Is the end nigh? PC market freefall accelerates.

Blazkowicz said:
Windows 8.1 is called Windows 6.3 under the hood.
So you really have a stupidly advanced and fast OS, probably more stable than most linux desktops (where you can still get bitten by some bad driver or weird stuff)

Metro is just the new flavor of turd that tries to ruin it, we used to have Real Player, then it was Adobe Reader that grew at a geometric rate, then you have some people forced to install Itunes (which forces installing Quicktime too and vice versa). Eventually some other silly piece of software will be written just so we can hate it.

Not all change is bad though, as a mild thing we don't have to click on Winrar warnings that the version is unregistered ; we don't have to upgrade codecs, which was a more serious and annoying thing (now you just need flash player and vlc, that's all)
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Really nicely put :LOL:
Indeed that OS is both a marvel of technology and schizophrenic. I'm ok (mostly) with it now though it took me time and a couples of shortcuts on my desktop. Overall in practice it is still not as convenient as the old windows (start menu) used to be.

Now among the dumb thing MSFT is doing, they split they user base asking devs to develop Metro apps in the mean time it seems the option of creating a hub, an appstore in modern parlance, for the old, native X86 applications did not crossed their mind... It is baffling :LOL:
Why? I don't know. I never really thought of that option (which is available somehow in the linux/free world) I did a couples of days ago and I've yet to find an answer for that obvious lacking.

There is a (mega) tons of X86 software out there and MSFT has not think about a way to properly present (and leverage they could make some money on sales) the costumers with all the option windows environment offers.
 
liolio said:
Really nicely put :LOL:
Indeed that OS is both a marvel of technology and schizophrenic. I'm ok (mostly) with it now though it took me time and a couples of shortcuts on my desktop. Overall in practice it is still not as convenient as the old windows (start menu) used to be.

Now among the dumb thing MSFT is doing, they split they user base asking devs to develop Metro apps in the mean time it seems the option of creating a hub, an appstore in modern parlance, for the old, native X86 applications did not crossed their mind... It is baffling :LOL:
Why? I don't know. I never really thought of that option (which is available somehow in the linux/free world) I did a couples of days ago and I've yet to find an answer for that obvious lacking.

There is a (mega) tons of X86 software out there and MSFT has not think about a way to properly present (and leverage they could make some money on sales) the costumers with all the option windows environment offers.
Click to expand...

Clearly they don't want to cannibalize the push for developers for the Metro platform, as their cross-device strategy (Windows phone, Windows RT) depends on it. If they fail to gain enough ground with developers for the tablet and phone devices, it's game over for Microsoft.

They'll survive for a long time with enterprise servers and desktops/workstations, but they'll gradually lose grounds as their solutions will be rendered obsolete at some point due to the rise of non-conventional platforms.

However, Windows RT seems to have failed already (I doubt MS can revive interest in this platform), and Windows Phone is a risky endeavour that is going to require many years and injections of many billions of USD before it'll be able to compete with Android/IOS (and even then it's no sure thing).

And instead of the desired push for developers and users towards METRO, their Windows 8 strategy so far seems to have backfired on them. There's a huge opportunity for Apple and Google if they try to fill up this gap (although I don't see it happening right now).
 
Gubbi said:
iPads are cannibalizing Apple's laptops. I'll bet Apple still comes out on top.

Interestingly there is growth in the U.S.

Cheers
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hopefully the new ipads are interesting. Apparently the 5c is doing poorly and the 5s is not selling as well as they wanted (your now able to go into stores and find them.
 
Interesting article putting the decline of the PC market into context:
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His evidence was very very weak, and if thats the best he can come up with Im likely to believe it is still shrinking.
'3.9 per cent in revenue terms for the second quarter of 2013 in year-on-year terms'
what about AMD? did nvidia release new products then to make this massive 3.9% growth etc

'EA, one of the biggest hitters in the business. They're up by eight per cent'
EA did they release big titles during that quarter compared to last year(*), what about other companies (**)

(*) I could say based on NPD sep/oct which have seen increased revenues YOY, that the PS360 console market is now actually growing (GTA5) which is bollux
(**) just quickly googled the biggest game company in the world, activision
PC GAP revenue down 8%, non GAPP revenue down 54% YOY
ala these figures fluctuate way too much you cant base anything off a single data point

now if he'ld came up with some data like according to gartner (or whoever) >$1000 PC's sales are growing then yes he may have a point
 
zed said:
now if he'ld came up with some data like according to gartner (or whoever) >$1000 PC's sales are growing then yes he may have a point
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This wouldn't mean anything since most PC's at that price point will be self builds anyway.

I agree we need more information but NV + AMD GPU sales have got to be the best indicator for growth of the PC gaming market
 
I agree we need more information but NV + AMD GPU sales have got to be the best indicator for growth of the PC gaming market
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If thats the case then most recent data I could find, Im still not seeing this growth. Remember also eg the US population grows about 1% a year, so staying the same is actually market shrinking.
Also they report 3.9% increase in revenue, youve also gotta take into consideration inflation as well as population growth. 3.9% is not something to shout from the rooftops

http://www.tekrevue.com/2013/08/19/nvidia-takes-62-of-discrete-gpu-market-share-in-q2-2013/
The desktop GPU market is in decline, and is now a statistical two-horse race between AMD and NVIDIA, according to a recent report from Jon Peddie Research. The firm’s analysis revealed a 5.4 percent quarterly decline in shipments for the market overall and a 5.2 percent decline over last year.
 
The HDD in my wife's laptop died (we are on a streak mine died 1 month ago), she got stressed out so just in case a new HDD does not do the trick (and to reassure her) we went both on the web to search for potential laptops that would fit her use: the market deserve to go down, it is a terrible market for customers.
Lot of vendors, the average vendors have an insane amount of different models, old and new ones as I guess stock managements has to be a nightmare.
Intel alone ships more different products than the whole ARM manufacturers put together, it might not be accurate but it describes the situation well.
I search for laptop powered by Bay Trail: 27 differents chips 2 or 4 cores, 1 or 2 MB of cache really light difference in clock speed (sometime 5%) and so on, the naming is all over the place , ATom, Celeron Pentium.
If you go for their other celeron and pentium... you are in a world of pain...
So I guess IHV are happy they can try to sell cheaper version wich run 5% faster but has half the L2 for example and fuck clueless consumers.
It is fine fucking clueless customers but I think that at least they should try to save them a headache...

Imho they have to cool down on how they bin chips, how much segmentation they create, etc.
I'm surprised that the IHV still agree to play that game, how many SKU do they have to deal with?

I looked for cheap tablets before Christmas (ultimately passed though that is not the point) and I found that it was a way easier task, researching for which SoC which tablets embarks (including cheap) was easier, the offering was more consistent.

I think that the market need some serious standardization, all actors could benefits from it.
Now it is not only not friendly to customers but I think it might also affect how customer perceive the value of what they are buying, dilute communications efforts, etc.

Imo sales are going down and it is partly deserved, visiting any IHV website is a punishment nothing less.
 
For most use cases, does it really matter what kind of CPU is in there? I think screen resolution and storage type matter much more, unless you're thinking about playing heavy games or doing serious professional work of some sort.

The only reason I've ever changed work laptops is because the screen cracked or because the HDD died and IT didn't support that particular 5yo model anymore.

So instead of making a decision based on CPU first, keep that to the last. Screen, storage, price, CPU. Much easier. :)
 
dZeus said:
Clearly they don't want to cannibalize the push for developers for the Metro platform, as their cross-device strategy (Windows phone, Windows RT) depends on it. If they fail to gain enough ground with developers for the tablet and phone devices, it's game over for Microsoft.
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Phones are a completely independent market, there is certainly money to be made there but software running on a phone doesn't drive the software used on content creation/editing platforms. There's a slightly larger overlap with tablets, but then I always said they should have just gone with x86 and plain windows for tablets ... phones in fact drove them away from making the correct decision in this regard.

Phones are a little like XBOX, there's no synergy with their core business ... there is in fact anti-synergy.
 
we went both on the web to search for potential laptops that would fit her use: the market deserve to go down, it is a terrible market for customers.
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I know what you mean, I wanted to buy one a year ago, 100s of models to choose from in my pricerange and theyre all crap
 
With laptops one method can be to walk in a store (good that they still exist) and discard like 80% of those with a keyboard that sucks.
That's a hyperbole maybe but hell, isn't that the primary interface to the machine :).

There are hundreds other reasons to bitch at laptops, like it's near impossible to find a 15" one without keypad. With the page up/down keys hidden away in a corner or something, yeah feels like I have to use it like a PC/XT keyboard (disable numlock to use the keypad as arrows + page up/down, home, end)

No scrollwheel? That'd be unusual, but fun :p
Laptop vendors are showing themselves to be very conservative acttually. All the same chiclet keyboard, panels etc. (in the 80s, computer reviews were written like this. Pros : has 64K of RAM, displays 8 colours. Cons : chiclet keyboard)

I'm starting to believe that building your own All-in-One PC is a good idea (VESA compatible PC or case mounted behind a monitor of your choice)
 
PC will never fall. never. I am new in board so i'd like to say hello to everyone. Laptop are great but keyboard - it's misery, for my job I get free laptop and I have bought usb keyboards because writing in laptop is.. painful
 
ryker said:
PC will never fall. never. I am new in board so i'd like to say hello to everyone. Laptop are great but keyboard - it's misery, for my job I get free laptop and I have bought usb keyboards because writing in laptop is.. painful
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Different perspective: I use a Mac chicklet keyboard on my PC desktop because it's most similar to my laptop. ;)
 
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