IDC says fourth-quarter PC shipments fell 10.6% year-on-year

[Denly]

PC have been good enough for a long time now, pretty much anything PII x4 and above with a $50 video card is good enough for most personal use. Combine that with company moving to virtual desktop or terminal services make those old C2D useful again.

there are also 10s of millions refurb PC/laptop trade in US alone every years.

People are still buying but they may option for a $300 SB i5 refurb than a new $500 i5 5xxx.

 

[mrmt]

Outside of playing Fallout all of my personal computing is done on my iPad now. It's just so much more convenient.

I couldn't get used to the ipad but my personal computing is done on the iphone and on the rmbp. I only use the desktop for gaming, and that's not very much nowadays.


But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

 

[ShintaiDK]

But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

I still use my desktop for everything primary and phone/laptop for minor stuff. 27" workscreen

 

[Headfoot]

I use desktop at home for everything, because its fast. But I use nothing but desktop for digital audio workstation (Reaper + plugins) purposes. I had projects that maxed out my old 2500k @ 4.5 so I couldnt listen to the song in real time without popping and clicking artifacts.

 

[Excessi0n]

But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

I use my desktop for... everything, with the exception of watching videos in bed.

I honestly have no idea why somebody would want to use a tablet or phone over a desktop. Mobile's only advantage over a desktop is that it's, well, mobile.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I still use my desktop for everything primary and phone/laptop for minor stuff. 27" workscreen

Yea, me to. I dont have a laptop, but I do have a bay trail tablet. I use it just for surfing the web. Online banking, record keeping, office tasks, and gaming of course are all done on the desktop. Personally, I still feel nothing beats the convenience of a full sized keyboard, big stand-alone monitor, and cpu and gpu power to spare. The tablet I have, unbelievably, doesnt even have a USB port so you cant plug in a mouse or keyboard, and I wont try to do anything except surf the web by touch. My desktop also has very good built-in wifi, while the tablet is very slow, both on loading the wi-fi and opening flash heavy pages.

I do have a very nice work laptop, but even there, I prefer the desktop. The only reason I use the laptop is because it has software loaded that is not on the desktops.

 

[MrTeal]

I couldn't get used to the ipad but my personal computing is done on the iphone and on the rmbp. I only use the desktop for gaming, and that's not very much nowadays.


But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

Besides my desktop, I have a 7" Android tablet, an old iPad 2, a Note 4, an iPhone 6, and a i7-3630QM laptop with a 635M. I really only use the laptop when travelling any more, and never use the tablets. I will do minor browsing on my Note 4, but I find typing to be a PITA.

Besides 9+ hours a day at work on my desktop there, I use the desktop in my sig for occasional gaming, PCB design, Solidworks design, and some Matlab. I could probably do with a mobile workstation, but it will have to wait until we start to see TB3 so I can have an external dock to run 4k60 plus my side monitors.

 

[III-V]

If I had money right now, I'd be investing in bottomed-out commodities and going all-in, full-YOLO on shorting stocks.

You know, it's funny. When I was in high school, we played a stock market simulation as a fun way to learn about the Great Depression. The game started well before the Great Depression, and I knew my history, so I went all-in on penny stocks, knowing that business was going to boom and I'd be rich. I thought I was so clever -- I knew that I had years (in class days) before the Great Depression hit. I was by far (orders of magnitude) the "wealthiest" in the class.

But suddenly we skipped from something like 1925 right to Black Monday. I ended up having more debt than the world had in combined assets.

And that is where we are at today. We're in the Roaring 20s. We think everything is business as usual, but things are collapsing under us. I wish I'd been smart enough to not spend every dime I had, and I am very concerned for my future now. Maybe I'm calling things a few years early, and I've still got time to save face, but chances are I'll get buried with the rest of you.

 

[maddie]

If I had money right now, I'd be investing in bottomed-out commodities and going all-in, full-YOLO on shorting stocks.

You know, it's funny. When I was in high school, we played a stock market simulation as a fun way to learn about the Great Depression. The game started well before the Great Depression, and I knew my history, so I went all-in on penny stocks, knowing that business was going to boom and I'd be rich. I thought I was so clever -- I knew that I had years (in class days) before the Great Depression hit. I was by far (orders of magnitude) the "wealthiest" in the class.

But suddenly we skipped from something like 1925 right to Black Monday. I ended up having more debt than the world had in combined assets.

And that is where we are at today. We're in the Roaring 20s. We think everything is business as usual, but things are collapsing under us. I wish I'd been smart enough to not spend every dime I had, and I am very concerned for my future now. Maybe I'm calling things a few years early, and I've still got time to save face, but chances are I'll get buried with the rest of you.

I agree with you that we're on the verge of a collapse in consumption, with all the associated horrors. The fall in trade and commodity prices is leading everything. This will be an interesting year.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Outside of playing Fallout all of my personal computing is done on my iPad now. It's just so much more convenient.

Can definitely get on board with this. I do most of my light/recreational computing on my iPad. My laptops are now for work/gaming when I am away from home and my desktops are mainly for work/gaming while at home.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Can definitely get on board with this. I do most of my light/recreational computing on my iPad. My laptops are now for work/gaming when I am away from home and my desktops are mainly for work/gaming while at home.

What do you use most of the time for when you are posting on forums?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yea, me to. I dont have a laptop, but I do have a bay trail tablet. I use it just for surfing the web. Online banking, record keeping, office tasks, and gaming of course are all done on the desktop. Personally, I still feel nothing beats the convenience of a full sized keyboard, big stand-alone monitor, and cpu and gpu power to spare. The tablet I have, unbelievably, doesnt even have a USB port so you cant plug in a mouse or keyboard, and I wont try to do anything except surf the web by touch. My desktop also has very good built-in wifi, while the tablet is very slow, both on loading the wi-fi and opening flash heavy pages.

I do have a very nice work laptop, but even there, I prefer the desktop. The only reason I use the laptop is because it has software loaded that is not on the desktops.

You might like the Lenovo IdeaPad 100s (the 11.6" Windows 10 laptop model). I find myself using it more than the 7" Bay Trail tablets that I own. At least for forum browsing.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I couldn't get used to the ipad but my personal computing is done on the iphone and on the rmbp. I only use the desktop for gaming, and that's not very much nowadays.


But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

I use my desktop for most everything, I have a laptop I use a lot as well. I have an HTC One m7 too (old but capable), I use it for text, calls, and Facebook. In a pinch I'll use it for other things, but generally speaking I hate using phones and tablets.

I guess I'm old, in my day we did our computing at a desk with a keyboard, dagnabbit! Now get off my lawn!

 

[frozentundra123456]

@Virtual Larry:

I first had one of the Winbook 7 inch tablets. The one I have now is a digiland (house brand I think) from best buy. The mini-usb charging port on the winbook broke so I can no longer use it. The Winbook was quite bit more useful than the one I have now. The Winbook had HDMI out and a USB port so you could attach a mouse, or even a USB hub and use a mouse and keyboard. The digiland i would never purchase again, but I was too lazy to return it. It has no video out ports or USB ports except for the mini-usb charging port. Unbelievably poor design, suitable solely for content consumption.

I have not seen the Lenovo IdeaPad, but I did see the Acer Switch 10 in Costco, and thought it was quite nice, and the price was reasonable. Of course they also had the Surface Pro 4. I am going back to get that after I win the 1.3 billion powerball tonight!!!

 

[Arachnotronic]

What do you use most of the time for when you are posting on forums?

Desktop, but that's usually because I often post here on small breaks from work. When I check the forums when I'm lounging around watching TV or something, I use my iPad.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Yea, me to. I dont have a laptop, but I do have a bay trail tablet. I use it just for surfing the web. Online banking, record keeping, office tasks, and gaming of course are all done on the desktop. Personally, I still feel nothing beats the convenience of a full sized keyboard, big stand-alone monitor, and cpu and gpu power to spare.

I was about to write something more or less exactly like that, but you beat me to it! The only thing I use my tablet for is as a complement for web surfing when being lazy and located in bed or on the sofa. And also when traveling really light. For everything else, the productivity and ergonomics of a full desktop environment is unbeatable.

 

[Techhog]

If I had money right now, I'd be investing in bottomed-out commodities and going all-in, full-YOLO on shorting stocks.

You know, it's funny. When I was in high school, we played a stock market simulation as a fun way to learn about the Great Depression. The game started well before the Great Depression, and I knew my history, so I went all-in on penny stocks, knowing that business was going to boom and I'd be rich. I thought I was so clever -- I knew that I had years (in class days) before the Great Depression hit. I was by far (orders of magnitude) the "wealthiest" in the class.

But suddenly we skipped from something like 1925 right to Black Monday. I ended up having more debt than the world had in combined assets.

And that is where we are at today. We're in the Roaring 20s. We think everything is business as usual, but things are collapsing under us. I wish I'd been smart enough to not spend every dime I had, and I am very concerned for my future now. Maybe I'm calling things a few years early, and I've still got time to save face, but chances are I'll get buried with the rest of you.

... How did the thread even come to this? I don't even know what this post is referring to. Is it just some random post about the expectation of a second great depression, or about the death of PCs? I'm so confused.

 

[VirtualLarry]

@Virtual Larry:

I first had one of the Winbook 7 inch tablets. The one I have now is a digiland (house brand I think) from best buy. The mini-usb charging port on the winbook broke so I can no longer use it. The Winbook was quite bit more useful than the one I have now. The Winbook had HDMI out and a USB port so you could attach a mouse, or even a USB hub and use a mouse and keyboard. The digiland i would never purchase again, but I was too lazy to return it. It has no video out ports or USB ports except for the mini-usb charging port. Unbelievably poor design, suitable solely for content consumption.

I have not seen the Lenovo IdeaPad, but I did see the Acer Switch 10 in Costco, and thought it was quite nice, and the price was reasonable. Of course they also had the Surface Pro 4. I am going back to get that after I win the 1.3 billion powerball tonight!!!

I have several Winbook TW700 tablets, and had a Digiland Android 4.4.x with a Mediatek quad-core SoC with 512MB of RAM.

The Digiland had malware in the factory firmware image.

 

[III-V]

... How did the thread even come to this? I don't even know what this post is referring to. Is it just some random post about the expectation of a second great depression, or about the death of PCs? I'm so confused.

They're both very much one in the same. One (PC stagnation) is just happening before the other. Intel doesn't understand how screwed they are. They'll probably survive, but it'll be a struggle (in the long run, not anytime soon -- they have credit, assets, and cash reserves to burn).

This might be the year AMD goes under too. They'll probably get bought out though, not super worried about their projects going to waste. It's sad, because I'm really hopeful for Zen (in spite of my previous past pessimism of AMD), but I don't think the market will be very nice to them, or anybody for that matter.

 

[SPBHM]

But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

for the same stuff I used to before (decent) smartphones existed, and probably more...

but I think my PC is a lot older than the ones I had back then.

 

[freeskier93]

I couldn't get used to the ipad but my personal computing is done on the iphone and on the rmbp. I only use the desktop for gaming, and that's not very much nowadays.


But I'm rather curious, who uses desktops at home today and besides gaming, for what?

If I'm at home I use my desktop for pretty much everything, mostly because it's fast. I also live in a small campus apartment so my desk/computer is in my room next to my bed. I do anything from CAD stuff (Altium and Solidworks) to watching TV (Netflix and a recorded from a tuner card).

I do admit though if I had a faster laptop I'd be more prone to using it at home, but it's a 6 year old C2D MacBook Pro. Between that and my iPhone 6S+ all my mobile needs are fulfilled.

 

[mrmt]

Desktop, but that's usually because I often post here on small breaks from work. When I check the forums when I'm lounging around watching TV or something, I use my iPad.

You have desktops in your office? It's been years since we've gone mobile for most of the personnel.

 

[Arachnotronic]

You have desktops in your office? It's been years since we've gone mobile for most of the personnel.

I work from home and I much prefer a fast desktop + large screen(s) for what I do, so yep!

I could get by just fine with a docked laptop attached to a large monitor or two (as long as I have at least a quad core CPU + lots of RAM), but can get much more performance/$ from a desktop.

The machine that I dedicate to work has a stock clocked Core i7 4790K, 32GB of RAM, SSD, and a large 32-inch monitor. It'd be very hard to get that kind of performance in a laptop, and practically impossible to do so for what I paid for the components to build it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

They're both very much one in the same. One (PC stagnation) is just happening before the other. Intel doesn't understand how screwed they are. They'll probably survive, but it'll be a struggle (in the long run, not anytime soon -- they have credit, assets, and cash reserves to burn).

This might be the year AMD goes under too. They'll probably get bought out though, not super worried about their projects going to waste. It's sad, because I'm really hopeful for Zen (in spite of my previous past pessimism of AMD), but I don't think the market will be very nice to them, or anybody for that matter.

This is also why we saw massive consolidation in 2015 that will continue in 2016. The top 20 semiconductor chart can end up containing all companies left after this.

 

[PingSpike]

I was thinking of stopping upgrading much, once I got my pair of SKL G4400 / Z170 rigs built and OCed. TBH, it was a semi-pointless upgrade from my G3258. In fact, OCing the G3258 makes more sense than SKL BCLK OC, due to issues with BCLK OC. (iGPU disabled, losing SpeedStep, AVX borked, etc.)

Ok, I upgraded mostly for fun, and bragging rights, and yes, possibly it's a little faster than the G3258 @ 4.0, but by the same token, I seem to have partially blown a UPS and PSU due to my OCing, something that never happened with my G3258.

I thought about getting one of those G4400 chips as well, since it can do VT-d. Decided to stick with my FM2+ setup since I didn't really think it would make a performance difference and I wasn't interested in buying new ram.

That's the other thing, the new platforms have all new bugs and that's just part of the early adopter tax. The trouble is what you get in return for the tax isn't much anymore.