run some older software, even in compatibility mode. I have 7 in a virtual machine under Linux on my laptop, just in case I really need it. Most of the time, I just use Linux Mint.

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[dargaud]

If I could just pop the hard drive in a new box and have everything adjust itself automagically, I would love to have the latest and greatest, even if I don't really need it

This is exactly how it works in Linux. I have some systems where I did this cycle a few times: update everything but the HD+OS (painless), update the HD copying the OS to new one (somewhat tricky), update the OS (painless).

Re:My desktop computer is 4 years old

[sad_]

linux does that, when upgrading my complete pc i just plugin my old HD and off i go.

Price fixing and crypto

[blackomegax]

Between insane DDR4 price fixing and the GPU market having dried completely up to insane gouge levels... yeah. fuck buying a PC right now.

WIndows 10 is crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not buying a new PC any time soon as Windows 10 is crap. Linux doesn't run the programs I need to use and Macs are simply too expensive and locked into a crappy walled garden.

Back in the good old days you could customise your PC to do what you wanted. Windows 10 is now like some sort of crappy Fisher Price appliance. That shitty half finished, half table interface is a complete dog's breakfast !

I don't want Cortana at all. I don't want a tracking ID, I don;t want to send any telemetry etc. to Microsoft (or anyone else) and I want to be able to uninstall *any* program or service that I don't need. You can't do this with Windows 10 as you;re not in control. Plus it's spyware.

So I'm sticking with my 10 year old XP machine to run the programs I want to run as it's plenty fast enough for my needs and I've got all the tools I want.

For browsing the web/email/anything involving the network I've got a crappy tablet which does that job quite well.

"Modern" PCs with Windows 10 offer me nothing and deny me everything.

Re:WIndows 10 is crap.

[JoeCommodore]

This and the latest MacOS is getting crappier as well.

The other part of it is is you have a PC/Mac with an older system that "just works" why are you gonna buy some new hardware that likely will lock you into the latest OS that just "doesn't seem to work right"?

I do use Linux, and for the most part it runs great on older hardware. Linux doesn't usually run just fine on the latest hardware. Why should I risk upgrade hassles with a new PC?

Maybe if they made PCs/OSs that people actually could use or have features they really want instead of more remote dependability, subscription tie-ins, and DRM.

Re:WIndows 10 is crap.

[tepples]

is you have a PC/Mac with an older system that "just works" why are you gonna buy some new hardware that likely will lock you into the latest OS that just "doesn't seem to work right"?

The biggest reason to run macOS is macOS-exclusive applications, and among Slashdot users, the most prominent of those is probably Xcode. The version of Xcode that targets the current version of iOS runs only on macOS Sierra and later, which needs a Mac from 2010 or later. My Mac mini is from 2009.

Re:WIndows 10 is crap.

[Hognoxious]

Linux is getting crappier too. I have an Eee with a recent version of Kali on it; doesn't hibernate properly (did on the old version) and for some unknown reason goes through grub twice on boot. Tried several DEs and none of them allow me to change the colours, which might seem trivial but the pre-installed themes are either angry fruit salad or too low contrast to see properly. Oh, and editing the menus is fun, if you can get it to work at all.

Shit, this all worked with Gnome 2. It even worked in Win 95.

Re:Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[Hal_Porter]

Which you can do on a PC. You can't do it on the new Macs. Also Apple kill off support for old hardware in new OS releases.

So like they build in obsolescence for iPhones, they do it for Macs too.

Re:Mobile is good enough for most.

[hey!]

I've been saying this for a long time in the context of desktop OS features. We don't need them anymore.

Desktop computers are still useful. Having a large screen and keyboard is still the way to go for performing tasks. But they can stop trying to be the digital switchboard for your life. Nobody who has a smartphone needs all those bells and whistles. I never, ever need my desktop to notify me of anything anymore.

That's why I use i3.

Re:Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[b0s0z0ku]

New iMacs seem to still have removable RAM and SSD. Even the latest, bleeding-edge Pro models.

New Laptop on Hold

[Hrrrg]

I was planning to upgrade my laptop. But now with the Meltdown and Spectre issues? No thanks - I can wait a couple of years for them to design new chips.

Re:New Laptop on Hold

[Szeraax]

Waiting for an APU hopefully with vega discrete, but for a laptop that isn't even a hard requirement anymore.

Re:its going to get worse

[scumdamn]

AMD silicon is the answer.

Re: Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[Hal_Porter]

What company doesn't kill off hardware between each major release? MS does it.

Actually for a long time they didn't

E.g. up to 8 Windows would run on pretty much any CPU. It was only with 8 that it started to require "NX bit, SSE2, PAE".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If you search you find a lot of people got told their machines couldn't be upgraded from 7 to 8. Having used 7 and 8, I'd say MS was doing them a favour, but it was still something of a departure for MS.

You could install XP, Vista and 7 on an absolutely ancient machine and it would still run, albeit slowly. Only with 8 did they start to kill off support for old hardware.

Up to that point Microsoft was a software company and it was in their interests to sell you a new OS to run on your old hardware and not break any applications.

Apple by contrast sell hardware and give away software. So it's in their interest to make new OS releases not work on old hardware. It's also in their interest to tie new releases of their applications to new OS versions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So if you've got a 2012 Macbook Pro which they were still selling up to a year or so ago, it's getting close to the edge. The next oldest machine, the 2010 Macbook Pro, is the oldest Macbook Pro supported.

I.e. I reckon I'm good for maybe one more release past High Sierra before my machine drops out of support. And for XCode that's an issue because you need the latest release to install it. I.e. Apple know for people who buy a machine to run XCode they can force an upgrade by tying XCode to Mac, tying XCode to the OS version and tying the OS to the most recent hardware.

Of course I might just decide to run macOS in a VM...

Few signs of life

[Cajun Hell]

The summary suggests the sales have gone down by a few percent. The headline suggests the sales have gone to about zero.

Using these two "facts" I can deduce that PC sales have always been nearly zero, a shithole market. You can question my stability, but you can't question my genius.

Re:Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[jawtheshark]

Well, Apple has been more than fair with my wifes mid-2010 27” iMac. It still has support from the latest macOS and it has upgradeable RAM. Maximum is 32GB, which is what we have. It’s the unofficial maximum, but it works.

One day, they will drop support, but the i7 870 it sports is no slouch so I’ll surely find something else to do with it.

Video card prices are nuts right now

[rsilvergun]

a 1050 is going for $200. A 1060 6gb for $500. To put that in context, I bought my bro a 1060 6gb for $230 on sale about 2 years ago. Until the crypto currency boom ends I think the high price of video cards will scare off new gamers unless they're really, really hardcore.

Re:Video card prices are nuts right now

[jittles]

a 1050 is going for $200. A 1060 6gb for $500. To put that in context, I bought my bro a 1060 6gb for $230 on sale about 2 years ago. Until the crypto currency boom ends I think the high price of video cards will scare off new gamers unless they're really, really hardcore.

Where are you doing your shopping at? YOu should be able to get a 1080 GTX TI for $500.

Re:Video card prices are nuts right now

[jittles]

a 1050 is going for $200. A 1060 6gb for $500. To put that in context, I bought my bro a 1060 6gb for $230 on sale about 2 years ago. Until the crypto currency boom ends I think the high price of video cards will scare off new gamers unless they're really, really hardcore.

Where are you doing your shopping at? YOu should be able to get a 1080 GTX TI for $500.

Sorry, no, that's the regular 1080 GTX, not the TI. The TI will run you an extra $100-200

The annoying part is they don't want to ramp up

[rsilvergun]

production, because everybody's expecting the crypto currency bubble to burst and they're afraid of getting stuck with a mountain of unsold inventory.

Re: Processor speeds stuck at 3.5 GHz

[Nutria]

A PC is as much of a black box as a car is. Stupid people deserve what they get.

Spectre and Meltdown flaws or planned?

[budsetr]

Spectre and Meltdown flaws or planned? Has anybody asked this question yet? Or should I say 'Have the right people asked this question yet?' Hardware is good right now. Good and stable and reliable. That being said what is the incentive for manufacturers if their stuff doesn't break down? Artificial flaws maybe? How do we get out of this cycle if it is artificially imposed by the manufacturers? This is something that has to include everyone: buyers and makers.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown flaws or planned?

[speedlaw]

Those are clearly back doors that sat for a while until found by outsiders....I'm not a conspiracy guy, but these holes weren't an accident

why ?

[speedlaw]

My work is the Apple walled garden/prison, but since my use is open/save/print, look at web page, the lack of time spent removing Hacker Crap is money well spent. Twice the price but not hassles later. My son has a gaming machine. We recently upgraded the video card, I tossed in a 256 ssd, and a better screen. We didn't break four figures, even close. If I ran windoze for the office, I'd save half, but pay it back in removal of hacker crap. It is clear there is no money left in the PC market, what I've bought for the Gamer in the last few weeks is AMAZING for the price.

existing computers are generally good enough

[roc97007]

PC sales have been slow for awhile. I think it's partly due to PCs becoming more than fast enough for most uses. (Except gaming and some other performance-intensive tasks.) There just hasn't been a compelling reason to upgrade.

I'm a heavy user of Adobe CC, and recently (about six months ago) upgraded from a reasonably top-of-line system built in 2005 (with graphics upgraded last year to an Nvidia card that Adobe would use to accelerate rendering) to a Dell T series workstation from 2014 or thereabouts. It was part of a load of scrapped workstations from a company that was apparently going out of business. 6 core Xeon, 32 gigs of ECC memory, toolless case, 8 TB helium filled Enterprise disk, two high end industrial grade CAD-purposed Nvidia graphics cards. At scrap prices. With that kind of hardware laying about, who in their right mind (except gamers and, I dunno ecoin miners) would buy new?

Re:What is this, 2008?

[Immerman]

640PB should be enough for me.

Few signs of life?!!

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Most people stop growing at around 40 years old. Do we then say that 40+ year-olds show few signs on life? The PC market has reached saturation and has stopped growing, which doesn't mean it's dead or dying. They're still selling huge numbers of PCs.

I assumed PC buyers were pros. Wrong

[EmperorOfCanada]

I assumed that people buying PC computers were content creating pros who trended to the expert side of things. But with HP taking the lead it clearly shows that I was wrong and that a vast portion of PC buyers took the short bus to the Staples store to get their fill of bloatware loaded flimsy piles of excrement. Once in a blue moon an HP will fool me into thinking "That one's not so bad." and then it tries to chew off one of my fingers with some shocking bit of low quality corner cutting marking BS nonsense.

If I had the choice between HPs best desktop model and a raspberry pi I would choose the pi without hesitation as I know that while not a star performer it won't let me down. The HP would be like a beautiful garden filled with poisonous snakes and skin inflaming plants.

Re:I assumed PC buyers were pros. Wrong

[tepples]

If I had the choice between HPs best desktop model and a raspberry pi I would choose the pi without hesitation as I know that while not a star performer it won't let me down.

My work involves FamiTracker and FCEUX debugger. These applications are free software, but they're made for the Win32 API and compiled for i686. Have you tried recompiling Windows applications for ARM using Winelib for Raspberry Pi? If so, what problems have you run into?

Re:I assumed PC buyers were pros. Wrong

[EmperorOfCanada]

I consider Wine to be like putting wings on a car to make a flying car. You just end up with a crappy plane and a crappy car.

I develop software and actually do use the Raspberry(not as my primary platform), but I just make the software cross-compile on linux or windows so it isn't a problem. My personal experience with porting other people's software is that it is endless pain and suffering.

Windows 10

[hambone142]

I'd love to buy new hardware but I WILL NOT buy a PC that runs Windows 10 or similar spyware OS's.

I'm going to stay on Win7 and if Microsoft persists on collecting data on users with their OS, I will migrate to Linux.

Game over unless Microsoft cleans up their act and I suspect they won't.

That's one reason PCs aren't selling.

Re:Windows 10

[Tony Isaac]

You think Windows 7 isn't spyware?

https://www.infoworld.com/arti...

Re:Windows 10

[blind biker]

I'm going to stay on Win7 and if Microsoft persists on collecting data on users with their OS, I will migrate to Linux.

Same here.

Re:Windows 10

[vandamme]

I'm way ahead of you. Run Linux (Mint and Ubuntu MATE) on my 6 year old eMachine, which does everything I need to do. And I just got a refurb Chromebook Pixel for $200, and run crouton on it.

Re:Windows 10

[toddestan]

Well, you can have Windows 7 (or Windows 8.1) without the telemetry. But you basically have to pick and choose your patches. The lists of the KB's that install the telemetry are online.

The biggest problem is that as of last fall Microsoft has started distributing the patches for these OS's as monthly roll-ups so you can't pick and choose the individual patches anymore. Since the roll-ups install the telemetry you are stuck with a patch level from last fall that you can't update further.

The only real solution is to install Linux.

Re:Windows 10

[WallyL]

I did this. Windows 10 made me a Linux user.

App publishers who refuse to support Linux

[tepples]

Linux beckons.

And becomes useless when the publisher of the application on which your business relies closes both your request for a native X11/Linux port and your request to correct brokenness when the application is run in Wine as RESOLVED WONTFIX.

Sales are flat because progress is flat

[lusid1]

I couldn't buy a PC today thats better in any significant way than a PC I bought 3 years ago, or 5 for that matter. CPUs haven't improved in any way and end user can see, Hard disks stopped getting bigger, SSD stopped getting cheaper, and GPUs are impossible to acquire thanks to the miners. So there is no replacement driver, and the market is saturated. Anybody who needs a PC already has a PC. Short of a PC mass extinction event or some actual progress on the platform, this is the end of the road. Its a mature market, and the rate of sales as it is today is pretty much what its going to be for the foreseeable future.

Re:Sales are flat because progress is flat

[thegreatbob]

Chilling on Sandy/Ivy Bridge, but managed to snag a clearance GTX1080 before the miners went apeshit. Nothing I routinely do scales exceptionally well beyond a few cores. Probably going to refit with AMD this year, but still don't know... i7-3820 @4.3GHz/GTX1080/NVMe SSD that does something like 2.2/1.2 GB/s R/W still seems to have what it takes. I do, very deeply, appreciate the modularity of the x86 platform... I find it kind of cool to have a machine with hardware spanning a great many generations (until ~2012 when i built the SB box, all of my main machines still had floppy drives). If the pre-built PC market suffers a major collapse, I'd like to see a return to the backplane+everything-else-is-an-add-in-card model of building custom machines... would be nice to be able to have realistic options outside of Intel-derived architectures for serious personal computing.

How to trust an app on macOS

[tepples]

Macs are simply too expensive and locked into a crappy walled garden.

To what "crappy walled garden" do you refer? A user of macOS can bypass Gatekeeper and trust an amateur-made application by Ctrl+clicking it and choosing Open.

Only gamers and pros want them

[Tony Isaac]

A lot of people are happy enough with a tablet or phone.

In the last century, sewing machines were marketed to every family so they could sew their own clothes. Now, only professionals want them.

Computers are following a tried-and-true path like other inventions before it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Mobile is good enough for most.

[TeknoHog]

Desktop computers are still useful. Having a large screen and keyboard is still the way to go for performing tasks. But they can stop trying to be the digital switchboard for your life. Nobody who has a smartphone needs all those bells and whistles. I never, ever need my desktop to notify me of anything anymore.

Wait, did you actually use your desktop computer as a source of constant annoyance back in the day? I remember playing around with Gnome panel sometime in 2000 when I was new to Linux, but I soon settled for minimal window managers like Blackbox and Fluxbox, which I continue to use.

I also like performing tasks instead of hanging around in a constant flood of distractions. I do use things like Facebook for coordinating tasks with groups of people, and it's bad enough if I accidentally leave the browser page open to play those annoying "ding"s with every fscking message. Like email, I think all textual messages are something you go and check occasionally, not something that is pushed onto you every time they come. (Don't get me started on phone calls.)

I also remember lusting after some kind of a wearable computer to have with me all the time, but seeing today's "smart"phone culture I'm not so sure any more. Simply being connected all the time would be too much for my concentration, no matter what the hardware/software.