Hey doc, what's the PC's prognosis? A. Long-term growth below zero

Re: PCs are now workstations?

Bingo. And people aren't refreshing their professional workstations for several reasons.

1) What they have is good enough.

2) Nothing is really compelling enough to trigger an upgrade asynchronously of system death.

3) Professionals don't want Fisher Price toy operating systems

4) The transition to the far more expensive "cloud" versions of software is not enticing. doubly so because this is just paying more money so that DRM can be added, without providing anything of value to the customer.

5) Once burned, twice shy: what value is there to the customer in buying into the new "perpetual upgrade" your-wallet-as-a-service PC ecosystem when new software versions regularly ship with undesired and undesirable changes?

While this doesn't cover everyone, of course, I think by now it's pretty safe to say that the majority of PC users are quite happy with what we've got for PCs and simply aren't enticed by the new stuff on offer.

At some point, you need to admit that you've reached Peak Hammer. Trying to reinvent the hammer isn't going to shift more hammers. You'll still sell hammers, but the design isn't going to evolve much. Hammers will be chosen based on quality and price and that's it.

You can go forth an invent the jackhammer, but that's a fundamentally different device. You can invent the screw and screw driver, but again, it's a fundamentally different device with a different purpose.

There's also the point where we need to accept that the screw driver and hammer are destined to be two different devices. You don't build a house with a leatherman. Markets evolve. You can't slap multiple tools together and hope you can keep your margins high. When you've reached peak hammer then it's time to accept margins on that tool will evaporate. You need to diversify: make a diversity of tools and make up the margin loss in volume.

Or, get the hell out of tool manufacturing all together and move on to something else. Either way, the halcyon days of short refresh cycles, mass shipments and high margins are behind hte PC industry. They won't be coming back.

Like the hammer, if you want to sell this common professional tool you are now going to have to compete on quality and price. Which, to put it bluntly, means Microsoft's PC division is pretty much fucked.

Re: PCs are now workstations?

I agree, with one caveat, I find, although I have a tablet and a smartphone, that I still put a lot of tasks off until I can sit in front of a proper screen.

A smartphone and tablet are great for doing simple tasks on the move, that have to be done immediately, but for more intense work, I'll wait until I get to a real PC with a decent sized screen and proper input devices.

With projected displays and better input methods on mobile devices, this might change over time, but if I need to type more than a line or two of text, if it can wait, it waits until I can sit at a proper keyboard, for example.

Re: PCs are now workstations?

The key thing is, PC's today are very powerful, they are cheap and they are small...

The no push to upgrade like there used to be, basically there is a diminishing return on upgrading..

the only real need for a very high spec PC is if your gaming...

I suspect in a few years, especially if Ubuntu get their way, we will see a merging of phone & desktop...

Your phone will do the processing, the dock will give you a bigger interface...

Re: PCs are now workstations?

My PC is not dying soon, but I can see a future need to replace it. Why? I'm currently streaming games etc to 2 other devices. No, a "server" will not do unless I can fit a Titan in there for some gaming GPU number crunching. Ok, I probably could, but currently a desktop gives me the streaming capability of paid for services, for half the price of a subscription or an expensive dedicated server.

Re: PCs are now workstations?

The PC generates all content and remains the digital workhorse of society, and anyone who thinks it is going away, including Gartner, probably invested all their money in lastminute.com in 1999.

Re: "I think PCs will be effected by those changes and react to the extent that they can."

Why did you put a grocer's apostrophe in PCs?

"8.1 makes Windows usable with a mouse again (at least if you have a touch enabled mouse). "

And that is the final link in the chain that damns Microsoft to the circles of Hell for all eternity.

There will be no ghosts visiting you this XMas, Scrooge McBallmer - you're doomed.

Re: You don't know what you've got 'til its gone

I completely agree, but I think there won't be any market growth coming out of this.

Consider: There are two types of users. (A) Sophisticated tech users, who want a PC or server, to use for photos, music, what have you you. (B) Unsophisticated users who don't care about any of that - they are happy to use facebook as a hard drive to use your words.

Type A users in the developed world already have a PC or server.

And there are many (perhaps more?) Type B users, who either have a PC because they bought it before tablets/smartphones came out (and hardly ever use it) or don't and don't care.

Now as developing countries increase their economic power, many new Type A users will come onto the market. But on the other hand there are lots of Type B users in the developed world who will never replace their PC, they'll get a tablet instead.

So in the end, growth is something the PC market will not see again, unless they come up with a step change in technology.

Re: It's always puzzled me.

Thats always the issue for me. It seems 'younger' folks are content with a picture shown as a 640x480 placement on a webpage.

"Looks great!" they all say!

Then you take those smartphone 8MP files and look at them full size and its noise city. I really dont know why everyone still craves higher MP on these things when my 2004 3.2MP Nikon still produces better pictures than even the 12MP+ smartphone monsters.

Re: It's always puzzled me.

Not just a megapixel issue - a lens size / flash type one too. I see time and again how absolutely crappily blurry do pics tend to turn out in an indoors / poorly-lit environment (like, say... pubs) yet people cannot seem to get enough of those around me - granted, they look perfectly fine on a mobile's tiny screen. Until you zoom in...

Re: It's always puzzled me.

I think the same thing was said about that new fangled 35mm stuff.

Re: The real trend

So why aren't they making/ selling PCs that don't take 3 minutes to start? It's not hard. You just replace the HD with an SSD. (120Gb is plenty, and for folks who need more, just plug in a USB3 Terabyte or two).

Once you've done that, get rid of all the fans (passive-cooling) so it's silent, and you then don't have to boot it except after major software upgrades or power cuts. You just turn off the monitor and let it go to sleep. Whenever you want, press a key and turn on the monitor. It's ready in a few seconds.

I've built myself such a system around a Gigabyte GA-C1037UN-EU board. Yes, it's a "slow" CPU, but quite fast enough for everything I use except a few games (for which I have a second PC). Can I buy a similar system without DIY assembly? I don't think so.

Lack of imagination at the hardware vendors is a part of their problem. What I can't do is integrate the passively-cooled PC into the monitor (which has a conveniently large area for a heatsink on the back), thereby saving a power supply and a lot of wires. Possibly also throw in a TV tuner, if TV tuners are as cheap as I think they might be.

I could get started on the state of laptops ... where can I buy a PC laptop with a 15in high-res screen, without taking out a second mortgage? The screens exist - you can buy a small TV with such a screen, for not a lot of money.

Re: We're losing more than what most realise...

Microsoft shut the door on hobbyist programming a long time ago. They wanted users clueless and brainwashed to buy MS. The accomplished the first part, something went wrong for them with the second :-)

These days your best discovery device is an old (or ancient, or even new) PC running Linux if you are happy with pure software, or a Rasberry Pi if you want to hack hardware. When I learned to hack hardware, the box I was hacking cost about ten times a Rasberry Pi, and a pound was worth more back then!