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back to article Stop everything! PC sales did increase in the UK over Christmas

Finally some PC shipments have arrived on our desk that reveal the products customers are actually buying – and the real picture is far less negative than most other analysts’ stats state. Both IDC and Gartner track shipments into distributors and retailers, not actual sales to punters, and after a sustained period of channel …

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  1. chivo243 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Huh?

    Notebooks jumped 15.5 per cent to 999k units, desktops declined 7.6 per cent to 254k, and mobile workstations went up 30.5 per cent to 3,300.

    Help, I need an explaination!

    Notebooks jumped 15.5 per cent

    vs

    mobile workstations went up 30.5 per

    What is the difference between a notebook, and a mobile workstation? Does a mobile workstation come with it's own sherpa?

    3 0 Reply
    1. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Huh?

      Given it's just 3300 machines, I guess they mean laptops with either Quadro or Firepro graphics.

      1 0 Reply
    2. Roland6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Huh?

      What is the difference between a notebook, and a mobile workstation?

      Good question, particularly as given the numbers in each group, I suspect there was a lack of clarity in the reporting and hence many 'mobile workstations' were reported as 'notebooks'.

      I would be interested to know where systems such as the Dell XPS-18 and the Lenovo Horizon series were reported, because both Dell and Lenovo include these mobile/portable systems in their desktop ranges...

      0 0 Reply
  2. Cuddles

    The PC is dead

    Long live the PC!

    "What is the difference between a notebook, and a mobile workstation? Does a mobile workstation come with it's own sherpa?"

    A workstation has actual processing power. For a desktop that generally mean multiple Xeon processors, Quadro (or FirePro) GPU at minimum with possibly Tesla depending on the type of work, and a ton of RAM - they still seem to sell them with as little as 64GB, but you'll be laughed at if you actually try buying something with that little. Obviously mobile workstations don't tend to have such high specs, but you're still looking at Xeon, Quadro and lots more RAM than a regular laptop (64GB being more like the maximum rather than minimum in this case).

    A netbook, on the other and, is a lightweight, underpowered laptop that can't do much other than brows the internet and type stuff in Word. Generally their processing power is enough to decode 1080p video and not a lot more - low power CPU with integrated graphics and probably no more than 8GB RAM, if that.

    Or to put it simply, the difference between a netbook and workstation is about a factor of 10 in price. You can get the former for a few hundred, while the latter is a couple of grand minimum for half decent specs.

    0 2 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Tom 7
      Reply Icon

      Re: The PC is dead

      You mean those machines that are found on the accountants desk but never the engineers.

      0 1 Reply
  3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    Lies, damned lies, etc.

    Windows 10 Home-based machines accounted for 78 per cent of retail PC sales and the OS was running on 35 per cent of business machines

    Truly "running on", or just "licensed on"?

    It's true that W10 is driving desktop sales, I'm about to buy a new PC with W7 installed, while I still can. It'll come with a W10 license + downgrade rights, but W7 preinstalled. How will that show up in Context's figures?

    5 1 Reply
    1. Roland6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Lies, damned lies, etc.

      I'm about to buy a new PC with W7 installed, while I still can. It'll come with a W10 license + downgrade rights, but W7 preinstalled. How will that show up in Context's figures?

      Suspect it will come with a Win10 COA, hence it will be reported as a Win10 sale.

      Word of warning, make sure you get the Win7 backup/restore media (or create your own) as I doubt the system will ship with a Win7 COA and hence you will only be able to restore Win7 by using the OEM recovery media.

      1 0 Reply
  4. phil dude
    WTF?

    Black Friday?

    There is no thanksgiving in the UK, so how can there be a Black Friday?

    Oh that's right, a marketing scam..."SALE!!!!! ALL THINGZ MUTZ GOOOOO!!!!"

    P.

    4 0 Reply

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