Global PC Shipments See Worst Drop Ever

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Worst. Drop. Ever. The end of the PC is near....again. :rolleyes:

Worldwide shipments of the once-mighty PC will see their most precipitous decline ever this year, with even more bad news to come in 2014. PC shipments, which just months ago were expected to fall 9.7 percent, instead will drop 10.1 percent this year, representing "by far the most severe yearly contraction on record," according to research firm International Data Corp. And IDC expects global PC sales to fall an additional 3.8 percent in 2014.
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The problem with "extrapolations" (predictions) is that they rely on everything following simple, predictable trends and are often proven wrong by "upsets", and events that didn't happen the year before.

PC purchasing isn't going to always be on an upswing. It's the way stuff goes.
 
I think at least from my preservative and people I've talked to as of late, their pc is 'fast enough', most people don't need anything more than they already have. There's no super new gfx card this year, no new super chip. If a [H] user like myself doesn't really want a 4770K, then how can we expect the main stream to be excited about getting better/faster machine.

PC needs to make itself relevant again, the 'fast enough' issue is probably not going away anytime soon and year-over-year is only going to get worse.
 
It's propaganda to get people to buy more tablets so people use a device that's totally not in your control. It's no different then 2006 when everyone was preaching the death the gaming PC.

But PC has a new weapon, and we call it Saint Gabe. Some people will think gaming has no effect in general PC sales, but remember Doom outsold Windows 95. Doom was the driving force for a lot of people to own a PC.
gabe.jpg
 
What the statisticians, number crunchers, and doomsday sayers of PCs will not tell you:

Many typical consumers are buying less desktop PCs nowadays and are retaining their current or older computers longer. Hey, if it can still browse Facebook, play Candy Crush, and that sometimes-I-play-a-female-Orc in WoW game session, then the computer still works for them. The software nowadays hasn't shown a compelling must-have-or-I'll-die reason to get a newer, more powerful computer outside of watching high definition videos on Youtube and movies on Netflix. Heck, Microsoft Office, through its many iterations can still run on PC hardware as old as the PlayStation 3 regardless if it's Office 2000 or Office 2013.

The ones benefitting the most from more powerful and newer computers and PC hardware are the "I-don't-live-in-a-basement" PC gamers, and they're a small niche of the PC market. Smaller than that are those that live and breathe off newer powerful PC hardware for work. These people do not dictate where the PC hardware and OEM computer market should head towards. They're the minority equivalent to the people the US Congress tend to not listen to every year. Only OEM companies still catering to this niche are making newer, better, and powerful hardware for them, and still make a profit from it. Even if just a small one. Companies like AMD and Intel have shown increased revenue, but it's nothing compared to it what was like before the tablets and smartphones exploded to the top. Microsoft is struggling to cater to that market and make a dent in it, while Apple and iOS, Google and Android, and Samsung are making money like Uncle Scrooge out of it. DirectX has probably gotten more attention on the 360 and XboxONE consoles than seeing major, must-have changes between DirectX 10 to 11.2 on the PC.

And, the rest?

They're buying tablets to take their Netflix and web browsing and Twitter addictions on the go. They're listening to music and watching movies on their smartphone. They're taking pictures and recording movies on their smartphones. They're buying smaller, less powerful notebooks and all-in-one computers if they need something with a little more oomph. But, if not, they're keeping that computer they bought off Dell or from Walmart a few years ago in a Black Friday sale, or inherited it from the geek in the family back in 2004. They're also buying video game consoles to play games without having to deal with the hassles of finding out if their computer with a Pentium III processor and 500GB of memory running Windows XP that's never been updated since 2008 can run a game like Bioshock Infinite.

"Oh look, Bioshock Infinite is out for the 360...", said by insert-non-PC-aficionado-consumer.

The PC market isn't dying, it's stagnating and slowing down is all that is. It's more of a heartbeat of a 60 year old person with a few heart attacks in his life time, than an active beating heart of an NBA basketball player. Alive? Yes, but not the same as it used to be. Companies are catering a lot of their hardware and directing their focus for the mobile handheld market, diving in head first and riding that wave since many normal consumers will buy a new smartphone or tablet every year or two.

But, that lowly PC that sits on that dusty desk in the den that's turned on when someone wants to post their baby pictures on Facebook or do homework by citing Wikipedia, and runs Microsoft Word 2007 trial-in-perpetuity doesn't need to be replaced. And, why should it? It still does what it does for the typical household.

That is unless you live and breathe the air of Orgrimmar, livestream to Twitch.tv your latest crazy hijinks in Battlefield 4 after jumping off the roof of a skyscraper, or running around like a pansy in the dark areas of the D6 military facility. These people are the ones buying newer PC hardware or the latest shiny over-priced metal box from an OEM company like FalconNorthwest or Alienware.

The ones still betting on and investing in PC's future are people like Gabe and Valve with SteamOS and Steam Machines, or Palmer Luckey and the Oculus Rift. Unfortunately for PC gamers, many games are primarily developed for the consoles first then back-ported and sidegraded to PC later. That PC version that looks all shiny and new to a beaming console gamer, looks no different than its console brethren running on hardware as old as the PC in the den. If it looked like Kate Upton before and after, it's still Kate Upton no matter if she was wearing clothes or little to none at all. That's PC games in a nutshell these days. And, many PC games nowadays can still run on that dated hardware from 2009 with Windows XP SP3 and DirectX 9.0c on a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, and a Geforce GTX 285. Why bother upgrading if the game is going to look no different than its original 360 or PS3 origin? The number of PC games that showcase the superiority of newer and faster PC hardware and strokes the egos of the PC master race brotherhood can be counted on the fingers of two hands and probably the toes on one foot for recent titles released in the past few years.

Again, nothing software-wise-- PC games or not-- have shown a compelling must-have reason to buy newer PC hardware or newer computers outside of the dedicated PC games that can have every bells and whistles turned on to look like real life. There are gamers still on Core 2 Quads or Phenom II X6s in their current gaming computer that can still run Battlefield 4 at low-to-medium-to-let's-push-it-medium-high settings anyway. If it can still run off that at decent settings for the majority of PC gamers, then why bother getting newer hardware? It's as if only PC-focused games show a compelling need to get the fastest and best money can buy.

However, your parents that occasionally post embarrassing stuff about you on Facebook or that bratty little sibling who uses it for homework and Microsoft Word 2007 will not need a newer computer with their fancy touch controls and Windows 8.1.

"If it ain't broke, why replace it?" said by nearly-every-typical-household-family with an old computer sitting on a dusty desk in the den.
 
Yeah, has nothing to do that many "standard" PCs are so obnoxiously powerful for the average user that there is no need to upgrade, nope nothing at all.

Hell my parents still are rocking a Dell that has a dual core AMD processor, came installed with windowsXP. But considering they read email, look at recipes online, and play solitare games (that come with Windows) they really don't need anything more other than an occasional blast with the air compressor every few years to get the dust out of the system
 
Even some of us who are IT pros but are getting hit in the wallet are letting our PCs go further between replacemnts.
I'm on 5years on my current pc.
been gaming on my xbox instead of upgrading my PC.
Plus if it's under $5 on steam it probably runs on my old PC anyway.

While a new machine would be leaps and bounds faster the true is that it's plenty fast enough to get the job done. Since I have a (also old) laptop, anything that takes a long time to process, I just get up and do something else.
 
As mentioned lees churn of new kit as old kit is still good.

Case in point - I picked up this week a mint condition Dell Precision T5400 workstation with 8GB of ram, a quad core 2.8Ghz CPU, card reader, firewire card blah blah.

The cost? £80! ($130)

I picked up another set of ram (16GB) for $80. I can get another CPU to twin it for £30.

Dirt cheap for loads of performance. This is a PC from 2008!!!! Wprimes in 15 seconds.

The guy I got it from makes a fortune selling 2008 spec Dell Dimension dual core office PCs for £130 a go. He sells them by the truck load.

No one wants the new i3/i5/i7 stuff as its no benefit for most business use.
 
plupien79 said:
Even some of us who are IT pros but are getting hit in the wallet are letting our PCs go further between replacemnts.
I'm on 5years on my current pc.
been gaming on my xbox instead of upgrading my PC.
Plus if it's under $5 on steam it probably runs on my old PC anyway.

While a new machine would be leaps and bounds faster the true is that it's plenty fast enough to get the job done. Since I have a (also old) laptop, anything that takes a long time to process, I just get up and do something else.
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I used to upgrade every one or two years to get the newest PC hardware. Now it's every 5 years. I want to upgrade soon since my computer is already nearing the end of 4 years now. But, people with not a lot of money or are being hit hard in the wallet are upgrading less often nowadays. Maybe get that new video card or processor when the next paycheck allows.

When I upgrade my current hardware to something newer, I'm going to at least future-proof the hardware for another four to five years. If I can still run Civilization 5 or Metro Last Light at medium-high settings at 1080p or FFXIV at high settings, I'm happy. Why? I know that the software I run on my computer and the games I play and the ones to be released in the next 5 years are still going to run on hardware bought today. If Oculus Rift came out with a model with dual 120Hz 1080p OLEDs released today that required newer more powerful hardware to drive the displays, I'd do it. But, the games between now and 2018 are going to still run on hardware I buy in 2013.

"If it ain't broke, why replace it, right?"
 
octoberasian said:
However, your parents that occasionally post embarrassing stuff about you on Facebook or that bratty little sibling who uses it for homework and Microsoft Word 2007 will not need a newer computer with their fancy touch controls and Windows 8.1.
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What's becoming interesting this holiday sales season is the price of some these "fancy touch" control Windows 8.1 machines, some of them have been going for well under $300 on a regular basis with good retail exposure. New full x86 Windows machines that are cheap and portable and faster than a lot of old 6 plus year old clunky desktops.

I think there's some light at the end of the tunnel for Microsoft, Intel and PC OEMs here. They now can sell and market devices that are both PCs and tablets that cost less than a number of tablet only devices. Since this just started with the arrival of Bay Trail and Windows 8.1, there's no hard info on how these things are doing and depending on who is doing the counting they may not be counted as PCs. I would like to see counts of devices by OS and not form factor.
 
The problem is that the biggest thing that people complain about older PCs is that they are slow. Slow in the sense that program take a long time to launch. If you look at the CPU usage it's not high but if you listen to your PC you'll hear the HDD grinding away. It ain't the CPU or the RAM that's holding PCs back, it's the HDD.

I took my brother's notebook that he always complained about being slow. It had a Core i7 in it and a gob of RAM but it was still slow as molasses. I gambled, I gambled in the sense that I bought an SSD for it. I put it in it and it took off like a rocket. Windows loads fast, programs load fast, all of that slowness that he complained about was gone. I did the same to a computer that had a Core 2 Duo in it, it too was slow before the SSD treatment and now it's like a brand new PC again.

It ain't the CPU or the RAM that's causing PCs to be slow, the HDD is the biggest bottleneck in today's PCs. Replace it with an SSD and that PC will be new again for years to come.
 
I just built a new PC after I learned the specs of the PS4 and XBONE. Should be good for a while now.

Luckily (?) with new console hardware, developers can begin to focus on multicore usage and higher ram usage. I hope the benefits validate the cost.

I think the real issue is that we've hit a very unfortunate equilibrium. Word processors don't need to get any more powerful. Multitasking is no longer a challenge for modern hardware. In terms of business, the need for more powerful hardware just isn't there unless human behavior changes or work place efficiency requirements change.

With regard to gaming the production cycle on most games is 2 years. You can only do so much in 2 years. Regardless of how many people you throw at a project, each person provides diminishing returns after a certain point. This means we are effectively capped in the complexity that a game can achieve. Obviously, you could turn a few dials over 9000 and create an artificial need for better hardware, just like you could insert a few inefficient loops, but my point is that if you assume good coding and good intentions, you hit a ceiling of development capability by limiting the window to 2 years. Art being the biggest hurdle.

Without some drastic improvement to the way games are developed or some altruistic game developers who put quality before profit, ya, we're in a hardware flat spin.
 
Looking at charts .... PC will be fine. Still shipping hundreds of millions of units a year...
 
heatlesssun said:
What's becoming interesting this holiday sales season is the price of some these "fancy touch" control Windows 8.1 machines, some of them have been going for well under $300 on a regular basis with good retail exposure. New full x86 Windows machines that are cheap and portable and faster than a lot of old 6 plus year old clunky desktops.

I think there's some light at the end of the tunnel for Microsoft, Intel and PC OEMs here. They now can sell and market devices that are both PCs and tablets that cost less than a number of tablet only devices. Since this just started with the arrival of Bay Trail and Windows 8.1, there's no hard info on how these things are doing and depending on who is doing the counting they may not be counted as PCs. I would like to see counts of devices by OS and not form factor.
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Let's not forget: These touch-based computers are finally starting to look as good on the outside as the Apple iMac that can cost as much as four times more than the lowest priced Windows 8.1 all-in-one computer.

Consumers typically judge a product with their eyes first and base part of their decisions in buying one off that. And, sadly, desktop Windows PCs have been stereotyped (odd using that word for PC hardware...) as being nothing more than "boring gray boxes" (or "boring black plastic boxes").

Examples:

HP Pavilion 20 - $399.99 (AMD E1 model)

2013-12-05_08-44-06.png


Dell Inspiron One 20 - $449.99 (lowest end model)

2013-12-05_08-45-46.png


Acer Aspire Z - $799

2013-12-05_08-51-37.png


Lenovo C540 - $701.22

2013-12-05_08-57-11.png


As long as they don't look like overly expensive shiny metal boxes from FalconNorthwest catering to a different PC crowd, Windows PCs may have a future. The only problem here: The powerful Intel-based AIOs are still a little expensive. If they want to sell these and sell them at a good rate, the prices and especially the Intel processors need to come down a little more. Or, start using AMD APUs. That and they need better marketing. If they have to get as dirty and showy like Apple, then go for it.
 
i would be more curious to gets stats from stores like amazon, newegg, directron, tigerdirect on how they are doing shipping out individual parts...
 
Everything is just slowing down. My 2600k is 3 years old now and I have absolutely ZERO reason to think it won't be perfectly viable for even high end gaming for the next 3 years. The old development cycle, PC games were constantly pushing past hardware, both GPU and CPU requiring almost yearly upgrades. That push is much less now, mostly due to the console effect.

If you are on the lower end of the user spectrum, simply using net games, browsing, email, quicken, etc - you need to upgrade even less often. PC makers have seen this. That's why ultrabooks and tablets are being pushed so hard by them, as this is the next viable product for yearly upgrades by average consumers - not the PC.
 
MrGuvernment said:
i would be more curious to gets stats from stores like amazon, newegg, directron, tigerdirect on how they are doing shipping out individual parts...
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Agree, also agree with others here with people just don't feel the need to upgrade. The computer still works, you buy a tablet for fun. This doesn't mean that the PC died... Heh.
 
Hdds are quite the bottleneck. But it's a shame they are so expensive YES STILL. People like myself need SPACE and the speed isn't worth the drop in space.
 
My Q9550 is still doing fine for gaming. Maybe I'll upgrade in 2014, maybe not.
 
These reports are just uninterpreted statistics. I have a Intel i7 920 that I bought when it first came out, so my computer is a few years old. Nothing pushes it without going to stupid levels of detail or multi-monitor. It still looks better than the new consoles.

I remember when a two year old computer was out dated and started having problems running new software (games), this just hasn't happened with the 8 year console cycle. Everything was built for the aged Xbox 360 and PS3, so my computer runs circles around em.

Once the industry has something to offer, software pushes my hardware I'll upgrade and buy (build) a new PC. Right now, unless I'm into folding or pushing benchmarks, whats the point?
 
Doom! DOOM!
DoomDoom DoomDoom!
DoomDoomDoomDoomDOOM!
DoomDoom DoomDoom!

Call me when the market hasn't self-corrected in about 10-15 years.

Until then, these fuckers need to take their ritalin
 
When a Core i7 from 2008 will keep up with a Core i5 bought last week for 90% of business and standard user tasks, why bother the upgrade? Where I work, we are almost at the point of replacement when they die, vs. standard cyclical. C2D to Core iX was a huge jump in performance. But Intel made these things so beefy, that software hasn't caught up.
 
Well, that's that. Time to throw away my PC and my flip phone to get with the times.

Oh wait, my clamshell phone is still a better phone than any $700 smart phone and my PC is still a better computer than any tablet.
 
octoberasian said:
As long as they don't look like overly expensive shiny metal boxes from FalconNorthwest catering to a different PC crowd, Windows PCs may have a future. The only problem here: The powerful Intel-based AIOs are still a little expensive. If they want to sell these and sell them at a good rate, the prices and especially the Intel processors need to come down a little more. Or, start using AMD APUs. That and they need better marketing. If they have to get as dirty and showy like Apple, then go for it.
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But it's more than just about the traditional desktop form factor, the PC is more increasingly going to be about these kinds of devices:

DellVenue8Pro-01-600x418.jpg


Asus-Transformer-Book-T100-3130_610x407.jpg


And it looks like there could be some traction starting with these devices considering their compelling prices. The user reviews of the V8P have been very high and the T100 seems to be almost as well received. Hardware like this is certainly a part of the Windows PC future.
 
The Core i5 and i7 are a victim of their own success. Intel wanted a CPU that would put them at the top of the heap, they did it but now nobody needs to buy a new computer because of that success.
 
heatlesssun said:
But it's more than just about the traditional desktop form factor, the PC is more increasingly going to be about these kinds of devices:

DellVenue8Pro-01-600x418.jpg


Asus-Transformer-Book-T100-3130_610x407.jpg


And it looks like there could be some traction starting with these devices considering their compelling prices. The user reviews of the V8P have been very high and the T100 seems to be almost as well received. Hardware like this is certainly a part of the Windows PC future.
Click to expand...


Just bought one of those for my wife to replace my old E1705 I handed down to her. Pretty slick little tablet/hybrid thing. I am super impressed with it, especially for $349.
 
octoberasian said:
What the statisticians, number crunchers, and doomsday sayers of PCs will not tell you:

Many typical consumers are buying less desktop PCs nowadays and are retaining their current or older computers longer. Hey, if it can still browse Facebook, play Candy Crush, and that sometimes-I-play-a-female-Orc in WoW game session, then the computer still works for them. The software nowadays hasn't shown a compelling must-have-or-I'll-die reason to get a newer, more powerful computer outside of watching high definition videos on Youtube and movies on Netflix. Heck, Microsoft Office, through its many iterations can still run on PC hardware as old as the PlayStation 3 regardless if it's Office 2000 or Office 2013.

The ones benefitting the most from more powerful and newer computers and PC hardware are the "I-don't-live-in-a-basement" PC gamers, and they're a small niche of the PC market. Smaller than that are those that live and breathe off newer powerful PC hardware for work. These people do not dictate where the PC hardware and OEM computer market should head towards. They're the minority equivalent to the people the US Congress tend to not listen to every year. Only OEM companies still catering to this niche are making newer, better, and powerful hardware for them, and still make a profit from it. Even if just a small one. Companies like AMD and Intel have shown increased revenue, but it's nothing compared to it what was like before the tablets and smartphones exploded to the top. Microsoft is struggling to cater to that market and make a dent in it, while Apple and iOS, Google and Android, and Samsung are making money like Uncle Scrooge out of it. DirectX has probably gotten more attention on the 360 and XboxONE consoles than seeing major, must-have changes between DirectX 10 to 11.2 on the PC.

And, the rest?

They're buying tablets to take their Netflix and web browsing and Twitter addictions on the go. They're listening to music and watching movies on their smartphone. They're taking pictures and recording movies on their smartphones. They're buying smaller, less powerful notebooks and all-in-one computers if they need something with a little more oomph. But, if not, they're keeping that computer they bought off Dell or from Walmart a few years ago in a Black Friday sale, or inherited it from the geek in the family back in 2004. They're also buying video game consoles to play games without having to deal with the hassles of finding out if their computer with a Pentium III processor and 500GB of memory running Windows XP that's never been updated since 2008 can run a game like Bioshock Infinite.

"Oh look, Bioshock Infinite is out for the 360...", said by insert-non-PC-aficionado-consumer.

The PC market isn't dying, it's stagnating and slowing down is all that is. It's more of a heartbeat of a 60 year old person with a few heart attacks in his life time, than an active beating heart of an NBA basketball player. Alive? Yes, but not the same as it used to be. Companies are catering a lot of their hardware and directing their focus for the mobile handheld market, diving in head first and riding that wave since many normal consumers will buy a new smartphone or tablet every year or two.

But, that lowly PC that sits on that dusty desk in the den that's turned on when someone wants to post their baby pictures on Facebook or do homework by citing Wikipedia, and runs Microsoft Word 2007 trial-in-perpetuity doesn't need to be replaced. And, why should it? It still does what it does for the typical household.

That is unless you live and breathe the air of Orgrimmar, livestream to Twitch.tv your latest crazy hijinks in Battlefield 4 after jumping off the roof of a skyscraper, or running around like a pansy in the dark areas of the D6 military facility. These people are the ones buying newer PC hardware or the latest shiny over-priced metal box from an OEM company like FalconNorthwest or Alienware.

The ones still betting on and investing in PC's future are people like Gabe and Valve with SteamOS and Steam Machines, or Palmer Luckey and the Oculus Rift. Unfortunately for PC gamers, many games are primarily developed for the consoles first then back-ported and sidegraded to PC later. That PC version that looks all shiny and new to a beaming console gamer, looks no different than its console brethren running on hardware as old as the PC in the den. If it looked like Kate Upton before and after, it's still Kate Upton no matter if she was wearing clothes or little to none at all. That's PC games in a nutshell these days. And, many PC games nowadays can still run on that dated hardware from 2009 with Windows XP SP3 and DirectX 9.0c on a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, and a Geforce GTX 285. Why bother upgrading if the game is going to look no different than its original 360 or PS3 origin? The number of PC games that showcase the superiority of newer and faster PC hardware and strokes the egos of the PC master race brotherhood can be counted on the fingers of two hands and probably the toes on one foot for recent titles released in the past few years.

Again, nothing software-wise-- PC games or not-- have shown a compelling must-have reason to buy newer PC hardware or newer computers outside of the dedicated PC games that can have every bells and whistles turned on to look like real life. There are gamers still on Core 2 Quads or Phenom II X6s in their current gaming computer that can still run Battlefield 4 at low-to-medium-to-let's-push-it-medium-high settings anyway. If it can still run off that at decent settings for the majority of PC gamers, then why bother getting newer hardware? It's as if only PC-focused games show a compelling need to get the fastest and best money can buy.

However, your parents that occasionally post embarrassing stuff about you on Facebook or that bratty little sibling who uses it for homework and Microsoft Word 2007 will not need a newer computer with their fancy touch controls and Windows 8.1.

"If it ain't broke, why replace it?" said by nearly-every-typical-household-family with an old computer sitting on a dusty desk in the den.
Click to expand...

It still boggles my mind that the media doesn't seem to get this. PC's are now mature enough that they don't need to be upgraded every 18 months and have moved from the "must have gadget" phase to the "durable goods" phase.

People need a compelling reason to upgrade their computer. Desktops will continue to be slower sellers while laptops will tend a bit higher. Partly because they are more popular, partly because mobile devices tend to take a lot more physical abuse and wear out quicker.

Tablets will eventually plateau in sales, but I expect they will fare better than PC's given they take far more abuse and will need to be replaced more often than something that just sits under a desk.

Phones will remain strong sellers as long as they continue to be subsidized in contracts, and even without, they need to be replaced fairly frequently due to wear and tear.

Both phones and tablets will remain primarily as supplemental computing devices for a while yet. Eventually I think we will see desktop and mobile devices converge into devices that you can just drop in a cradle to get a full desktop experience with. We're starting to see the beginnings of that with tablets having keyboards and tablet docking stations.
 
Combination of the progression of mobile devices satisfying more needs, plus the fact that even though hardware performance continues to increase, it has no real-world impact on the ability to do much of anything that couldn't have been accomplished with previous tech for mainstream consumers. TBH, the only reason I'd upgrade any of my components is if they fail. I'm still on a 2500K, I don't even overclock it. I transcode some videos. Don't game as much as I used to, but am still on a 1280x1025 monitor, with a HD5750 that satisfied most game requirements. Only the enthusiast segment is getting any benefit from the advancement of computer tech, and I think even that is very slight. Advantages to the mainstream consumer area has pretty much plateaued, largely after SSDs became more common. There's little perceivable difference in 'upgraded' components, fewer people care about the next new computer available.
 
heatlesssun said:
But it's more than just about the traditional desktop form factor, the PC is more increasingly going to be about these kinds of devices:

And it looks like there could be some traction starting with these devices considering their compelling prices. The user reviews of the V8P have been very high and the T100 seems to be almost as well received. Hardware like this is certainly a part of the Windows PC future.
Click to expand...

If I didn't need a new laptop that could do some midrange gaming under $800, I'd go with a Dell Venue 11 Pro or the T100. It would probably do more than my lowly HP Mini 110 Netbook running Linux Mint currently.

The problem, still, is that if you wanted a bit more heft than a Bay Trail Atom, you're still paying a price premium for an Intel Core i3 and i5 with LCD displays maxing out at 1920x1080 while Apple is out there with 2560x1600 LCD display (Mac Pro 13-inch) or 2048x1536 (iPad Air). To me it's still a lot of money, and I've said it before so many times in forum posts like these: These prices need to get lower especially from Intel, and the features need to be as compelling as Apple's products at better and lower price points. Do this and they will sell. The $300 to $400 Windows 8 tablets will work for the majority of people out there, but those wanting a little more power have to pay quite a lot more to do that.

That or these OEMs really need to consider lower-priced AMD APUs using Richland or the upcoming Kaveri APUs, and so far there's so few that have AMD in them.
 
teh_chem said:
Combination of the progression of mobile devices satisfying more needs, plus the fact that even though hardware performance continues to increase, it has no real-world impact on the ability to do much of anything that couldn't have been accomplished with previous tech for mainstream consumers. TBH, the only reason I'd upgrade any of my components is if they fail. I'm still on a 2500K, I don't even overclock it. I transcode some videos. Don't game as much as I used to, but am still on a 1280x1025 monitor, with a HD5750 that satisfied most game requirements. Only the enthusiast segment is getting any benefit from the advancement of computer tech, and I think even that is very slight. Advantages to the mainstream consumer area has pretty much plateaued, largely after SSDs became more common. There's little perceivable difference in 'upgraded' components, fewer people care about the next new computer available.
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The only push on the enthusiast end is on the super high end spectrum -- triple monitor gaming at ultra high resolutions. That's where the benefit of the newer bleeding edge hardware comes in. If you are single monitor gaming, even at high res and greater than 60hz, there is a lot of flexibility in hardware aside from GPU. If you are at 1200p or lower, you have even more flexibility.
 
octoberasian said:
If I didn't need a new laptop that could do some midrange gaming under $800, I'd go with a Dell Venue 11 Pro or the T100. It would probably do more than my lowly HP Mini 110 Netbook running Linux Mint currently.

The problem, still, is that if you wanted a bit more heft than a Bay Trail Atom, you're still paying a price premium for an Intel Core i3 and i5 with LCD displays maxing out at 1920x1080 while Apple is out there with 2560x1600 LCD display (Mac Pro 13-inch) or 2048x1536 (iPad Air). To me it's still a lot of money, and I've said it before so many times in forum posts like these: These prices need to get lower especially from Intel, and the features need to be as compelling as Apple's products at better and lower price points. Do this and they will sell. The $300 to $400 Windows 8 tablets will work for the majority of people out there, but those wanting a little more power have to pay quite a lot more to do that.

That or these OEMs really need to consider lower-priced AMD APUs using Richland or the upcoming Kaveri APUs, and so far there's so few that have AMD in them.
Click to expand...

You can get a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, i3, 3200x1800 res for $949. It's pretty compelling at that price point compared to a Mac Pro 13.
 
My gaming machine is coming up on its 5 year anniversary.
It received an SSD upgrade just under 2 years later.

I'm starting to outgrow the machine space-wise and in terms of memory capacity. Not performance-wise.

I have a big dividend coming next year. I'll probably wind up replacing the system at that point with a single-card setup (as much as I hunger for 4K resolution, I require multi-monitor more and I can't justify spending $7000-12,000 on 2-3 monitors), but go bat-shit crazy on RAM and an SSD RAID setup with a hard drive for bulk storage.
 
For most, a PC is a durable good not a disposable good. The average home computer is now like an appliance most people take for granted like a washing machine or a dryer. Just because people aren't buying the latest and greatest doesn't mean squat. There are statistician that are so narrowminded that they'll never think critically on what the numbers represent and what they don't.

That being said, PC fucking sucks and it's good that it's dying. Good riddance. Up with the abacus because it's retro and not mainstream :rolleyes:
 
Ashbringer said:
Some people will think gaming has no effect in general PC sales, but remember Doom outsold Windows 95.
Click to expand...
[citation required]

Doom was released in 1993 and was a DOS game. By the time Windows 95 was released, it was pre-installed on pretty much all systems. Doom sold around 2 million copies in 10+ years. Windows 95 sold 40 million copies in its first year.
 
SilverSliver said:
You can get a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, i3, 3200x1800 res for $949. It's pretty compelling at that price point compared to a Mac Pro 13.
Click to expand...

That's a pretty good start. Need more OEMs offering products like this with touch and at better prices. Hopefully prices come down in a year to bring laptop-tablet hybrids like this below $600 or lower. Prices with very good features make people compelled to buy these.
 
Meanwhile AMD cards are sold out everywhere along with components to attach them to because of the crypo-currency craze.
 
octoberasian said:
That's a pretty good start. Need more OEMs offering products like this with touch and at better prices. Hopefully prices come down in a year to bring laptop-tablet hybrids like this below $600 or lower. Prices with very good features make people compelled to buy these.
Click to expand...

Yeah this is the first season of really attractive, hybrid touch ultrabooks at reasonable prices. I think we will see a lot more competition in 2014 as the new Windows 8.1 hybrids are selling pretty well from my understanding.
 
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