Declining PC Sales Not Derailing SSD Market in 2012

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wintermint

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This isn't surprising at all. SSD is becoming a cheap easy way to upgrade a computer. The gb to price ratio have slowly and surely turned to the consumer's favor.
 

captainblacko

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doesn't surprise me. I bought my first SSD a few months back for my work laptop to help extend its life and I'd imagine most people are doing the same as the performance benefits out weigh the cost of buying a new machine.

the laptop in question is a HP DV8 fitted with a cheap OCZ agility3 120GB SSD.



 

blubbey

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Not surprising at all. They're becoming more affordable and more available. Good chance of it becoming a standard boot drive in a few years perhaps?
 

captainblacko

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[citation][nom]blubbey[/nom]Not surprising at all. They're becoming more affordable and more available. Good chance of it becoming a standard boot drive in a few years perhaps?[/citation]

i believe so.

I also think if the PC market goes the way its going and they push the ITX form factor we may end up with motherboards coming out with SSD's soldered onto the boards which can be used as cache drives.
 

Miharu

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Not suprise at all.
SSD are cheap.

For the PC sale declining no suprise. They try to sell you a $600-650 laptop for $1,400 telling you it's because it's SLIM. Everybody want slim laptop but no one want to pay so much for a laptop WITHOUT any nvidia/ati videocard. Just check the new HP Envy that you have see in a pub at the theater.... $1,400 bucks!!!

At the end, they also raised their $600-650 not slim model for $900.
So you think it twice before buy one.
HP, Lenovo, Dell,.... Declining sales but they make more profit by sale. They choice this path. So this probably change nothing for them.

And a desktop cost almost the same price as before... and you don't need right now to change it.
 

deksman

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It is also cheaper for people to simply buy individual components that might have a profound impact on performance compared to full blown computers.
As for PC sales slowing down - this is not solely due to hardware exceeding software demands. Its also tied in predominantly with automation taking over and companies finding it more cost-effective (not to mention efficient) compared to human labor (which they are finding increasingly harder to justify).
From a technological/resource point of view, this could have been done decades ago, but since we live in an economy where money and cost dictate everything, companies wait until technologies become cheap enough for them to implement (which they will do mainly if they see they can profit from it).
But, the amount of people losing their jobs is increasing in speed - purchasing power is only going to go further down, and people won't be able to re-educate themselves to do something else fast enough because technology will outpace them (we cannot 'compete' with machines in this).

In numerous situations, 3d design based software can easily push existing hardware to its limits and far beyond - and with the advent in 3d printers, such software is likely to become increasingly more commonplace.
 

jrharbort

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I remember exactly 4 years ago when I was looking at 128GB SSDs for around $400. The speeds were around 135MB/s reads, and 80MB/s writes. Now you can grab one today for as low as $80 with MUCH higher speeds, as well as vastly superior IOPS performance.
 
PC sales are declining because how much performance increase have we seen in the last... 4 years? It is all efficiency, feature, and integrated GPU enhancements. I'm a gamer and I'm still running my i7 920 CPU from over 3.5 years ago. I have no reason to upgrade. Though I did upgrade to an SSD recently. How often do people upgrade mobile devices? Every 2 years when their contract is up and tablet performance keeps increasing and you can't really upgrade a single component on them, so you have to buy new. If I want to upgrade a desktop you just slap some more RAM, an SSD, and at most replace the mobo/cpu. Besides, the average PC use keeps their desktop for something like 5 years anyway.
 

dthx

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People stopped buying PC's because the current Windows 7 PCs are too good.
10 or 15 years ago, you'd buy a very expensive high-end computer just to notice that after all you paid, it was still much slower and instable than expected (especially once you installed all your fonts/softwares/... on the PC). Editing photos/videos was not very pleasant and the 3D performances fell always short.
Now, you can still work with a three years Windows 7 old mid-range PC and feel that it's largely sufficient for what you do. It won't overheat, has enough storage and runs at a good speed.
Take a 4 years old PC with Vista, replace the boot drive by a cheap SSD, upgrade it to Windows7 and you get the feeling that you have a state of the art brand new machine !
 

Nossy

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SSD's are in tablets and MACs also.

PC markets are in decline because tablets and smartphone takes over some of the everyday tasks. A PC is generally good for hardcore gaming and other demanding tasks that requires a more specialized software.
 

ssd_pro

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SSD will remain the biggest upgrade a person can make to a PC/mac that initially had a HDD. Changing memory, cpu, etc will not have as major an impact as changing a system from HDD to even a sata2 SSD. I have a couple Vertex 4 256GB drives and they are just amazing.
 

tecmo34

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[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Graph says "thousands of units", but the article's quotes are in millions. Which one's the typo?[/citation]Neither... The charts says in thousands, so you don't include the first three "000", so when it reads 17,000... it is actually 17,000,000.
 

ivanto

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PC's "Actual" performance had exceeded the "Required" performance for most customers. Any improvements above what's perceived as required won't be valued as much and people won't pay money. Clayton Christensen explained it very well in Innovator's Dilemma.
-IvanTO
 

dgingeri

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I'm sure I've had a hand in that. I bought 5 this year, 3 of those in the June to August timeframe, one in May, and one just a couple weeks ago. I'm upgrading everything I have. It's the biggest impact an upgrade can have on a system.

It's especially important considering how much manufacturers are charging for SSDs. Dell wants $500 for a 256GB drive in many of their laptops, while the general market is sitting at
 

jacobdrj

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Why upgrade my desktop. I have a Core 2 Quad Q6600. I have 8 GB of RAM. I have a SSD for booting, a couple 1 TB hard drives for storage, and Windows 7. I even have a 6950 for good measure. Why do I need anything else?

My laptops are all either dual-core with HT or true quad cores. They have between 8 and 16 GB of RAM, and all of them can run Google Earth well, play 1080p without problems and have real world battery life over 3 hours (much more when being conservative). Until something breaks, I am sticking with what I have...

I am not alone.

I just got someone to upgrade their dual core Core based laptop with 2 GB of RAM to a SSD instead of getting a new computer. It amazed him.

I am doing it for someone else soon. I expect no less than WOW.

Sure, would a new i7 Ivy Bridge be nice? Sure. But I have no need for it.

At work, I just got upgraded to a Crucial M4, 8 GB of RAM, and Windows 7 64 on a 1st generation i5 laptop. I am happy as a clam. Going from a Scorpio Blue and Windows 7 32, it is like night and day.

Our needs now are improved internet bandwidth. Mine is very good. But I want fiber.
 

Burodsx

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Cheaper SSDs... faster speeds... increased storage over previous models... of course it's doing well and it will continue to do so.
 

matt_b

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It used to be that a computer upgrade/replacement every 4 or 5 years was pretty much the norm. What we have is a situation where software doesn't push boundaries on what hardware can do. SSD's are viewed as an excellent upgrade where the difference is night and day compared to an HDD OS drive. No other upgrade is viewed as more cost-effective as an SSD boot drive right now. Combine this with prices reaching affordability (synch. 128 Gb drives reaching $60 on sale?!?!), it's no wonder pc sales are being defined as declining and SSD sales the opposite. People are hanging on to something that still works well and breathing new life into all machines by upgrading the weakest link.
 
G

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Give me something worth upgrading. My phenom II X4 @ 3.6 plays all of my games on maxed settings and my GTX480 will run my 1080P 32LE5400 all day long with current games.

I want a CPU that is 2x the performance per clock with 8 cores and some games and programs that'll take advantage of it! No point upgrading when nothing is being bottlenecked by my current hardware.
 
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