
The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones - firefoxd
http://idiallo.com/blog/2013/10/pc-is-not-dead-no-need-for-new-ones
======
simonsarris
I've _felt_ this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of
waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years,
but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well,
and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf
systems.

When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the
keyboard and screen, then its _just plain hard_ to be disappointed with
anything new.

I think I can pinpoint when this happened - It was the SSD. Getting an SSD was
the last upgrade I ever needed.

~~~

Above that, PCs aren't necessary for a lot of people, because people do not
need $2000 Facebook and email machines. For the median person, if you bought a
PC in 2006, then got an iPad (as a gift or for yourself) and started using it
a lot, you might find that you stopped turning on your PC. How could you
justify the price of a new one then?

Yet if there was a major cultural shift to just tablets (which are great
devices in their own right), I would be very worried. It's hard(er) to create
new content on a tablet, and I don't really want that becoming the default
computer for any generation.

I think its extremely healthy to have the lowest bar possible to go from "Hey
I like that" to "Can I do that? Can I make it myself?"

I think its something hackers, especially those with children should ask
themselves: Would I still be me, if I had grown up around primarily content
consumption computing devices instead of more general purpose laptops and
desktops?

Tablets are knocking the sales off of low-end PCs, but we as a society _need_
the cheap PC to remain viable, if we want to turn as many children as possible
into creators, engineers, tinkerers, and hackers.

~~~
justincormack
I would pay for a silent PC. I paid a lot for a quiet Apple PowerPC Mac pro
back in the day and built a quiet PC but they are not silent and I have moved
to a quieter place and I can hear them (yes the Mac runs Fedora now). I have
some silent ARM machines but they don't quite cut it yet though maybe the new
quad core one will.

~~~
x0054
I have seen full size ATX cases from Silverstone with passive cooling, where
the entire case is machine out of aluminum and acts like an enormous heat
sync. Have yet to find a good fanless power supply. The new Mac Pro supposed
to be only 12DB. It's hard to beat that, most rooms have ambient noise of at
least 18db.

~~~
Havoc
> The new Mac Pro supposed to be only 12DB.

Until the dust hits it...

~~~
x0054
Solution: clean it once in a while :)

~~~
Havoc
>Solution: clean it once in a while :)

Teach me oh great one. Honestly I've never managed to clean a fan. You can
brush off the obvious dust but the noise comes from dust getting into the fan
itself.

~~~
x0054
Spray it with compressed air inside and out. You can get into the slit between
the fan housing and the motor and blow it out there as well. Most fans start
making noise due to bearing failure / wobble, not the dust. I have a small
home server with 4 fans. After almost 10 years now 3 out of the 4 fans are as
quite as they were on day one, the 4th has developed a bearing issue and needs
to be swapped out eventually. I am assuming that Apple will use hire quality
fans then the $3 crap fans I am using.

~~~
Havoc
>Most fans start making noise due to bearing failure / wobble, not the dust.

That exactly is the issue. They don't just mysteriously develop bearing
failure / wobble...they do so because dust gets into the bearings. And that
exactly is my point...no amount of compressed air can fix dust in the ball
bearing grease. I just end up replacing all the fans after a few years...

------
fiatmoney
"For what" is the obvious question. Web development with a remote testing
environment, office applications, email, web browsing - sure, a Core 2 Duo is
more than good enough if your software environment is kept in order. Audio /
video / photoshop, gaming, developing software that does math, data analysis -
you can never get fast enough.

The limiting factor is if your computer's feedback loop is tighter than your
brain's perception loop. If you can type a letter and the letter appears, your
computer is fast enough for word processing. But, if you can run a data
analysis job and it's done before you release the "enter" key, it just means
you should really be doing better analyses over more data. Certain use cases
grow like goldfish to the limits of their environment.

~~~
JVIDEL
In what planet? I'm not even going to use myself as an example because I do
other heavy stuff with my PC, I'm going to use my non-tech friends: one of
them got a new laptop with 8GB of RAM, why? because she was complaining about
webapps using too much memory and slowing down her previous system.

Regular users don't know or care about memory management, they don't even
close old windows or tabs, its about convenience. That's not a problem in
mobile where the need is the mother of invention so mem management is
automatic and chrome reopens the tabs you had by itself, but in a desktop
environment (specially windows) one wrong click and the session restore in
chrome wipes your previous session.

But it was cheap, cheaper than an unlocked iphone and it gets the job done so
its ok for her.

~~~
asveikau
> one of them got a new laptop with 8GB of RAM, why? because she was
> complaining about webapps using too much memory and slowing down her
> previous system.

I suspect a few people on HN will be reluctant to see their role in this
arrangement. _ducks_

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
I can pop-up Activity Monitor any time in the day, with multiple apps open,
and it's guaranteed the app using the most memory is a browser ( _any_
browser).

As a data point: Safari is using 600+MB now with just HN and GitHub open. It's
using more memory than all the other apps (editor, terminal, mail, Rdio,
Skype) combined. 600MB is not much by today's standards, but comparatively, is
ridiculously wasteful. It's a damn CD.

Hope the Mavericks update improves this a bit since I'm short on RAM on this
machine (4GB).

~~~
madvoid
Mavericks does amazing things to memory usage. My machine has 4GB as well, and
safari went from 1GB+ memory usage to 200MB memory usage for the same amount
of tabs. Under ML, I was swapping constantly; now, no swap at all.

~~~
X-Istence
Did you count up all of the individual processes? Webkit is now finally on par
with Chrome in that each tab is it's own running process.

------
UVB-76
People snack on smartphones, dine on tablets, and cook on PCs.

A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets.

Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a
fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell
for the PC.

~~~
romaniv
Why cook when you can eat chips and order pizza? Probably because it's better
for you and because cooking has cultural significance that goes beyond simply
replenishing calories.

People who cheerfully proclaim that PCs are dead forger that PCs aren't just
devices, they also attained a certain level of cultural significance. IF the
death of PCs also means the death of PC culture (which involves things like
game modding, hobby website making and so on), then the death of PCs is a
really, really bad thing.

~~~
UVB-76
Division of labor. Not everyone has to be a producer in every sphere; it's
okay to be a producer in some, and a consumer in others.

Plenty of people are too busy with other aspects of their lives — doing things
which may, for all we know, be of great cultural significance — to spend time
being a producer in the digital sphere as well.

Some people devote their lives to cooking for others; others devote their
lives to other pursuits, and only ever consume food produced by others.

~~~
Touche
That's where the analogy falls apart, people who only eat out are a small
percentage of the overall popular whereas people who only need a tablet are
purportedly the norm.

~~~
UVB-76
The numbers don't have to be the same for the analogy to work.

In any case, I think you're underestimating the number of people who never
cook, or cook very infrequently. In your average family household, one person
typically cooks the vast majority of the meals.

To clarify, by cooking I mean real cooking — beginning with raw ingredients,
going through numerous stages of preparation requiring some degree of skill,
etc.

------
protomyth
The PC market isn't dead, but then again, the Mainframe market isn't dead
either.

The Post-PC devices[1] (tablets / smartphones) are it for the majority of
folks from here on out. They are easier to own since the upgrade path is
heading to buy new device and type in my password to have all my stuff load on
it. If I want to watch something on the big screen, I just put a device on my
TV. Need to type, add a keyboard.

The scary part of all this is that some of the culture of the post-PC devices
are infecting the PCs. We see the restrictions on Windows 8.x with the RT
framework (both x86/ARM), all ARM machine requirements, and secure boot. We
see the OS X 10.8+ with gatekeeper, sandboxing, and app store requirements
with iCloud.

The PC culture was defined by hobbyists before the consumers came. The post-PC
world is defined by security over flexibility. Honestly, 99% of the folks are
happier this way. They want their stuff to work and not be a worry, and if
getting rid of the hobbyist does that then fine. PC security is still a joke
and viruses are still a daily part of life even if switching the OS would
mitigate some of the problems.

I truly wish someone was set to keep building something for the hobbyist[2],
but I am a bit scared at the prospects.

1) Yes, I'm one of those that mark the post-PC devices as starting with the
iPhone in 2007. It brought the parts we see together: tactile UI,
communications, PC-like web browsing, and ecosystem (having inherited the
iPods).

2) I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the HP-16c had kept
evolving.

~~~
marcosdumay
> I truly wish someone was set to keep building something for the hobbyist

I really don't understand your concern.

Hobbists have a wider selection of computing tools than ever before (altough,
that statement was true at any time since the 50's). We have the entire
arduino ecosystem for hardware hobbists, throwaway PCs like the Raspberry Pi
for embebbing real computers everywhere, several different standards of
desktop-capable parts for more powerfull systems, and the server ecosystem for
the real beefy ones.

Most of those computer types aren't even able to run Windows or OSX. iCloud
and Secureboot won't make them go away.

~~~
protomyth
> Hobbists have a wider selection of computing tools than ever before

I don't think that's quite true. We had Heath kits and a lot more variety of
computers from the late 70's to the early 90's. There is no under $200
computer sold at major retailers like there was in the 80's.

~~~
marcosdumay
Hobbism is not trendy* nowadays. There is nothing aimed at hobbists for sale
at any big retailer. It's not a problem with computers.

* Well, there is a perfectly rational reason for that, and it is not really a problem for hobbists. But that's the fact.

~~~
protomyth
It's a big problem for the starting hobbyist. A kid will probably receive an
iPad rather than something to start them on their way to being a programmer or
EE.

------
gtaylor
I built a dev/gaming machine back in early 2010. It's stout, but not a
ridiculously expensive (~$1,000) behemoth. The only thing I've done since then
is toss some more RAM in so I could have two sets of triple channel DDR3
instead of one. I can still run just about any modern AAA game at the highest
settings.

The only time I felt like I've needed an upgrade is while playing Planetside
2, which is/was very CPU bound for my setup. However, when it was initially
released, Planetside 2 ran like a three-legged dog even on some higher end
rigs. It's much better after a few rounds of optimizations by the developers,
with more scheduled for the next month or two.

I dual boot Linux boot on the same machine for my day job, 5 days a week all
year. For this purpose it has actually been getting faster with time as the
environment I run matures and gets optimized.

As good as it is now, I remember struggling to keep up with a two year old
machine in 2003.

~~~
usaphp
~$1,000 sounds quite cheap for a gaming machine which can still run any modern
game at highest settings. I remember I built mine at about the same time
(2010) for $2500, top notch video card, fastest cpu, lots of ram, but its 2013
now and I can not say that it runs any modern game at highest settings.

~~~
arjunnarayan
You overpaid. You're better off spending $800 and upgrading 3 times as often.

~~~
usaphp
That's not the point. He said he can run any modern game on high settings on
the computer he bought 3 years ago, I doubt you can play any game in 2016 on
high settings if you buy a computer for $800 today.

~~~
afterburner
I can do the same, also with a $1000 computer bought in 2010.

------
bluedino
Don't worry, PC manufacturers are currently selling machines that are already
obsolete.

My dad went to Walmart and bought a computer (why he didn't just ask me to
either advise him, or ask if he could have one of my spare/old ones I don't
know) and monitor for $399.

It's an HP powered by a AMD E1-1500. It's awfully slow. Chokes on YouTube half
the time. My dad is new to the online experience, so he basically uses it for
watching streaming content.

I could have grabbed him a $99 Athlon X4 or C2D on craigslist and it would
better than this thing. I'm not sure if he'll ever experience a faster
computer so I don't think he'll ever get frustrated with this machine, but
it's amazing that they sell an utter piece of shit like this as a new machine.

~~~
drbawb
>AMD E1-1500 >Bought a computer _and monitor_

Did he buy a notebook? I've never even heard of the AMD E1-1500 before today.
Everything I see says that its a notebook processor, and a pretty terrible one
at that. (2cores/2threads, and only 512kb of L2 cache!?)

What's worse is that it's a BGA package, meaning it can never be upgraded. If
that's really a desktop machine (and not some form of "all in one") that's
vendor lock-in at its absolute worst. They've ensured that instead of buying a
$99 processor he has to go out and buy a brand new machine.

\---

That's just awful. In 2013 you shouldn't be able to buy a computer that can't
stream 1080p movies with ease.

~~~
bluedino
It's a desktop. I've browsed the Sunday ads for Best Buy and Walmart and it's
common. Example:

[http://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-Black-
SX2110G-UW23-Desktop...](http://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-Black-
SX2110G-UW23-Desktop-PC-with-AMD-E1-1500-Accelerated-Processor-6GB-
Memory-500GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8-Operating-System-Monitor-Not/24766511)

------
zeidrich
A tablet is a PC. Especially as x86 processors start taking over arm
processors.

Just because it doesn't sit in a big box doesn't mean it's a different class
of system. The difference is really the openness of the platform, comparing
something like iOS to Win 8 pro.

That said, many tablets are basically what we would have thought of as PCs
before. Consider something like the Samsung 500T or similar, or thinkpad
helix. Components are small and cheap enough that they can be packed behind
the LCD, and you have essentially a laptop that doesn't need it's keyboard.

Will iPads take over PCs? No. They are too limited, not because of hardware,
but because of OS limitations. Will tablets take their place though? Quite
possibly. The portability is quite handy. That I can dock a tablet with a
keyboard and have a normal PC experience, but have it portable when I need it
is a selling feature.

The obvious cavaet is that a limited OS is fine as long as the majority of
data is cloud based. In that case even development can be done on a closed
platform, and the tablet becomes something more akin to a monitor or keyboard.
More of a peripheral than a computing device. We might get to that point, but
that's not the cause of the current trend.

~~~
PeterisP
A tablet is a PC only when attached to a full-sized keyboard and a full-sized
screen.

Input and output is the major differentiator, not the processor or OS.

------
downandout
If everyone adopted the attitude of the author of this blog, all innovation
everywhere in the world would cease instantly because, for most of us in the
developed world, everything is good enough already. There are many points
throughout computing history at which existing hardware was overkill for the
things that we were asking our computers to do. Had we stopped innovating
because of that, the world wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today.

In high school I recall lusting after a $4,500 486DX2 66Mhz machine with an
astounding 16MB (not GB) of RAM, and a 250MB hard drive. A few months ago I
spent a little less than that on a laptop with 2,000X that amount of RAM,
8,000X that amount of hard drive space, and a processor that would have not so
long ago been considered a supercomputer.

I for one am glad that we have continued to innovate, even when things were
good enough.

~~~
worldsayshi
No innovation would hardly die but hopefully focus on something important. We
will hardly run out of need for innovation any time soon. We rather have a
problem of innovative people focusing on the wrong things, because incentives.

~~~
andor
<rant>

The computer was a great invention. The Internet also is a big enabler. But
the latest computers and phones are hardly innovative: Compared to what you
got 5 years ago, they might be smaller and have better power efficiency. But
on the grand scale, how does that matter?

If you see the latest Macbooks being introduced, you probably want to get one.
It's very shiny and the Retina screen will allow you to _experience_ computing
in a great way. People try to become happy by spending money for experiences.
Tourism, iPhones, hipster coffee shops. They don't do it because it's the
universal recipe for happiness and living your life, but because it's what
capitalist societies expect you to do. Most "innovation" and "disruption" only
leads to zero-sum money shifts inside this system. If you think that a retina
screen is innovative, i think you need to get some perspective.

The same goes for cars. The Germans (where I come from) think that they're
innovative because we have a few luxury car makers here. Cars in general are
great, they provide mobility and that's useful. But how are the new cars
better than what was available 30 years ago? They're not even more fuel
efficient.

Bill Gates seems to have got it when he stopped working full-time at
Microsoft. All over the world people are using their software, but if we were
using OS/2 and Lotus instead of Windows and Office nothing would change. It
went very well for him and his company, but nothing they ever did was as
important for humankind as what Bill Gates is doing now: giving life to
millions by completely eliminating malaria and polio from the planet and
supporting AIDS and TB research with huge sums.

</rant>

~~~
beachstartup
> Compared to what you got 5 years ago, they might be smaller and have better
> power efficiency. But on the grand scale, how does that matter?

This is insane, wrong, and dishonest. How old are you? I'm 30 and during my
adult life (the past decade, basically) we've gone from phones that were
essentially unreliable walkie-talkies with shitty battery life to ultra fast
portable computers with 10 megabit internet connections and 4 or 5 different
onboard technologies (gps, camera, etc).

WTF are you talking about sir. Do we live on the same planet?

~~~
andor
Smartphones and tablets are the new TVs. Of course, hardware is much faster
than 10 years ago, but what is it used for? What is the impact of smartphones
on humanity? They have changed communication and entertainment patterns quite
a lot, and not in a good way I'd argue. Communication is now cheaper and
faster than ever, which means that many people don't think for themselves
before they tweet or write an email. Also, many people prefer not to think at
all and use their phones to distract themselves by consuming a constant stream
of meaningless stuff.

By the way, the mobile phones that I had 10 years ago (Sony Ericsson, Siemens)
were quite reliable and had good battery life.

------
josefresco
It's not that people don't need a new PC because their old PC does just as
good a job as it did 5 years ago. It's also not because your average mom and
pop are upgrading their own rigs themselves that new PC sales are slow.

It's that when tablets hit the scene, people realized they don't need their PC
for 90% of what they do on a "computer". Email, social networking, shopping,
music, video etc.

Us old geeks who swap hardware, play PC games, tweak OS settings and generally
use yesterday's general purpose PC will be the ones remaining who keep buying
new hardware and complete machines.

The general public meanwhile will only buy a PC if their
tablet/smartphone/phablet needs expand beyond those platforms.

The market will shrink but it will turn more "pro". The quicker MS evolves
into a modern IBM the better.

~~~
Xixi
Replace 90% by 100%. The use case of the PC at home is disappearing fast. What
can you do on a PC that you cannot do on a tablet? If you really think about
it, not much at all. On the iPad Apple's creativity apps [1] go a long way:
the basics for the amateur who wants to create content are covered. At home
the only thing I actually need a "PC" for is to import CDs, I cannot think of
anything else.

The rest is a matter of taste, I personally prefer PCs (well, Macs) but I can
definitely understand people preferring tablets, if only because they are so
much cheaper, and generally so much easier to use (to my astonishment my
daughter figured out how to use my iPad to watch videos on YouTube while she
was still 0 years old, before she could even speak...).

When it comes to work I need a computer. And event that might change in the
future [2].

[1] [http://www.apple.com/creativity-
apps/ios/](http://www.apple.com/creativity-apps/ios/)

[2] [http://thebinaryapp.com/](http://thebinaryapp.com/)

~~~
6d0debc071
> What can you do on a PC that you cannot do on a tablet?

Easy copy pasting, selecting specific parts of a document... basically
anything requiring precision and speed. You can add a keyboard and a mouse to
it I suppose, but at that point you may as well have got a laptop.

~~~
Xixi
That's just convenience. Do you really think many people will keep forking
$X00 for PCs just for a little bit of convenience needed only once in a while?
I respectfully disagree. A couple of anecdotes, for lack of evidence:

My grandfather (89 years old today) switched to the iPad. He was one of the
pioneer of computer usage in France (in the steal industry)... at a time when
programs were punched on cards! He retired before the mouse/keyboard thingy
became popular, and never quite managed to fully grasp it when he got a
computer ten years ago. He is not switching back, the iPad is way easier for
him.

My parents went full iPad without knowing it: after getting one a year ago
they realized that they just aren't using their laptops anymore. The iPad is
just much nicer to browse the internet. In short the iPad is better for them
80% of the time, and worse 20% of the time. It can only get better with time,
as we get better at making touch interfaces.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating anything, I just think that's where the
market is heading, and it's not coming back to the PC world I (and probably
you) grew up in. I for one will keep using my laptop... but I know I'm in the
minority.

~~~
boomlinde
Well, that "bit of convenience" varies in size a lot over the market. If you
intend to do any typing over a long period of time, using a tablet just isn't
a good idea ergonomically. There are may other reasons to stick to a PC, but
this one seems inherent to the tablet format, and once you add a keyboard and
a cradle to position the tablet ergonomically, you've lost every advantage
that using it might have had in the first place.

So yes, I'd say that there's a large market of people who would rather shell
out $X00 for a little bit of convenience rather than $Y00 for something that
will be totally unfit for their application. "it's not coming back to the PC
world I grew up in" is a truism, but no indicator of the future market shares
of PCs and tablets. Also, is there any basis to the claim that you are in the
minority?

------
rythie
I think people are pissed off with PCs.

They bought a windows machine for what to them is a lot of money (more than a
iPad), it didn't last long before it slow and it's got extra toolbars and all
sorts of rubbish. What's worse is that this happened last time they bought a
PC and the time before and the time before that. They are not going to add a
SSD because that's not how they think + they don't how + it's throwing good
money after bad + they are dubious of the benefits.

The iPad in contrast exceeded expectations and in the year or two they've had
it they had a better experience. They can't get excited about a another
windows machine because it's expensive, more of the same and not worth it
really.

~~~
nooneelse
I agree that this frustration is likely an appreciable factor in the market. I
use a pretty swift laptop for work stuff and need that power there, but lately
I've been noticing how much I've gotten spoiled by the relative lack of
babysitting that my phone and tablet have required. And I'm not even easy prey
for the toolbar and crapware BS you mention like a lot of people who were
previously in the PC market. PC makers worked damn hard to bring down the
dollar price, but let the price in time+frustration stay high and grow until
they got undercut by the overall cost.

------
javajosh
Backend devs can probably use more computer resources, particularly cores and
RAM. We want to simulate whole clusters on our dev machines and instrument
them with tools like Ansible and Docker, and then deploy multiple (fairly
heavyweight) processes like JVMs to them. But yeah, 4 (fast) cores and 16GB of
RAM is available in a _laptop_ these days, along with an SSD and the best
display you can buy, for $3k. (Of course I'm speaking of the MBPr).

Games can _always_ use more resources. AFAIK there is still a lot of progress
being made with GPUs. 60fps on a 4K display will be a good benchmark. The
funny thing is that GPU makers have taken to _literally_ just renaming and
repackaging their old GPUs, e.g. the R9.[1] As for the game itself, there is a
looming revolution in gaming when Carmack (or someone equally genius-y) really
figures out how to coordinate multiple cores for gaming.[2]

But yeah, most everything else runs fine on machines from 2006 and on,
including most development tasks. That's why Intel in particular has been
focused more on efficiency than power.

[1] Tom's Hardware R9 review:
[http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-r9-270x-r...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-r9-270x-r7-260x,3635.html)

[2] Carmack at QuakeCon talking about functional programming (Haskell!) for
games and multi-core issues:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PhArSujR_A&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PhArSujR_A&feature=youtu.be&t=16m20s)

~~~
jophde
You really can't get the screen, and the amazing OS support for it, anywhere
else.

------
bhouston
CPUs have not gotten significantly faster in the last couple years, especially
at the high end.

Back in Q1 2010 I got an Intel Core i7 980X which benchmarked at 8911
according to
[http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980+...](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980+%40+3.33GHz&id=866)

Now in Q2 2013 (3 years later) the very top of the line processor available,
an Intel Xeon E5-2690 v2, is only twice as fast at 16164:
[http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2690+v...](http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2690+v2+%40+3.00GHz&id=2057)

It used to be that things got faster at a much faster rate. And until this new
E5-2690 v2 was released, the fastest CPU was only 14000 or so, which is less
than 2x as fast.

~~~
DigitalJack
Can you give an example of a faster rate in the past?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The jump from Pentium 4 to Core2Duo. You could go from a typical Penitum 4 in
2004 to a new C2D in 2006 and get a major performance boost.

The C2D to i7 jump was pretty significant as well.

------
gordaco
> You rarely have the need to buy a whole new box.

This is the number one reason why I love the PC above any other kind of
computing machine. Need more disk space? Sure, go get a new disk, you may not
even need to remove any of the others. Want a better graphics card for that
new game? Easy as pie. Your processor died because the fan was malfunctioning?
Too bad, but luckily those two are the only things you'll have to pay for. The
list goes on.

I bought my current PC on 2009. The previous one still had some components
from 2002.

~~~
astrodust
In the enthusiast PC world you swap out parts and upgrade your system bit by
bit.

In the emerging post-PC world you just sell your old device and get a new one,
not unlike how cars are treated. I doubt anyone has trouble unloading their
old iPad 3, they probably get a decent amount of money for it if it's in good
condition. This just does not happen with homebrew systems, the risk is too
high.

------
joshuahedlund
What if one of the reasons we don't need new PCs yet is not that tablets and
smartphones are replacing the need for them entirely (although for some people
they are), and not that PCs are lasting longer on their own either (although
they probably are, too), but that tablets and smartphones are helping PCs last
longer by reducing the wear and tear we give them?

I'm still running fine with my 2007 Macbook, but I think my iPhone has
extended its life because now my laptop almost never leaves the house and
sometimes doesn't even get used in a day, whereas pre-smartphone I used to
cart my laptop around rather frequently and use it every day.

------
null_ptr
I disagree with _" The top of the line smart-phone or tablet you own today
will be obsolete by the end of 2014 if not earlier."_

I will use my 2011 smart phone until it physically breaks. If a 1.2GHz device
with a 300MHz GPU, 1280x720 screen, and 1GB of RAM can't make calls and do a
decent job of browsing the web, that's a problem with today's software
engineering, not with the hardware.

And if Google decides to doom my perfectly good device to planned obsolence,
fuck them, I will put Ubuntu Touch of Firefox OS on it. The day of disposable
mobiles is over, we have alternatives now just like we do on PCs.

------
dankoss
> When your processor is too slow, buy a new CPU, or you get a new heat sink
> and over clock it

The motherboards for PCs built 5 years ago are completely different from those
built today, and the CPU sockets have changed every other year. New processors
from Intel will be soldered on.

The performance of a PC from five years ago is probably adequate for web
browsing and office tasks. For anything more demanding, the advances in power
consumption, execution efficiency and process node are huge leaps from five
years ago.

~~~
romaniv
_The performance of a PC from five years ago is probably adequate for web
browsing and office tasks. For anything more demanding, the advances in power
consumption, execution efficiency and process node are huge leaps from five
years ago._

In 2000, a three-year-old PC couldn't run modern games. Today, a three-year-
old PC simply forces you to switch to lower graphical settings. The race for
hogging all the hardware resources did slow down in the past years, which is a
good thing for consumers.

------
jseliger
This reminds me of a piece I wrote a couple years ago:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-
arent-g...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-
anywhere-despite-the-growth-of-phones-and-tablets%E2%80%94because-theyre-
cheap) , which makes a similar point. Both articles are less screechy and less
likely to get readers than screaming headlines about OMG DEATH!!!

------
evo_9
The PC is dead, it's just not dead for computer professionals, and never will
be. But for the rest of the world - think mom, dad, gramps,grammy - why on
earth do the need the headaches of a full PC (mac or windows)? A good tablet
is basically enough for almost everyone else.

~~~
handzhiev
I'll never get this point. Laptop - fine, yes, but a tablet? How do you chat,
post FB status, or write an email from the virtual keyboard? It's painful.
Especially if you are 50+. I don't see my mom or dad using these devices.

~~~
crgt
My grandmother is 90 and she does all of those things from her iPad. She's
also almost blind and has arthritis, and yet she finds the tablet meets her
needs - which mostly involve keeping track of her grandchildren and great-
grandchildren via email and FB.

------
simba-hiiipower
_Of course PC sales will be low. When you don 't have enough memory, you buy
more RAM. When your processor is too slow, buy a new CPU, or you get a new
heat sink and over clock it. You rarely have the need to buy a whole new box._

i agree that the increased (functional) life of pcs is a contributing factor
to slowing unit sales, but its laughable to attribute it to the idea that
people who once would have bought a new pc are now just buying more ram and
upgrading internals.

the percentage of people who would have any idea how to do that, or even
consider it as a viable option, is far to small to have any real impact on
demand..

------
Zak
I've been prioritizing human interface over raw power for some time with my
laptop (more or less my only PC). It's semi-homebuilt - a Thinkpad T61 in a
T60 chassis. I would rather work on this machine than any new one.

The CPU is slow by current standards, but a Core2Duo isn't slower than the
low-clock CPUs in many Ultrabooks. The 3 hour battery life could be better,
but I can swap batteries and many new laptops can't. The GPU sucks, but I
don't play many games anyway. DDR2 is pricey these days, but I already have my
8gb. SATA2 is slower than SATA3, but I'm still regularly amazed at how much
faster my SSD is than spinning rust. It's a little heavy, but really, I can
lift six pounds with one finger.

So the bad parts aren't so bad, but nothing new matches the good parts. The
screen is IPS, matte, 15" and 1600x1200. Aside from huge monster gaming
laptops, nothing has a screen this tall (in inches, not pixels) anymore. I can
have two normal-width source files or other text content side by side
comfortably. The keyboard is the classic Thinkpad keyboard with 7 rows and
what many people find to be the best feel on a laptop. The trackpoint has
physical buttons, which are missing from the latest generation of Thinkpads.
There's an LED in the screen bezel so I can view papers, credit cards and such
that I might copy information from in the dark, also missing from the latest
Thinkpads.

------
rayhano
This is an over-simplication.

Yes, PCs aren't ageing as fast as they used to.

But they are obsolete beyond 'not being portable'.

Here is why tablets are winning:

1\. Instant on. I can keep my thoughts in tact and act on them immediately. No
booting, no memory lags, no millions of tabs open in a browser.

2\. Focus. Desktop interfaces seem to be desperate to put everything onto one
screen. I have a PC and a Mac (both laptops). I prefer the PC to the Mac;
better memory management for photoshop and browsing, and I love Snap. But
that's where the usefulness stops. With an ipad, I have no distractions on the
screen.

3\. Bigger isn't better. That includes screens. Steve Jobs was wrong. The iPad
Mini is better than the bigger variants. Hands down. Same goes for desktop
screens. I want a big TV, because I'm watching with loads of people. I don't
need a big screen for a PC because the resolution isn't better than an ipad
and I'm using it solo. Google Glass could quite possibly be the next
advancement in this theme.

4\. Build quality. PCs look and feel cheap. Including my beloved Sony Vaio Z.
The ipad in my hand could never be criticised for build quality.

5\. Price. The ipad doesn't do more than 10% of what I need to do. But, I do
those 10% of things 90% of the time. So why pay more for a PC when the ipad
has no performance issues and takes care of me 90% of the time.

I used to think shoehorning a full desktop OS into a tablet is what I wanted.
Seeing Surface, I can happily say I was wrong. I don't want to do the 90% of
things I do 10% of the time. That's inefficient and frankly boring. PCs and
Macs are boring. Tablets are fun. There's one last point why tablets are
winning:

6\. Always connected. It strikes me as absurd seeing laptops on the trains
with dongles sticking out. It takes ages for those dongles to boot up. I used
to spend 5-10 minutes of a train journey waiting for the laptop to be ready.
My ipad mini with LTE is ever ready. And cheaper. And built better. And more
fun.

The PC isn't dead, but it will have next to no investment going forward, so
will suffer a mediocre retirement in homes and offices across the world.

Note: I love my PC. I just love my ipad mini more.

~~~
claudius
> 1\. Instant on. I can keep my thoughts in tact and act on them immediately.
> No booting, no memory lags, no millions of tabs open in a browser.

Suspend to RAM, 8 GB of RAM and as many tabs open as I like (usually none, but
Opera appears to handle 100s quite well, too). You must be using PCs wrong.

> 2\. Focus. Desktop interfaces seem to be desperate to put everything onto
> one screen. I have a PC and a Mac (both laptops). I prefer the PC to the
> Mac; better memory management for photoshop and browsing, and I love Snap.
> But that's where the usefulness stops. With an ipad, I have no distractions
> on the screen.

I also have no distractions on the screen if I don’t want them. You must be
using PCs wrong.

> 3\. \…] The iPad Mini is better than the bigger variants. […] I don't need a
> big screen for a PC because the resolution isn't better than an ipad and I'm
> using it solo. Google Glass could quite possibly be the next advancement in
> this theme.

The iPad mini has a resolution of 1024x768, roughly the same as my X41. If
your current PC doesn’t have a higher resolution, you must be using PCs wrong
– I expect at least 1200 pixels vertically and 1400 horizontally if I am
expected to do any work at this thing. 900 vertically might be enough for
casual browsing, but it does feel inferior.

> 4\. Build quality. PCs look and feel cheap. Including my beloved Sony Vaio
> Z. The ipad in my hand could never be criticised for build quality.

I tend to be very wary around Apple hardware, seeing how people put them into
protective sleeves, pockets and all other assortments of stuff. I don’t think
a tablet would survive the things my T410s survived.

> 5\. Price. The ipad doesn't do more than 10% of what I need to do. But, I do
> those 10% of things 90% of the time. So why pay more for a PC when the ipad
> has no performance issues and takes care of me 90% of the time.

I won’t argue about performance issues (the iPad lacks the software to even
test performance properly…) and at least I pay for a PC because I want 100%,
not 90%, of the job done.

> 6\. Always connected. It strikes me as absurd seeing laptops on the trains
> with dongles sticking out. It takes ages for those dongles to boot up. I
> used to spend 5-10 minutes of a train journey waiting for the laptop to be
> ready. My ipad mini with LTE is ever ready. And cheaper. And built better.
> And more fun.

Time from button press to xscreensaver unlock window: 2s. Time to get LTE
modem ready: 5s. Time to open 100s of tabs in Opera and decrypt email locally
and do all other things I could possibly want to do: nearly instantaneously.
With an iPad mini (which would most likely break in my backpack on the way to
the train), I couldn’t even do half of these things – it admittedly might be
cheaper, though, but 1600 € every four-or-so years vs. 480 € what appears like
every year are roughly equivalent, wouldn’t you say?

As I said, if you settle with inferior stuff and use PCs as absurdly as
described by you, I can see why you like tablets more.

~~~
rayhano
Your point of view is certainly interesting.

As you suggest, I simply must be using PCs wrong. But then, the ipad doesn't
need an instruction manual, or to be used perfectly, for me to use that right.

~~~
claudius
Operating an automobile requires you to have passed a theoretical and
practical exam and attended numerous lessons. Bobby-cars[0] are given to kids
as young as two-or-so. Which one is preferable to get from A to B?

Of course, you should generally aim to use the tools that suit your needs and
capabilities, but preferring a tablet over a proper PC strikes me as rather
odd.

~~~
rayhano
You analogy would make more sense if you added the word 'performance' to the
statement.

A car is fairly intuitive to drive. Driving licenses are required for safety.

The comments you make are akin to performing in a sports car, where
concentration and accuracy is key.

You car analogy would fit if you had PCs as a F1 car and tablets as a Mini. F1
car is for speed and requires perfecting to get the tyres working right. A
Mini, you can pretty much drive through all sorts of faults and be none-the-
wiser, because performance just isn't an issue. Well, 90% of the time. :)

------
rndmize
I think the issue is that the rate of improvement has fallen pretty hard. I
remember when nvidia moved from the 5 series to the 6 series, their new
flagship card doubled the performance of any current card on the market. The
same thing happened with the 8 series. Processors before multicore would show
direct improvements in the speed of the machine, especially if (like the
average consumer) your machine filled up with useless, constantly running crap
over time.

These days I just don't see that. Graphics cards seem to improve by 30-50%
each generation, and because so many games are tied to consoles now, they
often aren't even taking advantage of what's available. With multicore
processors and the collapse of the GHZ race, there's no easy selling point as
far as speed, and much less visible improvement (now all that useless crap can
be offloaded to the second core!) and most consumers will never need more than
two cores. Crysis felt like the last gasp of the old, engine-focused type of
game that made you think "man, I really should upgrade to play this"... and
that was released in 07. Without significant and obvious performance
improvements, and software to take advantage, why bother upgrading?

------
mortenjorck
Five years ago, I bought a MacBook Pro to replace my PowerBook G4, which was
itself five years old. The list of obsolescences was enormous: It had only USB
1.1 in a market teeming with new USB 2.0 hardware that couldn't have existed
with the slower speeds; it had a _single-touch_ trackpad just as OS X was
introducing all sorts of useful multi-touch gestures; it relied on clumsy
external solutions for wi-fi and Bluetooth; it had a slow-to-warm CFL LCD that
had been supplanted by bright new LED backlit screens; it was even built on a
dead-end CPU architecture that Apple had traded for vastly more powerful,
energy-efficient, multi-core x86 processors.

Today, the calendar says it's time for me to upgrade again. Yet the pain of
obsolescence of a five-year-old laptop in 2013 just isn't the same as in 2008:
USB 3.0? What new applications is it enabling? Anything I need Thunderbolt
for? Not yet. New Intel architectures and SSDs at least promise less waiting
in everyday use... but I'm hardly unproductive with my old machine.

~~~
bennyg
I would just upgrade the RAM and put an SSD in there and you should be good
for a while. Drooping an SSD in mine was the single biggest upgrade I've done
for productivity and battery life.

~~~
Osiris
I have an old Dell D830 with a 1.8 Ghz Core2. I put an SSD in there and it
made it feel like a whole new machine. My parents were complaining out their
slow computers. I had them buy SSDs.

~~~
solnyshok
SSDs help in most cases, however, I once happened onto a netbook (Atom 1.6GHz,
2GB RAM) where SSDs did not really help. Slow as mollasses in Web browsing,
Flash video stuttering at 480p. I removed SSD and sold this netbook
immediately.

------
venomsnake
Quick and dirty guide for having decent PC:

1\. Buy mid range processor with a lot of L2 cache 2\. Find mobo that supports
lots of ram and stuff it to the max. 3\. SSD is a must 4\. Buy the second card
of the high tier model (the cut chip from the most recent architecture (in
their times that were 7950, 570 etc ... but with current branding of NVIDIA a
total mess it may require some reading if you are on team green) 5\. Any slow
hard drive will be enough for torrents 6\. In 2 1/2 years upgrade the video to
the same class. in 5 years ... if the market is the same repeat. If it is not
- lets hope there are self assembled devices on the market non locked.

I have been doing that since 2004 and never had a slow or expensive machine.

------
sdfjkl
Mainly we don't need new ones because the 3 year old one is still doing the
job. That wasn't the case a decade ago - your 3 year old PC was seriously out
of date and couldn't run most games released that year and probably not
install the latest OS release. This rapid progress has flattened out
considerably. Now people upgrade to get nice features such as retina displays
or SSD drives, but that's optional (so you don't do it if you don't have spare
money laying around) and the benefit is much smaller than going from a 90 MHz
Pentium to a 450 MHz Pentium III.

~~~
linux_devil
Agree , even for development you can compile almost all programs light or
heavy on a powerful machine built 3 years ago.

------
mcgwiz
Hmm, there seems to be the implication that we've hit some magical end state
in hardware development where consumer needs are forever met.

Personally, I think of these hardware market developments with an eye toward
interplay with the software market. Historically, software developers had to
consider the capabilities of consumer hardware in determining feature scope
and user experience. Hardware capabilities served as a restraint on the
product, and ignoring them could effectively reduce market size. The effect
was two-sided though, with new more demanding software driving consumers to
upgrade. Currently, in this model, the hardware stagnation can be interpreted
as mutually-reinforcing conditions of software developers not developing to
the limit of current hardware to deliver marketable products, and consumers
not feeling the need to upgrade. In a sense, the hardware demands of software
have stagnated as well.

From this, I wonder if the stagnation is due to a divergence in the difficulty
in developing software that can utilize modern computing power _in a way that
is useful /marketable_ from that of advancing hardware. Such a divergence can
be attributed to a glut of novice programmers that lack experience in large
development efforts and the increasing scarcity and exponential demand for
experienced developers. Alternatively, the recent increase in the value of
design over raw features could inhibit consideration of raw computing power in
product innovation. Another explanation could be that changes to the software
market brought about by SaaS, indie development, and app store models seem to
promote smaller, simpler end-user software products (e.g. web browsers vs
office suites).

I wouldn't be surprised if this stagnation is reversed in the future (5+ years
from now) from increased software demands. Areas remain for high-powered
consumer hardware, including home servers (an area that has been evolving for
some time, with untapped potential in media storage, automation and device
integration, as well as resolving increasing privacy concerns of consumer
SaaS, community mesh networking and resource pooling, etc), virtual reality,
and much more sophisticated, intuitive creative products (programming, motion
graphics, 3d modeling, video editing, audio composition, all of which I
instinctively feel are ripe for disruption).

------
keithpeter
Wow, big long thread here will take me some time to read but I know what the
OP is saying. A few pages not mentioned already...

The mysterious K Mandla gives 10 reasons _not_ to buy a new computer

[http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/ten-reasons-not-
to-b...](http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/ten-reasons-not-to-buy-a-new-
computer/)

The TOPLAP project (a real hack - give a teenager an old laptop and
Ubuntustudio or similar, light blue touch paper, retreat). By the way, if
anyone has resources for live-coding in puredata, please post here

[http://toplap.org/](http://toplap.org/)

The Zero Dollar Laptop Project [1] and current progress [2]

[1]
[http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/zero_dollar_laptop.html](http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/zero_dollar_laptop.html)

[2]
[http://www.furtherfield.org/zerodollarlaptop/](http://www.furtherfield.org/zerodollarlaptop/)

Now, I made a major discovery over the summer: I am actually _more productive_
on a laptop than on a desktop with a large screen. Strange but true, so I am
donating the desktops and adopting a couple of Thinkpads off Ebay (X60 from
Dec 2006 and X200s from March 2010) as my major computational devices. One
with Debian stock and the other with gNewSense 3.0 for a giggle.

------
tehwalrus
I have bought laptops, but not a whole desktop ever in my life. I've been
through two desktops, mind you, that were both built from scratch[1].

I think this article gets it about right - I've started enforcing a 3 year
cycle for both phone _and_ laptops because they were costing me too much (in a
mustachian sort of way) - and I've stuck to it with laptops (I made 3.5 years
on a 2009 MBP) and will be doing so with the iPhone (due for replacement
spring 2015.) If the nexus devices keep getting cheaper and awesomer, then I
might jump to those a bit earlier (particularly if I can sell the 32GB 4S for
an appreciable fraction of the new phone cost.)

Working with the 3.5 year old laptop got slightly painful (re-down-grading
back to snow leopard from lion was essential, I even tried ubuntu briefly) but
perfectly bearable for coding and web browsing. I'll see how slow the phone
gets, but I'm quite relaxed about not having the latest and greatest iOS
features (I've not seen anything compelling since iOS 5; I only did 6 because
some new app requested it.)

[1] or rather, one was, and then I gradually replaced all the parts until I
had a whole spare PC to sell on ebay, and one mobo bundle later and I'm still
using it with no problems, playing games etc.

------
btb
I guess it depends who "we" are. The average person dont need a new computer,
I agree. My mom is still using my old self-assembled desktop from 2008-ish and
is perfectly happy with it.

However for those of us that use our computers 8 hours+ every day, I think it
makes good sense to upgrade to the newest hardware every 2-3 years.

I just assembled a computer from new parts myself, and its nice now to have a
fully encrypted workstation, with zero performance hit. Q87 motherboard with
TPM(asus q87m-e) + UEFI bios + UEFI GOP Compliant videocard(EVGA GeForce GTX
770) + M500 SSD + Bitlocker + Win2012R2(or Win8.1) means you can enable the
builtin hardware encryption of the M500 SSDs. It gives me a certain peace of
mind to know that a burglar wont be able to grab my personal files and source
code if my computer was ever stolen. I also imagine the TPM+Secure boot combo
will make it harder for a rootkit to go unnoticed.

Not to mention the lower idle power usage resulting from the 22nm haswell and
32nm lynx chipset.

My friends at work seems to think I'm crazy for replacing a 2 year old
computer :) Although as I pointed out to one of them, he spent more than twice
as much on a new mountain bike, and I'm sure i spend alot more time on my
computer than he does on his mountain bike ;)

------
basicallydan
Good point, well made.

Personally, I upgrade incrementally, and I still use my PC on a regular basis.
The machine I have now is a hodge-podge of parts from different ERAs. I have
an Intel Q6600 but DDR3 RAM, and a modern, quite beefy graphics card that I
bought when it was in the upper-echelons in early 2013. It runs most modern
games pretty well. I have an SSD for most software but also three big HDDs,
one of which I've had since my first build in 2004.

------
dworin
I'm typing this on a PC where I did the same thing as the author. Over the
past 10 years, I've swapped out a part every two years or so to keep it
running the latest and greatest. But the CPU is five years old and still
running fine. I'm planning to donate it to a non-profit to replace a computer
that's almost 10 years old and also still running fine.

There was a time when you felt like a new PC was obsolete the second you took
it out of the box. But that was because we were just scratching the surface of
what we could do with new hardware. We're now at a point where it's hard to
find consumer and business applications for all the spare hardware that you
can afford.

Mobile adoption has been so quick because everyone is buying devices for the
first time (tablets), or there is an incentivized two-year replacement cycle
(phones). But I'm still using an original iPad that works just fine, and a 3
year old cell phone with no reason to upgrade. Eventually, I think we'll start
to see the same leveling off in mobile as well.

------
dkarl
I was ticked off that my 2007 Mac Mini couldn't be upgraded to Mountain Lion,
until I realized Snow Leopard ran all the software I needed on that box. I
think I'm happy with the hardware and form factor of my phone, too, so I've
got all the electronics I need for years to come. Good thing, too, because my
rent just went up, and I need a new couch.

------
thom
Interesting that the author assumes smartphones need to be upgraded almost
yearly. My smartphone upgrade path in the last 10 years has been HTC Typhoon
-> iPhone 3GS 32GB -> iPhone 5S 64GB, and a large part of the most recent
upgrade was a crumbling plastic case on the 3GS.

At no point during the 4-year tenure of the 3GS did it stop being astonishing
to me that I had flat-rate, always-on internet in my pocket, all my music,
ebooks and audiobooks, videos that I took of my wedding, and photos that I
took of our first child, who's now inherited it and mostly uses it for In the
Night Garden.

Personally I think that because of the reduced horizons of smartphones,
they're actually every bit as long-lasting as your PC. Sure, at some point OS
updates stop coming, and with that app upgrades, but the performance of the
3GS was fine, and I'm not afraid to admit that part of the latest upgrade was
just embarrassment at having such a naff old phone, as much as I loved it.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting to watch the uptick in 'retina' laptops. Basically people don't
need a new PC but will pay for a better PC 'experience' that means longer
battery life, 'better' screen (usually retina/IPS/etc), better ergonomics.

Interestingly it seems like some would love to run their old OS on them. My
Dad sort of crystallized it when he said "I'd like to get a new laptop with a
nicer screen but I can't stand the interface in Windows 8 so I'll live with
this one." That was pretty amazing to me. Not being able to carry your
familiar OS along as a downside. That reminded me of the one set of Win98
install media I had that I kept re-using as I upgraded processors and memory
and motherboards. I think I used it on 3 or 4 versions of machines. Then a
version of XP I did the same with.

I wonder if there is a market for a BeOS like player now when there wasn't
before.

~~~
yuhong
AFAIK even with OEM versions, only Win8 Pro edition comes with downgrade
rights.

------
niuzeta
the article is falling under fallacy of assuming the wrong sample. Of course
the author wouldn't buy new PC because he can _upgrade_ his old one. Heck,
almost any tech-savvy people can in fact upgrade or build one from the
scratch. If not, chances are that you know at least one person who can help
you and after the first time, it just gets easier.

the PC market isn't __dead __, it is slowly receding and it won 't stop. It's
because of the new alternatives, and assuming finite budge, when you get one
of the alternatives, which cost roughly around a consumer-level laptop, you
don't have enough for another PC that you don't need.

The article to me seems extremely narrow in both its oversight and scope.
People don't care about processing power not because it's a marketing gimmick,
but because they don't care. People who do care are the ones who know enough
to care, and they will always be minority.

~~~
dworin
For many of the most common business and consumer applications (web browsing,
using MS Office), adding a more powerful computer just doesn't do that much
for you. Power users will upgrade their old machines, but most users will just
keep using them.

------
JusticeK
4K will be the revival of PC sales, in two ways:

1\. Consumer affordable monitors. You'll need a better GPU, and probably
Display Port. I don't expect most consumers wanting 30" 4K display. They'll
want 22-27" displays of 4K resolution, a la Retina. (PPI scaling) Everything
is still the same size as people are used to (compared to 1080p), but
everything is sharp as Retina.

2\. 4K adoption of multimedia on the Internet. The more 4K videos that pop up
on YouTube, the more people who are going to want to upgrade their hardware.
This one isn't specific to PCs though, it could apply to mobile devices as
well.

Go to YouTube and find a 4K video (the quality slider goes to "Original"). Now
look at the comments. Many of the comments in 4K videos are people complaining
how they can't watch the 4K video because of their crappy computer (and
sometimes bandwidth).

------
abvdasker
Yeah, I pretty much agree with that premise. In my experience, faster CPUs and
RAM make little difference compared to the gains from an SSD. Hard drive disks
are such a huge bottleneck compared to other upgrades that the average user
gets the biggest gains in responsiveness from upgrading to an SSD. And for a
lot of PCs that doesn't even necessitate buying a new one.

For laptops it's a different story. The big push seems to be in reduction of
power consumption for longer battery life, which sounds pretty sensible to me.
I guess if battery life is a big concern for a PC user, then it makes sense to
go to a smaller process. That does seem like a pretty small reason to upgrade,
though.

Another good indicator that the PC "game" has changed is that the two major
commercial PC OS's just released their latest versions (Mavericks & 8.1) for
free.

------
exodust
Hardly any academics, or professionals who write articles, reports, or serious
documents, are doing so exclusively on their iPad. They probably own an iPad,
but the majority of people I see who are trying to contribute something
substantial to the world - a book, design, quality video and sound recording,
or just professional documents to share with colleagues... these people are
using a laptop or a desktop. Their PC might be old, but it does the job. These
people own tablets and phones too.

Now do the math. If everyone - smart, average, stupid, young, old, are buying
tablets and smartphones, then of course this makes PC sales look like death.

It's more like a "post-PC-avoidance" world we're in now. A lot of stupid
people avoided using PCs back in the day. Now all those people own tablets and
smartphones and use them for entertainment.

------
meerita
As a guy who has been involved in computers I tend to buy something to last at
least 3-4 years. Once I start feeling I'm behind I like to upgrade.

I had a 2005 imac before acquire this 2011 iMac and in between I've bought
MacBooks and Macbook Air. I'm thinking in getting my new desktop on 2015.

Thing is, when I go to my parents house, I see 2003 computers. I think this
reality apply's to many families: parents don't care about speed, they get
used because their needs are less computational and more casual, like
browsing, Facebook and Skype. The trend I'm seeing in Spain is getting iPads
for parents is getting notably high. All my friends instead upgrading their
parents pc desktops are buying ipads and parents love it. Are you having the
same experiences?

~~~
pqs
Yes. I'm living in Spain and my wife and I bought an iPad for her parents.
They love it.

------
DigitalSea
I actually touched upon this in a blog post I wrote last month:
[http://ilikekillnerds.com/2013/09/rumours-of-pcs-demise-
have...](http://ilikekillnerds.com/2013/09/rumours-of-pcs-demise-have-been-
greatly-exaggerated/) — and I said exactly this. A bad economy coupled with
the fact people just don't need to upgrade as much any more are reasons PC
sales have slowed. The PC will always be around, tablets and smartphones are
great, but they're not comfortable for extended periods of time nor as
capable. As I also point out, being a developer means I need a keyboard and
multiple monitors to do my job and coding on a tablet is just never going to
happen.

------
wahsd
That's why we all needs tablets. A tablet for you...and a tablet for you...And
you get a tablet....and you get a tablet....We all get tablets..... Oh! these
tablets kind of suck to actually produce or do anything on. ....... ok, back
to laptops and all-in-ones.

------
mhurron
Basically this, computers hit good enough a while ago, now you just have to
replace parts when they die.

Yes, on paper, the latest processor is faster than the one released two years
ago but you have to be doing specific types of workloads with it to really
make a big difference.

~~~
drill_sarge
Yeah. The last major thing for PCs in the past couple years were probably
SSDs.

~~~
jfoutz
The upgrade to SSD was glorious. Like 386 to pentium. Watching my machine boot
that fast made me grin for months.

------
akinity
The last few times I looked at the desktops available at Targets and Walmarts
in the Bay Area, there weren't very many options. Bestbuy and Costco are
somewhat better equipped. I think that, with the lower margins on desktops
relative to laptops and the amount of space they consume, desktop PCs are well
on their way out of being attractive to traditional brick and mortar
retailers.

Haswell architecture couldn't have hit the market at a better time for laptop
owners, with more powerful integrated graphics and low power use. I'm sure it
isn't a coincidence.

------
kdsudac
Every time I read an article about the death of the PC and the ascension of
mobile, I wonder how much carrier subsidies distort the relative demand for
PCs vs mobile devices.

I'm inclined to believe that mobile sales are "artificially" inflated by these
subsidies to a large degree.

Of course, if this business model is sustainable over the long term I guess it
doesn't matter for mobile h/w manufacturers.

But for s/w developers the fact that people upgrade h/w every 2 years because
of subsidies doesn't mean that those h/w sales are translating into a greater
user base.

------
linux_devil
I still use my 5 year old desktop (upgraded twice) for development. I like to
open box and upgrade it myself , if I want to do similar on laptop I think
twice . Freedom to upgrade it yourself is a bliss.

------
utopkara
Part of the reason is because we have gone back to the days of terminals.
Chromebook is a good milestone in marking what people do with computers and
how much power they need. We are past the point where computer as a consumer
device, and computer as a professional equipment have parted their ways. We
are also lucky that the people who buy CPUs in bulk for their powerhouses are
still using architectures similar to the ones we use in our desktops and
laptops. Because with our weak demand for new hardware, the prices cannot stay
low for long.

------
codegeek
I have always pondered over this whole question of PC being dead vs alive.
Interesting thing is that even though with tablets and smartphones, lot of
regular people can probably get away with not using a PC just to surf the net,
facebook etc, the real question that comes to mind is what will happen in the
future if someday coding/programming does become a commodity and more and more
regular people actually start coding (to whatever extent) to solve problems.
Would that ever happen ? What would they use then ? PCs ? something else ?

------
bparsons
I have a 13 inch Acer I purchased in early 2011. Despite its low cost, the
thing has run like a charm since day 1. I literally have zero desire to
replace this thing at any time in the foreseeable future. It still runs 4+
hours on a battery, which is remarkable, since I use this machine more than 5
hours a day.

I have a desktop with twice the processing speed and twice the ram, but for
all intents and purposes, it runs almost exactly the same as the little Acer.
Unless I am playing a game or running illustrator, I simply don't need the
power.

------
D9u
I ran my 2008 Acer Aspire One ZG5 netbook until I got my current "Ultrabook" a
couple of months ago.

The netbook handled just about everything I threw at it, and with FreeBSD and
dwm it ran faster than it did when I first bought it.

Unfortunately I'm not too pleased with the HP Envy 15. The AMD A6 Vision
graphics aren't so bad, but support for the Broadcom 4313 wifi card is sparse
in the nix world...

Soon I'll be tearing it apart to swap out the bcm 4313 for something supported
by FreeBSD, but for now, I'll not be purchasing a new PC any time soon.

------
staringispolite
Somehow I don't think my mom would trade her iPad for an e1505 with a broken
display, external monitor, plus the periodic need to upgrade the hard-drive
and install/upgrade Ubuntu :)

------
padobson
I don't know which conclusion I had about this was more useful:

1) I don't need to buy a new PC every two years anymore 2) Someone should make
a tablet with slots so it can be upgraded like a PC

~~~
pmelendez
" 2) Someone should make a tablet with slots so it can be upgraded like a PC"

Wouldn't that be a Windows 8 convertible laptop with a touchscreen?[1][2] Once
you put expansion options on it you start compromising mobility.

[1] [http://www.futureshop.ca/en-ca/product/dell-dell-
xps-12-5-ul...](http://www.futureshop.ca/en-ca/product/dell-dell-
xps-12-5-ultrabook-black-intel-core-i5-3317u-4gb-ram-128-ssd-
windows-8-xps/10237842.aspx?path=2765b0302338b61b44df333b3c0cbf7een02)

[2] [http://www.futureshop.ca/en-ca/product/hewlett-packard-hp-
sp...](http://www.futureshop.ca/en-ca/product/hewlett-packard-hp-
split-13-m010dx-13-3-touchscreen-laptop-intel-core-i3-3229y-128gb-ssd-4gb-ram-
windows-8-13-m010dx/10258240.aspx?path=b38e3965a2147fc1066fa8be564a68acen02)

------
willvarfar
> Of course PC sales will be low. When you don't have enough memory, you buy
> more RAM. When your processor is too slow, buy a new CPU, or you get a new
> heat sink and over clock it. You rarely have the need to buy a whole new box

This is not end-consumers nor businesses. Enthusiasts who were building and
upgrading their computers were always a small market.

The article talks about upgrading repeatedly, but I don't think the author can
extrapolate their own expertise over the rest of the traditional desktop
users.

------
beloch
PC's are far from dead for consumers but, for manufacturers and retailers, the
high-churn glory days are over. With high-end gaming now chained to the
console cycle, even gamers won't get the itch to upgrade more often than Sony
and MS refresh their platforms.

Intel, AMD, etc. might want to consider slowing their desktop product cycles
down a tad. Instead of spending extra to bring every incremental performance
to market as soon as it can be, perhaps longer product cycles will bring down
costs.

------
btbuildem
I'd argue a similar pattern is happening with laptops (well, at least ones
with exchangeable parts).

My old T400 was "dying" until I put an SSD in it. Blew my mind how significant
an upgrade that was. When it started "dying" again I maxed out the RAM @ 16GB.

The CPU is a bit lacking now that I want to run multiple VMs side by side, and
the chassis has seen perhaps a bit too much wear, so a replacement is coming
-- but I've managed to put it off for years, with relatively inexpensive
upgrades.

------
eliben
Hmm, I want to compile huge open source projects quickly. For this I need as
many cores as possible at a reasonable price, a lot of memory and an SSD. So
it's time to upgrade :)

------
davexunit
I agree with the author. I built my desktop computer in 2009 (I think) and
it's still going strong. I see no reason to upgrade. I also recently purchased
a used Thinkpad X220. It's a few years old but has no problem doing everything
that I want to do with it.

It's wasteful to be throwing away computers constantly. In the PC world, I've
noticed that it's particularly prevalent among "gamers" that are convinced
that they need a new computer every couple of years.

------
FrankenPC
Well, the CPU/RAM/HDD systems do last a very long time. It's the GPU that
needs periodic upgrading. Robert Space Industries for instance will be
leveraging the Cryengine 3 with nearly 10 times as many polygons as with the
average 3D FPS. Also, Microsoft keeps adding rendering features to the latest
OS's which require hardware updates on the GPU level. I guess what I'm saying
is: Nvidia will continue to be a sound stock to add to your portfolio.

------
drawkbox
A few things lead to this including the obvious tablet/mobile disruption. PC
Gaming decline due to console gaming and mobile and Moore's law and processor
speed.

I used to update for gaming and 3d almost entirely.

I also used to update more frequently for processor speed/memory that were
major improvements.

If we were getting huge memory advances or processor speeds still there would
be more reason to upgrade. Mobile is also somewhat of a reset and doing the
same rise now.

------
seanmcdirmid
The PC is not dead; the market for selling new PCs is just stagnant. PostPC
doesn't mean the PC is dead, but it lives on more like a zombie.

I'm hoping that a new generation of largish (24-27") 4K displays will lead to
a rebirth in desktop PCs, if only because we depend on them so much for
professional work where they've fallen behind in experience when compared to
high-end laptops, which shouldn't be the case!

------
malyk
I'm seeing the same thing with my iPhone. I Have a 4S and while I like what
the 5s brings I'm just not sure it's worth upgrading now. There is just
starting to be the very hint of slowness in some things on the 4S, but it
isn't anything like when I went from the 3G to the 4s. That was a huge
upgrade. Now it just doesn't feel necessary to buy the next thing on the same
schedule.

------
pmelendez
Thanks! Somebody finally said it! (or at least this is the first blog post I
read about it)

If any, what is dead is the software need for the Moore's law

------
ivanhoe
This is all true, I still can do pretty much everything on my 2009 PC, but
truth is also that I do it rarely, specially since I've got a new console a
few years ago and stopped playing on PC... everything work related is on my
laptop, playing games on console is nicer, PC desktops are simply not needed
anymore (for what I do, and also for majority of not-tech users)

------
dageshi
This is pretty much dead on. What I think will happen is that PC manufacturers
are going to look around for new markets and the obvious one is going to be
consoles. Once SteamOS comes out I expect a slow but massive ramp up in PC-
Console production in a similar vein to the way that Android powered devices
have come to dominate the smartphone market (in numbers shipped).

------
bitemix
It seems like the only folks who consistently upgrade their computers every
1-2 years are gamers and people working with big media files. Some friends and
I run a website dedicated to helping people build and upgrade their PCs. We
see about 130k visitors per month. That's a pretty low number, but it still
converts to a quarter of a million in sales every month.

------
b1daly
It's weird,but I feel like my PCs are all you slow. I bought a rMAcBook Pro
recently expecting to be blown away, but it still feels sluggish to me. I want
instantaneous response when it comes down to it. There actually is a
qualitative difference between 100ms and 10ms response time. I'm surprised, I
really thought we would be closer.

------
wainstead
When we speak of PCs versus smartphones or tablets we're talking a lot about
form factor and portability. I imagine a day when my smartphone has more
horsepower than the best desktop today and it can drive a huge 4K monitor
while streaming petabits at a time. You'll only need one device and it will be
the CPU to all your interfaces.

------
solnyshok
Mostly agree, however, I think there could be more upgrade waves for home PCs,
triggered by some qualitative improvements in technology. My guess, once we
have a reasonably powerful, totally silent (fanless, 512-1TB SSD), book sized
desktop PC, maybe in 2-3 years from now, it might trigger wave of home PC
upgrades. After that, who knows...

------
goblin89
This article makes a similar point:
[http://techland.time.com/2013/04/11/sorry-pc-industry-
youve-...](http://techland.time.com/2013/04/11/sorry-pc-industry-youve-
apparently-managed-to-perfect-the-pc/) (I think it's been posted on HN before,
but I couldn't find the post).

------
jebblue
Well I did, used my last one for almost 8 years, got this one a few months
ago, don't have to upgrade as often; I still have to upgrade. It's lighter,
quieter, generally more powerful, more RAM, more disk space, better graphics.
These are all the reasons I ever upgraded just not as often.

------
mpg33
Average computing power and storage has gotten to a point that it now can
handle the everyday stuff with relative ease. High-def video/gaming are the
main areas where hardware still has to keep up with.

Although one could argue that network bandwidth is still an area affects the
"everyday stuff".

------
fallingmeat
Thinkpad T60 purchased (refurb!) in 2007. Still a rock solid machine. It does
get a little warm though..

~~~
mattl
T60 will even run coreboot, if you fancy putting an SSD in there, you'd have
near instant boot.

------
shmerl
_> The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones_

It's really nice when some build process takes less time because of better
hardware. Also, try running some upcoming games on an old PC. Obviously the
need for some hardware depends on what you are planning to do.

------
snambi
PCs are ugly, clunky and they take up a lot of space at home. Also, a PC
reduces the appeal of home or office, compared with a Mac. Honestly this is
one of the reasons I bought a Mac. Ofcourse Mac is UNIX, that is another major
reason.

------
ausjke
This is so true, tablet/smart-phone are great portable devices, however I can
not live without a PC/laptop, it's just I already had a few of them. My first
choice will be PC, then smart phone, the last one is tablet.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
I just upgraded from Q6600 / 4GB to i7-4770K / 32GB, but actually that Q6600
would have been enough, if I would have just used SSD with it. SSD is they
key. Apps I user are Firefox, Thunderbird, Deluge and VLC.

------
Lost_BiomedE
My .02 is that Microsoft OS stopped being lead-ware. I noticed that since
Win7.

------
jrs99
When people say the PC is dead, they do not mean that it is not being used and
people don't need one... they mean that people simply don't buy it as often
and have other options to choose from, like laptops.

Saying that the PC is dead is being correct. Almost everyone I know buys a
laptop instead of a PC. I know a lot of people that do not have a PC, but I
don't think I know a single person that doesn't have a laptop.

It's like saying the Novel is Dead. Plenty of novels are being written, but it
is really not the one major form of art that people are discussing. That is
being replaced by television and film. Will there be novels written fifty
years from now? Most definitely. But still, the idea that the novel is the one
true form where the greatest art occurs is over.

------
tn13
Well, if PC had to die then on what are we going to write all our code ?

Tablets, those funky phones are popular today something else will get popular
after them. PC may never get as popular as them but they are here to stay.

------
kayoone
My 2009 Core2Quad with 8Gigs of Ram and an SSD still feels faster than the
latest and greatest with a normal HDD. It even runs OSX beautifully ;)

SSDs just changed the game, and it was about 2009 when that started.

------
hmart
I'm a happy owner of a DELL e1505 still working in the living room where has
survived two little girls of 4 and 2 years. Now I want to rescue it and
install Ubuntu after upgrading to a SSD.

------
tuananh
I recently bought a new PC, after 6 years. Not because my old PC is unusable
but I rather need a new one as HTPC with very low power consumption.

------
avenger123
At least Microsoft is helping the PC industry.

Microsoft and its SharePoint platform will keep SharePoint developers
upgrading their desktops upon every release.

------
mpg33
I think computing power/storage is becoming more necessary on the server side
than the client side.

------
nXqd
With all the guide from tonymac, I enjoy building my own hackintosh with
cheaper and better hardwares :P

------
hawkw
If there's no money to be extracted from it, then it's dead in the eyes of
industry.

------
alinspired
most of consumers will not even upgrade their PCs, but change it to a new PC,
laptop or tablet when it's completely broken.

i'm thinking my parents - they will use that 2000 pc until it's not booting
up, and then they'll worry on upgrade

------
platz
Below is what I feel is a relevant excerpt from Text of SXSW2013, Closing
Remarks by Bruce Sterling [1]:

\--- Why does nobody talk about them? Because nobody wants them, that’s why.
Imagine somebody brings you a personal desktop computer here at South By,
they’re like bringing it in on a trolley.

“Look, this device is personal. It computes and it’s totally personal, just
for you, and you alone. It doesn’t talk to the internet. No sociality. You
can’t share any of the content with anybody. Because it’s just for you, it’s
private. It’s yours. You can compute with it. Nobody will know! You can
process text, and draw stuff, and do your accounts. It’s got a spreadsheet. No
modem, no broadband, no Cloud, no Facebook, Google, Amazon, no wireless. This
is a dream machine. Because it’s personal and it computes. And it sits on the
desk. You personally compute with it. You can even write your own software for
it. It faithfully executes all your commands.”

So — if somebody tried to give you this device, this one I just made the pitch
for, a genuinely Personal Computer, it’s just for you — Would you take it?

Even for free?

Would you even bend over and pick it up?

Isn’t it basically the cliff house in Walnut Canyon? Isn’t it the stone box?

“Look, I have my own little stone box here in this canyon! I can grow my own
beans and corn. I harvest some prickly pear. I’m super advanced here.”

I really think I’m going to outlive the personal computer. And why not? I
outlived the fax machine. I did. I was alive when people thought it was
amazing to have a fax machine. Now I’m alive, and people think it’s amazing to
still have a fax machine.

Why not the personal computer? Why shouldn’t it vanish like the cliff people
vanished? Why shouldn’t it vanish like Steve Jobs vanished?

It’s not that we return to the status quo ante: don’t get me wrong. It’s not
that once we had a nomad life, then we live in high-tech stone dwellings, and
we return to chase the bison like we did before.

No: we return into a different kind of nomad life. A kind of Alan Kay world,
where computation has vanished into the walls and ceiling, as he said many,
many years ago.

Then we look back in nostalgia at the Personal Computer world. It’s not that
we were forced out of our stone boxes in the canyon. We weren’t driven away by
force. We just mysteriously left. It was like the waning of the moon.

They were too limiting, somehow. They computed, but they just didn’t do enough
for us. They seemed like a fantastic way forward, but somehow they were
actually getting in the way of our experience.

All these machines that tore us away from lived experience, and made us stare
into the square screens or hunch over the keyboards, covered with their
arcane, petroglyph symbols. Control Dingbat That, backslash R M this. We never
really understood that. Not really. \---

[1]: [http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-
sxsw2...](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/text-of-
sxsw2013-closing-remarks-by-bruce-sterling/)

~~~
mindslight
This isn't universally wrong, but it is dead-wrong with present technology.
And covering our eyes and pretending that we are currently that advanced
doesn't make it so.

Because while basic computation is a universal commodity, what is implemented
on top of it certainly _isn 't_ \- a piece of software always functions as
_someone 's_ agent. When the systems you end up relying on are entirely
defined by someone else, the only thing that represents your will is your
mind, and it is effectively executing a complex and ill-defined protocol
against always-diligent computers.

You've done the computational equivalent of declining a lawyer.

But it doesn't seem like a big deal, since you're only compromising a little
at any given time. But the software is always _changing_ in ways that benefit
its controllers while your expectations are mostly based on the capabilities
that they've presented. So the progress you perceive is entirely in _their_
desired paradigm. Features that would benefit you but at the expense of
Google/Apple/etc are never explored, because you aren't the user of their
software - you're its working set!

I can forgive the old-timers who were conditioned by broadcast media to see
the world in hierarchal take-it-or-leave terms and don't understand what
they're losing by sharecropping in walled gardens. And I can mostly forgive
the unclued herd that just buys whatever is advertised.

But for everybody who _knows_ the power of personal computers yet pretends
webapps and locked appliances are actual progress, either out of personal
laziness, cognitive dissonance, or longstanding need for social acceptance:
shame on you for abandoning that self-determination you tasted the first time
you truly experienced computing.

~~~
platz
Good thoughts here. I am optimistic due to things like raspberry pi and
arduino becoming popular, but at the same time these things just feel like
this generations version of building radio kits and model airplanes.
Ultimately it's the data rather than the computation that's important.

~~~
mindslight
Yeah exactly, it's not that general purpose CPUs will be outlawed like we
worried about in the 90s, it's that the generally popular ways of using
technology won't be using their capabilities.

It's not just the data itself, but really about _protocols_ used to access the
data. Protocols mediate between parties, and by choosing to download a binary
blob simply to check your email, you've given up any true bargaining power in
that exchange. You still have some autonomy by hacking the blob (userscript
injection, etc), but you're only building on unstable ground.

------
zerny
Well, PCs performance has never been beaten by tablets and phones.

------
devx
Either way, terrible news for Intel and Microsoft.

------
ffrryuu
The new fanless PC's are pretty cool.

------
bjoe_lewis
If only Paul let me vote twice.

------
badman_ting
Right, that's what it means to say that the market is dying. But if you need
to feel clever, feel clever.

~~~
nrivadeneira
Wish I could downvote this. Snark like this is toxic and is neither useful nor
interesting.

A lot of folks reading sensationalist articles about the PC market decline are
making the conclusion that nobody likes or uses PC's anymore since sales are
declining. The author is pointing out that it's a poor conclusion to make
since there are other factors contributing to the decline, including the fact
that the usable lifespan of today's PC's is longer than it used to be.

