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Posted on 04/12/2013 6:36:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The PC is in trouble. Big trouble, if you believe research firm IDC's new data, which shows that shipments of PCs plunged 14 percent in the first quarter of this year. That's the sharpest decline in sales of personal computers since the firm started tracking the industry in 1994.
Since the numbers have been released, technology experts and pundits have hypothesized about the causes of the ailing personal computer market. IDC, specifically, cited Windows 8, Microsoft's new computer and tablet operating system, as one of the main reasons people turned away from buying computers.
That's certainly a possibility, but one possibility out of a few others. Here are five possibilities of why the PC business is hurting so badly right now. Feel free to let us know in the comments which one you believe is the biggest contributor to the dying PC.
1. The iPad and other tablets are eating into the PC market.
Post-PC world is right. And Steve Jobs might have been right too -- PCs are like trucks, and tablets are like cars. The late Apple CEO said that PCs were like trucks that were used when the U.S. was an agrarian nation and we needed trucks to get around. Then cars took over. "They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people," Jobs said about PCs.
Many argue that tablets, or more specifically the iPad, have started to fulfill the tasks of those truck PCs. The result is that those tablets are eating into what used to be the PC's lunch.
2. Windows 8 is a confusing, unfamiliar and scary place.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
It's mostly for web surfing, e-mail and reading e-books. I'm planning to do some traveling but don't want to lug my laptop around. I would rather have something that fits in a pocket.
PC sales are falling, and it is not the ‘tablet’, either.
There is so much a push by so many other information sources, i.e., The Right Scoop, Weasel Zipper, and to some extent, even America’s Test Kitchen (what a buzzardized website that is), to NOT supply a simple ‘print’ button, or icon, that it is crazy!
It is harder for those of us who are becoming lost in the dust of the race to enslave the nation in social media, i.e., senior citizens who don’t care to sit on their butts, and watch every bloody news video! “just give me the damn thing in print, so I can go about my business, and read this at my choosing!’
To me, a 1st generation geek (univac 1050-II), when i visit my friends’ homes, and look at their collection of Internet Explorer icons all over the screen, for every little thing that they wish to keep tabs on, I cringe, greatly.
Windows 8 does NOT allow such a collection. You have Microsoft’s little boxes, and that’s it. All those IE icons get shoved someplace else. When I tell my friends that, the canned response is “(ch)uck that! I’ll keep this one till i cannot use it anymore, or until I have no more need of it, cause I’m gone.”
I bought a Win7 machine in ‘09. I do NOT use Microsoft Internet Explorer, MS Office, or that damnable buzzard offspring, Outlook. I retired from writing ‘guest columns for the regional paper’, last year. I retired from the workforce in ‘09, seeing what was coming with the Kenyan in office. I have no need for Powerpoint, Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets. I have done my own books in pen and ink since 1970, as I do my own journals. (Sorry, Janet the 2nd, you’ll just have to break into my home to read what I might have written about you.) If I don’t have it right by now, oh well.
As smartphones go, right now I am paying over $125.00 a month through what USED to be a broken monopoly, ATT.
Ain’t got much more room, so I guess I’ll be keeping this laptop till I can’t use it no more, too.
Oh yeah, almost forgot .... Lexmark is going bye-bye next year. Thank you, Lexmark! First, Kodak leaves me with 2 cameras i can’t do anything more with, except collect dust, and now Lexmark. I AM NEVER buying an HP printer, seem how they work so well, with a friend’s WIN7 machine.
I tried it at Staples... it is the WORST windows ever... (and that is from someone who still got Windows XP).
“Win8 is an unworkable POS.”
I have to disagree. I am becoming more of a fan of the tiles thingy as I use it. It is a much smaller difference than goung to a Mac (I have one of those too, and use it for very specific applications only). I am not about to change my pretty new high horsepower win7 machine, but I installed it on my old XP machine and it breathed new life into it. Added an SSD to the old machine and it is now a screamer. It will keep me from buying another PC for some time. BTW, writing this on an iPad.
OMB I was nearly middle aged when PCs hit the scene. I’m not even 60 and they are already obsolete?
I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!
#1: Performance of hand held computers works for the 99% that only surf the web and desktop performance meets all gamers’ and developers’ requirements for now.
Time for the Oama’Puter.
That's me. I could probably manage it on a really beefy laptop (would need at least 20GB of ram), but I just don't see that happening on tablets any time soon. Virtualization is da bomb as far as I'm concerned. I have an entire server rack that essentially fits right on top of my desk.
I’m in the same boat. I have a beefy NAS for storage and a Linux server running ESXi with 11 VMs. No way I could do that with a tablet.
That all sounds pretty interesting, but for those us who don't speak Greek can you explain that in more layman's terms?
:-)
I don't ever envision myself getting a tablet or something similar except perhaps for use at the job, but the Air Force is way behind on utilizing that type of technology.
The way people use the internet is changing and with it, how they address their computing needs. I can do more with my smart phone than I could with my first desktop. We are looking to upgrade the laptop but the cost to get a high-end machine is too high and a tablet doesn’t offer the storage we would need.
It is a dilemma but it’s one was can put off for another year or so.
Maybe if these silicon valley and tech idiots didn’t throw so much money into getting Obama re-elected, we would be able to spend the money on new PC and software upgrades instead of prepping inventory and precious metals.
Basically, I’m using the local network (whichever one I’m on) and create a connection back to my home, encrypt it, and surf the web from there.
Get a 7 inch tablet. You’ll love it. Wonderful portability and you can surf the web, read emails, watch movies, listen to music, and write docs to be played out later on your home computer if you have one. They are great especially for reading e-books in bed. The perfect size for this or for watching a movie in bed, or Freeping, or anything for that matter. And great for travel.
I’m typing this on my netbook at the moment. I love the size of my ASUS netbook (11 inch). It’s great for lying in bed, reading FR and posting comments. It’s much easier to type on a netbook, laptop or desktop when posting comments online. It’s harder to type on a tablet; however, you can buy a case with a wireless keyboard built in (check out Amazon) for some tablets (like for my DOPO’s). Works like a charm and makes posting comments online from a tablet a lot easier.
The major reason people are holding onto their older computers and even older tablets is that the Obama economy stinks.
P.S. I’m waiting for the day when you can send a document to the cloud from a tablet, and then print it out onto your home printer wirelessly directly from the cloud. I’m sure the tech nerds are busy working on this right this very minute.
Hence the Apple Watch, coming 2015.
You need both. Computer for prolific data entry, large scale flexible storage, serious computing power. Tablet for convenience, which is hard to overrate.
Not if you're an Obama-bot, loathe to admit that there is no "recovery", or just looking for one more "last nail" to drive into what is by now the pile of nails that is Microsoft's coffin.
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