Tech ping!
I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the fact that the economy stinks and folks are tending to hold-on to their money.
I’d like a new car, but the old one still works fine. I’d like a new PC, but the old one . . .
viruses
That's the big reason in my opinion, it use to be through most of the 80's, 90's and early 2000's that when you purchased a cutting edge PC, it was a given that it would obsolete in less than two years. Not so anymore, in fact I know people that purchased PC's in 2005, which are still completely functional and run everything on the market just fine, with the exception of some of really graphic intensive high end games. So unless you are a really high end gamer, there is little reason to upgrade until your computer finally conks out
Man! That article is spot on. I just bought an iPad last night with Quick Office as I will be traveling for two weeks and want to be able to communicate as I won’t be staying in motels. Also wary of public WiFi. My previous laptop was a 10-year old heavy Dell clunker so this will replace it when traveling and in the field.
Tablets are really cool, I like the Ipad, but compared to an equally priced laptop, the laptop wins big.
The laptop has 10x the storage, & a much more powerful processor. There are far more ports, & can play DVDs, too. The screen is much bigger.
The Ipad is much lighter, & I like the security of Apple screened software. Ipad software pricing is cheap compared to a PC, but can be cheap & cartoon-ish, especially the games. Touch screen is easier on the carpal tunnel than a mouse.
What to do, what to do?
Microsoft, Apple, and Google all vigorously support virtually everything I oppose, and vigorously oppose virtually everything I support.
I don’t patronize their products. I recommend against them at every turn.
Linux/OpenSource for me, except for “Android” (Google), of course.
If you MUST run windows, run it in a VirtualBox VM for free.
Downloads available from Microsoft for free here ...
http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads
No tablets or “smart phones” for me until Ubuntu Touch or Firefox OS are available on them.
I chuckle. If you are not in the software business or a business and only use the internet for shopping or social reasons you don’t need a computer. Any tablet or smart phone will work. However, try and write and debug said items on one of their own kind, you can’t. The average Joe who spends all their time at a coffee shop sharing pictures and status updates doesn’t need a 4 pounds 17 inch screen.
Before tablet and the likes you had to have a computer to do the inane FB thing and stuff, now the market has corrected itself.
The PC isn’t going away it is just being used by those that really need it.
Leave it to ABC to not mention the lousy economy as reason #1. When is obama going to give away free computers or did I miss that?
1. The iPad and other tablets are eating into the PC market.
No argument here. As a recent purchaser and user of an iPad, I do love my new gadget. I can listen to my music, read my emails, post to FR, browse the web, look at pictures on my home NAS, and do it anywhere in the house. All of this on a screen bigger than that of my phone, which is a huge plus.
However, as the article pointed out:
PCs are like trucks, and tablets are like cars.
Trucks still serve a purpose! I can't play Battlefield, EVE, WoW, Sim City, or any of my Steam games on my tablet, nor would I want to. The one game I purchased, Minecraft PE, is cumbersome and not enjoyable to play on my tablet, let alone my phone. I still go to my custom built, liquid cooled gaming PC with 32 inch monitor to do all of that!
2. Windows 8 is a confusing, unfamiliar and scary place.
Again, no arguments here. Microsoft seriously screwed the pooch on Win8. By some accounts, it's even worse than Vista. At least Vista's interface was moderately familiar. Win8 with its tile system is cumbersome and unfamiliar. Having worked in IT for almost 20 years, I can tell you that the number one complaint from the overwhelming majority of customers seeking tech support concerns interface familiarity. Once you change the littlest thing with the user interface, you force the user to change the way they use their computer, and that's NEVER an easy sell.
Most people I Know are using Windows 7 now and they love it. Microsoft did a good thing with Windows 7, and I believe at some point they may re-brand Windows 8 as a tablet/mobile platform OS and let it die on the vine like they did with Windows CE.
3. Windows 8 hardware is flawed.
At this point in the article, the bias is becoming VERY obvious. Microsoft does not manufacture hardware. They're a software company. The Intel Haswell architecture is just how the chip die is assembled. It has no bearing on the actual functionality of the system overall. Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Haswell or one of its successors (specifically Broadwell) makes it into the next generation of Apple devices. This writer obviously has no clue about specifics in the hardware industry.
4. Where are the netbooks? PCs are too expensive now.
This is by far the worst section of this article. First he mentions netbooks. Then he refers to PC price points. Finally he gripes about touchscreens.
To make this more concise, one needs to consider touchscreens in general. The touchscreen on your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile device uses different technology than the larger screens on laptops and netbooks. People aren't going to pay the price for a netbook when they're familiar with the Apple or Android experience on a tablet. This all falls back in Microsoft's lap as an insufficient mobile operating system in Win8. This has nothing to do with the hardware overall. Besides, what the Hell do netbooks have to do with PCs?
When you say PC, I think the desktop computer sitting on the floor of my office or the 6 lb. laptop I tote around for work. Netbooks are mini-laptops. They're a jump between laptop and tablet. There's not enough of a market for that level of difference. People are either satisfied with the size and power of a tablet or they go for the larger platform for office automation, gaming, multi-tasking, etc.
5. People are just not upgrading that much anymore.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, but not for the reasons stated in the article. My 3 year old Intel i7 930 quad-core processor, 12 GB of RAM, liquid-cooled dual-SLI nVidia GTX460s, and SSDs do everything I could possibly want when it comes to gaming. There's little reason for me to upgrade to newer components. Thus the crux: while Moore's Law is still applicable for component manufacturing, it is not applicable to the software development lifecycle.
Unless you are using your home PC for VMware Workstation, running multiple desktop OSes from the same piece of hardware, running a multi-use server, or developing the next generation of 3D multiplayer video games, there's very little software on the market that can utilize the full spectrum of resources on a newer PC.
High-end video games like Battlefield, Crysis, Medal of Honor, etc. only get up to about 3 GB of RAM and two to four cores of processor at 90%-99% utilization. The graphics engines are doing a bulk of the heavy lifting.
So unless you're doing constant high-definition audio/video coding/decoding, running full-complement virtual machine labs, or doing some serious multi-tasking, there's little that even your retail consumer-level computer couldn't do that a comparable 2 year old machine can't. No one's developing software to utilize the full spectrum of resources on these new machines.
This doesn't mean that PCs are dead or dying. It means that there's an enormous market of machines out there waiting to be used in a more complete way. It's akin to a frontiersman crossing over the crest of a mountain and staring down into a wide-open valley of fertile land. You can't use it all right away, but it's all there for the taking.
A consistently true syllogism we use in the IT world comes from something we've all said at one point in time, "1 MB of RAM?! We'll NEVER use all of that!" Every new generation of tech nerds realizes, "Wow, how wrong were we?"
Running Windows 8 and I must say they platform is much more solid than Win 7.
Having a traditional start screen is as easy as a couple of mouse clicks.
My software vendor and others like it in my professional all run under Windows, so I cannot run without it if I want vendor support for my software.
Also running and HP all in one with 23’ screen, core 4 processing and 1 TB disk with 8 gb memory. Machine has been reliable and very solid.
I think, as many here do, that the economy has a lot to do with PC sales.
I’ll stay with my fast HP desktops, and possibly a HP laptop, and Win-7 Pro; no tablets, iPads, smartphones etc hardware, and that Win-8 garbage. JMO.
Good article from ZD Net Regarding Win 8 and PC sales:
Win8 is an unworkable POS.
Classic shell allows the platform to work at least, but you still wander into Win8 oblivion much too often.
MS decided it would force customers to assimilate, or else.
The drop in sales is the “or else” in action. That’s what happens when you tell your customers to drop dead. Something is dropping, that’s for sure.
MS, right back at you... read the numbers and figure out why AND FIX IT.
MS needs to offer a WIN8 patch immediately that restores classic interface to WIN8 computers. MS purposely decided that people would have to learn to do without the classic interface that it considers a “crutch”. What MS doesn’t apparently understand is that to most casual users, that “crutch” was/is the face of Windows.
MS: those sales numbers are your New Coke revelation/warning. Either bring back classic Coke and admit you screwed this one up, or go away.
The main reason, the PCs were bought 3 years ago are still “good enough.”
You’re all wrong. People are spending their disposable income on guns and ammo.
IMO MS needs to accept the fact that they’re not going to win the tablet war. They should stick to making Windows and Office for corporations, which is their strong suit. Also if they could try and make an OS that wouldn’t crash and get viruses that would be nice.
If you are retired who really needs portability? I also prefer the security of a hard wired computer connection.
For the few texts I get I can deal with a simple phone.
I research and buy bigger purchases online. Other than that people can pick up the phone and call me or email.