Why are PC sales declining ? (Skybuck thoughts on it too)

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
are dinosaurs.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html

Bulkhead wrote:
On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html


Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lice...id=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...indows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

Big mistake.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Bulkhead wrote:
On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html


Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lice...id=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...indows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

Big mistake.

Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
approximately zero chance.

Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Bulkhead wrote:
On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

5)
5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html

Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lice...id=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...indows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

Big mistake.

Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
approximately zero chance.


I was tempted a few times to buy a new one because I can get roughly 2x
the simulation speed with more cores. But right now I cannot risk a
major interruption because some OS-incompatibility precludes me from
running SW or connected hardware that I really need. With some SW I was
explicitly told that there's issues with Win-7.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 18/04/2013 18:58, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Bulkhead wrote:
On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html


Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lice...id=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...indows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

They have to retire it at some point and Win7 is perfectly stable
(unlike Vista) and Vista was never quite as bad as it was painted. MS
Office 2007 was far more of a dog's dinner at initial release but didn't
take anything like the same amount of heat.

Corporates that I know are only just now upgrading to Win7 as MS is
trying to push Win8. They are stuck on some prehistoric browser because
some other MS intranet product is wildly incompatible with newer ones!

Big mistake.

Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
approximately zero chance.

Buy one while you can still get the downgrade to Win7-64 Pro.

Do the sums to decide which CPU has the best bang per buck when you
decide to buy. My current PC is a nominally games machine with an
i7-3770K and *no* graphics card installed - just using the CPUs fast 2D
graphics. It is astonishingly frugal on power unless working very hard.
Plenty fast enough for any simulations and the 4 core i5-3570 would be
almost as good for programs that don't use hyperthreading efficiently.

The law of diminishing returns sets in for 4 processing units anyway.

If you don't want realtime 3d rendering for action games animation the
graphics card isn't strictly necessary. The manufacturer had some
difficulty believing the specification that I requested.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:58:01 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
wrote:

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Bulkhead wrote:
On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html


Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/lice...id=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...indows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

Big mistake.

Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
approximately zero chance.

I recently bought a new laptop and promptly UPgraded it from Win8 to Win7.

?;-b

On 18/04/2013 17:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

5)

Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
are dinosaurs.

I am with you on this. Tablets are rapidly taking over at home.
Given you can get an Android tablet for under $100 they are going to
make a very large dent in the sales of new PCs and low end laptops.

Apart from video editing and gaming there is precious little that a home
user these days needs the full power of a desktop PC for.

Windows8 naffness has perhaps accelerated the decline but the main
problem is that PCs are now good enough to do anything that a home user
is ever likely to want to do and quickly too. There are no more killer
applications that require a massive new hardware upgrade any more.

Time was when just to run the newest OS you needed yet another memory
upgrade - those days are long gone despite the tendency to bloatware.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Apr 18, 11:45*am, John Larkin
wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"









wrote:
Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! :

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it )
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
*Skybuck.

5)

Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
are dinosaurs.

--

John Larkin * * * * * * * * *Highland Technology Incwww..highlandtechnology.com* jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME *analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

I think 5 also...

The main reason is that we have only 24 hours a day...no time for PC