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Tech Shoppers in the UK Ditch Desktop PCs and DVD Players (ofcom.org.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the times,-they-are-changin' dept.

Brits are ditching DVD players and desktop PCs and are increasingly turning to newer technology such as smart TVs and smart watches, Ofcom research has found. From the research: Shoppers in the UK are predicted to spend billions of pounds again this year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and much of that is expected to be spent buying tech online. So, Ofcom has crunched the numbers on which tech devices people have been buying in recent years, and which ones they're getting rid of.

Ownership of digital devices such as smart TVs, smart watches and smartphones has grown significantly in recent years, as more people need a constant connection to the internet -- internet users say they spend an average of 24 hours a week online. By contrast, MP3 players, DVD players and desktop computers seem to be falling out of favour as smartphone use continues to grow, particularly for browsing and streaming. Meanwhile, the popularity of tablets and e-readers seems to have peaked. Ownership of both is significantly higher than it was seven years ago, but has levelled out in the last few years.

123 comments

  1. The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where have I heard this before? Ahh yes, when it was going to be completely "replaced" by the tablet...

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re: The desktop is dying! by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 1

      Historically if you wanted to browse the web and check email, you plonked down for a desktop that was bottlenecked by ram before it left the factory. Plus you probably got sold Office "to open email attachments."

      So to some extent, the market for high end deaktop computers was the same as the market for functional computers. It was always a false market.

    2. Re: The desktop is dying! by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

      The CPU in mobile devices has it's ram bottlenecked before it's even encapsulated to be attached to a PCB.

    3. Re: The desktop is dying! by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      4K and 5K and 8K games will drive that need to buy more powerful desktop computer parts.
      New CPU and GPU products have to keep up with software that can support 4K.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re: The desktop is dying! by dnaumov · · Score: 1

      A 600 eur iPad Pro from last year, at the things it can do, basically runs circles around most 1000 eur PCs of today.

    5. Re: The desktop is dying! by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except it only runs a toy operating system (not even real MacOS) and lacks a filesystem. So the things it can do don't really include real work.

      But if you qualify with 'the things it can do' you might be able to make a case.

    6. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      They must sell really crappy PCs in Europe. These days $1000 PC is outfitted with gaming card and 16GB of ram which will run most of game and professional applications just fine. I don't know what iPad Pro can run, $1000 PC can run any modern application without being locked in to Apple walled garden.

    7. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me know when they come out...cause they got nothing now..at least nothing worth playing.

      enjoy the lootboxes.

    8. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least you can fire up your emulator.

    9. Re: The desktop is dying! by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      AC the displays exist for the 4K support. The GPU need more work, so thats a next gen upgrade to max out 4K quality.
      Need a new CPU.
      Software should be 4K ready.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    10. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If your older CPU is an i7 4790K you don't need a new CPU yet. Old high end beats new low end even for CPUs

    11. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Except it only runs a toy operating system (not even real MacOS) and lacks a filesystem. So the things it can do don't really include real work.

      But if you qualify with 'the things it can do' you might be able to make a case.

      So I guess your point is most people never did real work on a computer in the first place and were oversold on $2000 desktop PCs for many years. The desktop PC ain’t making a comeback, it’s just going to wax and wane with PC gaming trends and business OS upgrade cycles, only one of those having any real profit margins.

    12. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hell, a crap cobbled-together desktop PC is still far superior to either Android or iOS for getting real work done.

      Even as is, there is no real technical reason that Android or iOS has to suck for serious work, it's just that the mobile platforms are generally aimed at the lowest common denominator, and the user base tends to be mostly airheaded Generation Z types who feel the need to ruin every self portrait with lame vaguely anime-style superimposed cat ears, and drive each other to violence through nasty Facebook postings.

    13. Re: The desktop is dying! by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      No one is interested in that garbage. Kids are playing Fortnite and such which run on mobile phones and tablets. What is the point of a 4K game if the playability is crap?

    14. Re:The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Desktop and laptop PC SALES have gone down, because they have reached saturation point, and people don't need to replace them ever year or two anymore! Today's computers offer very little in performance and features over computers that are 6-8 years old.

      Oh, and try and find a TV these days that NOT a smart TV! Its almost impossible!! No, people don't necessarily need or want more devices that are connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, it is getting hard to find devices that don't have that capability! And yes, people still buy DVD players and MP3 players, just not as gifts.

    15. Re: The desktop is dying! by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A 600 eur iPad Pro from last year, at the things it can do, basically runs circles around most 1000 eur PCs of today.

      I doubt it. My dev environment alone eats up around 16GB, that's even assuming that gcc can run on iOS, and cross-compile for my target, or that eclipse/VS/qtcreator will run on iOS, or that various creation tools (gimp, etc) will run on iOS.

      Tablets are not toys because of the hardware, they are toys because they are content-consumption only devices. Those of us who produce more content than we consume won't use tablets to do the production.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    16. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Okay, hereâ(TM)s an example of what I want to do.

      I googled and found a website with a PDF I want to send to my friend. Not the link, I want to send the PDF as an attachment. Easy as pie on a desktop. Even Linux with Lynx and Pine itâ(TM)s no problem. Canâ(TM)t do it on iOS.

      For getting actual shit done on a website you need an actual PC, not a tablet which is just an iPhone with a bigger screen. Sometimes it works â" if the website was specifically made for mobile â" sometimes it doesnâ(TM)t.

    17. Re: The desktop is dying! by houghi · · Score: 2

      You also will notbuy your PC at that store or Best Buy and spend mire than average on it.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    18. Re:The desktop is dying! by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uhhhh did anybody even bother to see WHAT KIND of desktops they are offering this year? I did because my main PC is getting a bit long in the tooth and was looking to see if there was any deals....ugh.

      We're talking AMD A9s, seventh gen Core I3s, "gaming PCs" with FX-6300 CPUs....noticing a pattern here? Its all old shit they want to get out the warehouse and they are wanting stupid money for those! Hell the one offering the "gaming PC" (I can't remember if it was Worst Buy or Wally World) wanted nearly $400 USD...for an FX-6300 and Geforce GT 710! That's a CPU from 6 fricking years ago in a socket that AMD no longer supports!

      So no shit Sherlock nobody is buying the desktops this run, because what they are offering is overpriced underpowered crap!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    19. Re:The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This or that is dying" is marketing gobbledygook for "no longer growing". According to this gobbeldygook, the telephone died many years ago - but it is still in use. In the same sense, coca cola is dead too - it is already sold wherever people wants it - so not growing unless the population grows. The desktop may very well have peaked, in the sense that everybody who wants one already got one, and PCs are not getting much faster each year so they are not replaced until something actually break (or another year pass and new people become working adults.)

      The desktop will keep selling (but not growing), until the power of the desktop fits inside the tablet form factor. Which is a long way to go. Processors may be getting there, but not yet the graphics and certainly not the flexibility of interchangeable parts & customization.

    20. Re:The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, and try and find a TV these days that NOT a smart TV! Its almost impossible!!

      Easy. It is called a monitor/display and is sold in the desktop pc section. It has HDMI input, which is usually what you need for connecting it to the cable/satellite box that brings in your TV signal.

      "Smart TV" is garbage. Basically, a real slow computer built in, which is therefore never used for anything at all.

    21. Re:The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would like that rig enough (choice of nvidia proprietary or nouveau on linux) though a Ryzen 1200 with everything else same would be much better.
      GT 710 on a desktop, that would be an upgrade for me. Ha!

      It's shit. But it's a good machine actually for people afraid of the big bad Intel ME and AMD PSP.

      seventh gen core i3? lol so this one has 3.9GHz, UHD 630 graphics (same as on i9-9900K), AVX2. Bigger games want more cores now. I'd love it for emulation (can it play PS2 games? on its own, for 50W to the CPU?)

      I once saw much worse, in my country. This was before we knew stuff like "black friday" existed, but monochrome Pokemon games were out. a local supermarket somewhere (i.e. foremost a groceries store) had a Pentium 120 desktop at original asking price, and another desktop or two. The store's direction probably didn't really know what they were. It had about a $3000 or $4000 equivalent sticker price and worth a tenth that.

    22. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      there is no real technical reason that Android or iOS has to suck for serious work,

      The technical reason is Google. Google is all out maximising suckiness everywhere it goes. Look at today's new Youtube feature "two ads for the price of one" - now your ad break is twice as long so you don't get as many in your movie!

      Hell, if it has an ad in it, I watch something else!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    23. Re:The desktop is dying! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      But it's a good machine actually for people afraid of the big bad Intel ME and AMD PSP.

      No one gives a damn about this, and it is well and truly reflected in the article.

    24. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A 1st generation Ryzen 5 (less than $100 = low-end CPU) handily beats that i7 4790K. It's great for games. The high-end CPUs on the market (2990WX, 2950X) are not great for games.

    25. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what iPad Pro can run

      Candy Crush?

    26. Re:The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Desktop and laptop PC SALES have gone down, because they have reached saturation point, and people don't need to replace them ever year or two anymore!

      Exactly the same argument I heard in 2008.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    27. Re:The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      If you're buying a desktop retail, you are doing it wrong. They've always been sub par components hobbled together and loaded with malware and spyware at an extortionate price.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    28. Re:The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      until the power of the desktop fits inside the tablet form factor. Which is a long way to go. Processors may be getting there, but not yet the graphics and certainly not the flexibility of interchangeable parts & customization.

      Not to mention heat. Processing billions and billions of instructions and vertices per second burns a lot of electricity, which is then converted to heat. All that heat has got to go somewhere. When I was young, back at the dawn of time and computing, a 250W power supply was more than enough for everything (including the monitor, whose power outlet plugged into the PC's power supply directly). Now you need 800W or up if you want to run any sort of decent graphics card - and the monitor(s) also plug in separately. Calculations = energy = heat. You can't shrink that out of the system.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    29. Re:The desktop is dying! by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      You must be a youngster then because it didn't used to be this way, specially during the 00s PC boom. I remember scoring C2Qs and AMD Phenom Triples for sub $200 on Black Friday with pretty damn good specs from memory to HDD space. Sure the OS was filled with crapware but it was easy enough to just nuke the OS and use the enclosed key to install a clean OS. You didn't get the top CPU but it would be not very far from it, for example when the Q9xxx was the top Intel chips you would get a Q8xxx so really not bad.

      But what they are offering now? Frankly sub $250 used PCs on eBay have newer CPUs and better specs than their $400+ offerings, its literally old junk that was sitting in a warehouse somewhere but they are asking new PC prices for. I mean seriously an FX-6300 for $400? AMD A8s and Core i3 dual cores for $500? Their prices are frankly worse than what I've seen on just daily deals from Amazon and Dell, they sure as hell ain't worth standing in line in the cold to buy that is for damn sure!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    30. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the irony prize is awarded to: iOS post complaining about iOS on the web (although the formatting fault thatâ(TM)s the âoegiveawayâ is slashdotâ(TM)s)

    31. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uhhhh... I guess you're not familiar with the option on iOS that allows you to download and save a file in both Google drive and iOS cloud and then send it as an attachment..?

      I think you can do it with Dropbox but not sure since I don't use it.
      Next time..? You won't sound like a moron if you do just a LITTLE research.

    32. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I use it all the time and it works every time. Just like a desktop

    33. Re:The desktop is dying! by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      "This or that is dying" is marketing gobbledygook for "no longer growing".

      Indeed, it is because of the fixation on (potential) growth as a measure of company performance.

      It's why Tesla is so highly valued - one day it could become a virtual monopolist supplier of electric vehicles and therefore sell the equivalent of the combined total current vehicle market all by itself...

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    34. Re:The desktop is dying! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Now you need 800W or up if you want to run any sort of decent graphics card

      My PC has two video cards in it, peaks at about 400W, and will run any AAA game at least with decent settings.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    35. Re: The desktop is dying! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Except it only runs a toy operating system (not even real MacOS) and lacks a filesystem. So the things it can do don't really include real work.

      The average user needs neither of those things, nor to do "real work" by your definition. Most of them spend 99.9% of their time in the browser, and an iPad with a crippled OS will do what they need to do.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    36. Re: The desktop is dying! by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You also will notbuy your PC at that store or Best Buy and spend mire than average on it.

      My desktop is a 2nd-gen i7 with 16GB of ram, cost around $250 when I bought it last year, and yet it will still do more than a top of the range tablet bought now, mostly because the tablet is almost incapable of being used to produce content.

      The tablet can't replace the desktop, because the desktop is used for a much more demanding class of functionality (content-production). The tablet is equivalent to a TV, the desktop is equivalent to a lathe.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
    37. Re: The desktop is dying! by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      Except it only runs a toy operating system (not even real MacOS) and lacks a filesystem. So the things it can do don't really include real work.

      But if you qualify with 'the things it can do' you might be able to make a case.

      You can run MS Office, run a version of illustrator as well as photoshop. What sort of "real work" that an average person needs at home are you talking about. Remember, I said "average" person not some techie nerd who wants to run LINUX.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    38. Re: The desktop is dying! by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      Hell, a crap cobbled-together desktop PC is still far superior to either Android or iOS for getting real work done.

      Even as is, there is no real technical reason that Android or iOS has to suck for serious work, it's just that the mobile platforms are generally aimed at the lowest common denominator, and the user base tends to be mostly airheaded Generation Z types who feel the need to ruin every self portrait with lame vaguely anime-style superimposed cat ears, and drive each other to violence through nasty Facebook postings.

      What sort of "real work" does an average person need to do at home? Today, many workplaces even offer virtual desktop environments for their users so you can simply remote into work on your iPad or Android tablet and check work stuff without a "real" computer. You run MS Office and a bunch of other applications on tablets these days and a lot of activity is performed on the web these days from filing taxes to budgeting software.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    39. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's odd - OEM builds at the correct price range from reputable vendors like HP have always been good for me. My old PC had a Core i5 750 with 4GB RAM and an NVIDIA GT 220 with a traditional HDD in 2009 and shipped with Windows 7. During its 9 year duty cycle, it got a GT 760, cheap OEM 700W PSU from China, bump to 16GB RAM and a 128GB SSD (original HDD repurposed for data storage). It was also eligible for Windows 10 as an upgrade, which keeps it going as a work PC to this day! My latest machine from HP uses a Core i7 6700, 16GB RAM, GTX 970 and a 480GB SSD+2TB HDD. I've since replaced the 2TB HDD with an 8TB HDD but the rest is the same. I expect it to have a 10 year duty cycle as I'm using Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB 2016 from my MSDN entitlement which won't need replacing for many years to come anyway (as it receives the same support lifecycle as Server 2016).

      In my humble opinion, the "cheap" OEM parts outlast the enthusiast/consumer parts. Keep in mind I am happy to spend £800 on an OEM pre-built PC. People looking for a cheaper build with superior reliability for general purpose use should:

      1) Buy second hand tower form-factor server machines then fit a sound/graphics card to add desktop functionality. Enthusiasts can do this with Fujitsu servers to get decent gaming PCs on the cheap with low noise output, high RAM and a good CPU. As a bonus, these often come with Server 2008 R2 licensing, which can be used securely until 2026 with some registry tweaks to slurp the premium support patches (as people can do with XP today until 2019). 2008 R2 is essentially Windows 7 but without the telemetry slurp added post Win10.
      Or;
      2) Buy a decent HP or Dell SFF style unit second hand and add an SSD. These units are so ridiculously common and can be had for £150. These are not for gaming but will last another 5 years before the hardware is actually obsolete and are eligible for Windows 10 using the build 1511 clean install technique with the OEM Windows 7 key functioning as a Windows 10 product key (this still works legitimately). This outclasses custom builds and the setup can be done without any real IT experience.

    40. Re: The desktop is dying! by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      A 600 eur iPad Pro from last year, at the things it can do, basically runs circles around most 1000 eur PCs of today.

      I doubt it. My dev environment alone eats up around 16GB, that's even assuming that gcc can run on iOS, and cross-compile for my target, or that eclipse/VS/qtcreator will run on iOS, or that various creation tools (gimp, etc) will run on iOS.

      Tablets are not toys because of the hardware, they are toys because they are content-consumption only devices. Those of us who produce more content than we consume won't use tablets to do the production.

      Cool story bro but they are not talking about developers or other niche users. They are talking about average users who might need Office and a few other applications and do a lot of the home finance online with their browser.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    41. Re:The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      Youngster? I remember punch cards. Retail computers were always shit compared to mail order from the likes of Dell, Gateway, etc. And the smarter people bought the parts mail order and built them themselves.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    42. Re: The desktop is dying! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      reputable vendors like HP

      I rest my case.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    43. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For power users where they want to do more they'll often opt for a desktop-replacement laptop. The main advantage of the desktop is its upgradability and most manufacturers don't want you being able to do that as it means you aren't a future customer.

    44. Re:The desktop is dying! by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      The connector for the monitor was just a pass through from the wall socket, the psu itself did not drive the monitor.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    45. Re: The desktop is dying! by drsquare · · Score: 1

      That's a very niche market.

    46. Re: The desktop is dying! by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Its a long upgrade path. To get beyond just supporting 4K at 30 and 60 fps. Then to get the best quality at 4K with the high refresh rates.
      The display can support that. The GPU will need work. Thats another "desktop" part to buy.
      More Ram, more CPU. Then the software needs new hardware to look its best.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    47. Re: The desktop is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except it only runs a toy operating system (not even real MacOS) and lacks a filesystem. So the things it can do don't really include real work.

      But if you qualify with 'the things it can do' you might be able to make a case.

      Real MacOS is dead. It's now macOS.

    48. Re: The desktop is dying! by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 1

      Real people don't worry about Apple Marketing Punctuation Guidelines.

  2. You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    See subject: I'm so sick & tired of /. BULLIES. You shitweasels have nothing better to do than HARASS, STALK & IMPERSONATE little ol' me. I've done absolutely NOTHING wrong & just try to make everyone's lives better w/ my work that stops ads & malware.

    * As soon as I post, I'm CENSORED to -1 w/ ABUSED downmodpoints by bullies like ZIP, who even admits to this. I caught c6gunner mocking then IMPERSONATING me when he forgot to log out. Zontar mailed me a postcard w/ THREATS on it, then LIES & STALKS me. All because you JEALOUS JOWIE "ne'er-do-wells" KNOW I'm World-Class & you're shit. It's why you hide behind FAKE names & UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS. You wish you were me & that's why you IMPERSONATE & ATTACK me.

    I'm even improving my already GREAT PHYSIQUE & SUPERIOR INTELLECT while you weezils sit around all day on /. STALKING & HARASSING your BETTERS. I repeatedly dust the no-mind bullshit blatherings you BULLIES post to attack me. Like always I WIN & YOU LOSE.

    APK

    P.S.=> This BULLYING of me is SO UNFAIR & I've done nothing to deserve it from you people. I'm tired of CASTING PEARLS before SWINE with my work that you CAN'T do better than. GROW UP... apk

    1. Re: You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      lol. Idiot.

    2. Re:You people need to STOP BULLYING ME... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      This BULLYING of me is SO UNFAIR & I've done nothing to deserve it from you people

      Really? So you're not even going to admit to being a spammer on this forum for years and years? Harassing other users who merely point or when you're wrong?

      It's ridiculous, you know. Complaining about people using screen names, which protect them from the very impersonation problem you're also complaining about.

  3. DVD PLAYERS??? what year is this story from? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    were they buying DVD players in 2017?

    1. Re: DVD PLAYERS??? what year is this story from? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      It is Brexitland, they are a bunch of trumpoid degenerates with bad teeth.

    2. Re:DVD PLAYERS??? what year is this story from? by bosef1 · · Score: 1

      I was wondering about this as well. It's late, so I'm not going to RTFA. Did they mean video disc players in general, due to the rise of streaming video; or did they literally mean people aren't buying DVD players anymore, and the UK has finally discovered Blu-ray?

    3. Re:DVD PLAYERS??? what year is this story from? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't be surprised in any way if DVD players outsell Bluray players. They are cheap and have a HDMI output, and they play DVDs.
      They don't need Internet and weird shit to work. In fact, all DVD players sold outside the US ignore DVD regions, so regions were all for nothing except in the country lawyers got it enforced. About "unskippable FBI warnings" and "unskippable trailers", I would have to find an imported US DVD and then try on a DVD player to see if the restrictions are ignored.

    4. Re:DVD PLAYERS??? what year is this story from? by ath1901 · · Score: 1

      Yes, and according to the article DVDs were replaced by smart watches which satisfy the same need for round and shiny objects. I suppose this explains why so few people buy smart watches...

  4. Not ditching. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just not upgrading. These things have become commodities. No one ever complains microwave ovens are being ditched just because no one goes mad over buying them anymore. People are just spending money on the next new shiny things.

    1. Re:Not ditching. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Besides, almost every television available today is a smart television. Just like most cellphones people want to invest in as their main phone if their economy allows for the more expensive contract prices. The second phone might still be a inexpensive feature phone.

  5. Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People are building their own desktop computers by purchasing the components they want to use. Demand is massive.

    1. Re: Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Its really not. Most of my friends have quit building. Ill never build, nor buy, a desktop again. Everyone is buying laptops.

    2. Re:Building Their Own by helllllllloooo · · Score: 1

      Ugh. You mean they are doing this ALL the time now?

    3. Re:Building Their Own by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      4K and higher refresh rates will need new hardware parts to look really great.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re: Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Laptops are not a replacement for desktops.

    5. Re: Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, ok. If you want to get actual work done you need a big good screen. I guess you can plug a monitor into your laptop but if your work doesnâ(TM)t need you to be mobile a desktop is going to be faster day to day as well as easier to fix. When the keyboard on your MacBooks pro breaks after 3.5 years and they quote $700 to fix it youâ(TM)ll wonder why you didnâ(TM)t just get a desktop in the first place.

      Not to mention the keyboards on laptops are getting dramatically crappier lately.

      Sometimes mobility just doesnâ(TM)t matter that much.

    6. Re: Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On a PC laptop you can look up the $12 keyboard part on ebay (ok, this may need checking about new laptops).

      The keyboards are crappy, but they never were that good.
      The touchpad on cheap laptops are a huge improvement over a decade ago, even if it's one that "clicks itself".
      Use a hub with keyboard and mouse.. or you could use what non tech users come up with, the logitech mouse + keyboard combo with the tiny USB nub.

      I should feel bad for encouraging that laptop idea, but it's not absurd. Often it's much faster than an older desktop, higher RAM ceiling, faster/newer USB, better audio DAC output. Winblows license built-in (okay, we may want to get rid of it, but it can be saved up for later even)
      The cheap laptops still have TN displays. I have to warn against this (any high resolution is wasted, maybe 1366x768 panels of that sort are easier on the eyes).

      What about desktop keyboards and displays? These can be of a bad quality as well. So, you can have a real desktop and fuck it up, too.
      Just like you can get a nice kitchen built, buy fine silverware and dine on canned spaghetti and spam.
      Best outcomes is if you really got everything you need. The other extreme would be to have a 11" $200 laptop (but we have standards so wipe that Windows and install linux, so everything get 9000 times faster and lighter) with a high quality compatible monitor, high quality keyboard, decent mouse, monitor speakers or an amp and bigger speakers, back up drives.

    7. Re:Building Their Own by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      People are building their own desktop computers by purchasing the components they want to use. Demand is massive.

      Yeah, no. The average joe/jane is not "assembling" their own PCs. Time is money for most people. Only enthusiasts are "building" PCs for themselves or their friends. Demand is not really that massive. Supply for a lot of components is constrained at times because of supply chain issues.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    8. Re: Building Their Own by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      I have an ASUS VivoBook S15 S510UN hooked up to a 50" TCL 4k TV. It works fine. I get work down on it just fine on. I can also play Starcraft II in 4k on it as well with the dedicated GFX card. It does not run at 60hz but I don't care. It was pretty cheap and the form factor of a Macbook air without the sticker shock. I don't need a desktop. My work also supplies a 15" dell latitude for work. It has enough power for coding and debugging .NET services. The point is that laptops can both do real work and game enough for the average person.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
    9. Re: Building Their Own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      agree to disagree...

  6. No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because nowadays, there's barely a point in replacing them.
    A 6 year old PC can still play modern games. And games used to be the only thing left that required non-professionals to follow the expensive upgrade cycle.

    PCs just are what they always were: A tool for universal data processing.
    It's not their fault they were wasted on useless consumer blobs running fixed-function modules ("app[lication]s") to waste their lives.

    But of course the money media must keep up the state that anything but by-definition-unsustainable exponentially exponential growing growth is the devil, and the stable balance of infinitely recycling resources that all surviving things in the universe have in common literally means literal death for being Literally Hitler(TM). Literally. ... /s
    As that's the only way they can keep leeching on society, by making us work, without working themselves.

    1. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Because nowadays, there's barely a point in replacing them. A 6 year old PC can still play modern games.

      And even then a modern graphics card would bring it almost all the way up to speed. I mean it should have a Sandy Bridge+ generation CPU, DDR3 RAM and a PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot. And if they get a shop to swap it they should get an SSD too, if they don't already have one. By the way, just managed to get a 2TB SSD for $220 + VAT on a Black Friday sale which was <5x the cost/GB for the cheapest HDD. Last year it would have been well over double that, spinning rust has stagnated while SSDs are still falling quite a bit.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I game on a first-gen i3, albeit I play older titles. I was able to test out some newish titles and they sort of played, but the lower IPC and lack of RAM are hurting the system. Sandy Bridge systems should be fully usable due to the massive IPC gain in that generation.

      With Coffee Lake and Ryzen now available, the earlier Core2Duo-era users finally have a reason to upgrade. Coincidentally, PC sales rose during this time period.

    3. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Because nowadays, there's barely a point in replacing them.

      Yes and no, it depends on what you do. I just upgraded my 6 year old PC not because I do something new with it, but because other devices forced my hand. My camera takes 50mpxl images which just load and processed painfully slowly. My old camera didn't do that. My new phone takes 4K video footage and Premier just chugged when faced with that. That old 1TB drive was great in its day but with a modern game pushing 70GB it is not only filling up quickly but the wait between cutscene was just a pain.

      Sure your old graphics card can play battlefield 5 at 1080p, but how about getting a 4k HDR monitor? Well now you're probably wanting a 1080Ti or something beefy to keep your frame rates up unless of course you're happy accepting sub par graphics (That has been the upgrade case since the 90s).

      Also I'm actually interested what the future will hold with raytracing enabled games. It looks like we're finally getting back to an era where even high-end hardware struggles with the graphics quality that developers provide, something that hasn't really been a case since the xbox360 was released unless you were one of the aforementioned 4K gamers.

    4. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Those tend to be niche areas though. Most people don't have Premier. They take photos and videos and upload them straight to the internet.

      Gamers will spend a lot more on upgrades than PCs. Between 1994 and 2012, when I was more into games, I bought a total of 2 PCs. The second one was because I couldn't buy an AT motherboard with a modern CPU. I bought about 5 or 6 motherboards in that time, and a similar number of graphics cards, of course.

    5. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by toddestan · · Score: 1

      I still see little reason to replace my PC though it's 6 years old. I've upgraded the graphics card somewhat recently and put in a SSD. But the Core i7 processor, 16 GB of ram, motherboard, and all the other bits are original from 2012 and and still compare well to a new PC. The only real innovations seem to be increasing the core count, and some things like NVMe which this motherboard is too old to support.

    6. Re:No they don't "ditch" them! They keep them! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The only real innovations

      Did you ever in the past upgrade on innovation, or because your computer was unable to do something?

      As I said, it depends on what *you*, and you alone, specifically *you* do with your computer. You see no sense in upgrading. I found it a necessity given my not that rare workload of playing with photos and videos.

      As for innovation, we just entered the world of raytracing. Expect an upgrade to be necessary in the coming year for quite an incredible jump in the graphic quality of games if you do that. Gaming and photo / video editing aren't incredible edge cases.

      But yes if you're the home user whose workload extends to firing up Google Docs, posting on Slashdot and watching Netflix then your 6 year old computer should last you 6 years more.

  7. PC is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Because everyone already has a computer and don't feel the need to buy a new one every year!
    Other than gamers who want the latest hardware, most people are content with a computer from 2010... I should know, my PC is from 2010 and still more than usable enough after upgrading to an SSD and changing the GPU to keep up with games.

  8. DVD players?? by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

    Fine DVD plsyers ar probsbly a duinge marcket but what about BD anf 4K Bd players. Ore does tfa mean any player for disc based video??

    1. Re:DVD players?? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Since those both play DVDs, I would assume they're already included in the numbers.

  9. Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The "Bang for buck" ratio has deteriorated.

    ie:

    8086 -> 80286 -> good BFBR "Bang For Buck Ratio"
    80286 -> 80386 -> good BFBR
    80386 -> 80486 -> excellent BFBR [ VESA local bus, faster ram ]
    80486 -> pentium -> good BFBR [ pci bus, more ram, much faster speeds, MMX ]
    Pentium -> Pentium 4 -> good BFBR [ pcie, more ram, much faster speeds, better video cards, etc ]
    Pentium 4 - > Quad Core or Core2 - > excellent BFBR [ pcie, next gen, DDR3/DDR2 memory, much better cores, and more of them ]

    Now, we are in the era where we:

    -Add slightly faster ram, at the cost of latency - shitty BFBR
    -Add slightly faster video cards, at a very large cost - shitty BFBR
    -Add slightly faster CPUs, at an obscence cost -- very shitty BFBR

    so the BFBR has decreased, where you can spend another $1000, to get 10-15% better performance, measured in "seconds" for most tasks, or less, or a few more FPS, which anything above 30 would be unnoticeable.

    spend $100, get an SSD, and make it feel like a new system.
    Spend $1000, get a slight performance boost.

    I'm still using a 2600k, with 16gb, with a 7770HD video card, I see no reason to upgrade.

    1. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Youd bfbrs are somewhat suspect (Pentium to Pentium 2), but I was mostly with you until your 30fps comment. You are blind if you cannot see and feel the difference between 30 and 60.

    2. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by quenda · · Score: 1

      30fps comment. You are blind if you cannot see and feel the difference between 30 and 60.

      I guess he is thinking of movies, rather than FPS games or desktops.
      I did not like The Hobbit in 48fps, but maybe that was just the 3D making it bad.

    3. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I don't think it was the 3D or the frame rate, per se. I think it was that special effects toolchains were not set up to account for differences in motion perception - tl:;dr the VFX (even subtle ones you weren't supposed to notice) just looked like a video game. Need more motion blurring, for one.

    4. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      60FPS is the new "e-peen" for us old-timers. There is very, very little difference in gaming between 30 and 60. Particularly now with the twitch shooter long dead.

      Professional, actual real paid-to-do-it gaming streamers often run at something less than 60FPS to both ensure that their audience streaming experience is smooth and they can run at least one 4k monitor and at least one other to multitask between their audience that pays them because they are good at a game, and the game itself.

      Advertisers, by paying those people, have convinced everyone that 60FPS is the minimum and everything is inferior to Discord, despite having nothing unique or superior, among many other worthless consumerism-based products. That is, company outputs solely intended to make money and not solve an actual problem. Enter the 60FPS or bust useful idiots gobbling up the 1000 USD cards no longer suitable for bitcoin mining.

    5. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What in Sam Hill are you talking about? Nobody runs below 60 on purpose. They use a second computer to do compression to avoid dropped frames.

      There are tons of twitch games - Rocket League, CounterStrike, etc - all very popular.

    6. Re: Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 2002 we were playing Quake 3 and 60 fps sucked. At the time I was using a 14" CRT on the PC of mine, it was free, space saving and OLD. I ran the desktop at 70Hz and games at 75Hz or 85Hz (depends on the resolution). This is higher than 60 and you do see the difference, it's not only about the CRT flickering. The (better, faster) family PC had a bigger monitor and ran at fucking 100 and 120Hz. Back then Windows XP had the "60Hz bug" so on that ones games ran at 60Hz which was a pain, unless you used a third party utility that unlocked it (and monitor .inf file helped not get stuck at a 85Hz maximum). And so when you had a game run like butter at 100 fps that was very obvious (easy to come by, about any game from 1998 or 1999 run on a low end CPU from 2001 would do)

      This was before all that streaming and Discord shit existed. People shared "demos" sometimes, on actual websites (i.e. a file sized in killobytes that records a game, exactly the same feature used for the pre-recorded game that plays immediately when you launch Doom 1 and Quake 1). Counterstrike and Quake 3 supported that, both used successor engines to Quake 1. "Teams" would make videos with highlights from their games (lots of frags, headshots and "ownage") as .avi or .wmv and you would download them from web 1.0 sites.
      With LCDs and laptops stuck to 60Hz, 60 fps later became the gold standard (it was already, but there was not much thought to doing more and we didn't have the luxury anymore of playing games with a $50 CPU 5x/10x faster than the minimum requirements..). Half-Life 1 had a 100fps engine limit so it was good to run HL1 mods at 100 fps. When youtube came out it was easier to get 100 fps in Half-Life than to watch full screen youtube (flash) video.

      In the 90s or earlier monitors ran at 70Hz in most games, because 320x200 is 70Hz (640x480 was 60Hz). Doom went for 35 fps so that's not bad but with PC getting hugely faster that quickly got to be a locked 35 fps with minimum framerate 35 fps. If you want a minimum 35fps at modern games (let's allow very occasional drop below) that does require some very significant hardware still. (like a 2600K and 16GB RAM and a compatible vid card, say)

      Nintendo had their Nintendo 64 console, state of the art 1995 hardware, awesome but had its limitations still. So they released Mario as a 30fps game, F-zero (futuristic racing) as a 60 fps game and Zelda as a 20 fps game.

    7. Re:Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they released a processor that retained the speed and removed the bugs they found as of late that has OS people scrambling for fixes that slow down systems that'd be a nice bang for buck. Sadly they haven't done that yet.

    8. Re:Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I see no reason to upgrade.

      You didn't mention what you're feeding in an out of your computer?

      I would see no reason to upgrade if I took happy snaps on my smartphone, or recorded video using a potatoe. I would see no reason to upgrade if you're sitting there with a 1080p shitty monitor, playing some games that also run fine on the Xbox360.

      On the flip side, start editing 50mpxl images (getting standard on new SLRs), or editing 4K video (getting standard on mobile phones), or try and drive a 4K display, with HDR, well suddenly you may actually see actual improvements in your life for the extra dollars spent.

      The bang for buck is still there if you use it. You just don't use it. e.g. the Slightly faster RAM and slightly faster CPU I just bought has quartered the processing times of astronomy images for me. But then I present the computer with a load where it can actually use it's extra cores and heavily relies on video bandwidth.

      If you drive back and forth in a school zone then a V8 Mustang won't benefit you much.

    9. Re:Upgrading Has Little "Bang For Buck" Ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have an i3-3225, 4GB RAM, onboard video, been working great and no reason to upgrade until I get a 4k display.

  10. At home it mostly is by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    a resurgence in PC gaming has helped mask that a bit, fueled mostly by the insane popularity of Fortnight and PUBG, but folks are buying less and PCs. They'll buy one or two for Junior to do the homework on but they don't usually upgrade them much.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:At home it mostly is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...that's also because when you buy a PC? You don't need to buy another for several years, and just swapping in the newest no-extra-power-needed graphics card is a huge performance bump whenever the existing GPU gets sluggish. When a GPU that can be slapped into any existing WalMart beige box is under $200 and can play even the newest games decently? Folks aren't dropping big coin on a whole new system.

      - WolfWings, too lazy to login to /. in way too long.

    2. Re:At home it mostly is by aristotle-dude · · Score: 1

      a resurgence in PC gaming has helped mask that a bit, fueled mostly by the insane popularity of Fortnight and PUBG, but folks are buying less and PCs. They'll buy one or two for Junior to do the homework on but they don't usually upgrade them much.

      You can play fortnight on a Samsung S8.

      --
      Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  11. Not just UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's taken all this time to notice? Been like that all over the world for some time. Guess the editors must be over 35....

  12. smart TV? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean the box under my old TV is included in the TV itself, alongside some spyware. Thanks.

  13. I read the title as by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Tech shoppers in the UK dont want to be able to repair their own PC, or watch movies when not connected to the internet"

  14. Black Friday in the UK? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why does the UK have Black Friday? That doesn't make any sense.

    1. Re:Black Friday in the UK? by Retron · · Score: 1

      It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, especially as we don't even get a day off work out of it as they do in the States! It seems to have taken over from the traditional Boxing Day/January sales here in the UK, even though those sales were a place to pick up a bargain (in terms of unsold stock brought in for the Christmas rush).

      If anything, it seems to have hastened the demise of our High Streets, as people now expect discounts (whether real or imagined) before Christmas rather than afterwards... right during what used to be peak profit-making season.

    2. Re:Black Friday in the UK? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you referring to Friday of Colour?

    3. Re: Black Friday in the UK? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Five years ago, nobody outside the US had even heard of Black Friday. Now, retailers are trying to push it everywhere. They have not been particularly successful, though.

    4. Re:Black Friday in the UK? by ledow · · Score: 2

      We don't.

      Shops have been trying to make it a thing, for about 2-3 years now.

      After some footage of Black Friday Walmart rampages a few years back on the news, suddenly shops decided they wanted that and tried to induce it.

      Pretty much nobody cares. To us, it's just a pre-Christmas sale when you spend most of December Christmas shopping anyway. And the price reductions are even more fake than other sales. At least "January sales" actually happen as shops sell off leftover stock. Not everywhere, but they do.

      Black Friday is also not just a "day"... it's a week and they're trying to make it a month. Nobody really cares. It's all hype and rubbish. There's literally no increase in sales over what you'd expect before Christmas.

      It's not like the US where you effectively get two holidays in short succession. We get Christmas, and that's it. So nobody is going to splash out in November because everyone who was going to buy you gifts for Christmas will do the old "Oh, no, don't buy that, leave it for later (because I've already decided to buy it for you and I have no other ideas!)".

    5. Re:Black Friday in the UK? by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Black Friday isn't even that old in the US. It's been around a long while in the sense it's known that the Friday after Thanksgiving is a popular day to go shopping, but it's really only the last 10-15 years or so when the retailers have been hyping it up into a major event. Though it seems to be dying the last couple of years for a variety of reasons - people buying online, the retailers pushing it to be a week and the entire month of November which just means people spread out their spending, and people not wanting to deal with the crowds and lines. Finally, the big thing is that people are realizing it's all hype and games and the deals aren't even that good. As you say, if you want a deal wait until it's January and the stores are actually trying to clear out some inventory.

  15. Compelling PC software is waning by DidgetMaster · · Score: 1

    The problem is almost nobody is building high quality PC software these days. Most new development is out in the 'cloud' with the PC being treated like the old 'dumb terminals' from the Main Frame era. The stuff running on the PC now is mostly front end client software that just sends commands to the servers in the cloud.

    Once upon a time, all the cool new software was running on a PC that was not connected at all to the internet. Local databases, spreadsheets, word processors, etc. were all designed to work on a standalone PC with you controlling all your data. I think the pendulum can swing back and bring demand for more HEDT machines if compelling PC software once again is created. The backlash against big cloud providers that either abuse your data for their own profit, or fail to protect it from hackers will be a major factor in the pendulum swing if it happens.

    1. Re:Compelling PC software is waning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the pendulum can swing back and bring demand for more HEDT machines if compelling PC software once again is created.

      There is "owncloud", if you want don't want to depend on others or keep your data private. All those cloudy apps still working - but with your own server for the stored files, calendars, mail etc.

  16. I recently built a new PC by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

    When Ryzen came out I thought it was time to upgrade and throw AMD a bone. So I bought a new computer system. Motherboard, CPU, but then... the DRAM and NAND were expensive like heck and the GPU prices were ludicrous because of those god damned coin miners. So I put an old GPU card on it and got lower end memory and NAND products.

    I ended up with a M.2 NAND drive which was not any larger than the SATA one I had in my old PC and cost about as much if not more... A couple months passed then Meltdown and Spectre came around. So basically I've left it in another floor collecting dust while I'm still working on my old PC. I can't feel assed about transferring the file systems and applications from my "old" PC to the new one. Oh and the case they got me had no 5 1/4" frontal drive bays whatsoever for my legacy discs so I had to buy an external reader. At one point I thought I was better off with a laptop.

    I blame the memory cartel pricing, obscene GPU prices which are like 2x what they should be right now, and the CPU manufacturers for a) screwing it up b) Intel keeps spinning new revisions of the same shit over and over and calls it a new product.

    So it is little wonder few people want to upgrade. Also 4K just made everything more expensive and it is useless for gaming.

    1. Re:I recently built a new PC by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      A couple months passed then Meltdown and Spectre came around. So basically I've left it in another floor collecting dust while I'm still working on my old PC.

      Your old PC (especially if it's intel) will be vulnerable to those unless it's old enough to be single core (i.e. a P4 or older).

      I ended up with a M.2 NAND drive which was not any larger than the SATA one I had in my old PC and cost about as much if not more...

      M.2 has the capability to be faster, since it'a a much faster bus.

      Also 4K just made everything more expensive and it is useless for gaming.

      I've got dual 4k monitors at work. I've never gamed on them!

      That all said I know where you're coming from. My day to day machine at home is a 8.5 year old laptop (1st gen core i7 Q820 @ 1.7GHz, 16GB RAM and a couple of SATA SSDs). It doesn't suport M.2 as far as I know, only SATA II.

      I have a very nice 2k screen that I used to use a lot when I worked from this machine but now serves as a screen to watch TV. Quite often SD tv. Nice screen though.

      Honestly it works fine, sufficiently so that I don't see the need to upgrade it in the forseeable future. RAM is the main thing and it's got more than many new machines (and will max out at 32G if need be). Still zippy enough to do everything I'm interested in doing at home.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:I recently built a new PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Low end M.2 drive can possibly be slower on writes than a bit older, higher end SATA drive. New 128GB drive has fewer flash channels than old 128GB drive..
      Likely the M.2 one is faster except uncached writes but that's a wash. A nice-to-have. Doing 10,000 or 50,000 reads per second doesn't quite matter when we're asking it to boot the OS and launch VLC (or most anything we do).

      If you were to need a new laptop M.2 drives take less space.. so if it were to have three M.2 slots, that's more drives in less space (if obsessing with details then we could look up what's the SSD's thermal output or even check whether there's a setting for that..)
      Could be interesting when flash prices collapse. We could have an external one (USB) and back up at 1GB/s (a bit below that). A silly luxury today but soon, not that much.

      btw for a laptop like yours it can be possible to add USB 3.0 ports on ExpressCard if you have the slot and need or want them.

    3. Re:I recently built a new PC by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I ended up with a M.2 NAND drive which was not any larger than the SATA one I had in my old PC and cost about as much if not more...

      That alone should have netted you a close to 10x improvment in performance for identical cost unless you bought an incredibly crap M.2 drive.

      obscene GPU prices which are like 2x what they should be right now

      GPUs are going for bargain basement prices right now. New prices are back below MSRP, and the second hand market is flooded with cards. NOW is the time to buy, and if you're anywhere close to that 2x mark it's time to pick a different store.

      and the CPU manufacturers for a) screwing it up

      In what way?

      So it is little wonder few people want to upgrade.

      It really isn't, but not for the reasons you cite. You didn't specify your workload. You're happy with an old GPU, can't be arsed about memory bandwidth, so what on earth do you want out of your new computer? I only recently upgraded because well I had to. 4K video, 50mpxl images all of that takes effort to actually process and is slowly becoming the norm (modern phones do 4K video now too). You say 4K is useless for gaming, I say it provided a nice visual quality increase because frankly you can only push AA so far. You clearly don't game competitively otherwise you'd also be looking at a monitor with high refresh rates which is also something you need high-end hardware (especially higher than 1080p) in order to drive.

      It's little wonder few people want to upgrade because few people actually tax their computers. It has nothing to do with the current cost of performance of the hardware itself.

    4. Re:I recently built a new PC by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Low end M.2 drive can possibly be slower on writes than a bit older, higher end SATA drive. New 128GB drive has fewer flash channels than old 128GB drive..

      Huh TIL.

      I did try a benchmark for sequential reads on a modern high end laptop. The internal (M.2) drive could hit 2.5G/s, versus mine which saturates the SATAII port. That was a good laptop though, not a cheap M.2 drive.

      btw for a laptop like yours it can be possible to add USB 3.0 ports on ExpressCard if you have the slot and need or want them.

      It actually has USB3 already (not all ports). And as it happens I do also have an expresscard USB3 adapter too!

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    5. Re:I recently built a new PC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A couple months passed then Meltdown and Spectre came around. So basically I've left it in another floor collecting dust while I'm still working on my old PC.

      Your old PC won't be getting any BIOS updates to protect it against Meltdown unless you're very lucky or the system is not that old, while the new system is only affected by some of the Spectre variants. So you better use the new one instead.

    6. Re:I recently built a new PC by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      My old PC has an AMD Piledriver processor. It doesn't do SMT. It does CMP. So it isn't as vulnerable to those exploits as say Ryzen or an Intel processor. It is vulnerable to out-of-order branch prediction attacks though. But then again so is nearly everything else including ARM.

    7. Re:I recently built a new PC by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      The CPU manufacturers screwed it up by making buggy processors and, at least in the case of Intel, with little performance benefit over much older processors.

      I wanted to game with higher detail on and to compile things faster. I also occasionally encode video or audio. That's why I bought the AMD Ryzen so I would have more concurrent threads to improve compilation. I might buy a new GPU card and larger SSD and put that Ryzen computer to use eventually. However it might be a bad idea because AMD is currently with a poor GPU lineup vs NVIDIA which likely means the prices won't be down as much as they should be at.

    8. Re:I recently built a new PC by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Other people agree that GPUs are still overpriced like heck.
      https://www.eetimes.com/docume...

    9. Re:I recently built a new PC by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      My old PC has an AMD Piledriver processor. It doesn't do SMT. It does CMP. So it isn't as vulnerable to those exploits as say Ryzen or an Intel processor.

      Old i7 with hyperthreading here. Probably vulnerable a. f.

      It is vulnerable to out-of-order branch prediction attacks though. But then again so is nearly everything else including ARM.

      Phones, yes. I think the RPi is safe since it's an in-order processor. Though that's why it's not really very speedy and the 1.4GHz Pi3 is absolutely no match for this 1.7GHz i7.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    10. Re:I recently built a new PC by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The CPU manufacturers screwed it up by making buggy processors and, at least in the case of Intel, with little performance benefit over much older processors.

      Not at all. The CPU does exactly what it says on the box. They traded security that is almost irrelevant to general consumers in favour of performance and as shown recently that security can happily be regained through software. The CPUs currently on the market do not show any higher level of errata than in the past and they still happily work like they did in the past.

    11. Re:I recently built a new PC by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      That article says nothing about GPUs being overpriced. It's a bitching and moaning piece that the current top of the line GPU is the most expensive one ever released ignoring that there are plenty of high performance parts with great prices available, mark-ups have gone with the crypto-bust, and due to current market oversupply getting a high-performance GPU has never been cheaper. Bitching about the high cost of being an early adopter for a new technology that is currently sold out everywhere (implying it costs exactly what it needs to) doesn't change that. Weather is not climate as the Slashdot favourite comparison complaint goes, and the price of GPUs has shown an extreme downward trend this year with some cards at less than half the price of their February highs, well below launch price, and recently quite far below MSRP due to oversupply.

      Hell NVIDIA's stock price just slid by 50% on news of oversupply and lowered prices following poor sales.

  17. What year is it? by reanjr · · Score: 0

    DVD player? I haven't seen one in years. And desktops have only been found in libraries since tablets hit the market.

    1. Re:What year is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A friend found a mobile DVD player, those with a 16:9 TFT screen as a clamshell. It looked worn out and dirty so I thought it was old like early 2000s, days of the DVD player that can play divx.
      It turned out it has a TV tuner. To my surprise, it worked : the poor little thing was playing full HD H264 TV live! So, it's not too old afterall. With a compact external sound system and a jack (some thing with one speaker, radio, USB) the sound was good enough. And before discovering it's a TV we watched a couple DVD movies. We used some random 12V PSU.

      There still are people who play discs and watch TV. A friend had trouble with space took by the discs so I told him to throw away the cases and keep the discs. Done. So he may get to keep like 100 movies in good quality without owning a PC.

  18. IMPERSONATING ME AGAIN? apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).

    & NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

    YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)

    APK

    P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE (& U STOPPED TRYING IT in your impersonations of me) .... apk

  19. Not ditching, just not replacing by Going_Digital · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The technology in desktop computers is mature, it is no longer developing at the break neck speed it once was. It wasn't long ago when once a system was 3 years old in seemed ancient and slow by comparison to the latest model. Today however your 3 year old system is still perfectly good and you would hardly notice any difference in performance if you replaced it today, so why bother?

    Everything has this cycle, where it gets to the point that what you already have is good enough, and further small tweaks do not justify the cost of replacing.

  20. Blame those impersonating me... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Wasn't me you replied to: See subject: It's impersonators of me & I only post on hosts IF they stop threats OR speed you up. I don't off topic.

    HOWEVER: I won't "lay down" to losers that don't do a DAMN THING OF VALUE attacking me 1st. I defend myself w/ facts they can't beat.

    I've got a "psycho fanclub" IMPERSONATING me & spamming + lying about MY work STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts like whackos!

    GOOFS like c6gunner CAUGHT IMPERSONATING ME https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

    (His name's on the post as SUBMITTER signing "APK" as I do while he ALTERED users words of praise of my work (since he tried INSULTING me & I issued a FAIR CHALLENGE to him that HE SHOW HE CAN DO BETTER - he hasn't to date)).

    gweihir PROVED you IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... too!

    APK

    P.S.=> I'm not here to win a popularity contest OR to lose (it's for LOSERS like c6gunner - not I): I'm here to WIN & so do hosts users... apk

  21. Blame those impersonating me... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Wasn't me you replied to: It's impersonators of me & I only post on hosts IF they stop threats OR speed you up. I don't off topic.

    HOWEVER: I won't "lay down" to losers attacking me 1st. I defend myself w/ facts they can't beat.

    & NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "playing victim ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.

    I've got a "psycho fanclub" IMPERSONATING me & spamming + lying about MY work STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts!

    GOOFS like c6gunner CAUGHT IMPERSONATING ME https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

    (His name's on the post as SUBMITTER signing "APK" & he ALTERED users words of praise of my work (since he tried INSULTING me 1st & I issued a FAIR CHALLENGE to SHOW HE CAN DO BETTER - he hasn't)).

    gweihir PROVED you IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... too!

    APK

    P.S.=> I'm not here to win a popularity contest OR to lose (it's for LOSERS like c6gunner - not I): I'm here to WIN & so do hosts users... apk

  22. one step closer to 1984 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they are all buying Telescreens in Oceania

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

  23. The biggest difference between D9 and D5 by fbk_606759 · · Score: 1

    The sound of the D5 is generally Dolby Digital, and its code rate is 384~448kbps. D9 generally has DTS (as long as the positive film is not too long), and there is THX certification, DTS code rate is much higher than Dolby Digital, the lowest is 768kbps, the highest is up to 1.5Mbps. And the DTS encoding capacity is also amazing. Sometimes the D9 can also be equipped with LPCM lossless sound. Therefore, the D9 format of the disc, of course, the sound effect is undoubtedhttps://www.newbecca.com/product/10075941340