Brit consumers still holding off on buying new PCs until that Brexit thing is over and done with The bad news bus kept on rolling in calendar Q2 as consumer PCs sold to retailers continued their decline. Business customers’ enthusiasm for pricier hardware did, however, keep tech wholesalers revenues afloat. Distributors' sales-out figures were an improvement on the previous quarter, with an overall year-on-year drop for …
I certainly have. Hello Ryzen 3700X, and bye bye Core i7-920: retired after a decade of sterling service.
(I say 'retired', but we all know the truth is a quick, unsentimental blow to the back of the chipset after the long walk out to the WEEE scrapheap behind the barn.)
A quick check of the TARIC for "computer base units" suggests that there is zero third country duty for importing from various sources. (Example India-to-UK selected in the link below).
https://trade.ec.europa.eu/tradehelp/myexport#?product=8471500000&partner=IN&reporter=GB
I'm not so hasty to rule out there isn't something else I don't know about, but on the surface I cannot see any special import taxes applied to computers.
In any case, weak sales reflect the defect rate of current hardware. 5 year old CPUs are largely fine for most tasks, so many "upgrades" are simply the asset lifecycle running it's course. Beyond that it's pretty hard to find many cases where an upgrade is needed or even desired (outside of slapping in an SSD or latest video card upgrade).
In any case, weak sales reflect the defect rate of current hardware. 5 year old CPUs are largely fine for most tasks, so many "upgrades" are simply the asset lifecycle running it's course. Beyond that it's pretty hard to find many cases where an upgrade is needed or even desired (outside of slapping in an SSD or latest video card upgrade).
Spot on. You have a good eye for what's going on away from the buzzword bingo of marketweasels.
@binraider666
n any case, weak sales reflect the defect rate of current hardware. 5 year old CPUs are largely fine for most tasks, so many "upgrades" are simply the asset lifecycle running it's course. Beyond that it's pretty hard to find many cases where an upgrade is needed or even desired (outside of slapping in an SSD or latest video card upgrade).
Unless it actually breaks, why buy a complete new box? I recently had a play with my previous laptop. 9 years old, Win 7, decent processor, 8GB, but so much accumulated crud it took 15 mins to boot. I just swapped the HDD for an SSD (£70), £15 for the EasyRE de-crudder software, free upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10, and it's now bouncing like a baby lamb.
The days of 3-year upgrade cycles are long gone.
"Unless it actually breaks, why buy a complete new box?"
I agree entirely. I only buy a new box in two circumstances -- if one of my boxen actually breaks, or if I need another machine to add to my fleet. The days when machines were wimpy enough that replacing working ones because you need something more powerful ended years ago (outside of someone with specialized needs, anyway).
Won't make any positive difference when £1==$1 which many people in the City of London are predicting when BoJo's pals force through a 'No Deal' BREXIT.
The only thing that is certain is that there will be more uncertainty leading to $/£ rates going all over the place. Personally, I think we will see 10% price rises pretty well across the board and rises in inflation which inevitably leads to bank rate going up and widespread job losses as exports dry up and all those so-easy-peasy trade deals fail to materialise.
Once there is certainty either way pound may well strengthen.
UK seen as very safe place to hold assets.
Nice thing is this rise in sterling will prevent interest rates rising.
The certainty and low interest rates may well lead to a property boom as well as some more useful investments in infrastructure such as renewables.
I half heartedly voted remain but there are advantages and disadvantages in EU membership. Either way UK will probably continue to do nicely.
On Sunday I was in beautiful Fenton House in Beautiful Hampstead, listening to Tim Lott as he enjoyed a midday glass of wine in the beautiful sunshine celebrating the publication of his new novel while across London the world was enthralled with tennis and cricket. He was saying how awful modern life is.
This quote:
"Context senior analyst Marie-Christine Pygott told The Reg: "Consumer demand is weak across all [Western Europe] countries - consumers do not see enough reason to invest in a new PC and smartphones are used for day-to-day tasks ..."
makes it clear that it is a Europe-wide problem.
I'm sure Brexit might make matters worse in the UK but I don't believe it is as significant as the lack of sufficient reason for consumers to junk quite serviceable PCs running Windows 7.
Until the industry stops using Brexit as a fig-leaf, it isn't going to get any better for them.
Well if they can no longer blame the EU for their incompetence they will have to find another scapegoat.
But this time they will probably be partially correct, if anybody thinks Brexit will be even slightly beneficial for 99.99% of the UK population, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
There is an old song by 'The Who' called 'Boris the Spider'
The chorus goes
"Creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly"
but the last verse is very apt
He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl around
He's embedded in the ground
If BloJob becomes PM, it won't end well.
Revenant wrote:
"This quote: ... makes it clear that it is a Europe-wide problem."
Do you really believe that Brexit uncertainty is not creating Europe- or world-wide problems?
The clusterf*ck of Brexit shenanigans combined with the unpredictable orange genious taking loudly and carrying a small d*ck makes EVERBODY uncertain about what will come next. Uncertainty leads to reduced investments.. which leads to economical slow-downs.. which leads to brexiteers happily quoting lacklustre performance in the rest of the EU as a reason to go ahead with their destructive idiocy.
I am convinced that Brexit can trigger a worldwide recession which will be destructive for everyone.. but mostly so for the UK.
also:
Reading a BBC hys from outside of the UK has become extremely depressing because it daily demonstrates the level of thinking that is behind the whole thing, and it is not a pretty sight.
Nothing currently meets my specifications.
I have a 5 year old Yoga 2 Pro as my main DJ machine and it's brilliant. i7 is quick, screen is bright and parts can be replaced in it very easily.
New machines are just not as good. Terrible dull screens (to advertise better battery life) glued in components and less ports (no HDMI specifically as I'm a video DJ)
I have money sitting but it seems nobody wants it. The Surface seems good until you realise it is expensive (plus pen plus keyboard), it's glued together, only has a one year warranty and virtually no ports.
Its not Brexit, its lack of innovation and not giving the customer what they want.
Yep. I now tell customers NOT to buy new PCs and laptops.
Not worth the money.
I tell them to get all their kit ex-Enterprise from Amazon Renewed. Core i5/8GB/SSD/Win10 Pro Dells for £130! Three machines for the price of one!
Parts are easy to get hold of too. Laptops are Lenovo T430's for £200+. Again not glued together and easy to work on.
The computer world is going backwards. The kit might be getting faster but not necessarily ...better.
@Jason7 I completely agree - you can find some amazingly good spec fully refurbished kit for a stupidly low price on Amazon and eBay! so there no incentive or justification to look at buying a new PC. I would also go out on a limb and state this is probably true for the majority of home users who do mainly web browsing, emaill and the odd document, but they just don't realise it.
>Its not Brexit, its lack of innovation and not giving the customer what they want.
A vast majority of machines are used just for surfing, word processing, some excel and email so there's still plenty of life left to do those undemanding tasks and if you need a speed up just replace the spinning rust with an SSD.
>New machines are just not as good.
Hmm, yes as power requirements get smaller so do the batteries so you gain no advantage and don't get me started on at least one of the DRAM banks being soldered in on a lot of laptops today.
I agree too. While Brexit is a big bag of wank, the only thing it's affected here is the value of the pound.
My home PC's getting on a bit now. I've brought it up to 32 GB of RAM in the last year, thanks to ebay and I've got about 17TB of storage which I didn't have before. Basically it's plenty and I have no need for anything else.For those who just browse the internet or write Word docs, they will have reached that point ages ago.
Same for tablets. Most people just buy new ones if the old one breaks. And that's happening more with phones now too.
The only new PCs I buy are Pis & Odroids.
It could be that the prices out there are just shocking. The prices we pay in Blighty are insane and I've no idea why.
Take SSDs for example. I ordered a 1TB SSD from the US for $89. It'll take a few days longer to arrive (as a friend has to bring it in for me), but that's a worthwhile trade off because in Blighty it's around £129 depending on where you look. Roughly double the price.
Same applies for pretty much any electronics.
As for businesses, well Windows 10 runs just fine on old Windows 7 machines with an SSD upgrade.
We're also on an odd number for Intel releases. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I generally recommend waiting for the even numbered versions to release as you generally get a better deal and a better product.
E.g. 6th gen Intel, 8th gen etc.
Right now we're at 9th gen (which is pretty boring). 8th gen was a refresh (but there were lots of deals to be had).
So my advice would be to wait unless absolutely necessary. 10th gen will be interesting. Lots of innovative ideas coming to the table, including the standardisation of Thunderbolt.
Finally, techies these days don't get commission's or bonuses for supplying kit.
I get a percentage of whatever I save in the various budgets I have at various companies I work for.
That doesn't mean to say I cheap out, I don't, if anything I over budget. But it does mean there is an incentive to reign in spending where it's unnecessary...i.e. sorry Pam in accounts, Sage and Office run fine on that. Let's put an SSD in and upgrade to Windows 10 though.
"Take SSDs for example. I ordered a 1TB SSD from the US for $89. It'll take a few days longer to arrive (as a friend has to bring it in for me), but that's a worthwhile trade off because in Blighty it's around £129 depending on where you look. Roughly double the price."
Let's see. £1 is about $1.24 at the moment. Plus US prices don't include taxes. That makes $89 about £132. It's actually cheaper in the UK.
> "The prices we pay in Blighty are insane and I've no idea why."
20% VAT combined with tory austerity and the threat of any kind of Brexit affecting the pound.
If 'no deal' happens, expect to be paying a lot more for just about everything.
Paris, cos well, use your loaf.
PCs do what they've always done.
An average PC in a shop is more than suitable for the vast majority of people.
Specialist buyers are niche and even then, you don't need to go mad to get decent hardware.
Chromebooks do 90% of what the average person uses their PC for. Especially if you use Google Docs / Office Online, etc.
Also, a Chromebook costs £150, a laptop of any value starts around £300 and goes up quick.
Things like Acer Chromebook Tabs - combining Android tablet and Chromebook in one device - basically mean you have "full" Chrome on a tablet, capable of doing that 90% of the work, plus play all the casual games off the Play Store, for half the price of an iPad.
I will soon be in the market for a new laptop if I can't repair mine adequately (on its second battery, second PSU, and third keyboard, just through sheer volume of use for absolutely everything). According to what I see... a basic "gaming" (not really) laptop will outclass that machine two-fold in almost all respects. And yet that old laptop still runs all 1000 of my Steam games more than adequately.
And desktop PCs are dying outside of business compared to laptops. Nobody wants a chunky thing stuck in the corner any more.
Why do I need a new machine? If I need a new machine, why would I spend a lot of money? If I bought a new machine, why would I go with Windows?
I know *my* answers to those questions don't meld with 99% of the population, but that's what they are asking themselves. And Chromebooks are inheriting that stupid inference of "It's a Chromebook so it can't get viruses", which has never been true of any platform whatsoever, are cheap, have stupendous battery life, and are good enough to do anything you really need to do on them (I've issued them to hundreds of kids, who use them for everything from video editing, to audio/MIDI sequencing, to their primary word-processor, not to mention browsing their entire curricular content - even Pearson are stopping producing textbooks any more).
Well, if you're not staying in Windows, then you don't need a new machine. Linux works better than Windows on the same hardware, without question.
But, if you want to keep playing all 1000 of your Steam titles, then you're going to have to stick with Windows for a while longer - just like me.
And that is basically my problem. I'm a gamer, and the games I play do not (except for a paltry few) exist on Linux, to my dismay. Yes, I know about Wine, but I'm lazy and have other things to do than play around with a virtual machine to get my gaming on. When I have time to game, I don't want to waste time fiddling. I said goodbye to that around Windows XP SP3 and I have no intention of going back there.
I have a Linux server (Mint) with a Minecraft server on it, works perfectly fine for my needs. But my gaming platform is still Windows because 99% of all games are on Windows.
I'm not happy about it, but here we are.
SteamPlay and Lutris are expanding the range I can play without rebooting into Windows. Useful, because nothing ever seem worth the hassle of rebooting out of my primary OS anymore.
(Including in some cases older games that friends apparently want to play, but can't, on their new Windows machines)
That's neither here nor there.
Don't try to run Windows on Linux or vice versa in an era where everyone's computer has virtualisation instructions in their processors, Hyper-V built into Windows, VMWare available for less than the cost of a Windows licence, and GPU-V passthrough. And VMWare lets you do the old "Linux windows inside a Windows session" / vice-versa tricks so you don't even know that you're virtualising and can use the desktop environment of choice to run everything.
But if you need to stay on Windows (which most people don't), then you don't get a choice. Most people, however, have a choice and are taking it in preference to a whole new machine or even revamping their old. And when you do need to game, a Windows gaming machine is dirt cheap now compared to what they used to be. Unless you're talking 4K VR, your machine can likely run almost anything if it has anything vaguely resembling a discrete graphics card in it.
No consumer is going to install Linux on their working Windows machine, because they never even installed *Windows* on their Windows machine. It was all done for them, and they wouldn't stand a chance of getting UEFI booting off a CD working as an average consumer. Power users, obviously, already know this. Casual users, it's just not an option. Wine is so far from being an option that it's almost as laughable as telling them to use ReactOS.
I speak as someone who's been on Slackware since the 90's, helped make a single-floppy Linux distro, had licences for Crossover Office for god-knows-how-long and still runs 50% Linux servers in my workplace.
Nobody is going to consider a OS unless it's pre-packaged like Android, iOS or Windows. Chromebooks have merged into the Android ground now, and nobody even realises they are Linux underneath. But you have a clear split - people who need games buying Windows desktops (but more likely sticking better graphics cards / processors into their existing desktops), and people who just need "the Internet" and are buying Chromebooks and entirely other devices.
Both are killing the desktop PC market, and harming the laptop market. And I can't say I blame them.
This is true but most end users don't have the nerve or inclination to have a go. With most Windows 10 based modern computers you have to turn off secureboot in the bios to even stand a chance to load a different o/s. For the person who looks at the news or reads emails its like asking them to wander to an area with a sign that says 'Here be dragons...'
I'm not so sure. My daft old man (70, from Yorkshire originally, spends most of his time on his allotment complaining with other old miserable bastards) prefers a small form factor mini PC plugged into a 32" screen...mainly because he can wall mount the screen, hang the PC off a bracket under the desk and use wireless peripherals...he gets to keep all of the desk space when he isn't using the machine then and he doesn't have to plug a load of crap in every time he wants to shop online / watch YouTube. Everything is out of the way.
You can also get mini PCs with a good spec for a better price than a laptop with an average spec.
He currently uses an i5 6th gen machine with 8GB DDR4 RAM and a 250GB SSD running Ubuntu 18.04.
He mainly uses online banking, YouTube and Amazon.
It cost around £200 new in an Amazon sale. Can't remember the brand off hand, but it's an industrial looking thing, passively cooled (the case is effectively a heatsink). It's about the size of a standard paperback book.
He chose it, no recommendation from anyone, specifically for the form factor and the fact it doesn't require battery power. He's been using Ubuntu since 12.04 and has worked out how to install it himself.
Another factor not mentioned by anyone here yet as far as I can tell is that a lot of people in IT tend to give away old PCs as we tend to get our hands on them when companies replace older kit (it's cheaper to rip out the drives and send them off for shredding than paying to recycle the whole machine). I do. They're usually a couple of generations behind, but they're business spec, so tend to reasonably well built...stuff like Optiplex desktops, Latitude laptops etc.
My advice to anyone out there wanting a cheap but decent machine, find your local IT guy, buy him a few beers and an SSD and you might find he can magically produce a half decent machine for you.
I had a lockup full of identical Optiplexes. Had around 50. Gave away 30 (mainly to pensioners and parents that wanted a machine for the kids homework) and used the remainder as spares for the people I gave machines to.
I kept a fleet of 30 out of warranty machines going for about 6 years effectively for free. I only ever charged a nominal fee for support if it was urgent. Approx £20 an hour. No fix no fee. Parts included (where possible).
I was making about £200 a month in support, mostly on tickets asking to be shown how to do things. Not much, but solid beer money.
The local computer shop wasn't happy when I spoke to them. Turns out at least 20 people I hooked up were regulars. Until I onboarded them to my low cost IT bonanza. They fucked themselves with their £50 call out fee though.
Point is, with techies out there handling the massive amount of second hand business kit, OEMs will have a hard time convincing some people to buy a new machine given their use case.
It's got nothing to do with changing trends, increasing prices etc.
It's probably got more to do with the rate at which businesses are encouraged to refresh their kit.
A friend of mine demonstrated just that (hooking up a mobile phone to a full size monitor, keyboard and mouse) using a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 the other day, don't believe it was Chrome but looked like good enough OS for desktop use.
Since the iPhone launched I often wondered how long it would be before you could just drop your phone in a dock and use it as a main PC, I don't think that time is that far off.
I think it's a simple case of technology getting to the point where most people are happy with the response from their hardware and software.
This doesn't just apply to PC's, I think you can say the same about most tablets and mobile devices now, they are at a point where they will do most jobs.
If you are only carrying out average tasks with it (e.g. using Office type applications, web browsing, watching streaming video, gaming) even cheaper devices can handle it, more speed really isn't that noticeable for these kind of tasks anymore.
Why upgrade if last years device will handle the job?, and at the lower end there are some very capable devices, I bought a €250 Chromebook to take on holidays last year (no real worries if it gets damaged, lost or stolen compared to a €1200-2000 laptop, it's almost in the disposable category), I've got to say it's becoming one of my favorite devices, even though I have much more powerful laptops I could use, it's light, mobile and has a long battery life, along with a touch screen.
Unless you have a specialist task, such as heavy graphic manipulation/animation/Pro gaming, or serious number crunching it doesn't really make sense to upgrade to get slight performance increases now, last years devices are good enough.
Which is why I despair at so many tech sites that review for instance, phones.
You see their review and it has to be written in such a hyperbolic way that the phone that came out 6 months ago is totally obsolete.
Obscuring the sad truth that at best it's 2% better than the one from 6 months ago which itself was only 2% better than the last and so on.
It's all boring mature commodity tech now. Has been for years. Once dual core CPUs appeared it was game over in a lot of cases. But tech sites have to hype this crap up. Take a look at RAM group tests. That's a good example of people wasting their lives.
Sales will lower for consumers until either some good innovation comes into the picture or programmed obsolescence kicks in.
The latter is a dangerous game. Once consumers have realised it, you're toast. Thomson TVs anyone ?
Nvidia has tried the former, but it's too early as a technology, and their prices are clearly insane.
As for Intel, they're clearly hit by the end of the Moore law.
If we Brexit, then we won't need to bother buying new PCs will we? Or maybe if we don't Brexit we won't need to bother buying new PCs. Ok, so that's perfectly clear then: no matter what, Brexit affects buying a new PC. It has nothing whatever to do with actually needing a new PC.
The same apparently applies to cars. Never mind that falling sales are a European or world wide issue, just blame everything on Brexit. It is of course, why the US stopped sending people to the moon too, way back in 1973.
Yeah it is uncertainty. Even in my "small business circle" no one currently wants to spend any money till they know which way it's going to fall. If it goes Brexit then they want to make sure there is no expenditure until they are certain it's not too bad/catastrophic.
If they dropped Brexit completely tomorrow it would be the biggest boost for the UK economy in decades.
Maybe that's the plan. Drive it down and down...buy buy buy and then Cancel/Profit.
Got my 'workhorse' PC from my local pub, they paid €30 for it, they decided to upgrade it (why??) and gave it for me for nowt (albeit the modules, case, screws, etc. were in two plastic shopping carrier bags...)
Anyway, got the bugger home, put it together (surprisingly easily, as it was a Lenovo desktop), Then was fortunate enough to find I still had a couple of days to go to upgrade its Windows 7 to 10. Worked perfectly
(Then realized what crap I'd downloaded,so also stuck Linux Mint on it). NIRVANA!
Now, I'm a very Happy Camper! (Oh, the monitor came from a skip. Also perfect).
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