Is the end nigh? PC market freefall accelerates.

[jimbo75]

I think all of intels previous 55W mobile chips have been ~$1K "extreme editions" though? It doesn't seem likely that they will change that.

GT3e appears to be some kind of attempt to save OEM's $100 on attaching an Nvidia card at a narrow price/performance level. It will also look good at the top of Anand's benchmarks for a while, but in terms of advancing the market I can't really see it.

Anand mentioned something about "R suffix" desktop chips with it though, first I heard about that one.

 

[joker454]

I saw this article but I don't think it has anything to do with Windows 8. There is just little reason to upgrade one's pc anymore. I evaluated my current setup at home where I do extensive video editing and encoding, so I need all the cpu power I can get. Yet my office pc is still a 3 year old sandy bridge cpu. Because while Intel keeps making me want to buy a new motherboard, cpu and reinstall everything to get 10% speed increase here and 10% speed increase there, meanwhile I slapped in an ancient NVidia 560ti and got a 400% increase in video encoding speed, and can view video in realtime on the editing timeline even with lots of effects piled on, something still not possible with Intel's latest and fastest cpu's.

So I had to wonder, if I don't need to upgrade even though what I do for my business is very cpu intensive, they why in heck would the average person need to even bother when they just need it for typical daily tasks. Same with my gaming pc, it's also a 3 year old sandy bridge machine. I changed the video card once and will probably change it once again once the new consoles come out, and that's it. It will probably last for years as it is.

There just isn't a whole lot of need to upgrade a pc anymore.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah I know someone playing her Pogo quite contently on an Athlon XP 2500+. The renowned Abit NF7-S 2.0 is just that awesome. That CPU probably still beats the latest ARM tablet nonsense per-core...

That's probably what's going on with the death of PC sales, and the reason for the fight-to-the-bottom in pricing.

 

[jimbo75]

Windows 8 has to take some blame but I agree it's been overstated. Had it been great it might have saved PC's, but that's a lot different from being at fault for their demise.

I'm a desktop guy and always will be, and thankfully there are still plenty of people who think the same way. The problem is that as the market shrinks, the price rises - or the performance stagnates. There's no escaping it, we either have to accept higher prices or much lesser performance increases at the same price. I have this weird hunch that many of us will stick with what we've got and go buy a tablet instead...

 

[HMBR]

I can't see why Windows 8 should be blamed, perhaps it could be blamed for not being extremely positive, but the OS for me is far from a disaster or something to be avoided...

I blame the overall economics of the world at the moment, the rise of ARM and Intel/AMD for making good enough hardware (for today's basic computing) since 2006.


PS. this post was made using a dual core k8 at 2.4GHz using Windows 8 Pro x64

 

[Squilliam]

That should definitely play a part into it, I would also think that with the crisis people are less willing to replace devices that are still working for the sake of having something new.

In general I do agree that tablets are offering people a choice when all the options they had previously was a computer for doing precisely the same task. I guess if all you're mainly doing is internet surfing then something like the iPad with a good screen and reasonable performance along with excellent battery life with a touch screen to make casual facebook etc a breeze to surf would be a good alternative. Whilst you can buy a $500 laptop none of them are actually that good, I'm typing this on an 11" touch screen Windows 8 laptop I got for study and compared to the iPad it really isn't that great inspite a similar price. The screen is terrible 1024/768 and it has 2GB of RAM and a 1.1Ghz Celeron. Whilst the computer would be more powerful than an iPad 4 the act of surfing the net would probably be more pleasant on the former.

Relying on EOL parts to drive volume is not sustainable.

This trend doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.

Well it isn't something to rely on but I figured that it was something which was different YOY between this sample and last which could have explained some of the drop in PC sales.

Big purchasers/IT departments probably know something about Haswell by now. It does look like a compelling improvement for laptops. There hasn't really been a 'great' Windows 8 tablet released yet (I've been watching) and people are probably hesitant to jump into an OS with a new paradigm. In addition to this I wonder if gamers are thinking about whether to go console or PC for the next cycle? There are a lot of contributing reasons I guess but worrisome nonetheless.

 

[joker454]

Well I guess one way Windows 8 could be blamed is that it runs faster and leaner than Windows 7 does. For example we were able to revive an old laptop we had lying around by putting Windows 8 on it. Windows 7 ran like a pig on it do to too much disk thrashing (it only has 1GB of ram), whereas Windows 8 works better on it. So in that respect if your current hardware is running a bit slow then you can put Windows 8 on it to speed it up and put off a pc hardware upgrade a few more years. Likewise my Mac Air and office pc both are noticeably faster with Windows 8, which gives me even less reason to bother upgrading any time soon.

The pc space has just gotten kind of boring, there haven't been any exciting upgrades since the i7-2600k. I'm more looking to the gpu space now for future performance increases given that Intel has shifted gears and is understandably now chasing power efficiency rather than brute performance. I'm also keeping an eye out for the next rev of Surface Pro's, either haswell or amd based versions, I may grab one of those. My two desktop pc's look to be fine for the foreseeable future.

 

[HMBR]

Well I guess one way Windows 8 could be blamed is that it runs faster and leaner than Windows 7 does.

that's another interesting point, I remember when upgrading from windows 95 to 98 I needed more ram, when upgrading from 98 to XP I also needed more ram, a faster HD, a faster CPU...

when Vista came it was basically the same, but it seems a lot of people where unhappy, 7 came with the same requirements, and it was still higher for the people upgrading from Xp to 7, it made sense to upgrade or buy a new PC for the new shiny OS that everybody loved, when it comes to windows 8... there is no higher requirements, actually it probably runs better with slow IGPs and less memory, since it was also made to work with ULV tablets.... my Athlon X2 2.4GHz feels like a new machine with windows 8, it's a very pleasant basic computing experience.

 

[RedVi]

The majority that "buy" Windows get it through purchasing a new PC. I don't think Win8 being less resource intensive has a lot to do with hardware sales decline.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Well I guess one way Windows 8 could be blamed is that it runs faster and leaner than Windows 7 does. For example we were able to revive an old laptop we had lying around by putting Windows 8 on it. Windows 7 ran like a pig on it do to too much disk thrashing (it only has 1GB of ram), whereas Windows 8 works better on it. So in that respect if your current hardware is running a bit slow then you can put Windows 8 on it to speed it up and put off a pc hardware upgrade a few more years. Likewise my Mac Air and office pc both are noticeably faster with Windows 8, which gives me even less reason to bother upgrading any time soon.

The pc space has just gotten kind of boring, there haven't been any exciting upgrades since the i7-2600k. I'm more looking to the gpu space now for future performance increases given that Intel has shifted gears and is understandably now chasing power efficiency rather than brute performance. I'm also keeping an eye out for the next rev of Surface Pro's, either haswell or amd based versions, I may grab one of those. My two desktop pc's look to be fine for the foreseeable future.

Windows 8 sure didn't help either. Unlike gamers and 3D hardware enthusiasts, most users simply don't have a reason to buy new PCs, or even upgrade existing hardware.

I think people were expecting Windows 8 to kick off an upgrade cycle based on its touch screen capabilities, and the market has sort of rejected Microsoft's vision there. Traditional PC users are rejecting the start screen, and tablet users already have iOS and Android to suit their needs.

 

[fellix]

Well I guess one way Windows 8 could be blamed is that it runs faster and leaner than Windows 7 does. For example we were able to revive an old laptop we had lying around by putting Windows 8 on it. Windows 7 ran like a pig on it do to too much disk thrashing (it only has 1GB of ram), whereas Windows 8 works better on it. So in that respect if your current hardware is running a bit slow then you can put Windows 8 on it to speed it up and put off a pc hardware upgrade a few more years. Likewise my Mac Air and office pc both are noticeably faster with Windows 8, which gives me even less reason to bother upgrading any time soon.

Very similar story here.
My old old Toshiba laptop, with a cut-down single-core Merom and 2GB of DDR2 suddenly became a semi-decent portable workstation with Win8 driving it. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and the full stack of web browsers -- everything running in a smooth symphony, perfect for a second mobile web-developing rig. And saved me a good amount of cash for the intended new machine.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

A lot of businesses won't spend the money to upgrade to Win 8 in these economic times, and Win 8 with it's enforced Metro/lack of start nonsense breaks a lot of workflow.

A lot more people would have adopted it (especially given the good price at launch) if it didn't have these artificial barriers that put so many people off it. It's just easier to stick with Win 7 and know what you are doing than doing things differently with the Win 8 paradigm.

MS should have known that with nothing really compelling in Win 8 for desktop PC users, inertia would take over and people will stick with Win 7 rather than deal with all the barriers that Win 8 makes them jump over.

 

[zed]

Very similar story here.
My old old Toshiba laptop ..

I agree that win 8 seems to be a very nice OS underneath (i,e, ignore the metro UI etc stuff)
but the facts are win 8 adoption rates are very slow, slower than win 7, slower than even vista.
which disproves the above theory.

its the economy, its win 8 being crap, its win 8 being too good, its intel, what else?.

but Seriously,
is there anyone that actually seriously believes that the primary reason behind the decline is NOT due to the recent rise of tablets/phones?

 

[fellix]

Vista, for all the hate on it, actually drove the hardware sales up in the wide PC spectrum -- more memory, better graphics accelerators, etc. At least the hardware vendors were happy with it.
Win8 doesn't push such boundaries, except for the touch-friendly UI, but that's simply not compelling for the desktops in any way. It is still struggling to gain momentum in the tablet market due to overwhelming competition, while the optimized kernel and memory management means no excuse/need for a new grand upgrade or replacement cycle, at least for those willing to move to the new OS.

 

[zed]

while the optimized kernel and memory management means no excuse/need for a new grand upgrade or replacement cycle, at least for those willing to move to the new OS

I dont think youre understanding the logic.
If what you say is true and hordes of users are finding win8 so great that they can use it on their old PCs (thus no need for new hardware)(*), then it follows logically the adoption rate of win 8 will be very high. Yes.
But based on win 8's terrible sales numbers we can conclude thats not true.
Sorry Im terrible at explaining things, perhaps someone else can try.

(*)note I tend to think the same as you the underlying OS in win 8, seems to be less resource dependant as win 7, and FWIW mac OS lion

 

[jimbo75]

People with old PC's are quite content with XP and have no real need to upgrade to Windows 8.

I do believe that many people will actively be avoiding Windows 8 on new PC's which will be contributing, but it's mostly tablets doing the damage imo.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I would have gone Win8 except for Metro/lack of start. I used it for a few days, and it was just awful. Everything that I could do easily in Win 7 I could do in Win 8, only with more hassle and trouble, so I might as well save money and stick with what works.

Really, I don't understand how a big company like Microsoft that has dominated desktop PCs for the last twenty years could make such a big mistake of forcing a touchscreen UI onto desktop PCs that overwhelmingly don't use touchscreens. It's just the wrong tool for the job, and should at the very least have been optional, not dumped onto us whether we want it or not.

 

[Grall]

I dont think youre understanding the logic.
If what you say is true and hordes of users are finding win8 so great that they can use it on their old PCs (thus no need for new hardware)(*), then it follows logically the adoption rate of win 8 will be very high. Yes.

TBH, even if a MS OS sells terribly it's still being bought by hordes of people... It's all relative. I'm not sure if actual hordes of people buy win8 to use on old(er) computers though, I think most get their windowses when buying a new system. The hardware sales lost to people finding win8 breathing new life in their old struggling nag of a PC are probably merely incidental, and marginal.

 

[Alexko]

I would have gone Win8 except for Metro/lack of start. I used it for a few days, and it was just awful. Everything that I could do easily in Win 7 I could do in Win 8, only with more hassle and trouble, so I might as well save money and stick with what works.

Really, I don't understand how a big company like Microsoft that has dominated desktop PCs for the last twenty years could make such a big mistake of forcing a touchscreen UI onto desktop PCs that overwhelmingly don't use touchscreens. It's just the wrong tool for the job, and should at the very least have been optional, not dumped onto us whether we want it or not.

The strangest part is that the OS has been out for months, and this has been pissing people off for months, and MS is still not backing down. This must be coming from Ballmer himself, otherwise I don't see how the company could be this stubborn.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I would choose Windows 8 over 7, but then again I'd be using third party software and I'm a technical user who was not really pleased with Windows 7's start menu. So, crap got replaced by crap and you can use the same software (Classic Shell) to get the same end result (a start menu with almost all Windows 98 features). But Win 8 has improvments on top of crap. Task manager is the most visible of it, the old one was getting long in the tooth, dating back to NT 4!

Needlesss to say most people don't have the same viewpoint as I do.
In honesty, I don't run Windows anymore but I prefer Windows 8 over Windows 7 if I have to use it.. unless I can't install that 3rd party software to fix it.