Intel throws chips on the table, Microsoft plays the Copilot card in wild bet on AI PCs Intel has muddied the AI PC waters by sharing some of Microsoft's broad, non-vendor-specific requirements for running Copilot locally on Windows while insisting that such computers really do need Intel silicon at their heart. The PC industry is banking on the machine-learning hype bubble not bursting any time soon. Expensive …
What are they expecting ? Yes, there was a time when the next Intel CPU and Windows version was a must-have, because the result was obvious on screen. It was visibly faster, it performed better, everyone was happier.
It's been at least a decade (or two) since that was true. Today, the least-performing phablet/laptop will allow you to YouTube/Tik Tok/Facebook/Xitter to your heart's content. When that satisfies the need of 90% of the population, and COVID has forced almost everyone to purchase current equipment, it means that nobody actually needs a new computer for the next six/ten years at least.
So yeah, sales will be sluggish for the foreseeable future. Why can't you see that ?
My current personal laptop is five years old, and I don't even see any need to upgrade. I intend to use it as-is until the components start failing.
Pascal wrote "there was a time when the next Intel CPU and Windows version was a must-have", but frankly that time was never for me. Nothing I need to do for my personal household use (e.g. tax preparation, handling documents, banking), nor for entertainment, needs more resources than even a ten-year-old machine can easily provide; I only got this laptop when the old one started to randomly shut down due to overheating, and cleaning it out didn't help much.
And as for my own research — well, there are certainly areas of CS that need a lot of resources, but there are also many that don't. And it turns out that even in the age of "AI" I can still write without needing an LLM to hold my hand.
A sizable part of the population doesn't need now to have a general purpose personal computer, but it's happily using their smartphone. Few people, outside business necessities, are buying PCs.
People buying a desktop or tower computer for home are almost all enthusiasts and gamers, the one that in the 1980s bought a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64: we were relatively few compared to the general markets, and even if there computer were sold in millions, they were used by a niche.
Just a reminder on how to disable that nonsense: How to turn off Copilot in Windows 11 — keep it AI free
Microsoft, being well Microsoft, will just wait a little while then force it on anyway.
I've uninstalled it from five of my machines and last night up popped CoPilot on one!!!! WTF!!!!
Just like having set search on the taskbar to be an icon on the taskbar, Microshaft changed it back! AGGGHHHH!!! Eff off Microsoft.
I'm not enrolled in any preview stuff so why are they forcing it on my effing computers? Surely this should be covered under the Computer Misuse Act?
I have a 32GB AMD Framework 13, which I bought in preference to the fantastic Macbook Air, because I refused to pay £££ to have adequate memory.
All of the bits inside are replaceable, so in theory, and if the company stays in business, I don't need to buy a whole new laptop. It's a little rough round the edges, but is generally very good. If this sort of thing took off, it would be terrible for laptop manufacturers.
>> "and if the company stays in business, I don't need to buy a whole new laptop."
The IT industry will continue to operate the protection racket that threatens to expose users unwilling to keep up with their continual technology escalation to cyber threats, by withdrawing "support" for any hardware that doesn't meet their reqirements - essentialy lots more sales of PCs loaded with features that are unnecessary for most users, and throw hundreds of millions of perfectly usable PCs on the scrap-heap.
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