Quick maths refresher: Intel CPU shortages + consumer stock bottleneck = no computer sales growth in EMEA for 2019 EMEA PC shipments look set to shrink in 2019 due weak consumer sales and the effect Intel's prolonged CPU shortages will have on product availability during the Back To School season. According to IDC, 71.3 million desktops, notebooks and workstations will be shipped into the region's channel this year, which if correct will …
Previous sales data already shows a ~5% increase for business sales so something is happening.
On the home sales front however, it’s tanking - in negative double figures in most EU markets. The Win7 end of life is pushing people to mobile devices rather than newer low end laptops. Aside from the odd bargain, the majority of sub-£400 laptops either need converted to a friendly Linux/OpenOffice build and the windows tax removed to make them competitive or just straight out dumped with £100+ discounts.
Yes, I’m looking at everything with small, very slow HDDs or <150GB SSDs - you will struggle to Win10 on those...
AMD CPUs are cheaper, better designed/more secure, and now, faster than Intel equivalents (particularly once all the mitigations are applied to fix the vulnerabilities in Intel gear).
Win, win, win.
If only HP and Dell weren't so far up Intels contra-marketing arse they might be offering some superior non-Intel alternatives to make up for the shortfall.
Anyone buying over-priced, insecure (and, apparently) hard to source Intel CPUs these days needs their fricking head seeing to.
AMD also forces their PSP on you for DRM purposes. Security isn't the main concern, preventing you viewing or saving things you shouldn't (piracy etc.) is. In that regard, they're just as bad as Intel, even though they have a good core this time around don't pretend for a second they are altruistic or have the consumer's best interest in mind.
As recently as yesterday, a classmate asked me about what to pick for a new laptop, showing me screencaps with various budget Celeron laptops and a Skylake i3 Dell that a shop is trying to get rid of by marking down the price below the $250 point. When I asked her about her current laptop, she replied that she had a 2011-era Dell. The jump is not worth it, especially that her usage is basic stuff, and the Celerons are going to be woefully underpowered, with a much crappier build quality. A SSD upgrade would do her just fine. However, she still insisted on upgrading.
Why?
She said that it's because her Windows 7 install has been nagging about "upgrading" (yet, for some reason, Windows 10 didn't infect it yet) and the machine frequently reboots for updates.
She thinks that the updates are because the laptop is old, and the "upgrade" is to a new laptop.
Face palm, totally not because of her, but because of M$'s blackmail. It's the first time I really felt how people are easily taken for a ride.
Can anyone remember what MicroGit was boasting that Win10 ran better/faster then Win7 on older iron?
But now you have to get a better PC to run the POS.
I probably will be buying/building a new PC this year, as mine still runs a 10 y/o AMD Phenom cpu; but it wont be on Intel iron, and it wont be running Win10; it will be dual booting Linux, with Win7 for playing games that dont like WINE.
Stating the obvious; but 5 year old CPUs in desktops are still mostly still good enough. Some incoming patches are screwing up older dual core setups, but otherwise there's little reason to swap unless you are doing heavy computations and/or gaming.
Even then, my 5 year old i7-6700K has plenty enough power for the forseeable future. The motherboard/graphics setup is more likely to be a limiting factor before the CPU and RAM are. Even then, a 970GTX is still plenty good enough to play just about anything albeit not at 4K. Not that worries me, when DosBOX gets more use than DirectX.
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