back to article The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

The PC market is doomed. We know this. You know this. Gartner knows this, but it reckons vendors can bleed out a few more pennies if they start selling high-end rigs for gamers. "PCs are no longer the first or only devices users are choosing for internet access," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner. …

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  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "PCs are no longer the first or only devices users are choosing for internet access,"

    Maybe I'm getting old & the memory isn't what it was but I'm sure I can remember businesses not only using PCs for purposes other than internet access but using them for business before internet access became common. I think they might still be doing that. The vendors' problem isn't that people are using other gadgets instead of PCs, it's that the PCs they have are still working and fit for purpose.

    Maybe the market for market reports has also saturated as they keep finding the same thing.

    1. itzman

      Re: PCs are no longer the first or only devices users are choosing for internet access,"

      I think the point here is that domestic customers, and to a large extent many corporates, have dumped the PC, especially where all they actually want is internet access.

      The PC has been a two pronged fork - business workstation and low level domestic and corporate network access device.

      The second prong is now essentially dead. What that means is that there will be a huge drop in sales volume of both the desktop hardware, and windows software, in favour of android type devices.

      And the severe risk that in more professional situations, running bespoke code, the PC will be running Linux instead of windows.

    2. W. Anderson

      Whatever the reason, PC sales are declining rapidly

      Even as Doctor Syntax states - "the PCs they have are still working and fit for purpose " - which is true to a point, does not explain clearly the precipitous drop in PC shipments each year over the past 5 years, in regards concrete and fact-based reason(s).

      Unfortunately this news, while not being new, is very depressing to many Microsoft loyalists, who continually rant on TheRegister and other USA tech media that the venerable PC market, aka Windows PC market, will return to it's former glory, even if only in their own minds.

      Recently Dell reported substantial drop and loses in PC sales, and HP has effectively transitioned to "enterprise and corporate" data centre focus. The only profitable PC vendor, which also has fading Windows PC sales, is Lenovo with good sales in China, a country that had mandated future computing platforms for all government, education and banking/related financial institutes be based on GNU/Linux Operating System (OS), which does not help Microsoft at all.

      The most powerful Super Computer on earth, for third straight year is not a IBM or Cray product out of USA, but a Chinese built Linux based computer, and the Chinese have thus proven and been adequately convinced that Windows based technology - even in PCs - is a trend of the past.

      The arc of the technological universe has swung away from tech behemoths of old, to new gladiators using mostly Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) based technology and innovation absent from PC vendors.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Whatever the reason, PC sales are declining rapidly

        Even as Doctor Syntax states - "the PCs they have are still working and fit for purpose " - which is true to a point, does not explain clearly the precipitous drop in PC shipments each year over the past 5 years, in regards concrete and fact-based reason(s).

        Maybe since the GFC corporates are getting a little tighter with the 3 year refresh cycle in order to save cash as those old machines...guess what?...are still just as capable of running any of the tasks they did when first bought. You also have places switching to Citrix/VDI type environments (although I don't know how server sales have gone) which also removes the need to refresh the PCs. Where I'm working there are a few workstations but most old desktops are just citrix viewers.

    3. a_yank_lurker

      @Doctor Syntax - Gartner is ignoring the fact that PCs are still useful for many people and many purposes. They are not looking at basic economic history of what happens when a market matures. Unit sales do not grow and sometimes decline for a period. There will be a vendor shakeout because the manufacturing capacity is too large for the market and some will not make it through the contraction.

    4. 1Rafayal

      Personally, I would be interested to see how many "old" PM'S that have been shipped over to impoverished countries are in use.

      Years back, I worked in a school during the switch from Acorn machines to Windows based machines. We boxed up all the Acorn stuff and donated it to a charity collecting working computers for poor countries who wanted to provide at least some basic IT education.

      Granted, the comparison between Acorn and Windows is beyond the point now, but I do know quite a few schools donated old machines and equipment to similar charities during the first few years of the new century. I wonder who uses them now, if at all.

      1. Chika
        Happy

        Granted, the comparison between Acorn and Windows is beyond the point now, but I do know quite a few schools donated old machines and equipment to similar charities during the first few years of the new century. I wonder who uses them now, if at all.

        Well... now that you mention it...

        (Keep quiet, you two! Maybe they won't notice!)

    5. Boris1558

      The non-connection business use of local office computers was quite low pre-internet. Most (about a 10 to one ratio) of the computer "like" university devices in the mid 80s were used to connect to somewhere which quickly meant the Internet as it became available late in the late 80s. All the people I knew who had computers at home in the 80s used them for games or bulletin-board serving/access hardly business like activities pre-internet.

      The number of my IT department colleagues who truly need more that a second screen and a "real" keyboard in addition to their laptop or tablet is about 1 in 70 (while about 1 in 4 think they do).

      1. 1Rafayal

        @Boris1558

        I think the point I failed to make is this: whilst we are all whizzing away with our fancy new wundermachinen, what is the third world using, if anything at all?

        A lot of UK business has been donating old computing equipment for almost a decade to organisations like UNICEF and Save the Children. What has happened to that equipment? Who uses it? Does it even get on the Internet? What software does it run?

        There must be a whole demographic out there that we simply don't see because we are arguing the toss over which version of which operating system is more superior etc. And, from a distinctively tacky point of view, is there an untapped market out there?

        I know Microsoft tried to pedal a basic version of Windows XP or 7 a few years back, a Starter edition or something, for developing countries (quite why they would want a hobbled version of an older Windows when they could get a fully featured Linux distro was beyond my capacity to reason at the time).

        These must be places where Internet availability will be patchy at best, so offering Stuff as a Service wouldn't really work that well, if people even wanted it.

        I guess that's why Zuckerberg and Co are trying to give Africa free Internet, because Stuff as a Service is what they really, really need right now.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "A lot of UK business has been donating old computing equipment for almost a decade to organisations like UNICEF and Save the Children. What has happened to that equipment?"

          Given that this is old equipment before it gets shipped one wonders how much longer it survives. In fact, how much survives the rigours of shipment. Having said that, any trip to the local skip site shows a selection of old PCs and monitors in the electronics cage. What happens to those? And how many of those PCs have been wiped?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Do gamers even buy PCs though? I never met anyone who did. They're too fussy about picking the exact components, especially GFX card, low latency RAM, and storage, to just grab something off the shelf.

    1. MrXavia

      They do for laptops, the choice for high end laptops is very small...

      PC wise, I think the high end has always been a DIY market

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        By choice we mean MSI.

        But the market for gaming laptops is even smaller than the market for gaming PCs

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          "By choice we mean MSI"

          Eurocom uber alles.

    2. NoneSuch Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Absolutely correct. I built my last gaming rig three years ago with hand picked parts and it still out-performs brand new Dells today.

    3. Greg J Preece

      Been a PC gamer my whole life, and I'd never consider a pre-built tower. Aside from wanting to know exactly what's in it/having it match my spec, and the honest satisfaction I get from putting one together, pre-builts are often a complete rip-off. $1400 towers labelled as "premium gaming" PCs that turn out to be running 750GTs, the lowest possible quality of PSU, that kind of thing.

      1. PhilBack

        800W is not the standard part

        Nor are silent fans or usable cases.

        DYI all the way!

    4. PatientOne

      @ massivelySerial

      Yes, gamers do indeed buy PCs and not just get the parts to build the PC themselves. They do, however, tend to go to specialist suppliers for said PC's, and not to the likes of DELL or HP who manufacture in bulk and don't use the top end components, nor allow pick-n-mix builds. These reports tend to ignore the smaller, specialist suppliers who are doing quite okay at the moment.

  3. Kurt S

    "The high-end, purpose-built gaming PC segment (for example, $1,000 or more) is where PC vendors should focus for long-term profitability, despite this segment's competitiveness," said Tsai.

    Shame a large percentage of that target audience tend to build their own then.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I had a friend at uni who's house was burgled, and his pride of joy gaming machine, with the colour co-ordinated LEDs and windowed case was stolen.

      The insurance company gave him, not cash of equivalent value, but a beige box PC. The look on his face still haunts me today.

      1. Kurt S

        I can imagine, the poor sob, that's the stuff of nightmares that is.

      2. fattybacon

        Insurance win

        You need to spell out to your insurance company what was inside.

        I had an £150 Dell netbook stolen, that by outlet flook had a 3G data card inside and an SSD. They replaced it with a £500 Dell ultrabook because they couldn't find anything else with a 3G in on their list.

    2. DiViDeD

      "target audience tend to build their own "

      The last off the shelf system I bought was a 486DX-33, at a time when Commander Keen represented the pinnacle of PC gaming (oh yes!).

      Even that didn't get off scott free, since I replaced RAM, CPU, storage and added a 'graphics' card before moving up to my first DIY machine. The trouble with retail gaming rigs is that they always have the last, or last but one graphics hardware, the PSU that *might* be good enough for Far Cry, as long as you don't do something stupid like turn everything up to 11 or SLi a couple of Titan Blacks, which is EXACTLY what hardcore gamers will do!

      Gamers setting video options on their new game don't need a set of switches and sliders for AA and anisotropy, they simply need a button that says 'Everything. Max'. And if it can overclock the GPUs and CPU while it's at it, that'll do nicely.

      Gamers don't rely on a warranty to protect against failure, they rely on replacing everything that might be suss with something in steel capped boots way overspecced for the job. And they never, ever, build down to a price.

      If PC manufacturers are going to rely on gamers for their future sales, they'll have to either trawl the supply chain for military spec hardware (preferably with a couple of blue LEDs attached), or just shut up shop and go back to building washing machines.

      A few years ago someone asked me where I bought my gaming rig. When I told her I'd built it she asked "So how much money did that save you?"

      Save? SAVE??

      1. Boothy

        Re: "target audience tend to build their own "

        Similar for myself.

        My first ever Windows PC was an off the shelf unit, and that was back in 1998 If my memory is correct?! (I was an Amiga 4000 & 1200 user at the time). The PC was a Pentium II, the type with the CPU on a card, rather than the usual ZIF socket.

        This was also my last ever Windows PC that I bought (although I did buy a Laptop at one point).

        Since then its been Triggers Broom. Update this, update that, replace this etc. None of the original components left now other than the case, which stands empty now.

        No idea how much I've spent over the years, and also don't really care!

        1. Chris Griffiths
          Thumb Up

          Re: "target audience tend to build their own "

          Same here. Looking at my PC now, it's exactly the same as when I build it in 2007. I've only swapped the case, motherboard (twice), CPU (three times), memory (same), HDDs (three swaps and an addition), monitors (on my 4th) and soundcard (removed). But at least I kept the same DVD-RW all the way through!

          Just today I treated myself to a new PSU to help with my rebooting issue*

          *vanity project to tidy up my cabling and stop my case bulging

      2. Chika

        Re: "target audience tend to build their own "

        When it comes to PCs, while I do have laptops that were off the shelf, I've never bought a desktop PC. I've always bought components and built it myself going back to my first self-build, an AMD K6 II/Gigabyte board based system. That kept going for quite a while until I cooked the CPU by forgetting to hook up the fan during a case swap.

        The only off-the-shelf PCs I ever bought were Risc PCs, and they are pretty solid beasts!

        Even a blind pig stumbles across an Acorn now and again!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, if Gartner says it's pretty much dead, then it's either totally dead or there will be a renaissance.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Gartner? Aren't they dead already?

      If the PC is dead then I take it that everyone inside Gartner has ditched theirs?

      If not then Gartner should die NOW!

      1. Roq D. Kasba

        Re: Gartner? Aren't they dead already?

        Gartner must pay The Reg to publish their press releases, the past few have been at best dubious but with very little editorial snark.

      2. Anonymous Blowhard

        Re: Gartner? Aren't they dead already?

        From the numbers quoted, it looks like they've stopped using calculators as well.

        "an estimated 232 million units in 2016" worth "an expected $137m" equates to a unit price of 59 cents.

    2. J. R. Hartley

      Is 2016 the year of Gartner on the desktop?

      Probably not.

  5. Naselus

    Since it's a Gartner Report

    That more or less guarantees that the PC market is about to quintuple in size in the next 3 years.

  6. Christian Berger

    "Ultramobile premium"

    For Garner that probably means "Ultrabooks" which are huge slaps of a laptop... for some reason optimized to be thin. That's not portable. A portable device would be like a Palmtop.

    Also all we are seeing right now is the "home computer" crowd moving towards tablets and "smart"phones. Those are the people who used to have traditional home computers and TV-sets connected to them. As PCs became cheaper, they moved to them, causing in part the "Windows Boom" in the 1990s. Now they move away from that market. What is left are more professional users, people who want to actually work with their computers...

    and those people don't care about pre-loaded crap. They want to have the operating system they want, not whatever Microsoft considers fashionable at the time.

    1. spiny norman

      Re: "Ultramobile premium"

      I'd agree there was a "home computer" market that sold PCs to people who didn't really need one, but there was no viable alternative for what they did need. Now there are alternatives - phones and tablets - they've gone there in droves.

      I don't play games, but I still wanted a PC with decent graphics that would drive a big screen that I could actually do stuff on. I ended up with what I suppose you'd call a mid-range gaming machine, which I didn't get from one of the big vendors. I'm ok with Windows 10, but it was nice not to have a load of other sponsored junk to remove.

  7. BarryUK

    Hmm, seems to be confusing meeeeelions with BEEEELIONS in this article.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      2016 - the Year of the $0.59 PC?

      Being a Gartner report, three orders of magnitude is an acceptable error bar...

    2. F. Svenson

      Glad I wasn't the only one stumped by revenue under $1 per unit shipped.

  8. tempemeaty
    Facepalm

    Is Microsoft the elephant in the room...?

    As long as pc makers continue to rely on Microsoft to make their PCs sell nothing is going to change.

    * sits back watching everything circle the drain *

  9. Chronos
    Holmes

    The PC...

    ...you have is perfectly adequate. You are not a Phombie (phone zombie, wandering around looking at a smartphone and not watching where you're sodding well going, wishing you had some brains) and you don't want Windows 10 despite Macrosoft more or less ramming it down your throat, so SALES are dead.

    The PC's demise is greatly exaggerated.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge

      Re: The PC...

      "The PC's demise is greatly exaggerated."

      WELL! SAID!

      As you pointed out, SALES are dead. well, not ENTIRELY dead. Just dropping and low.

      why?

      a) user perception of "better". Win-10-nic and "Ape" don't 'look better' or 'perform better' than existing (say windows 7) machines. Moore's law isn't making them 'faster enough' than 'what you already own'.

      b) the 4-inchers [aka 'phone zombies'] who do ALL of their computing on a 4-inch phone screen, do faceb**ch, tw*tter, and texting [the new 'messenger'] MOST of the time. They buy new 'toys' to do this with, and they're nearly always a 4-inch 'phone factor'.

      - which leads to -

      c) SALES are currently driven by the 4-inchers. This drives CLUELESS MARKET-DROIDS into "feeling" that "the PC is dead". which is WRONG.

      HOW TO FIX IT:

      give people a reason to WANT to get a new PC/laptop to replace the old one!

      [as of now, "Ape" and Win-10-nic are DIS-incentives to get something new]

      /me points out: sales figures are more like a derivative, not an integral, and nobody is tracking "the depletion rate" of existing machines, now are they? So it's an incomplete picture at best.

    2. Shadow Systems

      Re: The PC...

      Very well said!

      I am in the market for a new machine & have been shopping the various players in the desktop market. I can get very nice deals on awesome hardware (how about a quad core, 6th gen, 4GHz, i7 with 32Gigs of DDR4 RAM & a 250Gb M.2 SSD for $1,200USD from System76? Is that good enough?) for less than the cost of a similarly equipped laptop. "Thin & Light" critters need not apply, they can't even come CLOSE on specs much less performance, & certainly not at that price point.

      So I can shop around to find the best deal on the hardware I want in the configuration I need, & work with the seller to tweak it even farther, all for a price undreamed of ~5 years ago. And best of all, if I don't want Windows on it I don't HAVE to get it. Most of the major vendors try to insist, but all it takes is the phrase "Do you want to make this sale or do you want to leave MS on it?" to get them to back off. You obviously can't do this via a website, but if you get the basics of the system you want there first & then call their sales line, that's where the haggling & tweaking comes into play.

      It *really* pounds the lesson home if you configure the hardware with $Vendor1, get it RIGHT up to the point of giving them your credit card, then asking about either it being a bare bones (no OS) or Linux box. If they refuse then you shrug, say "Guess I'll take my money somewhere else then..." & wait a few seconds before hanging up. They NEED that sale, they're hurting for the money, so it's a buyer's market. If they refuse to play, you can take your ball & go elsewhere.

      Like System76, where the aforementioned desktop can be had by configuring your own "Rattle Pro" machine to the top of the line bits they offer, & *still* not come anywhere near what others would charge for a pitifully equipped "Thin & Light" supposedly "Gaming" laptop.

      I'm not trying to flog S76, I've got no ties to them at all, but I was _SO_ impressed by the value you can get from a dealer if you tell them you want a desktop rather than a laptop. They fall all over themselves to make that sale, thus ensuring you can get some massively sweet hardware for very little (comparitive to laptops) cost.

      The fact that you can then "force" them to either give it to you without Windows on it or as a Linux (usually Ubuntu) box instead is just icing on the cake.

      Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go browse the vendors again. I like configuring one of those supposedly "dead" PC desktops & cackling gleefully at the prices...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The little hand held jobs will never replace the PC. The reasons for the loss of sales is not just people buying mobs to view facebook. In the early days of computing, people often upgraded every 2 years because they needed additional computer power and features to do their jobs. I remember upgrading from an old 8086 computer to a 286 because the 286 had 4 meg of memory and a 80 meg hard drive and was much faster. I upgraded my 286 for a 486 because the 486 had windows 3.10 (a gui which made things easier to do), and a 160 meg hard drive. Right now, my computer does anything I need it to do. It has a stable operating system (Linux) and I have little need to upgrade. Likewise corporations are less likely to upgrade every two years because 1. their existing system does everything that the corporation needs to have done. With extensive investment in software,it would be very costly to upgrade to a new set of computers and operating system and their would be little to show for it. Just a few thoughts

    1. Richard Jones 1
      WTF?

      Re @AC

      I started with the 8086 running DOS and no internet at all. I built some forecasting models use Lotus 123, then we got hold of the 8088(?) twice as fast but doing much the same thing. I went through a whole herd of such machines, many with no HD and using sneakernet to collect process data for daily and weekly stats processing. The saving on paper printout per machine allowed them to replaced every 6 weeks. I never remember any of them every needing to be replaced..Then the 286 flew in, followed by the 386 and 486 and on and ever upwards, Now I am retired my i3 has been running fine for 6 years or so. My 2008 portable now runs Windows 10, though the only move it makes these days is from the bag to my desk for a weekly backup and to collect a few bits of data. When I can get a mobile phone with a 23 inch or bigger screen, a proper keyboard, no touch screen and a battery that last more than 5 minutes, 5 days would be nice, then Gartner, you can send me a postcard. Oh and this beast should fit into a shirt pocket and ensure hands free is a way of life, just like my existing phone.

      So 8 year old portable; check.

      So 6 year old desk PC;check

      So 10 year old mobile; check

      Yes all present and correct.

      1. Dadmin
        Facepalm

        Re: Re @AC

        Small point, but; "no touch screen"

        Then don't touch it! You do know that you can pair a normal bluetooth mouse to any Android device and it just puts up a standard pointy cursor for you, don't you? I've not tried this on my new iPhone, but I suspect its the same; someone plopped in support for a standard mouse driver, but it's not an attractive feature for most users, so they say nothing about it, but it's right in there for you to use.

        Personally the PC market is an overpriced joke. Unless I'm going to get a high-end gaming rig, which I can just build myself, the "reward" for updating the hardware (better graphics, faster apps, quieter fans, bigger mem and disks) is almost non-existant. There just aren't that many daily apps (applications for you old, crusty types) that require more horsepower than what you can get in a budget system.

        I do plan on updating my aging MacMini(circa 2008) soon, but for PC I really don't have a need since I am mostly a console gamer. The prices for hardware need to come down for people to upgrade and use a desktop system. Perhaps there are too many manufacturers and some need to step aside or get purchased by a bigger player?

        Personally, I got gifted a Lenovo x220 core i7 with 16GB of RAM and a 200GB+ SSD last winter when my last gig's regular IT crew were upgrading the laptop fleet. My bro said "hey, you want one of these old laptops?" Now I have a dedicated Linux Mint system and if need be a Windows 8 OS without a license. Works in a pinch when some payment site has their services locked into an IE browser only mode. Anyway, do I even need to mention Raspberry Pi? Holy crap, even Intel does not get the picture; no one is going to buy a $250+ NUC system when, if you don't live under a rock, you can get a killer box for less than $40 for the naked board. NO ONE!

        REPENT SINNERS, BEFORE YOU WASTE MORE MONEY ON HARDWARE THEY SHOULD JUST GIVE OUT FOR FREE!!11

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: Re @AC

          re: Small point, but; "no touch screen"

          Well whilst I can appreciate the desire not to buy a system with a touch screen, a good second best is to simply disable the touch screen - something MS made very easy in Win7 and I expect is also very easy to do in Linux...

        2. Updraft102

          Re: Re @AC

          "You do know that you can pair a normal bluetooth mouse to any Android device and it just puts up a standard pointy cursor for you, don't you?"

          But will that instantly reconfigure the OS to make better use of screen space, now that huge onscreen controls aren't needed to cope with large, fleshy fingers? Will the OS be able to provide feedback to the user when the mouse arrow hovers over something as it does on operating systems built around a mouse? Will the self-hiding UI elements resize themselves to a more reasonable level and stop auto-hiding once they can afford to take up less of the content window?

          When you build for touch, you have to bake a lot of bad UI features into the OS to make it work. If you're using a touch device, the compromises are necessary evils; you deal with them because there is no other choice. But if you're using a mouse-based pointing paradigm, those necessary evils are wholly unnecessary. That's why some of us reject Windows 10 on the desktop-- even if there is no touchscreen on the system, we still get a confusing mess of half native Windows (mouse based) UI and half touch UI, with the latter forcing us into the compromises for touch support without any compensatory benefit that makes it worthwhile.

      2. Updraft102

        Re: Re @AC

        "When I can get a mobile phone with a 23 inch or bigger screen, a proper keyboard, no touch screen and a battery that last more than 5 minutes, 5 days would be nice, then Gartner, you can send me a postcard."

        That's a good start, but phones are still essentially disposable items, and PCs have gotten to a nice point where they are durable and technologically relevant for years after purchase (which is the cause of the gnashing of teeth regarding how the PC business is "doomed" because people keep using them until they no longer work... you know, like just about every other product people own and use. Are toasters doomed because people aren't throwing away working examples and buying new every two years?

        Mobile phones are meant to be thrown away after a short period of use. They're difficult to service, typically being glued together, with their batteries soldered in. They are often flimsy and allow the screen to crack quite easily. Their batteries have short service lives. Android devices often end up being obsolete, security wise, a few months after you get one, since the cellular carrier has no incentive to keep you using your old phone longer and thus never releases a patch (or does so one or two times and then calls it an EOL'd product).

        Apple products tend to do better (though still not even close to how long you get support with Windows, and even then you can install another version of Windows or Linux post-EOL and remain patched forever) but then you have to put up with the walled garden and the number of features Apple has arbitrarily made off limits to you-- like even seeing that there is a file system under there somewhere. It's fine, I guess, if you're talking about a content-consumption toy, but if you have more serious needs, iOS isn't going to cut it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Every few months I have the Pavlovian urge to upgrade

      But then I think "how can I actually justify this? My current box still does everything I need reasonably quickly!" so the credit card gets put away again.

      1. DiViDeD

        Re: Every few months I have the Pavlovian urge to upgrade

        "But then I think "how can I actually justify this?"

        Do what I do - Just buy another Graphics card. Or some more cold cathodes. Or a bigger fan with even more LEDs on it. Or a case with more or bigger windows, so people can see how much you've spent on cold cathodes and LEDs. Or (and I must admit I did this) a USB astronaut on a stick whose eyes light up when you lift his helmet (QUIET at the back!).

        You'll be amazed at how much that improves your spreadsheet work.

        or not

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    there is a lot more to a computer than just Surfing the Internet And games. I for one do word processing, Accounting, photo editing, CAD work, and some software development. Whereas some of these things can be done with the laptop, The speed and graphics of a laptop is still not fast enough for some things. And tablet computers are good for the field,but I don't know of anyone who wants to do CAD work on them. and as far as the touchscreen goes unless you need the exercise, a mouse is much more efficient. Especially on a large screen. I don't know of anyone who would want to use a 21 inch touchscreen setting on the desktop for very long. It's fine for the movies and TV shows, but in real life It's just not feasible.

    I think the market has just been saturated with good desktops. and with the economy as it is, They are not replacing them as quickly. Also the innovation in computing has slowed in some cases hitting a brick wall. New technology has to be developed that can and should replace the older technology. And I'm not talking about some hyped up piece of garbage that is presented as new technology. Most people that I know, would rather use a desktop computer than a tablet or phone for There general work.

    I can remember hearing about the demise of the desktop computer when the laptops came out. It has not happen yet. there's a niche that each technology holds in the marketplace. And there is a need for the desktop computer, and there will be for several more years at least.

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