PC sales outlook improves: Now terrifying instead of catastrophic There's no sunrise in sight yet, only a slightly paler night: IDC reckons a lame uptick in convertibles and slim laptops will slow the PC market's collapse. Convertible and slim, sorry, “ultra slim” laptops will make up 63 per cent of notebook shipments by 2020, IDC reckons (by that time, Vulture South wonders, how many new …
So the industry needs to persuade consumers to give up perfectly acceptable 4-5 year old (fairly modular design) HP devices (pick your make here) with slim led backlit displays, having all ports including Ethernet/eSATA, devices with replaceable batteries and parts a plenty on ebay (new keyboard etc) with...
A disposable, sealed up - 4 year shelf life device to save consumers an extra 2-4 mm in their bag, with the disadvantages of knowing that a coffee split will render their data gone (in the case of the macbook Pro w/touchbar) + others. i.e. UKP 500+ repairs for Surface Pro battery issues etc.
Hmm..I think I'll pass. Having an active backup plan is all fine, but I do like the ability to pull the disk in the first instance, after I've dropped my laptop and at least have a chance my data is intact, before spending hours of restoring data.
I really don't care about saving 2-4mm in the scheme of things. Basically, stop soldering SSDs. NOW. I can cope with the rest, just not that.
"A disposable, sealed up - 4 year shelf life device to save consumers an extra 2-4 mm in their bag, with the disadvantages of knowing that a coffee split will render their data gone (in the case of the macbook Pro w/touchbar) + others. i.e. UKP 500+ repairs for Surface Pro battery issues etc."
that ships with WIN-10-NIC pre-installed. Yeah, no deal.
A bit more variety on offer would help.
Looking for off the shelf kit has been a pain when you wnat something different from the limited choices on offer.
I fancied a small form factor laptop, there's plenty ... if you want weedy processor, minimal RAM and minimal size disk space.
As planned use would be plenty of no internet access on (non first class) public transport (hence want a small size for crammed sardine spaces), a cloudy based solution no use, decent storage vital, as is decent RAM & processor as would be doing more demanding work than just spreadsheets / word processing (e.g. compilation of complex projects then running test suites so decent multi threading performance useful for parallel running of test cases), plus that holy grail of an optical drive - some people still use them vendors! Plus easily swapped batteries, not sealed in units which give laptop a life only as long as it's battery.
So, as I cannot see what I want, so no purchase made..
I'm sure there's lots of people with different but equally non mainstream requirements that look at the range of kit on offer & go, not really what I want, I won't bother shelling out the cash on something sub-optimal as I can find a better use for the money.
To add to your list.
I want an OS not Windows 10. (Microsoft, which lives in a bubble, does not realize how much people hate Windows 10.) And I want the full driver support from the manufacturer for that alternative OS.
I want a Blu-Ray drive that can read 4K UHD discs and play them. I want a laptop with at least a DisplayPort 1.2 adapter so that I can, with the appropriate adapter, play these 4K discs on a TV when I am not at home.
I want a SD card slot. I want some USB C slots and some USB A slots.
I want manufacturers to give AMD's CPU's a chance only because competition is a good thing. One of the problems AMD ran in to was that the computers which their CPU's were put in were junk by design. With Zen coming out soon, it would be nice if they would actually use good motherboards for AMD parts. For the sake of our wallets.
When the PC sales decline started, they were in denial - for several years they predicted it was a blip (caused by waiting for Windows 8, hatred of Windows 8, waiting for Windows 10, China slowdown, and a half dozen other excuses I can't recall) and strong growth would resume in the next reporting period. They were always wrong.
Lately they've seen reality in the years of falling sales, keep predicting the decline will flatten imminently. Here they are forecasting that out for five years, claiming the convertibles will balance the decline seen in other market segments because convertibles are the only segment showing any growth. Sorry IDC, the market for laptops that can be used as tablets is limited, and will soon be saturated when there are enough less expensive alternates to Surface Pro. It won't be the savior any more than Windows 8, Windows 10, next generation CPUs from Intel or anything they've claimed the market is waiting for.
Will these clowns ever learn?
I got my first small laptop (netbook) after seeing this:
https://regmedia.co.uk/2007/06/06/asus_eeepc_2.jpg
Those were the days. Where is she now, when I need her?
The battery on my first eeepc is now dead; the 800x600 screen is too low nowadays.
Why can't I get a small laptop with better than 1366x768 resolution today without going into premium price ranges?
I can find a cheap tablet of that size (eeepc size) with a full hd screen, but it won't run Linux.
Maybe a manufacturer will surprise me, next year.
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