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

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 ?


This is an intelligent post. Who are you? Where is Skybuck? What have you
done with him?


--

Reply in group, but if emailing remove the last word.

Hmm speaking of laptops... my mother claims her toshiba ? laptop's harddisk
died one month after it was out of warrenty...

I probably posted which laptop she bought somewhere on usenet in the past...

Just thought I'd let you guys know that... so even laptops can fail... yes
even expensive ones... and yes toshiba too

Not really surprising for me... I told her this would happen after she
bought it my half-sister takes care of it and has seized control since
the start...

Perhaps she believes I could not hack it and take over... I could but I
won't it's too risky in many ways.

So I let her have her fun or in this case stress and annoyances with it !
LOL.

HI SISTER ! in case you ever read this ?! =D Having fun yet ? =D

Bye,
Bye,
Skybuck.

P.S.: I told my mother maybe she needs a tablet =D

P.S.2: Maybe all this doom thinking is become self-forfilling-prophecy

PS.3: Neh probably not walls and all that

Maybe new strategy of Microsoft:

Screw hardware, we want to earn money with software !

Make software run on more systems and profit !

Has it worked out yet ? Maybe not... maybe yes... and maybe it will in
future...

Blizzard games are quite impressive quality wise... and yet they run on
modest systems.

Maybe Blizzard earns lots of money from their software, instead of requiring
gamers to buy new hardware

Maybe Microsoft got inspired by Blizzard and decided to go the Blizzard way


Blaming Microsoft for making their operating system more efficient is pretty
insane isn't it ? LOL.

Bye,
Skybyck =D

On Apr 18, 10:09*am, "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.

I think it's the mobile/ tablets that are doing it.

I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?
I've got an old desktop at home that I'd like to upgrade.
My 'boy' (a 12 year old) really would like a better gaming machine.
We've got a newer laptop that we use for gaming (I think minecraft is
our favorite game.)
but it tends to over heat and slow down during the games.

So I've been looking at a new desktop from Dell.
Several questions then,
1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)
2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
(running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?
3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Thanks for any advice or wisdom,

George H.

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 ?

1. and 2.
Games where main drive force behind PC sales, and now
they are mainly produced for Consoles which have
long life expectancy period. Hack you don;t need
more than 2gb of RAM... (have you saw game that needs
more than 2gigs?)
You can do everything else with hardware from 2003.

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

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:46:47 -0700 (PDT)
George Herold wrote:

On Apr 18, 10:09Â*am, "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,
Â* Skybuck.

I think it's the mobile/ tablets that are doing it.

I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?
I've got an old desktop at home that I'd like to upgrade.
My 'boy' (a 12 year old) really would like a better gaming machine.
We've got a newer laptop that we use for gaming (I think minecraft is
our favorite game.)
but it tends to over heat and slow down during the games.

So I've been looking at a new desktop from Dell.
Several questions then,
1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)

Don't know I assemble PC myself.

2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
(running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?

Yes, Win 7.

3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.

4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
Memory is cheap.

4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Depends on games also... but if you need to play in higher resolutions
everything on high, this would be most important.
IMO medium strength card is enough.

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:16:49 -0700, Joerg
wrote:


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

Yup.

I try to maintain exactly two major versions of Microsoft operating
systems on my machines at any given moment. I'm not ready yet to give
up entirely on XP, so Win7-64 and XP-32 are the two. There's a real
advantage to having a 64-bit O/S with lots of usable RAM for some
stuff- and XP will no longer be supported for many pieces of
engineering sofware such as Solidworks (beyond 2013) and Solid Edge
(current version ST5 will not install on XP).

Win8 strikes me as perhaps ending up more of a stepping stone, like ME
or Vista, that might be best stepped over, but (other people's) time
will tell. I sure don't want (nor do I want anyone else) to touch my
monitors with slimy greasy fingers, so the tablet features are not
very interesting for a desktop system.

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 18/04/2013 20:21, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:14:45 +0100, Mike Perkins
wrote:

A decade ago, the rate of improvement in computing speed was such
that you had to buy a new PCs every year to keep up.

That's because every improvement in hardware performance has been
negated by software bloat, software speed, and software complexity.
In effect, overall usability has been stable since about 2002. Sure,
the new software looks more artistic, and probably has some
improvements, but neither art nor obscure features get my attention.

This perhaps where I will disagree with you. I recall doing a serious
FPGA synthesis 10 years ago where times were halved when I purchased my
next PC.

I also have Windows XP running on a 5 year dual-core PC and the boot
times and general pleasure of use is nowhere near as good as this
year-old quad-core running Windows 7.

Software also tends to grow faster than the bugs get fixed. That's
because features and functions sell upgrades, while bug fixes are
expected to be free. Eventually, the software grows bloated and is
still full of bugs.

Sign in the window of a local computer sto
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/Win7-downgrade.html

In the past few years I haven't seen quite the same change. One
consequence it is now worth investing in a good PC which might
realistically maintain its market position for a few years rather
than months!

I have never considered a PC an investment, and don't believe that
it ever will become one. The price attrition on PC's is just too
radical. In general, for the money I save by purchasing a used PC,
I can later use to purchase it's replacement. A decent high end
laptop is about $1000, but a 5 year old dual core used laptop does
for about $350. In addition, there are changes on the horizon, such
as bigger better and faster SSD drives.

I would agree regarding "investment". I was making the point that PC
"inflation" has nearly halted such that a good PC bought 2 years ago, is
still a pretty good PC today. Unlike a PC bought 10 years ago.

I would also agree that I may consider changing my RAID disk for a SSD.
In the past I might have used the upgrade as an excuse to buy a new PC,
but now I would be more tempted to just change the insides of my box.

Incidentally, most of my working machines run XP. My various
weather stations run Windoze 2000 and Linux. My customers run
Windoze 7 and 8, but I don't have any of those to fight with.

I'm guessing but I would have thought the PC processing power you
require is perhaps not the same as current gaming or video decompression
etc might require.

I would also say if it's not broke, don't mend it!!

--
Mike Perkins
Video Solutions Ltd
www.videosolutions.ltd.uk