PC Sales down 14% in first quarter YoY

[rgallant]

The people here who are downplaying the issues with the Windows 8 UI are probably used to dealing with hobbyists and other techies, and have not spent a lot of time working with "regular people" using PCs.

The user interface is a big deal. In fact, if anything it is the deal. Small things that you and I can quickly work around leave a lot of people throwing up their arms in exasperation. The "quick fix" or third-party app you can find on the net in 30 seconds, these people wouldn't find if they were on it all day. It's not because they are stupid. It's because technology is not "their thing". They don't want to have to learn how to find some new "shell" for Windows. To them, a shell is something you find on a beach.

People do not like change. They will tolerate it if they can be convinced that there is some benefit to them. They will not tolerate having to learn whole new ways of doing things, especially new ways that are less efficient, just because a bunch of pompous executives in corner offices in Redmond, Washington, decided that they were going to "move the industry forward" by insisting that they knew better than millions of their users what those users liked.

Windows 8 is the single biggest display of corporate pomposity and contempt for customers since.. having a hard time even thinking of anything this incredibly obnoxious. Maybe when Intel tried to ram Rambus down our throats in the late 90s.

and some people find the nivida ui a joke for 2560x1440 [like me]
the top GPU seller = video maker 10 billions in sales and NVCP ui written on 12" mono chrome monitors***** what a fuing joke
-go to game profile and it has not changed in ten years WHY because the programers do not have real monitors to see what crap they write with guide lines given by corporate managers that use iphones for their testing.
NVCP shows up as a 4"x6" drop down BOX -4 feet in length for games , any real person THAT uses NVCP could see it's a big joke . but none of these Managers\CEO use any of the software they get a bonus's from , BROKEN SYSTEM ,same as MS

 

[fixbsod]

Rant much? Windows is the dominant PC Platform and near dominant OS.

2560x1440 resolution is an extremely niche market at this point.

Complaining about the control panel size at an extreme resolution and comparing that to the DISASTER that W8 which is a full OS compared to a tweaking settings for a graphics card...

If you want to be pissed at nVidia for coporate pompous asshattery than be pissed off at nVidia for the bullshit 680 which was really a 660 and then the more bullshit Titan which should have been the REAL 680 being crippled on TDP and sold for $1,000. . That's some serious shite considering the 580 was $499.

and some people find the nivida ui a joke for 2560x1440 [like me]
the top GPU seller = video maker 10 billions in sales and NVCP ui written on 12" mono chrome monitors***** what a fuing joke
-go to game profile and it has not changed in ten years WHY because the programers do not have real monitors to see what crap they write with guide lines given by corporate managers that use iphones for their testing.
NVCP shows up as a 4"x6" drop down BOX -4 feet in length for games , any real person THAT uses NVCP could see it's a big joke . but none of these Managers\CEO use any of the software they get a bonus's from , BROKEN SYSTEM ,same as MS

 

[holden j caufield]

I think a core2duo is just perfect for the masses. Not for gamers, devs, overclockers, or those working with vms. But for my gf, relatives etc who only watch youtube, do excel, outlook, web mail. It's pretty much even over kill for those tasks about the only thing that might choke a c2d is HD Flash for them.

There is no reason for these people to buy new pcs

 

[lopri]

Don't despair.

..

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think a core2duo is just perfect for the masses. Not for gamers, devs, overclockers, or those working with vms. But for my gf, relatives etc who only watch youtube, do excel, outlook, web mail. It's pretty much even over kill for those tasks about the only thing that might choke a c2d is HD Flash for them.

There is no reason for these people to buy new pcs

It may be adequate, but it is far from ideal. I recently went from an E4500 machine to an i5, and I amazed how much faster it feels in everyday use. I upgraded primarily for gaming, but the difference in general use is amazing.

That said, people who are using a machine that is adequate like a core 2 duo will likely not find out how much snappier a new system is because they dont want to spend the money as long as the machine they have is working.

 

[lopri]

Yet those people are eager to go after slower phones or tablets.

 

[Madpacket]

It's all about the smartphone and no new good PC apps that demand crazy CPU power. The smartphone will replace most computing eventually. Intel is in trouble.

 

[blackened23]

MS does not know how to deal with change. If they've ever run a website, they'll know that users do not like change! You implement change by slowly evolving your UI, not by doing something drastic.

It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Let's not kid ourselves, computing is changing for the average consumer: tasks that required a desktop PC a decade ago can now be done on much smaller form factors. And that is what the average consumer will buy.

There will be hundreds of debates on whether microsoft pursued the correct direction, but the consensus is they had to do something to get a slice of the mobile market. Whether we like it or not, the desktop will never be a primary computing device for the "average" consumer ever again, period. So it's kind of foolish to expect Microsoft to cater to the needs of the desktop user. With that said, perhaps they could have made better compromises for desktop users - but Windows 8 really isn't that bad. It's not what I wanted in an OS update but it's not bad at all.

As far as the market share loss, it's really no big deal. Seriously. This happens to various industries all the time and in a dog eat dog world, the smallest players will exit the market. PC vendors will still exist, but there will be fewer of them. Eventually they will attain some form of equilibrium again to balance the continued demand of enthusiasts. My prediction is that many average PC vendors (HP, etc) will exit the market while some premium brands will remain to cater to the high end users like ourselves. As far as I can tell, high end computing / gaming PC demand has remained fairly steady - while low cost PC vendors (eg dell, HP) have been hit hard.

 

[rgallant]

Rant much? Windows is the dominant PC Platform and near dominant OS.

2560x1440 resolution is an extremely niche market at this point.

Complaining about the control panel size at an extreme resolution and comparing that to the DISASTER that W8 which is a full OS compared to a tweaking settings for a graphics card...

If you want to be pissed at nVidia for coporate pompous asshattery than be pissed off at nVidia for the bullshit 680 which was really a 660 and then the more bullshit Titan which should have been the REAL 680 being crippled on TDP and sold for $1,000. . That's some serious shite considering the 580 was $499.

-it's almost as bad @ 1920x1200 if you ever looked
But it is the same disconnect from the main core product the seller is marketing to what the buyer \ user uses\see's controlled by high level marketing or NON in tune ceo's .
-steve jobs if anything might have used apple products in a normal fashion and gave\ dictated feed back, I doubt any ms high level ms exe owns\has a pc on their desk and more likely a lap top they close up when a meeting is to take place. a monitor on their desk might take away from there facial focus.

 

[HeXen]

I bet gaming PC's are as strong as ever, but it's a niche market

 

[Sleepingforest]

PC gaming grew 6% last year and 15% in 2011. The global growth is still pretty strong, though it was mostly in more mobile forms like laptops last year.

 

[Melina42]

Couple of points perhaps already made:

- The current global political-economic situation has been made horribly unstable by a rich elite who are all acting, ironically, like Kim Jong Un: put me in control and let me do whatever I want or I will keep rocking the boat, hard, until we all drown.

Nobody is going to invest, or spend, in that kind of environment. My spending is your income and sorry, since I don't know whether I'll have a job or not tomorrow, whatever you tell me, I'm saving it all for future purchases of Cheerios.

- we forget that MS has incurred GINORMOUS support costs with all the variants and legacies and varieties of hardware and software they've had to support. Win 8 feels like a strong signal from MS to me, that, "we have to break from all that, somehow, or die. Win8 is the first warning shot."

- we are in The Long Tail of the Long Tail. People (cf. first point, above) are buying utility, and glamor in small doses. The commodification of smartphones and tablets is well underway. In just a couple of years, buying an iPhone/iPad for $500-$800 (less if you slave yourself to a two-year contract) will look about as ludicrous as spending $40,000 on a stereophile audio system, nice hobby, hope the Three of You left who can afford it enjoy it. True everywhere. Hyundai, not Honda. BMWs with engine sounds artificially piped in to impress, meanwhile losing cylinders to gain mpg, and gaining bloat to kill pedestrians less. Stylish is passé, and, increasingly, really ludicrous, especially to younger generations. Ridiculous waste of money they'll never have.

- The Cloud. The metaphor of Metro separates you from your computer. Not just MS; Adobe, with subscription CS6, iTunes, it's all moving Up There, to where the Digital Data God Lives. Your device is a mere, thin-client throwaway access interface to The Giant Digital Store in the Sky. That is these companies' long-term dream. Sony. Acquisition of Gaikai. MS is heading in that direction, too, obviously with Office, and at some point a client OS will be kind of irrelevant and about as interesting to think about as the circuit running your toaster. We're kicking and screaming now (Google the name Adam Orth for recent evidence), but folks, short of a catastrophe, architecturally this is the easier future.

- finally, lest we forget: iPhone, and what's followed after: music player, camera, computer, note-taker, communications device, direction finder, e-reader, shopping system, movie player, games player, all in one, all mobile. All in a thing that weighs less than a wallet. Oh, soon, a wallet and credit card, too. Medical info and self-care device. The thing back in 1982 that no-one ever dreamed could possibly be possible. Not a Tricorder, yet, but pretty close! More seamless than we'd ever have thought. What can beat that?! Ever?! MS of course saw this but could never get there. Too much legacy, too much internal bullying, arrogance and grandstanding, too much naïveté, lousy aesthetic sense.....ultimately, just too plain Geeky. Smart, but in too narrow a way.

Too late.

 

[Cerb]

They're laughing at the absurdity of the situation they are in, except fot the girl on the left, who's wondering WTF the rest of them are up to. :biggrin: You can even see how bad the glossiness is in that picture. Actually showing the reflections or glare is something they typically go out of their way to avoid, so that you don't notice how bad it is for your eyes until your return window has closed.

IMO, at the costs of those things, they need to be drop resistant, and waterproof at 1 atmosphere. Or, like phones, they can cheap enough to occasionally break one (rarely do consumers pay more than $200 for a phone, regardless of its cost w/o subsidy). If they keep going for neither, their options are to channel Steve Jobs, or look foolish like they always do. They want these to be things people think they need. But, if you don't have that level of clairvoyance, or charisma, when technology becomes a need, it then needs to be fundamentally higher quality, or cheaper, or people will scoff at the money, since they could buy their whole family phones and tablets, and pay for the related data plans for several months, for the cost of a really nice x86 tablet. Sure, it's worth it for some people, but the push to bring them to the masses is laughable. Samsung, OTOH, with affordable models, and telco subsidies for high-end models, keeping the end-user outlay acceptable, is laughing all the way to the bank, instead of being laughed at.

They want the late 90s to early 00s, again, but the economy isn't there, and user wants and needs aren't there.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What is that Ginormous tablet-like thing running Windows 8. That's not the Slate Pro, is it?

I don't really think that I would like to lug that thing around.

I have a nice Acer Aspire 722 C-60 netbook, that is slim, sleek, and relatively lightweight. Plus, it runs Windows 7, and gets 5+ hours on a battery charge. I like it.

I'm not really a fan of tablets.

 

[lopri]

That thing was originally dubbed Windows "Tablet," rightfully ridiculed by press/blogs, and is now called "Portable PC" or something in that vain. Might as well call it a portable TV. (that still sounds awkward :biggrin: )

 

[lopri]

There is an interesting catch-22 there as well. Since i-Whatever chips need moar power to run, they need physically bigger bodies. (larger batteries, fans, etc,.) That in turn compels use of bigger screens - otherwise bezels would look unwieldy - and we know screens are #1 power hog on portable devices. So there wastes moar power.

Just can't win.

 

[pablo87]

Does anybody care though other than Intel and a few PC romantics?

Microsoft has Xbox and billg has moved on, AMD obviously nobody at the top cares, NV is moving on too, memory & HDD guys become monopolies.

I've always believed Intel to be the industry caretaker, the one to take action to drive the industry forward. But after Andy, the direction has gone downhill - UB is a good example.

Sure they're still paranoid and only the paranoid survive, and that's necessary but its not sufficient. You also have to ask, what should we be most paranoid about?

Don't be surprised if Xbox and PS4 make a further dent in the PC market. All that's needed in Sony's case is the right price point and a strong base of non gaming apps...

 

[MisterMac]

Does anybody care though other than Intel and a few PC romantics?

Microsoft has Xbox and billg has moved on, AMD obviously nobody at the top cares, NV is moving on too, memory & HDD guys become monopolies.

I've always believed Intel to be the industry caretaker, the one to take action to drive the industry forward. But after Andy, the direction has gone downhill - UB is a good example.

Sure they're still paranoid and only the paranoid survive, and that's necessary but its not sufficient. You also have to ask, what should we be most paranoid about?

Don't be surprised if Xbox and PS4 make a further dent in the PC market. All that's needed in Sony's case is the right price point and a strong base of non gaming apps...

If we look longterm - isn't it COMPLETELY in Intels interest to push the thin client definition further?

Trying to get everything in the cloud will benefit Intel ginourmously?
Same chips - double the pricetag?

Obviously they don't wanna be left there ONLY - but if everything moves there they will autonomously grow out of their massive stranglehold in the cloud.

 

[dma0991]

Don't be surprised if Xbox and PS4 make a further dent in the PC market. All that's needed in Sony's case is the right price point and a strong base of non gaming apps...

Console has never done anything besides gaming/multimedia and I doubt they'll expand beyond gaming/multimedia anytime soon. Next gen consoles aren't even stated to have such features. Some genre of games are best played with a keyboard and mouse. The same goes for productivity stuff.

I doubt anybody will feel the dent as a PC isn't used solely for gaming.

 

[Cerb]

If we look longterm - isn't it COMPLETELY in Intels interest to push the thin client definition further?

Trying to get everything in the cloud will benefit Intel ginourmously?
Same chips - double the pricetag?

Obviously they don't wanna be left there ONLY - but if everything moves there they will autonomously grow out of their massive stranglehold in the cloud.

Until someone offers something else that's good enough. The Cloud largely runs on Linux. Offer enough performance and RAS, and Intel will have issues. Not better. Not even as good. But, enough. FI, near-future 64-bit ARM CPUs might be good enough for some users. Intel runs such infrastructure now, because the closest competition is a joke, on performance grounds alone. But, ARM, FI, is advancing at a rate faster than Intel is. And, they don't need to reach Intel's level of performance.

They can be a few generations behind in that, but offer comparable power efficiency, and become a serious threat. That could especially be true if most of it stays relying on things like Memcache and distributed K/V DBs*. While you benefit from more good choices, Intel could be faced with the possibility of having to reduce margins to stay relevant. Long-term, there's no easy and obvious way out for anybody, Intel included.

* OT: Also, some practical research has been done on generically modeling consistency, so it could be quite possible to, in the coming years, build proper RDBMSes out of these eventual-consistency column/graph DBMSes.

 

[Idontcare]

That thing was originally dubbed Windows "Tablet," rightfully ridiculed by press/blogs, and is now called "Portable PC" or something in that vain. Might as well call it a portable TV. (that still sounds awkward :biggrin: )

And even then, looking at the guy lugging it around on his shoulder, I would not exactly call that portable. Looks uncomfortable as hell.

 

[Melina42]

Don't despair.

..

In that "family" shot..... are they all laughing at the ludicrous idea that anyone would want that Kaypro Do-Over in their midst?

 

[JAG87]

Don't despair.

..

[/QUOTE]


Nice! It's not just a PC, it's a table too!

LMAO

 

[Idontcare]

Nice! It's not just a PC, it's a table too!

LMAO

They are trying to be like Apple, you are looking at what they internally call "surface mini"

(j/k)

 

[Homeles]

That massive thing is the Sony Tap 20.