PC sales are up across Europe. You read that right. PC sales are up Sales of personal computers - boring old-school desktop and laptops – are up across Europe. So says market-watcher IDC in its new Personal Computing Device Tracker for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the first quarter of 2017. Notebook PC sales grew by 11.7 per cent to lead the surge to 17,400,000 overall sales, about …
Well, since last June my UK sales have fallen off a cliff. ONE to UK in 2017. In 2017 about half are to North America and half are to France + Germany.
Just anecdotal.
Nervous people don't buy expensive stuff. I wonder what non-contract (sim free) smart phone sales are like in UK last 6 months compared to Jan - May 2016?
Cheap SSDs staples such as the Integral 120GB Series-P / Series-V were £25 this time last year, now £50-60. Thankfully, we made hay while the sun was shining (last year).
SSDs are still the best type of upgrade "on the cheap", though.
Other brands were/are also good, like Sandisk Plus (were MLC, then TLC) - now branded WD (not tried) and of course, Samsung.
YOU are not going to get any sovereignty. The MPs will get more.
You had MEPs before, with a say in Europe, and Europe was able to restrain the more bizarre ideas of UK MPs.
Now, you have no say in Europe, which is still your biggest market and source of food - so biggest economic and social partner, and our nut-job MPs can resume their roll-out of mad legislation, unrestrained.
Well, obviously the Brexiteers are waiting to buy Great British computers, once they arrive (or are revived [1]), instead of having all of that foreign muck foisted upon them.
Or the computer buying populace is not at all happy that fall in Sterling has made imported goods more expensive and this is putting many off.
[1] Ah, BBC Micro, we do miss you.
@deadlockvictim
Isn't the Raspberry Pi manufactured in Cardiff? (Probably from parts brought in from abroad, but that's another matter). That should do them. They can also put a British OS on it in the form of RISC OS - and there's a release called 'Pico' which boots straight to the BBC BASIC command prompt.
What's wrong with «Brexiteer»? It's a handy neologism to describe the 50%+ of the voting population of the United Queendom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that voted to secede from the E.U. It has connotations of going forth bravely into a brave new world. I find it useful.
We've always been shafted on price for laptops and PCs in the UK.
With laptops we get shafted on spec as well. The OEMs know they can punt mid range crap and top end prices.
The average consumer seems to only care about disk space. Which is presumably why the bottom end of the market tends to have larger hard drives.
The number of times someone has asked me "how much memory has it got" when they meant hard drive space is incredible.
Britain simultaneously has some of the smartest people in the world whilst also having one of the largest groups of cretins.
It's not cretinous to not know about computers especially since many of those buying them for grand children didn't have access to them until they were well into adulthood. I'm sure a few of them could teach our millennials a few things about how even modern car engines worked as they are far more likely to have had to get their hands dirty maintaining their own car.
Using the wrong terminology is one thing, fact is they knew what they meant - storage space as that's typically what's marketed as good as it holds all the kids "college work", it's not as if other goods aren't marketed as equally daft at times, cars for example are typically done on fuel efficiency none of us ever see and on glamour when it's a tool most of us don't think twice about until it breaks.
No it isn't cretinous to have little understanding of computer specifications, its outrageous. Help is out there.
Its not a dauntng task and doubtless everyone here would give free advice if asked. I know I would annd regularly do...I look after a small contingent of pensioners for free with technically related issues.
I even refurb and give away kit to those that are easily flabbergasted if Ive recently done an office clearance.
The biggest scandal is that there usually isnt a decent range to choose from on your local high street. Certainly not at a reasonable price. Ergo those people that dont ask for help / can't find help get screwed.
Ive seen shitty i3 based machines with 4GB of RAM and 720p display go for around the £500 mark. Thats unbelievably poor value for money.
You can get an i5 with 8GB of RAM and an SSD for that.
I still see Celeron based stuff going for around £400 with 2GB RAM.
Dick Turpin doesnt wear a mask anymore, he sells laptops now.
It's quite obvious that sales would be increasing.
After all, a Windows 10 machine has a much shorter lifespan, what with the violence directed at them thanks to stupid MS designs.
I'd bet the sales of window panes have also risen sharply. And probably computer-related accidents as well.
... the only winners are the insurance salespeople.
Ah yes. An enigma them. Often financially some of the only true winners, while simultaneously being a bunch of bottom-feeding losers, the lowest of the low (not all mind, but some.. Guess who has been helping friends trawl through some policies for house/contents insurance, stuff which includes such gems as "if your property is damaged/stolen as a result of a deliberate act of any person on your property" - theft normally is deliberate!).
I'm sure PC etc sales firms who get a lot of repeat business feel like winners. And those of us who do our best to support such machines while they still live, well.. We feel so very far from winners (thankfully "I don't use W10 so don't know a thing about it" helps a lot. That and, er, "accidentally" killing a machine due to a lack of knowledge but someone still pushes you...)
Yup, not only is this just a tiny blip, but it's not even this year's blip, it's last year's back-orders due to component shortages.
And yes, Brexit is worth mentioning. Sales were already in the toilet due to the bankster heist known as "austerity", a general lack of interest in all things not mobile, and that malware masquerading as the next version of Windows. Brexflation has merely compounded an already dire situation.
The PC isn't just dead, it was brutally murdered in its sleep.
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