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

On 20/04/2013 5:33 AM, Skybuck Flying wrote:
The latest and greatest graphics card is the nvidia titan. Even a super
computer was named after it.

You got that wrong, the Titan video card was named after the
supercomputer, to take advantage of the marketing potential from Nvidia
being put into that supercomputer. Interestingly, that same computer has
CPU's made by Nvidia's main rival, AMD. Both could've taken advantage of
Titan as a marketing tool.

Yousuf Khan

On 18/04/2013 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)

No, games have nothing to do with it. It's been shown that only about
10% of PC's are for hard-core gaming. The rest are playing Solitaire, or
Angry Birds, which a computer from 10 years ago could easily play.

As far as hard-core gaming goes, the PC is the only game in town (no pun
intended). They are higher power than all of the gaming consoles (until
the next generation consoles come out, which will ironically be using
AMD CPUs & GPUs, used in PC's as well). So if all a PC was for was for
gaming, then there would be no PC sales decline, as there is always a
market for faster and faster in that market.

Unfortunately, there is no longer a market for faster and faster in the
regular PC market. Most computers from 5 years ago are still more than
powerful enough to run all of today's applications, quite fast. There
was a time where you needed a faster computer just to run the latest
Office. Now you don't.

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

Yes, that has something to do with it, I'd say that's probably 70% of
the problem. No, you can't simply use Windows 7 as an alternative. When
you buy a new off-the-shelf PC, most of the latest ones are required by
Microsoft to have Windows 8 installed, not Windows 7. This is not a
problem if you're building your own, since you are buying whichever OS
you want, but when you're buying an off-the-shelf computer, you don't
have that choice usually.

So people are avoiding buying the computer rather than holding their
noses and buying it anyway. Combined with the fact that most computers
from 5 years ago are still more than adequate, people can afford to hold
off these days. Microsoft's successful strategy of forcing people to
change for the sake of change, has now backfired.

4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick
of it )

Not really a huge problem anymore.

5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better
for many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Phones, yes maybe. Tablets, no I don't think so. Everybody needs a
phone, even if you don't do much more than use it to make phonecalls.
Eventually, you'll find that smartphone is also pretty handy for making
quick accesses of the Internet. Tablets are more of a luxury item, not
everyone needs one of these, like they do a phone.

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

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

3 & 5.

Yousuf Khan

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 4/21/2013 1:37 PM, josephkk wrote:

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


Did you pay the Micro$oft tax twice !?!?


?;-b

On 4/19/2013 9:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 19/04/2013 12:46, mike wrote:

Bottom line is that the old way of faster and faster has run out of
steam. The game user is the only part of the end-user desktop
demographic that still needs faster and faster.

I used to have a rule of thumb that I would buy a new PC or laptop
whenever the performance of a new one was more than three times the old.
This was typically about every three years since 1985. Back then they
typically cost around £2k+ and were decidedly specialist kit.

Using that rule of thumb you won't buy a new machine for the next 20
years! lol I don't think PCs are actually getting much faster these
days are they? The clock speeds stopped increasing some 12 years ago
and it seems like the only thing they can do now is increase the amount
of on-chip memory.


Moore's law has basically run out of steam at a clock speed at 4GHz
without increasing the core count. And the processors have now become so
powerful that domestic users have no need of any more horsepower.

I wouldn't say there is no need for speed, they just can't deliver any
more. I do need to replace my 4 year old laptop though because it only
has 3 GB and that is just not enough anymore. I'm hoping the price of
flash disks comes down a bit more and I will extend the life of this box
another couple of years by compensating for the lack of memory with
faster disk access.

I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

--

Rick

Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 18/04/2013 10:09 AM, Skybuck Flying wrote:

selective snips

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

Yes, that has something to do with it, I'd say that's probably 70% of
the problem. No, you can't simply use Windows 7 as an alternative. When
you buy a new off-the-shelf PC, most of the latest ones are required by
Microsoft to have Windows 8 installed, not Windows 7. This is not a
problem if you're building your own, since you are buying whichever OS
you want, but when you're buying an off-the-shelf computer, you don't
have that choice usually.

Yousuf Khan

When buying a new Windows 8 PC (with its installed OEM OS),
check with the tech support of the company for "downgrade rights".
You may be able to replace Windows 8 OEM, with Windows 7 OEM. Now,
if it was in the actual sales menu, all the better. You can downgrade
a Windows 8 PC with a pre-installed OS, but it does not apply
to a copy of Windows 8 you bought yourself at the store. Downgrade
rights were intended to protect the pre-built PC builder, from
the tastes of the market.

"Downgrading from Windows 8 to 7: What you need to know Nov 20, 2012"

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20151...d-to-know.html

"Hewlett-Packard is typical: It does not support downgrades of
consumer-grade Windows 8 PCs to Windows 7. But if you buy a machine
loaded with Windows 8 Pro, you can make the jump. HP's policy is
based on Microsoft's licensing terms, which support downgrade rights
only to new PCs preloaded with Windows 8 Pro, the version of Windows
designed for business."

I expect the price adder for Pro, probably amounts to effectively
just buying a license for Windows 7 :-( But, do the math and
see for yourself.

"We ran a quick comparison survey of machines from HP, Dell, and Toshiba,
and found that an upgrade to the Pro version of Windows 8 increased
system prices anywhere between $35 and $100."

You probably can't buy 7 that cheaply. At least, a legit copy.

HTH,
Paul

rickman wrote:
I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

Hybrid hard drives - Such as:
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard...-hybrid-drive/
--
Roberto Waltman

[ Please reply to the group,
return address is invalid ]

On Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:58:21 -0400, Larc
wrote:


It's all part of a big dumbing down process. And it's not just in the area of
electronics. Just listen to some of the stuff people are calling good music. Feed
everybody sh*t long enough and a lot of them will develop a taste for it.

Larc

I can read/play my own or go to a collection without having to tune
into much. Dunno. No teevee, either. Just a shortwave. Used books in
stacks from the Inet. People, popularly, always look up to emulate
what their government is doing. Facebook and Twitter, according to
The Atlantic, almost had to go into emergency recess to accommodate
all the newfound prayer group interests praying for Boston's mangled.
And, meanwhile, if the Senate turns up dressed as peacocks in silk
transparent dresses, sadly, there is an element in truth also in that.

On 4/19/2013 11:56 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:25:00 +0100, Mike
wrote:

I thought they had algorithms to rotate any memory changes throughout
the disk?

Most SSD's have such an algorithm and more. What it does is detect
errors, and reassign alternate blocks in its place. When access time
to any block on the drive is the same, such a system makes good sense.

Do they do that with rotating media? I have a problem with my laptop
where it occasionally looks like it is locked up. If I wait long enough
it returns. Usually it is one or two programs that stop, but if I try
to use other programs they can all end up halted. Eventually it returns
to normal operation. The cause seems to be a disk access that ties up
the interface without moving much data as indicated by the Resource
Monitor. The blue line maxes hard at 100% with a low erratic data rate.
When I looked up what the blue line is, it appears to be the disk
interface usage. This says to me the drive it trying to read a sector
which is bad and continues to reread it for some time before it either
gets the data correctly or finally fails.

I was ready to replace the drive at one point, but some of the files are
corrupted and the copy software throws up its hands and says, "What do
you want me to do about it?" I found my recovery disk but haven't taken
the time to fix the corrupted files yet. In the meantime, I've noticed
the SSDs are getting cheaper. This machine only has a 160 GB drive and
I can get a larger SSD replacement for under $200. I'm thinking this
will let me continue to use this machine for another year or two until
Windows 8 is acceptable.

I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
doesn't develop problems with age.


I do image backups which backs up literally everything. It's faster
and better than any other method I've tried. However, the image
backup software seems universally crude and strange. The least
disgusting of the lot seems to be Acronis True Image, which is my
current favorite. Run it from a boot CDROM, not while the operating
is running, and it will work better and much faster. (Typically 1 - 2
GB/min to USB 2 or 4 GB/min to USB 3).

I tend to just copy the parts I know are important. I'd like to do
regular image backups, but as I said above, the software finds corrupt
files (or actually errors while reading) and stops... I think it is
EaseUS I have tried using. It appears to have installed a dual boot
Linux partition on my hard drive.


I am impressed, my only concern would be overall power consumption and
its cost.

The computers in the photo were salvaged at the recyclers and cost me
about $30/ea. Pentium III, 3.5" HD, about 2GB RAM, running Windoze
2000. Nothing really special except that they're totally reliable.
Well, I have been killing off cooling fans, but that doesn't really
count. About 55 watts average consumption measure on a kill-a-watt
meter. At $0.20/kw-hr, that's 481 kw-hrs/year or $96/year. Not
great, but also not worth spending several years electricity budget to
reduce the cost. Replacing the 3.5" HD with a flash drive will save
about 10 watts, which I think will be the biggest improvement.

I have a couple of desktops with XP that came from FreeCycle. I don't
use them much, but find their presence comforting when I worry about
losing a more often used machine. Actually, one was from FreeCycle, the
other was from the trash in front of a friend's townhouse. Two USB
ports don't work, but otherwise it is a very usable machine.


A hard disk takes more power than a system built around a
micro. Some of the NXP ARM processors are very affordable and can run
Linux.

True. The software we're using:
http://www.weather-display.com
also runs on Linux. However, we have other services running on these
machines, such as a ham radio packet email gateway. Much as I would
like to run Linux, the packet stuff is Windoze only at this time.

Many of the tablets are I/O limited, but there are LOTs of SBCs that are
not only powerful, but very small, very low power and very low cost,
even as cheap as your salvage machines. You have heard of the rPi,
right? The Beagle is another family of boards at higher prices, but
still below $100. I think they are feeling the pressure from the rPi
and are coming out with a new board which might be more price
competitive. I think the dinosaurs will be the desktop computers
managing weather and packet stuff. Get someone to port the packet stuff
to Linux or even Andriod. Life is too short to waste on Windows.

--

Rick

On 21/04/2013 21:56, rickman wrote:
On 4/19/2013 9:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 19/04/2013 12:46, mike wrote:

Bottom line is that the old way of faster and faster has run out of
steam. The game user is the only part of the end-user desktop
demographic that still needs faster and faster.

I used to have a rule of thumb that I would buy a new PC or laptop
whenever the performance of a new one was more than three times the old.
This was typically about every three years since 1985. Back then they
typically cost around £2k+ and were decidedly specialist kit.

Using that rule of thumb you won't buy a new machine for the next 20
years! lol I don't think PCs are actually getting much faster these
days are they? The clock speeds stopped increasing some 12 years ago
and it seems like the only thing they can do now is increase the amount
of on-chip memory.

It is about every six years now to get a threefold increase. I generally
buy for the best price performance at the time. Clock speed used to be a
simple metric from the original 4.7MHz right up to some now on offer
brutally overclocked to 4.8GHz that is a 1000x increase since 1981 or
roughly speaking a 25% average improvement annually. Recent improvements
have been largely in CPU utilisation, pipelining and speculative
execution rather than raw clockspeed.

My old Q6600 benchmarks at 2962 and uses ~350W with graphics card
whereas the new i7-3770K benchmarks at 9461 and about ~120W all in.

Actual benchmark speeds are still increasing provided that you have the
right software and can use fully multicore and multithreaded code. The
problem is that after about 6 CPUs the law of diminishing returns sets
in and the code spends an increasing amount of its time sharing the load
between threads or worse still doing work in parallel that will later be
scrapped when the independent thread results are combined.

These days the biggest performance increase can be had by putting
frequently used files onto an SSD with essentially zero seek time and a
transfer speed that maxes out SATA3. The Samsung 830 & now 840 drives
are very impressive - beware that some benchmarks give artificially high
performance figures of merit on highly compressible data.

The SSD upgrade is capable of giving old kit a new lease of life.


Moore's law has basically run out of steam at a clock speed at 4GHz
without increasing the core count. And the processors have now become so
powerful that domestic users have no need of any more horsepower.

I wouldn't say there is no need for speed, they just can't deliver any
more. I do need to replace my 4 year old laptop though because it only
has 3 GB and that is just not enough anymore. I'm hoping the price of
flash disks comes down a bit more and I will extend the life of this box
another couple of years by compensating for the lack of memory with
faster disk access.

You can get the 256GB Samsung 840 for around £180 and the cheaper
consumer grade 250G one for ~£130. Provided that you keep it backed up
just in case the storage medium fails then what are you waiting for? The
prices may fall a bit more but the technology is available and the price
is not outrageous for the performance boost it offers.

Be sure to disable MS lame indexing and never defrag it!

I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

My desktop has the Intel SSD cache installed. It does make the thing a
lot more nippy. It also has a dedicated Samsung 830 SSD for bulk high
speed data which makes a big difference for random access lookups.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown