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

"George Herold" wrote:
I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?

That is considered rude on Usenet. Why not just
start a new thread? If you do, others who don't
want to read opinions about why PC sales are
declining would spot your inquiry and might
reply.

*TimDaniels*

The fact that a desktop and laptop PC lasts much longer than it used to plus
people wanting to have tablets is probably the main reason.
They don't need new PCs and laptops.

I have a desktop PC that I built in 2005 that has an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core
CPU and 1GB memory and it runs Windows 8 beautifully.
And I have a laptop that could do likewise, but I have left it with Windows
7.

Previously, to run a major new release of Windows would have at least
required a motherboard upgrade for a system builder or a new PC
or laptop for the man in the street.

"Skybuck Flying" wrote in message
.home.nl...
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 Apr 18, 8:09*am, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)

Good reason: if you already have a computer that runs 7 well.

John Savard

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:02:54 +0100, Mike Perkins
wrote:

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.

10 years ago, my typical machine was running on 512MBytes of RAM on an
Athelon 64, early Pentium 4, or G5 CPU. I still have machines in this
class running and they are depressingly slow. However, there's an
oddity which somewhat substantiates my claim. If you load a P4 with
512MB, and install XP SP1, it runs just fine and with quite usable
speed. However, as you install all the numerous updates, the machine
slows down. I've tried running XP SP3 machines on 512MB and it's
really really really slow. 1GB would be a good minimum and 3.5GB
would make it more usable. What happened is that the OS became
bloated, grew considerably, and slowed down. With updates, Microsoft
certainly doesn't care about performance on a 12 year old OS that will
soon be obsolete. I also see similar issues with old OS/X and Linux
distributions. The OS and applications were designed for the CPU and
memory footprint of their day. As the hardware improved, the software
writers simply took advantage of the added horsepower and RAM
inevitably resulting in bloat. Can you name any OS or program that
grew smaller over time?

To be uncharacteristically honest, it's impossible to generalize over
a 10 year period. Some things became faster, while others slowed
down. Some software was cleaned up, while other remains buggy and
unstable. Progress is not a straight line. Still, it took me about
5 minutes to boot my 1983 IBM XT from its 10MBytes HD. 30 years
later, it still takes about 5 minutes to boot my XP SP3 machine. This
is not progress.

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.

Try running XP SP3 in a virtual machine on a computer with lots of
RAM. The OS ends up residing mostly in RAM, rather than bashing the
hard disk. It's quite a performance boost (after the initial load).

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'm still using PIII machines for weather stations and data loggers.
The main attraction is low power consumption. I could do better with
a modern SBC, but I already had the working machines.

For myself, I buy the old and used machines from my customers when
they get new machines. I'm perfectly happy to use an older machine. I
used to put yellow post-it notes on the machine indicating how much
capital expense I deferred by NOT buying a new machine.

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.

I've had severe difficulties and surprises with RAID. I can see it
for performance (striping), but not for reliability. If the drives
are identical, they tend to blow up all at the same time.

SSD has the potential of giving me an ulcer. I monitor the error rate
and bad sector allocations for my customers. So far, so good.
However, they're now buying SSD's from strange sounding company names
that I can neither locate or pronounce. I smell trouble as the NAND
memory starts to fail. Same with LED backlighting displays, which
will eventually produce a backlighting color balance problem as one of
the 3 color led's drops in output.

Long term investments aren't really possible with todays component
selection, which is often intended to target product life to a
specific number of years. If the operating conditions are well
defined, it is possible to predict the lifetime of many components.
Electrolytic capacitors are a good example. The result are products
that have components where everything blows up after about 5 years.
They can sometimes be fixed, but who wants to replace ALL the
electrolytics in their new computah?

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.

The weather station spews data at 2400 baud. I could process that
with a PIC controller. There's nothing even close to real time, and
everything is done in small batches. For output, it creates web
pages, pretty JPG's, and ftp's them to a public web server. The only
CPU killer is the web camera, which we decided really didn't justify
an upgrade. Incidentally, I lied. I have one running XP SP3 because
the packet radio drivers and software wanted Dot Nyet 3(?), which
doesn't officially run on Windoze 2000.
http://bd-wx.k6hju.com/BonnyDoon.htm
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/wx/index.html
These are old photos. It's a much bigger mess today.

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

If it ain't broke, you're not trying.
http://www.motifake.com/facebookview.php?id=142183
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:34:57 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

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

Perfect timing. My compliments to the drive designer and manufacturer
for meeting the desired time-to-fail specification so closely. The
next model will be better and fail a day or two after the warranty has
expired.

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

Yep, and you can search for it yourself.

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

What you pay has very little to do with quality. There was a
connection at one time, but not any more. You can spend outrageous
amounts of cash for absolute junk. Even worse, in some product areas,
you can't buy quality at any price because all the good manufacturers
have been bought and nobody is willing to pay sky high prices for
quality.

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

You are not a doctor and should be prescribing pills.

Or, perhaps you're recommending this tablet:
https://www.google.com/search?q=etch a sketch&tbm=isch

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

With computer buyers like your, it is very difficult to be optimistic
about the state of the industry. When you defenestrate your
computers, find some other hobby, and go away, then the industry and
my attitude will surely recover.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

amdx wrote:

Oh, I think the slide in PC sales has to do with mobile.


Along with so many people out of work, and no decent job on the
horizon.

On Apr 18, 4:09*pm, Melzzzzz wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:46:47 -0700 (PDT)





George Herold wrote:
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.)

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.
That's my thought... gain is cheap too!

George H.

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.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Apr 18, 5:56*pm, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:
"George Herold" wrote:
I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?

That is considered rude on Usenet. *Why not just
start a new thread? *If you do, others who don't
want to read opinions about why PC sales are
declining would spot your inquiry and might
reply.

*TimDaniels*

Really? I was trying to be polite.
I guess if I start my own thread, then I'm
sorta responsible and have to follow through.

If I just hijack something.. then I can stop paying attention
if it turns into a ****ing contest.

Do you have any thoughts about a new desktop?

(Wow.. I just saw the cross-posting list. Sorry I thought I was just
asking on SED.)

George H.

On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:


Yes, Win 7.

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

4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
Memory is cheap.
That's my thought... gain is cheap too!

What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

I have win7-32bit running on a P4 with 2GB ram.
I ran it that way with no swap file for months.
I did decide to re-enable the swap file when I discovered
that I couldn't run XP and Linux simultaneously in virtualbox.

I've got more ram. Just can't see any reason to crawl under
the table to install it.
I don't normally hibernate, but I've had laptops where big
ram made it take longer to return from hibernation than to boot
in the first place.

I've also got a dual-core system with twice the horsepower
and 4GB of ram. I'm sure you can come up with an example,
but
for what I do, I can't feel enough improvement make it worth
switching computers.

mike writes:

On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:


Yes, Win 7.

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

4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
Memory is cheap.
That's my thought... gain is cheap too!

What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

I have win7-32bit running on a P4 with 2GB ram.
I ran it that way with no swap file for months.
I did decide to re-enable the swap file when I discovered
that I couldn't run XP and Linux simultaneously in virtualbox.

Only thing I know of is indeed for running virtual machines. Which I
would absolutely be doing a lot of if I was stuck with windows

I suppose editing a big video or something but I don't do that.

I've got more ram. Just can't see any reason to crawl under
the table to install it.
I don't normally hibernate, but I've had laptops where big
ram made it take longer to return from hibernation than to boot
in the first place.

I've also got a dual-core system with twice the horsepower
and 4GB of ram. I'm sure you can come up with an example,
but
for what I do, I can't feel enough improvement make it worth
switching computers.

--

John Devereux