Shock horror as business finds a cost effective way to sweat their assets.
Northamber: Windows 10 killed our sales momentum
It is an end of an era for the tech channel as Northamber chairman David Philips – the godfather of distribution – confirmed he is stepping back from operations and is seeking a new leader of the company. The colourful veteran confirmed today he is “closing in on the age of 71, so it is clearly time I commence the process to …
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Friday 23rd October 2015 12:24 GMT terry 1
I suspect their big profits were down to lack of competition at the time, but as people got familiar with the likes of time and tiny etc, pcs ended up being cheaper anyway. I recall my 486 DX2/66 with 4mb of ram cost IRO £1200 back around 93/94, now I can get a crap (branded) one for sub £200. Account for a windows key, the cost of the hardware, I suspect the margin for that is probably £20 to the dizzy.
As for W10 killing the market, yes, to some degree. Consumers are quite happy with their XP / Vista / W7 machines and are put off by the negativity that surrounds 'tiles / start menu', however in the business world *I* don't feel much has changed. i'm still buying in W7 pcs for clients and have no intention of taking them futher until forced to.
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Friday 23rd October 2015 12:37 GMT Mage
Sad end of era
I remember my Computer selling friend using them about 1981.
Not sure if the ACT1 he sold was from them?
The Victor 9000/Sirius 1 ran CP/M-86 and MS-DOS but did not claim to be IBM PC compatible.
It was far better. The IBM in 1981 only had 320K or 360K floppies and a horrible text only goldfish bowl monitor. No Clock or Audio. The ACT 1 had 800x400 non-glare graphics, audio, clock, 1.2M floppies etc. A giant step forward from Apple II, TRS80, Pet and CP/M S100 boxes. The IBM PC wasn't, it was little more than heavy expensive alternate for Wordstar/Supercalc/Visicalc (Spread sheets was the biggest selling reason for Apple II, CP/M, IBM PC at first. Letter quality printer were slow and expensive compared to MX80 to print a spreadsheet.)
I guess IT gear is now mostly direct to big retailers, phones, tablets, laptops.
Disappointing to read that thousands of schools a day are activating Chrome books.
MS & IBM set back the industry in 1981.
Windows 10 is a backward step, as has most of MS since 2003.
MS are also extinguishing SW resellers too.
OS and IT gear is going to have as much support as a TV set.
The "Channel" is doomed.
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Friday 23rd October 2015 20:02 GMT Richard Plinston
Re: Sad end of era
> The IBM in 1981 only had 320K or 360K floppies and a horrible text only goldfish bowl monitor.
In 1981 the IBM-PC had only 160Kb diskettes, Single-sided single density 40 track 8 sector. It was designed to compete against the Apple II which had 120Kb diskettes. It also had a cassette tape port (I have one here) for those who couldn't afford diskette drives. The model A (mine is a B) could be had with 16Kb RAM for running BASIC with cassette tapes, max RAM was 256Kb.
> and a horrible text only goldfish bowl monitor.
The initial release did have the option of the CGA card and colour monitor - if anyone wanted to spend up that highly.
> The Victor 9000/Sirius 1
That was more than a year after the IBM PC - late 1982. There were many machine that were better than the IBM, but IBM had the sales force.
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Friday 23rd October 2015 12:49 GMT Davie Dee
Or another way or looking at it,
Company X took there eye off the ball and expected their cash cows to continue to provide indefinitely. IT is a lot like nature, if you don't grow and adapt to your surroundings you die, those that can not only adapt quickly but also take the initiative and lead the progress will have a much better chance of surviving.
You might not like MS, or their products, but they are, finally, adapting to the changes in the market, all the leaches that feed off their back will need to adapt with them.
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Saturday 24th October 2015 09:44 GMT Pascal Monett
People aren't asking anything
People are still blindly buying whatever is in the shops. And blindly clicking on whatever popup says "install this!". And then turning to us to get themselves out of the shithole they put themselves in.
The only good thing is that the PC is indeed dying - and Windows with it. The vast majority of tablets and phones being sold and used do not run Windows and, hopefully, never will.
But people are not making the choice, the vendors are doing that for them.
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Saturday 24th October 2015 13:41 GMT jonathanb
Is there anything a new computer can do that my five year old computer can't do? Not really, so I will replace it when it breaks, not because it has some amazing new features I want to play with, much like the appliances in my kitchen.
I am the sort of person who goes out and buys the latest model to play with new technology, but with PCs, there just isn't anything to tempt me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
