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Businesses upgrading to Windows 10 forced global PC sales into the black for the first time in seven years in 2019, but it could have been so much better if Intel's chip drought had eased.
Preliminary findings from Gartner pegged shipments at 261.23 million, up 0.6 per cent year-on-year, and rival analyst IDC reckons 266.69 million found their way on the shelves of distributors and resellers, itself up 2.7 per cent.
Forced upgrades from Microsoft still seem to outweigh jumps to Linux. Will that ever change?
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Global PC Sales Up for First Time in 7 Straight Years
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Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:15AM (6 children)
As people pointed out PC sales declined at one point partly because people stopped needing to upgrade and the old PCs were still working just fine. Now perhaps some of the older ones that are fast enough were beginning to finally start breaking down and so people were replacing them? Kinda like appliances.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:55AM
The decline helped to freshen up the market. There's more innovation, hybrid devices, stuff like this [anandtech.com] or this [anandtech.com]. I will probably look at getting a 2-in-1 for my next system.
I'm not even sure that planned obsolescence is an issue, because today's laptops appear to have better build quality, more metal materials, etc., some of which can be attributed to Intel's Ultrabook program [theverge.com]. Batteries are probably the worst part since they will inevitably need replacement, but charging is getting much better because proprietary power connectors are being replaced with USB-C. The use of cheap QLC NAND or perhaps PLC (5 bits per cell) NAND could become one of the biggest points of failure. It should also be noted that many of today's laptops make it very difficult to repair/replace/upgrade RAM and other components, also thanks to that Ultrabook thinness/lightweight trend.
We do have more fanless systems, which should be more resilient since there is no dust intake.
There are still conventional (node scaling) performance increases that will be realized by 2030 with the possibility of much more massive performance increases in the future.
While entry-level $50-$200 systems are now good enough for many people, some users can take any increase in CPU or GPU performance they can get. It's not over until we have deepfakes that take milliseconds to make and 16K resolution VR gaming.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:20PM (4 children)
I just bought a laptop a few months ago for that very reason; my old Acer was missing some keys and was so full of dust it would overheat after half an hour of use.
Replaced it with a Dell Inspiron 11 3000. I'll post a review soon. TL;DR: it's s l o w , , ,
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 16 2020, @07:10AM (3 children)
They reuse that model name. What's the CPU and GPU?
I'm going to guess it's a lot faster than my systems.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:19PM (2 children)
AMD A9. Not sure about the GPU.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:26PM (1 child)
AMD A9-9420e?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:56PM
Yes.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org