Prices of PCs have been trending upwards recently; that could be changing:
Cooling demand plus supply chain problems meant PC shipments declined 15% year on year in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022, totaling 74.2 million units, according to IDC's preliminary count in its worldwide personal computing device tracker.
Shipments by Lenovo, HP, Dell and Asus were all down for the quarter. Apple's share of the PC market, which includes desktops, notebooks and workstations, is now 13.5%, up from 8.2% in the same quarter a year ago, leaving Apple as the only vendor with growing shipments – up 40% on the same time last year.
In a nutshell, high-end PCs are selling well as consumer and education sales have slowed. Shipments of cheaper PCs have continued falling since 2021, amid inflation fears and the industry's supply chain woes, with vendors manufacturing fewer Chromebooks as they pursue profits in higher-end Windows PCs.
Gartner noted that to maintain profits as inflation leads to increased costs, the PC industry wants to raise average selling prices (ASPs) despite weakening demand. The reduction in the mix of PCs from Chromebooks, which tend to have low price points, and the shift to premium products also helped increase the average ASP – but an increase in inventory, especially in the consumer channel, could cause an ASP decline as vendors try to lower inventory.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:10PM (5 children)
Is this [amazon.com] a PC? How about this [inovato.com]?
How many years do you have to go back before the $29 "device" linked above has better specs than your desktop PC of the day had?
Prices are falling, for sure, but people are still willing to spend a certain amount per "PC" so they're still buying performance upgrades.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:16PM
https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/journal/12498 [soylentnews.org] ;)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:52PM (3 children)
Actually, since PC stands for "Personal Computer", and your phone and tablets are computers with radios installed, most PCs today run Linux and BSD, the OSes Android and Apple are based on. Your question, not only is your phone a PC, it has more computing power than NASA had when men walked on the moon.
Linux on the desktop? Just lay your phone on a desk!
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:31PM (2 children)
Yeah, what I think people forget is: in 2006 basically all PCs were still 32 bit, having more than 2GB of RAM wasn't just rare, it was very hard to benefit from in any normal OS. I was using Gentoo 64 bit in 2005, but that was a very rare bird at the time. Dual core PCs and laptops were _just_ starting to emerge. Clock speeds had already sort of maxed out in the 3-4GHz range, with more normal machines down around 2GHz, and 3D graphics co-processors were hillariously weak by todays' standards.
Applications and operating systems haven't changed all that much in the past 15 years, particularly when compared to the 10-15 years before that. And that $29 quad-core ARM machine with 2GB of RAM, HDMI out, etc. will outperform most mainstream desktop PCs sold at least up through 2012.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @05:20PM (1 child)
That Allwinner chip should be slower than an Intel Pentium D 950 from 2008, and with much slower single threaded performance. It's much more efficient, but Allwinner chips have shitty support like most ARM chips.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 12 2022, @05:29PM
>Intel Pentium D 950 from 2008
Was that a mainstream "desktop for business" chip, or a top-end gaming and engineering chip?
ARM chips aren't ideal, for sure, but they have come a long way. I would never have tried to use an ARM based desktop in 2012, but today it's not so painful.
My mid 2006 laptop was a MacBook Pro, with a (top of the line) dual core 2.6GHz processor. Early 2006 MBPs maxed out at 2.4GHz and if you weren't paying the premium they had 2.0GHz processors, IIRC. Much before that, dual core chips became very rare.
As I said, the "top end" clock rates did hit 4+GHz then, but you paid for that, both in cubic dollars, and in power->heat. Even the 2.6GHz MBP was a lap burner.
I remember in the 2004-ish timeframe AMD was making major power efficiency gains on Intel, and even started to edge out Intel sales growth for a few quarters, then they got body slammed and my AMD CALL options went to 0.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:27PM (4 children)
A PERSONAL computer
One that does not require network connectivity blabbing to the mothership
Unfortunately corporations have decided you can't have a new one of those
so I will continue to not buy their products
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:59PM (3 children)
Pretty much this.
Since I cannot buy a PC, I also see no reason to buy a NPC, a non-personal computer.
NPCs are notoriously hard to control, you can rent them but they eventually still do only what their master wants them to do.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:54PM (1 child)
Big autism moment for both of you.
You are posting on the interwebz, so you are already owned.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday October 13 2022, @06:17AM
The fun bit is that I use a device to post that doesn't become a totally useless brick as soon as it is disconnected from this medium.
The difference is that I can choose to use it, but I'm not required to do so just to use my device.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @09:09PM
What do you mean, you can't buy a PC? Despite the scare over "secure" boot and other restrictions, it's still very much to buy a wide range of PCs all the way from sub-$100 boards to $10k monster gaming systems, and you can install whatever Linux or BSD you want. If you feel like you're locked in to corporate control, maybe you need to go someplace other than the Apple store.