[citation][nom]Goldengoose[/nom]People are also building their own desktops more and more now (or getting a friend to build it for them) - Could be interesting to compare these results to those of CPU+motherboards etc etc and see what sort of sales they are pulling in.[/citation]
could also be that a dual core from years ago can still run almost anything of today... some applications may need a gpu assist though.
[citation][nom]The Don[/nom]There is no innovation to drive PC sales. I have had the same pc for 5 years now, and see no need to upgrade any time soon. The are no killer-apps to drive sales like we had in the 90's.[/citation]
no innovation? computers use to be so slow that any jump in power was noticeable, now we can increase the power by 30% and not see any real world difference outside of cpu bottle necked games, and rendering applications.
computers have become fast enough, its not a "lack of innovation"
[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]That was bound to happen.There is a point where the PC gets fast enough to handle everything the 'average' user needs.That means he/she will stop upgrading and only replacing if broken.So unless we find something else to do for our computers that current technology can not handle this will be a continuing trend in the domestic sales numbers.[/citation]
ssd, but im assumeing they have to halve the price before average people start looking at them.
[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]This is for a few reasons:1) economy, people are upgrading necessities, or adding 'cheap' accessories, while keeping working products around longer.2) Win7. Why buy a new PC when you can just upgrade Vista to Win7 and get more power from the computer? We are going to see the same problem with Win8. It runs on slow hardware better than older OS's (provided you have enough Ram... which is cheap).3) Cheap upgrades. Ram, CPUs, Cases and Monitors are all relitively cheap as they have lowered their prices to meet the requirements of a slower economy. The only exception are HDDs, but many (myself included) are switching to small SSDs when our HDDs fail (so long as they meet our space requirements)4) Tablets and Smartphones. While I still insist that they do not replace the use of a PC or Laptop, they are a reason to not get a new one. So long as your main computer is faster than the tablet or smartphone then why bother upgrading? With quad core processors, Win8, Office for ARM, and other changes coming this year I think we will see Tablets replacing PCs, but not yet.5) perhaps most important, system requirements. If all you are doing is browsing the web and checking e-mail, and editing the occasional document then you dont need anything more than a late gen Pentium 4 or Pentium D, and a Core2Duo with a decent Ram and HDD/SSD loadout is about as fast as you can get for web browsing and similar activities. Even video games seem stuck; Froever tied to game consoles that refuse to change. It is only the content creation software that needs more power, and for the most part a mid-grade i5 system is more than enough, and the new i5's and i7s are largely overkill. So until utility costs rise through the roof prompting the use of newer more efficient computers (my new i7 rig with a GTX 570 takes less power in daily use than my old C2Duo rig paired with a 9800GT), or the natural attrition of dying hardware kicks in then we will likely see this trend of lowered computer sales continue. But I still think most households will have at least 1 PC for the next 5-10 years, which will later convert into a home server for a multitude of mobile (smartphones, MIDs, laptops, etc) and fixed use devices (refridgerators, TVs, HTPCs etc.)[/citation]
the current web was unviewable 3 years ago on my p4, i hate to think what it would be like today.
[citation][nom]nycteris[/nom]Buying a pre-assembled computer vs. DIY has nothing to do with intelligence; custom-built computers are still a small niche in the overall PC market. I'm sure you'd love a mechanic insulting you because you're not smart enough to replace an engine's driveshaft on your own.[/citation]
stupid, maybe
lazy, yes
putting a card into the computer isn't hard,
installing drivers isn't hard
putting a psu in isn't hard
the only thing i was sketchy about with building a pc was the cpu cooler, because it required far more force than i was comfortable with applying.
people who say they got a prebuild because they dont have time... took me 45 minutes to prebuild, 5 minutes to install drivers (let it sit and install and restart by itself) and about 5 more minutes to install video drivres.
people who say its to hard, they are a mix of stupid and lazy, because its not hard, look at any youtube video, and if they actually find it hard, than i consider them stupid.
putting a computer together is really just attaching a to b
your drive shaft analogy, i just watched a youtube video, if we all had a full car jack in our garages, than i would consider that a no excuse to go to a mechanic thing too. but because most of us have crappy jacks that are only good for tires, and not for for under the car work, i cant blame people for going to a mechanic. i also don't blame people who go for an oil change, because they know exactly what they are doing and can get it done faster than you could at home, without a mess, and odds are, they know exactly what they are doing, for almost any given car, where you have no clue and have to either guess or read a manual.
[citation][nom]Wamphryi[/nom]I think an underlying issue is the software bottleneck that has been prevalent since the launch of i Series CPU's. However that is all changing. For some years now I observed my Rigs running at a fraction of their capacity. Now it seems that software programmers are moving heavily to 64 bit programming. I recently had my i7 2600 K with 16 GB RAM pushed to its stock limit by Cyber Link Power Director and Adobe Premier Elements. All of a sudden my main Rig seemed like a minimum requirement to run this software. Corel X4 rings out the CPU and caches up all the RAM and that is a 32 bit Application. At one stage Premier Elements consumed 10 GB of RAM (not cached) and for the first time ever I saw 10 GB RAM in use outside of using RAM drive. It was only a year ago I could render with enough left over to browse and email but now I have 2% of CPU resources spare which is not enough to multi task.[/citation]
to be fair, rendering and content creation has always demanded allot more for the pc than anything else, if you upgrade the software every year, you would see that it always went for close to a 100% load (at least in video editing, drawing with coral, i believe it emulates real world paint and such, so it requires more than photoshop)
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