back to article PC sales sinking almost as fast as Donald Trump's poll numbers

New data from analyst outfits IDC and Gartner suggest the PC market continues to crater. The latter firm's 3Q2016 data records an eighth consecutive quarter of shipment decreases, to 68.9 million units or a 5.7 per cent decline from the third quarter of 2015. IDC found “nearly 68 million units in the third quarter of 2016 ( …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let's see:

    - Processor Speeds * # of Cores barely increasing over the last 5 years;

    - Crap Operating Systems that spy on you and brick your machine with compulsary automated updates;

    - etc, etc;

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's see:

      And the big improvements in performance per watt to give a longer battery life have received resounding support from manufacturers by putting smaller batteries in.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Let's see:

      - Processor Speeds * # of Cores barely increasing over the last 5 years;

      Exactly. If you can upgrade the memory and the disk, you are forced to replace due to battery wear now, not because of performance.

    3. P. Lee

      Re: Let's see:

      >- Processor Speeds * # of Cores barely increasing over the last 5 years;

      So true. My 3930k is still up there near the top of the non-Xeons and the only time I stress it is with transcoding. If I want a 50% performance increase the chip is going to cost over 1600 USD (I paid 225 for my current chip) and that gain is by adding more cores - there's only an 8% increase in single-core performance.

      Apart from that, its easily capable of handling anything I throw at it.

      I might have considered upgrading to a newer CPU if it was far more power efficient etc, but Intel's cunning revenue generation plan of changing the socket with each new CPU release prevents that.

      What might tempt me to buy a new PC is a laptop with a "desktop-speed mode" perhaps requiring a docking/cooling station which comes with an PCIEx16 external graphics system.

      Another item on the wishlist is a hardware hypervisor. I'd like to have two OS's in memory with no software emulation.

      1. Ben Norris

        Re: Let's see:

        "Intel's cunning revenue generation plan of changing the socket with each new CPU release"

        To call it revenue generation really demonstrates your ignorance. Chipset features are being updated at least as quickly as cpu features these days and more needs to match in order to work at all. New chipsets with new cpu families are a necessity for innovation because CPUs are not the independant black box that they have been in the past.

        Also hypervisors already have hardware support. Depending on what exactly your idea of not running in software is, it is either not physically possible or has been available in CPUs since 2005!

    4. Ilgaz

      Just yesterday, 3 hours wasted

      A friend's high end HP i7 laptop was taking 3 minutes to boot on a not so bad hybrid HD. Moved him to SSD just to see the freaking thing still takes 2 minutes to boot with a 549 MB/s read rate. Updated the graphics driver using windows update, it boots in 10 sec. Next time, black screen of death. Switched to archaic HP Win 8 driver, it boots fine and couple of minutes later, screen flickers and we have the latest, non working driver again thanks to windows update.

      The issue is,MS dares to touch a highly customised, special setup hybrid graphics mix of Intel HD3000+ATI. Both chip vendors (ATI and Intel) say don't mess with drivers in your case, go to laptop manufacturer (HP) and yet MS overwrites the drivers.

      They removed the "don't auto update drivers" option too so you have to run a special, official tool by MS to block installs of specific hardware drivers. I can't imagine any newbie, non technical user understand that concept. They will think that their system is broken. MS could at least code an auto rollback driver function, it is all about caring.

      He could buy 3 high quality tablets for that price and damn things keep working like a charm even without updates, there are even android 3 tablets in use which never had updates.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just yesterday, 3 hours wasted

        Sounds like failed Graphics Hardware, failed BGA lead-free solder balls on the dedicated AMD ATI Chip. Assuming it isn't (its likely to be that, HP will fob you off repeatedly though).

        Use a bootable USB ISO of Linux Mint 17.3/18, boot from that (17.3 is more reliable for this), see if you get any graphics issues, attempt to install the AMD Proprietary Drivers, log out, log back in, you can see if the problem is hardware or software better then. The USB of Linux Mint, is bootable without actually installing anything to your computer.

        You may need a RJ45 hardwire network connection if you Wifi doesn't work out of the box. Most do, Broadcom there is a proprietary driver to install, like the AMD Graphics.

        Yep its a real pain,Windows 10 forced updates. I had this in Windows 10 Pro.

        There is a knack to getting Windows 10 to stop looking for a replacement Graphics Driver (often it will offer two display device drivers at once (Nvidia in my case), meaning the Powershell 'device driver' block hack doesn't work. Assuming you've already allowed Windows update to run, and this has happened.

        Go to Device Manager, under Display Devices->AMD ATI etc, right click - properties, select Driver Tab, Rollback Driver, if grayed -> Uninstall Driver. (try both ways, if unsucessful first time)

        Go to System -> Advanced System Settings, Click Hardware Tab

        Select Device Installation Settings...

        Do you want to automatically download manufacturer's app and custom icons that are available for your devices?

        Select -> No (your device might not work as expect).

        Run Windows Update. Allow it to parse/download, attempt to install any Graphics Device Drivers.

        Once upto date..

        Manually install HP AMD ATI Graphics Driver.

        Run Windows Update again. It should now keep the manually installed driver.

        You may have to work at a lower screen resolution to do these operations.

        1. Ilgaz

          I used this "hidden tool"

          They have the following tool as a ms fixit package. They don't advertise it. Really mysterious just like the entire fixit story which became too popular and abandoned

          https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930

  2. Richard Jones 1
    WTF?

    The Kit Is Fast Becoming Just Tools

    For many people the various items are just bits of kit to do jobs. Tools only need to be replaced when they can no longer do the job, break or the job changes. If the job is still getting done 'well enough'; why change the tool(s)?

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge

      Re: The Kit Is Fast Becoming Just Tools

      "If the job is still getting done 'well enough'; why change the tool(s)?"

      exactly, like "my 10 year old PC does just fine, and does *NOT* have Win-10-nic on it!"

      Which is a nice segue into the REAL problem: Win-10-nic is a reason NOT to get a 'new' one.

      If Micro-shaft simply changed their policies to allow new computers to ship with '7 Home' on them again, sales would get a NICE boost. But ever since that's been "not happening", PC sales have suffered. Blatantly.

      Because, 'new, shiny' isn't enough to sell a new computer these days. Especially if it's "wearing Win-10-nic".

      1. Ole Juul

        Re: The Kit Is Fast Becoming Just Tools

        "Because, 'new, shiny' isn't enough to sell a new computer these days."

        Shiny is especially unimportant when it goes under you desk.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Kit Is Fast Becoming Just Tools

        Sounds like you have the Nvidia nforce chipset, there is a workaround, if you were told by "Get Windows 10" your machine didn't qualify. Use the USB Installer - ISO of Windows 10 1607, Install the nforce driver manually from an older Win7/Win8.1 driver.

    2. Warm Braw

      Re: The Kit Is Fast Becoming Just Tools

      why change the tool(s)?

      Unfortunately, other people can break them when you're not looking.

      I've been using Office 2000 for years (roughly 16...) and, courtesy of a Microsoft update, it seems to cope fine with newer Office file formats, but I've no doubt it won't do forever. However, other changes to my PC mean the file dialogs now take an age to open and Excel can only be quit from the task manager. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 now barfs on startup, presumably because wherever it phones home to is no longer there. And I've got a bunch of hardware that will only work under XP.

      So you can only keep stuff going for so long - though that would seem to be too long for some: when you can only rent your tools, you're have no control of their lifetime whatsoever.

  3. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Agreed. If it works, and does the job, why give it the shaft and buy a new one...

    Another factor to consider is that most people are comfortable with the win7 interface, and the win10 infernalface is too daunting for them (they still think it is the same as win8/8.1)

    And also the fact that you cannot transfer your win7 licence over to your new shiny...

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Meh

      "And also the fact that you cannot transfer your win7 licence over to your new shiny"

      Depends on the license, if it's OEM (ie licensed to that piece of hardware), then no, you're stuck. If you paid for a full license you can keep moving Win 7 to a new machine. Hell, you can still do that with XP.

  4. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Besides, any kind of tablet is not conductive to do lots of typing on or CAD design, for that you still need a proper Win7/Win8.1 computer. Heck, any 386 with 2Mb RAM, DOS and WordPerfect will be suited just fine for that task... :p

    IMHO (and from my POV) a tablet is good enough for viewing emails on the go, do stocktaking on, other $jobs where you have to walk around and check things off, play the odd casual game and keep in touch via whatsapp/twatter...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Besides, any kind of tablet is not conductive to do lots of typing on or CAD design, for that you still need a proper Win7/Win8.1 computer.

      FTFY

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I agree with your sorta(?) point that an older computer would work perfectly fine for something like word processing. After all, the world did just that. On a side note, I still have my 386 if you'd like to buy it. Can't recall how much memory was in it, but I think it had a whopping 20MB HD...

  5. Filippo Silver badge

    I don't think the whole Win10 thing is a major factor here. Most people outside IT don't really care what Windows it runs, beyond grumbling a bit when stuff changes.

    I think the main reason for the slump is that, back when PC performance was doubling every 18 months, developers made use of the extra oomph either by adding more features or being more lazy, until you would be basically forced to upgrade, because your old machine would collapse under the weight of the new version of something.

    Now that PC performance is pretty much stalled, any application that's targeting recent specs will usually also work respectably on fairly old iron. So what's the point of upgrading?

    We may see a boost to sales once they get SSD costs down to the point where developers feel they can get away with building stuff that works poorly on HDDs. Then everyone will be forced to get an SSD, and many of those will just buy a new PC.

    1. Timmy B

      Very sensible Flippo. That seems to be exactly what I see and I spend most of my time dealing with everyday folks and their PC usage. I also think you missed one thing. As net connections get faster the need for processing at the client end lessens. Why bother buying a really powerful PC if everything you want can be provided "in the cloud" on a 5 year old budget PC.

      Perhaps cheap 4K screens on laptops will get a few sales?

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Facepalm

      "We may see a boost to sales once they get SSD costs down to the point where developers feel they can get away with building stuff that works poorly on HDDs. Then everyone will be forced to get an SSD, and many of those will just buy a new PC."

      Don't give 'em ideas!

    3. Jess

      pc performance

      most budget PCs I've seen are far lower spec than things businesses chucked out when they left XP.

  6. Oh Homer
    Terminator

    It's simple, really

    Factor 1: Austerity (a.k.a. the rich robbing the poor).

    People now have far less money to waste on anything that isn't on the survival checklist. For most of them, that list does not include a largely ornamental relic from the 90s.

    Factor 2: Most people are not geeks.

    The non-geeks (i.e. the 99%) who jumped on the PC bandwagon, merely tolerated the impossibly complicated and dysfunctional monster that Microsoft chained to their desk, only while there was no better alternative more suited to how ordinary people live in the real world, and now there is. Phone, GPS, Facebook ... check. Reading email in Outlook on a laptop as you walk to work? Not so much.

    Factor 3: What's a PC?

    We're now at least two generations into an era in which it's not considered abnormal to have never used a PC outside of the classroom (the same generations who rarely if ever watch TV). Oldies (and in particular geek oldies) find this hard to imagine, but it's a fact. This geek oldie doesn't even own a TV, and most of my viewing time is spent watching YouTube on a smartphone, on the train, in the kitchen, and pretty much everywhere other than at a desk (mainly because I simply don't have one).

    Welcome to the 21st century.

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: It's simple, really

      Oh Homer, to sum up most people do not need powerful kit for most of their activities. Phones and tablets are often more than adequate for most uses.

      1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

        Re: It's simple, really

        Except that it *is* powerful kit. Modern smart phones do full screen video at HD with colour & sound far beyond a PC from 10 years ago.

        Not comparable to the state of the art PC plugged into the mains, but still remarkable. Just because it is mostly hidden, doesn't mean it isn't there.

  7. Nastybirdy

    Also, this doesn't track people like me who build our own boxes and upgrade them piecemail rather than buying a whole new machine from a branded manufacturer. Because we don't like being ripped off with their stupid prices and substandard components.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Grandfather's Axe

      Same here.

      3 PCs 2 cases are 8 years old, other for watching films about 4 years.

      Graphics cards 5 years+, monitors too.

      HDDs replaced when they start to fail or at 5 years.

      Anything that needs more than the 32GB RAM that's in the 2 main PCs is only used briefly, so is shunted into Azure. Doesn't cost anything when it's turned off.

      I doubt I'll ever replace the cases, just the internals as they wear out. I do fancy a bigger monitor (2 x 24", 1 x 20" at the moment), but not all applications can cope with super high resolution screens.

      Sadly, my Surface Pro is unlikely to last more than 3-4 years.

    2. Chunky Munky
      Coffee/keyboard

      I've had the same broom for years!

      Agreed. My PC is at least 10 years old, but in that time it's had 3 new PSUs, bigger HDDs, an SSD, a new mobo with upgraded processor & memory & just last Christmas a shiny new graphics card. I'm picking up a new keyboard & mouse on my way home tonight (all the characters have worn off the keyboard) as a treat because I've been such a good boy recently! The only thing that hasn't been changed is the case, but it's the same PC I've had for at least 10 years :)

      1. Timmy B

        Re: I've had the same broom for years!

        "but it's the same PC I've had for at least 10 years :)"

        I say that's a Theseus' paradox and just because the case is the same it's not really the same PC. You have had some bits for 10 years but could equally say it's only as old as the newest component.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: I've had the same broom for years!

          "I say that's a Theseus' paradox"

          Did you hear a sort of whoosh sound?

          1. Timmy B

            Re: I've had the same broom for years!

            I've been on holiday - for me it's Monday morning....... should avoid posting anything anywhere until fully awake I suppose.

        2. BlackDuke07
          Facepalm

          Re: I've had the same broom for years!

          @Timmy B. I think you missed the joke there. Search for "Only Fools and Horses same broom trigger".

        3. itzman
          Linux

          Re: I've had the same broom for years!

          theseus - yep. I never really get a 'new PC' it s continuous rolling upgrade, driven by hardware failure usually, although the SSD w\s a luxury..

  8. Stork Silver badge

    The practical gains of new gear is limited

    I upgraded a 5yo MacBookPro to a (then) current one last year, the old one had a 750GB hybrid disk. Main changes:

    - 1/2 kg less

    - I can no longer have all my photos with me

    - snappier disk I/O, booting much faster but that is every other month or so

    - nicer screen.

    If the old one had not been playing up I would probably have waited - a lot.

  9. James 51

    My PC is dying a slow death. Suspect I was a little heavy handed when I put the new CPU in. Holding out for Zen though before I think about buying a new one.

    1. jason 7

      " Holding out for Zen though"

      Why wait for disappointment?

      1. Richard 26

        "Why wait for disappointment"

        It's the Way of Zen.

      2. James 51

        Either it will live up to the hype and I won't be annoyed at having spent the money when I knew something better was just over the horizon or it won't and Intel will likely drop their prices to keep people's attention.

  10. Andy Non Silver badge
    Meh

    I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

    As I dislike Windows 10 so much, I buy my kit directly from a small manufacturer with Ubuntu pre-installed, and I drop Linux Mint onto it. I doubt such purchases will show up in the statistics. No more big-brand, UK high-street Windows PCs for me, especially as my last Windows PC crashed and burned during the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. That is the 2nd PC Windows 10 has trashed for me. There won't be a third. Microsoft has lost me as a customer for ever.

    1. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

      I hope you pursue Microsoft for some compensation for PC damage / potential data loss (e.g. via small claims court if UK based)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

      Why don't you just buy the kit with no OS on it at all?

      I've done that for years and then put the OS of my choice on there. Still on Win7 for now but I won't be upgrading. Going back to Apple after an absence of 12 years.

      And before any of you try to convince me to use Linux as a desktop OS, it doesn't support the software I need. I'm quite happy with Linux on my servers though.

      1. VinceH

        Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

        "Still on Win7 for now but I won't be upgrading."

        Ditto - although in my case it's back on Win7, rather than still on it. I've been using Windows 8 for a couple of years because of an urgent purchase, but I finally went out of my way to buy a laptop with Windows 7 Pro on it a short while ago.

        That goes along with a desktop PC that I bought over a year ago, but only recently set up, and which is running Linux Mint. (It came with 8) - and a brand spanking new Windows 7 desktop PC that arrived yesterday.

        So I can use the Windows 7 laptop when out and about at clients where I need Windows, the Windows 7 desktop PC at home when I need Windows, and the Linux Mint desktop PC at home for everything else. As an added bonus, I intend to install Mint on one of my old laptops so I also have a laptop to take out and about with me when Windows is irrelevant.

        Previously, all my PC stuff was on a single Windows laptop, which was therefore under heavy use - so that spread of machines should reduce any given machine's workload and, hopefully, enable them to last that much longer into the future.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

      "That is the 2nd PC Windows 10 has trashed for me. There won't be a third. Microsoft has lost me as a customer for ever."

      After the problems you chronicled here in the past I'm surprised you gave then a 2nd chance.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

        lol and yet the cause of the error remains ;)

    4. Spudley

      Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

      > I buy my kit directly from a small manufacturer with Ubuntu pre-installed

      For the benefit of those of us who are planning on doing the same, please could you mention the supplier's name and whether you'd recommend them. (I've done exactly this in the past but the supplier I used to use has gone out of business so I could use some recommendations for a new one)

      1. Andy Non Silver badge

        Re: I for one will never buy a Windows computer again

        @Spudley I buy from the manufacturer via Amazon. My kit works great and they get good reviews. Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VUTOI58/ref=twister_B00VUUC39K?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How disappointing...

    I came to this thread to look for all the Trump apologists spouting, and all people are doing is talking about their PC hardware and Windows 10.

    There's no fun any more. :(

    1. RegGuy1 Silver badge

      Re: How disappointing...

      ok how about this?

      FART FOR PRESIDENT !

    2. Lars Silver badge

      Re: How disappointing...

      Yes, right now I wish PC sales tanked even faster, a lot faster..

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Here's your "fun" then...

      I doubt the average Trump stalwart would apologise, because they believe in what he says, even if he claims he doesn't mean it.

      Trump's "offensive" attitude towards women may be a reflection of the fact that some women are naturally inclined to seek out (i.e. be "available to") higher status males (including married ones) to improve the chances of their offspring - even if it's not PC to say so.

      Most Trump supporters want a wall built - it's not necessarily racist (not that they'd care about that accusation) because the USA comprises many races and is more diverse than Mexico. The group most likely to gain economically from less immigration is low paid workers who are more likely to be recent migrants. More immigration makes it cheaper for wealthy Americans to employ workers or buy their services.

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