Yeah, yeah, PCs are dead? Ask Texan Mick and his Dell empire if that's the case

Good old fashioned sales of business PCs is keeping growth at Dell Technologies chugging along, more than compensating for crappy sales of server and networking gear. Coming hot on the heels of financials from rivals HPE, Cisco and NetApp, Dell Tech - the home of Dell EMC and VMware - last night reported a 2 per cent year-on- …

[steve 124]

cheaper ram

Might have something to do with the fact that DRAM manufacturers have almost stopped raping the public on memory prices (which we're up nearly 500% since 2015, at Q4 last year). DRAM translates to nearly all components (mobo, GPU, SSD, and of course, RAM). I would have already built at least 2 new PCs at my house in the last 3 years, except the prices were so artificially jacked up, so I waited. Maybe in 2020 I'll build a new rig, but it's sad that even now DRAM prices are about 150% of where they were when my last PC was built.

Still waiting to hear back on the class action suite they were supposed to be bringing against the big 4. I'm sure my slice of that pie will be something like 37 cents, but I just want to hear some CEOs went to prison again. If they aren't prosecuted then it will happen again (just like in 05 and 97).

PCs aren't going anywhere, it's just nobody could afford to upgrade until very recently.

[Cavehomme_]

Re: cheaper ram

I'm not a Grammar Nasty, but...

"which we're up"

Nope: which were up...

[devTrail]

Re: cheaper ram

Huh?

I saw prices going slightly down for low frequency modules probably stuff that went out of production and good only to upgrade older PCs. But overall prices are still high, the story of the cheap DRAM and cheap SSDs seems just a marketing trick.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cheaper ram

Dell doesn't rape people on memory. They do it on laptop batteries. And that's the exact term they used.

[Unicornpiss]

Quality?

Let me just say that I like Dell equipment, but their laptop quality has been abysmal for the last year or two on their Latitude line. Are they seeking to emulate HP in this regard?

[devTrail]

Re: Quality?

Today most, if not all, of the production is done by subcontractors. Chances are that some Dell and HP laptops actually come out from the same factory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Quality?

I've worked in both places and let's say this, you need to be careful. When I use my hard earned dosh to buy a laptop, I must admit, it's a Dell. I think that image from when I was at HP of a room full of trolleys, each stacked 6 ft high with brand new, failed laptops has stayed with me ever since. And my kids have only ever bought Macs following their childhood experiences with HP PCs. IT's not just just the box IT's also the Support.

[JJKing]

Re: Quality?

I got IMO, a very well speced laptop at a very reasonable price from Dell. The one thing I do loathe about it is they will only supply Winshit 10 drivers. No Linux or even Win 8.1 drivers, just Winshit 10. As a result, I do not have a working Ethernet port and had to change the Wi-Fi card so I could have some sort of connectivity since I refuse to run that piece of crap Micro$hit have forced onto hardware that I OWN.

Guess I am going to have to try different Linux flavours and find one that is most compatible with the hardware that I have.

_{Oh yes, my Dell was made in PRC (that acronym so describes their political system) and assembled by some non democracy communist bastard.}

HANG IN THERE HONG KONG!

[Unicornpiss]

Re: Quality?

Speaking of drivers, when we went through the transitional period when Win10 was new and we were still using a Win7 image, the new Dell models came out, and drivers for both were available from Dell's website. Or I should say that reasonably good hardware drivers were available for Win10, and barely functional ones for Win7. You could tell that not much effort was put into making the new models compatible with Win7, despite LTS for 7 still being around for another 5 years or so at the time. A lot of the upgrades we ended up doing were to avoid the flaky 7 drivers. Just not what you would hope for with a business laptop supplier, and with their professional Latitude line. (and this is not related to my previous comment about the abysmal quality of late)

Upvote, downvote, doesn't really matter, but I do kind of fail to understand why the downvotes for stating what myself and my colleagues personally have experienced with Dell over the last 1-2 years--the Latitude 7480 and 7490, as well as the 55xx series workstations have had more sudden system board failures than any other model we've ever had.

Again, I like Dell. (don't get me started on the dark days when we used HP) But I do think their quality has slipped.

[jelabarre59]

Re: Quality?

Let me just say that I like Dell equipment, but their laptop quality has been abysmal for the last year or two on their Latitude line.

It's the case on their All-in-One systems as well (although, looking at the system boards on them, they're pretty much "laptop" machines anyway, just with bigger screens and external keyboards). The in-laws just "upgraded" their 4-yr old Dell AiO to a current Inspiron AiO (funny, it didn't 'inspire" me once I was configuring/decrappifying it for them) and it runs just as bad (or worse) than the machine they were replacing.

If, as another commenter here says, HP & Dell are coming off the same line, perhaps they should be considering Lenovo next time around.

[bombastic bob]

Win-10-nic driving SALES? Only because 7 support and IT people unreasonably fear alternatives...

It's time for Dell to PROMOTE LINUX. SAME hardware as Win-10-nic machines, but with Linux, and $50 CHEAPER because NO LICENSE FEE.

Dell: do THAT, and you'll see REAL success!!

Because the PC is _NOT_ dead. It's also NOT a slab, NOT a phone, NOT a touchie-feelie "device". It's a mouse, keyboard, and display, from which ACTUAL WORK can be done. And NEARLY ALL of it could be done with LINUX as the OS.

[NATTtrash]

Dell does do Linux Bob...

Come on Bob, cut Dell some slack. Because they do offer Dell boxen with Linux on it. And have, if I remember well, been doing so now with the XPS 13 for 2-3 years (people, please correct me if I'm wrong on the time period). In addition, Dell in the EU now offers many other models (Inspirion?) to come pre-installed with *nix. That's more than I can say for the other boxen slingers. Anybody called for support from an OEM after *nix install lately? Or looked for a *nix lappy in their catalogue? (Don't be silly, I mean the big ones, not e.g. Pine or S76).

Phoronix/ Michael benchmarked the *nix XPS quite regularly.

Now, it could be that, due to your location, this is not available where you are. If you search the US (and I think also UK?) Dell site for the XPS 13/ 15, you will find you will find only a Windows installed option. Must be that non-SJW "free competition" thing you guys have over there...

[NATTtrash]

Re: Dell does do Linux Bob...

Correction: I do apologise, but Dells bloody auto-direct messed up the link I left for the Dell *nix boxen search. Here it is for some countries...

Scandinavia

Switzerland

Germany

France

Italy

Sorry, out of languages now... But I'm sure you can find more yourself ☺

[GrumpenKraut]

Re: Dell does do Linux Bob...

Still (from Germany) crap like if you want 32GB of RAM then it has to be Windows. With Linux you get 16GB, no more, cannot add more memory. Grrr...

[Roj Blake]

Re: if you want 32GB of RAM then it has to be Windows. With Linux you get 16GB

In fairness to Dell, with Windows the OS probably uses at least an extra 16GB.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Dell does do Linux Bob...

you're pointing out some of what I've observed - too many boxen don't have a "linux option"

[bombastic bob]

Re: Dell does do Linux Bob...

unfortunately, when I have looked at Dell in the past, they ONLY offered "linux as an option" on their MORE EXPENSIVE hardware. The bulk of the machines were WINDOWS ONLY.

That's the problem - perhaps I should have been more specific?

So I'd like them (basically) to offer Linux as an OPTION, for ALL machines that come pre-shipped with Win-10-nic on them, at a discount because NO win-10-nic tax payed to MICROSHAFT.

That's what I meant.

(had to use a lot of extra words to explain it, thought maybe most of this was obvious, but oh well)

[devTrail]

Re: Win-10-nic driving SALES? Only because 7 support and IT people unreasonably ...

but with Linux, and $50 CHEAPER because NO LICENSE FEE

I admit it's a while that I don't check the prices, but I don't think you're right. Big producers use different tricks to inflate the prices of PCs with Linux and small producers don't have a lot of margin to cut the price due to their scale. Eventually PCs with Linux cost as much as PCs with Windows and it is only for commercial, not technical, reasons.

Of course you could by a PCs with Windows and try and recover the licence, but the hassle ensures that only a minority would do that.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Win-10-nic driving SALES? Only because 7 support and IT people unreasonably ...

"Eventually PCs with Linux cost as much as PCs with Windows and it is only for commercial, not technical, reasons."

They subsidise the cost of the laptop by filling it up with paid-for crapware. You can't do that on a *nix build.

I'd be surprised if the bigger players are paying as much as $50 per OEM licence.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Win-10-nic driving SALES? Only because 7 support and IT people unreasonably ...

"subsidise the cost of the laptop by filling it up with paid-for crapware"

you DO have a point...

[jelabarre59]

Re: Win-10-nic driving SALES? Only because 7 support and IT (ttile to long)

Well, they won't charge less for a Linux pre-install because the MSWin installs are subsidized by all the crapware they bundle with those pre-installs. Your Linux option, being a cleaner, crapware-reduced pre-install, will actually have to pay for more of it's own cost.

Now, if Dell sold cleaner, vanilla-installs as an option, *then* you'd see a price differential in favor of Linux.

[Magani]

Oblig quote

"...the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.”

Mark Twain (attrib)

[Wonder Dog]

Another large infrastructure vendor seeing revenue decline. None of them are telling the real story. I reckon its because the workloads are moving to the cloud so companies dont need to buy that on perm stuff. Longer term ..the likes of HP, Dell, NetApp etc are in for a tough ride as more and more organisations come to realise that the cloud ior SaaS s perfectly good enough for a lot of their workloads

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll omit the obvious cautions about entrusting all of your company data to "the cloud". Hybrid models are much safer, and require on-premises computing power. The mature players in the market are "HP, Dell, NetApp, etc."

Also... last I checked, "the cloud" consisted of computers and storage as well. Most of which might be customers for "HP, Dell, NetApp, etc."

I'd say the general economic picture, and the political circus in the US, are more responsible than "the cloud" for short-term revenue dips.

[mark l 2]

While business might be spending money on new PCs to replace Windows 7 boxes, how much of that is going to continue after next year support for Windows 7 ends?

Since MS have said Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows then there would be no need to upgrade PCs to get the latest OS, so you can run them until the physical hardware starts to fail. Even a low spec PC these days comes with enough CPU power and RAM to run most of the common business software.

I have a 10 year old Dell Optiplex PC which runs both Linux and Windows 10 reasonably well after increasing the RAM for 2 to 8 GB

[PiltdownMan]

Mine's a 10 year old HP Laptop

Alright, I've upgrade the CPU from 2.0GHz to 2.6GHz, upped the RAM to 8GB AND put in an SSD.

It flippin flies now. (WIndows 10, Office 2019, Visual Studio 2019, OoenSCAD, Arduino IDE etc)

(Alright, VS2019 compile times are a bit iffy, but hey)

I reckon it's got a nother 10 years life left in it now.

[yoganmahew]

Re: Mine's a 10 year old HP Laptop

Likewise my gaming laptop has had some upgrades, but still flies; that may be more to do with me being stuck in a couple of games in the past, though :)

I wonder if declining consumer sales are the result of really short business recycle times? A 2 year old refurb'd company laptop has an adequate spec for most uses (barring graphic intensive) and on ebay is wildly cheaper than an equivalent power new. Plus, buying second hand lets you see real user reviews.

[Clunking Fist]

Re: Mine's a 10 year old HP Laptop

Wait til they stop producing drivers for equipment/components more than X years of age.

[John Brown (no body)]

"Even a low spec PC these days comes with enough CPU power and RAM to run most of the common business software."

True. I've also seen the expected lifespan grow over the last decade or so. Most of our big customers were buying desktops with a 3 year on-site warranty because that was the replacement cycle. It went up to four years. Then 5 years. Most modern kit still seem to become less reliable after 5 years so most places seem to be still replacing on the 5 year cycle and paying for on-site warranty for the same period. Others will replace only some after 5 years and store the old kit. The old kit is then used to replace failed old kit so those departments who don't need new shiny will keep using old kit for 6, 7 even 8 years without any sort of warranty/maintenance cover.

[W. Anderson]

Windows malware catastrophe causes Dell adultery.

What is interesting about Dell's robust "PC" Sales in comparison to weak Server sales they are experiencing - in comparison to competitors' robust Server/Data Center sales, is that the plague of Ransomeware malware that is ravaging the USA is attributed directly to Microsoft Windows "ONLY", so Dell's fortunes on edge computing may very well be a contributing agent of this Cyber Security cancer.

Possibly one reason Dell is 'partnering with Google to provide "Enterprise Grade" Chromebooks as hedge against epidemic of attacks through their 'until now' favourite Redmond OS, along with offering Ubuntu Linux "pre-installed" on several more laptops and desktop PCs.

That is, until Microsoft clamps down harshly on their adultery.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Thank cellphones

PCs were momentarily declared dead because people choosing between a desktop and a laptop would choose a laptop. Now a cellphone or tablet can do most lightweight portable computing. The high-end ones even make pretty good remote terminals with a little USB-C docking station connecting them to Ethernet, mouse, keyboard, and monitor. It makes sense to buy the desktop for serious use and skip the laptop.

[Baldrickk]

Re: Thank cellphones

Even then, the desktop was the cheaper, more maintainable option (as in, lets up the memory/HDD etc)

That said, the biggest performance increase I see on old laptops? Stripping them down to clean out the heat-sinks of accumulated fluff. SSD comes second.

I had a laptop for doing things on, on the move, and a desktop for gaming. I've lost the laptop now, for pretty much exactly what you have described - my phone does all my casual use, and my desktop does all the heavy lifting.

No longer doing work on the move has helped with that though - for that I would want a laptop.

[clyde666]

PC sales

I suspect Dell are just getting a larger share of the overall PC market.

I don't see any sign of great demand for new PCs.

[a_yank_lurker]

Re: PC sales

That is probably partly true, but in a mature market there will be annual ups and downs in unit sales around an average. So this year, for many cyclical reasons may be an up year which will be matched by a down year in a couple of years for the same cyclical reasons.

[Conyn Curmudgeon]

CPU and GPU power hit a "good enough" ceiling many years ago meaning that as long as the thing still runs then its fast and powerful enough. People simply arent throwing out their old slow PCs and buying new ones as regularly causing alarmists to say that the PC is dead. Same thing is happening now with mobile phones, the iPhone 6S is a prime example of where the phone was "good enough" with little reason to upgrade outside of just having the latest thing.