Sweating the assets: Techies hold onto PCs, phones for longer than ever Businesses are likely to sweat device assets for longer this year as they spend conservatively in a weakening economy, and this along with shrinking demand from consumers is leaving manufacturers in a tight spot. Gartner forecasts a perfect storm with fortunes declining for shipments of PCs, tablets and mobile phones 4.4 …
"...a 39 percent plunge in Windows-related license revenues paid by PC makers."
This might explain why Windows 11 is requiring that we replace all the corporate users computers ... in the early days (Windows XP) all the computer manufacturers were complaining that people were not buying new computers - nowadays Microsoft makes money by creating a situation that makes users to buy new computers. If the income level stays down then will be be seeing Windows 12 soon?
There's an easy solution to that - don't run Windows. My home laptop is from 2014-ish, and was definitely not top-of-the-line when it was new. Got it secondhand myself; it was too slow for the previous owner, but when running Ubuntu it's pretty reasonable for normal office work and web surfing.
Of course, most corporations (including my employer) are so deeply steeped in Microsoft Everything that they can't envision using anything else, even if it's cheaper, faster, and more secure.
Of course, most corporations (including my employer) are so deeply steeped in Microsoft Everything that they can't envision using anything else, even if it's cheaper, faster, and more secure.
I take it that you included the cost of replacing all of the document management systems used, as well as the case management system because they require office running on windows when you allowed for it being "cheaper"?
What I might run at home myself might not be suitable for my workplace.
"...Of course, most corporations (including my employer) are so deeply steeped in Microsoft Everything that they can't envision using anything else, even if it's cheaper, faster, and more secure..."
This is all too often the refrain from non-Windows users.
It isn't cheaper when you factor in training, migrations from current systems and support + support contracts (with the latter often being a significant cost even if the only perceivable benefit is having someone to escalate to/shout at).
Then there is the oft-overlooked aspect that many many businesses run on Excel. They have third party plugins from very large vendors (SAP, being one example) that they need to do day-to-day business. And there are simply no alternatives to these in the OSS market.
Like it or not, the corporate world almost entirely relies on the Microsoft stack. Show me an open source equivalent of Exchange - not the email component but things like calendars etc, that can be synched/shared across devices etc. (Not saying they aren't out there - asking the question).
The simple fact is that if it really were cheaper and quick-and-easy to do, an awful lot of places would've done it.
Companies have been sweating assets for longer now for years. 2015+ era hardware is perfectly capable of running Windows (notwithstanding the artificial hardware requirements baked in by MS) - throw in an SSD on the ones with spinning rust + maybe an extra bit of RAM where needed and the difference is night and day for a fraction of the price of a new machine.
Add to that that an awful lot of companies and people purchased new machines at the start/early days of lockdown and they are still going strong, why would they rush off to buy new?
There are more than a few examples of organisations that have tried to switch because of some idealist tech-bore has climbed enough rungs to instigate the idea. It's not too long before they abandon the project or switch back.
The anti-windows gaslighting attempts on Register comments are at least quite amusing though.
One of my employers used to run on Excel and all.
Now they run on Office365 for us minions and a variety of SAAS systems for keeping track of students and for managing teaching resources.
When working remotely I do everything in a Web browser. As do my Windows using colleagues.
It will be interesting to see what happens in (say) 5 or 10 years.
Microsoft will be happy to support linux using office365 and all online, as long as they get their recurring income. This is why they no longer care that much about open source, etc.
They will, of course, try to get as much from windows while they can, but not a top priority anymore.
@TonyJ. To add to your comment, the cost of Microsoft products is a well understood business cost and easily baked into budgets and forecasts. The unknowns in migrating away are a massive turn off for finance and the rest of the org. Also, as an IT Director / CTO in a large org you've got a lot more to focus on.
"It isn't cheaper when you factor in training, migrations from current systems and support + support contracts (with the latter often being a significant cost even if the only perceivable benefit is having someone to escalate to/shout at)."
It really depends on what you need. More and more applications than used to be desktop installed are now either server or cloud based, so the type of desktop OS matters a lot less than it did 10 years ago.
We actually have clients that made the shift away from Windows, usually to a mix of Macs and Linux (the latter for engineering workstations, the former for general office work). Support calls and the associated costs have gone down noticeably. Training needs were minimal, which, considering that people have no problem dealing with different UIs on their phones and IoT devices, shouldn't really surprise. Internal surveys show that users are actually more happy with their new systems as well.
"Then there is the oft-overlooked aspect that many many businesses run on Excel. They have third party plugins from very large vendors (SAP, being one example) that they need to do day-to-day business. And there are simply no alternatives to these in the OSS market."
Well, there's Excel for mac OS, so that's one thing. But yes, if you're dependent on a piece of proprietary software that only runs on Windows then you're forked. But then, maybe it's about time to reconsider that dependency, which is nothing more than a Single Point of Failure that can bring your business down any minute, and start considering alternatives.
"Like it or not, the corporate world almost entirely relies on the Microsoft stack."
True, which is why ransom ware and data breaches are so abundant.
"Show me an open source equivalent of Exchange - not the email component but things like calendars etc, that can be synched/shared across devices etc. (Not saying they aren't out there - asking the question)."
There are not many FOSS alternatives to Exchange, but then Microsoft has already rang the death bell for on-premises exchange to force its customers into MS365. And once we look at Exchange in the cloud, there actually are alternatives - Google Workspace being one of them.
"The simple fact is that if it really were cheaper and quick-and-easy to do, an awful lot of places would've done it."
There have been a number of examples that show that alternatives to Windows actually reduce TCO. One example is IBM's move from Windows PCs to Macs several years ago. There even are a number of Linux migrations, such as in France (where Linux is used by various parts of the government). There are a lot more successful migrations than failed ones (Munich's Linux episode was a failure because of a number of external factors, such as failures in the process, bad management and political interference).
The main reason why many businesses (especially larger ones) are so wedded to Microsoft is because those responsible rarely care enough about IT to look at all the options, nor do they care making their business fully dependent on a single vendor with a shoddy track record. On top of that, any change comes at the risk of failure, which would be career hampering. So it's easier to go with the same vendor everyone else goes with, and pay the monthly ransom to absolve themselves of all responsibility should things go sideways.
They have third party plugins from very large vendors (SAP, being one example) that they need to do day-to-day business.
Managers have allowed vendor lock-in to happen. Whether that made good sense for those companies ("just get it done now!), and the trade-offs were carefully-considered, or were simply neglected, I don't know.
I suspect many such companies will end up spending large amounts of money and time (which is money) down the road when Microsoft, Google, SAP, Oracle, or whomever sunsets a product those companies depend on, or makes it much-more expensive, or forces an upgrade to an insufficiently-backward-compatible new version.
>t isn't cheaper when you factor in training, migrations from current systems and support + support contracts (with the latter often being a significant cost even if the only perceivable benefit is having someone to escalate to/shout at).
That's a very convincing argument -- up to a point. From a "Developer who's not developing applications for the Microsoft's platform" perspective Windows is an unmitigated pain in the butt that consumes immense amounts of effort coping with its quirks and deficiencies. You cope because you have to, not because you want to, and the complaints about the negative impact on development schedules is just shrugged off as noise from the lower orders.
Meanwhile management uses tools like Excel for purposes it was never intended for -- managing projects, for example. The final straw for me was forcing us to use OneDrive for common file storage. It showed just plain arrogant tone deafness by management -- they've had more then their money's worth out of me and I don't need to spend any more time knocking my head against artificial brick walls.
There are signs that MSFT has recognized there's a world outside Office which is why it made the land grab for Git and started incorporating foreign environments into its product line. But those of us who are aware of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" are rightly wary of such things.
"It isn't cheaper when you factor in training, migrations from current systems and support + support contracts (with the latter often being a significant cost even if the only perceivable benefit is having someone to escalate to/shout at)."
That's what Windows addicts are saying, but in the real world employees have no problem working with Macs or even Linux boxes. We have a number of clients that moved away from Windows, and guess what, support costs have dropped notably. Which even IBM found out after they went for Macs instead of Windows boxes years ago. Or the French Police and MoD (which use Linux).
Lots of places have moved away from MS. Just because you didn't look doesn't mean they don't exist.
Just looking at the regular borkage Microsoft puts towards its users - including highly silly stuff like repeated cases of printing not working or links to all applications getting deleted, these problems don't exist on other platforms. It's all this shit that only MS shops have to deal with.
"Then there is the oft-overlooked aspect that many many businesses run on Excel. They have third party plugins from very large vendors (SAP, being one example) that they need to do day-to-day business. And there are simply no alternatives to these in the OSS market."
I understand, but if your business is so highly dependent on a crutch from a single vendor (SAP) that binds it to another, constantly changing tool from another vendor (MS) who has a very poor track record when it comes to software quality then you really should have a very hard look at the dangers for your business that come from this dependency.
What happens when MS makes another change that breaks compatibility with that plugin? Can your business still do the work?
"Like it or not, the corporate world almost entirely relies on the Microsoft stack. "
True, and that's one of the reason we see so many hacked and ransomware'd businesses again and again. Using the same, lacklustre software stack that's build with toilet roll cores and glue makes for a great target for attackers.
And because, especially in larger businesses, getting hacked or losing customer data rarely has any direct consequences for the responsible leadership, not much does change.
"Show me an open source equivalent of Exchange - not the email component but things like calendars etc, that can be synched/shared across devices etc. (Not saying they aren't out there - asking the question)."
Ever heard of Google Workspace? Zoho? NextCloud?
Heck, even iCloud can do that.
Exchange on premises is dead, it has already been killed off by MS, so with MS you're already looking at MS365. For which there are alternatives.
"The simple fact is that if it really were cheaper and quick-and-easy to do, an awful lot of places would've done it."
The simple fact is that many places actually have done it, and aren't looking back. Actually, the only place which did go back to MS was Munich, and that's because because of some severe mistakes made during their Linux migration, in addition to political meddling.
But yes, making the change means someone with balls need to have a look at all the critical software dependencies that have developed over the years, and develop a proper transition strategy which makes sure all aspects of the business are covered. With risk-averse IT leadership that often only knows Microsoft, that's admittedly a hard sell. Peter principle and all that.
Most corporations are knee-deep in 20+ years of technical debt and legacy systems triple-locked into Windows and MS office.
Libre office will do everything anyone might want to do but cannot replace some beancounter's master spreadsheet. Whole business models are being propped up by some custom built, undocumented, Windows-only code written a decade ago by someone who left the company years ago. A new startup could very cheaply and easily start as Linux-only. The cost to a large organisation of swapping Windows for Linux is probably far more than simply paying the Windows licenses.
I have WIndows 11 Pro on a Dell M6800 that's at least nine years old. I am also running 11 Pro on a Ryzen 7 1700 which is about the same age, in that case I had to add the TPM to the GigaByte motherboard, which was hard to find. So no, Windows 11 doesn't require you to change all the systems.
You might be happy to do that on a home machine but most of us would not do it on business machines: it's simply not worth the risk of using the various workarounds needed to make W11 install, with the knowledge the MS could break the machines at any time and we would have no recourse. It also won't install feature updates on non-compliant hardware, so you would be looking at clean install / reimage once a year or so, assuming you want to stay on the latest feature update (which many do, for good reason).
What so many on here don't seem to get is that the sort of tinkering which they (and many of us) are happy to do on home and test machines is simply not appropriate for production work machines. Nor is moving away from MS in many cases.
I've not had cause to replace my regular daily driver machine in at least 5 years. It's fine. It does everything it did back then and there have been no real improvements in hardware that would warrant it. Screen is a perfectly acceptable 15" at 1080p affair, and my eyesight really isn't good enough for it to be worth getting a 4K one. Storage is a respectable 512G of NVME making it more than large enough and fast enough. I did put another 16G of ram in it last year to take it up to 32 - but that was only so I could play Cities Skylines on it with more mods loaded - it wasn't really necessary.
I'm not seeing anything compelling in new desktop or laptop offerings at the moment. GPUs continue to march on, but outside of gaming who cares, ML guys? Most people are not doing ML, and the ones that are are more likely to be interested in big server-grade stuff. We've really not had a compelling "Get a new machine this is so much better!" in years, and outside of gaming even the incremental improvements have been largely unnecessary for daily "browse the web" "watch netflix" "send emails" type tasks.
To be honest, the only upgrade I'm looking for in the nearish future is some faster drives - possible silicon - for the file server.
Like you I replace my daily driver only when it can't cope with what I need it for - I'm not a gamer - and the biggest impact this will have on me is that my usual strategy of purchasing an ex-manager's overspecced laptop when the company upgrades will have to wait a year or two before they appear on ebay. But as that's something that happens only every four or five years, I'm not worried. And obviously, nor am I in the immediate market for something shiny and new.
My daily driver is four-five years old, and to be honest I could happily still be using the *previous* machine, never mind this one. Even my battery's still good, due to careful charge control, it's still at 83% of design capacity. The only reason I might upgrade is I'm learning CUDA, and support for my GPU is due to be dropped in a coming version.
To be fair, for the. new M1 MacBook Pro is quicker, but more importantly cooler and lasts much longer on battery than the previous Intel based MacBook Pro it replaced. I don't think I know what the fan sounds like on this thing.
And worry not: the SD slot is back on the Arm MB Pros at least!
I ran a 2013 Macbook pro from new for about 7 years. Then it got a minor bump to a 2015 with 2TB stick. Couldn't go any newer because of butterfly-gate. End of last year upgraded to a 2020 *Air*. Nice wee machine, does more than I need it to. So that's basically 2 computers in a decade, and the most recent one is down a level in the pecking order. Same with phones, my iphone 6 went for about 5 years before being passed down to my son who ran it for another 3 years.
Don't look to me for revenue growth.
The only possible reason for upgrading is power efficiency. But that's not really Intel's thing. I used to always have an EOL Sun server or 2 whirring away in the garage for email and DNS but the constant power draw would be painful nowadays.
outside of gaming even the incremental improvements have been largely unnecessary
I do play games, and the incremental improvements have been largely unnecessary. (mostly courtesy of most games being designed for every gaming platform, so they have to work on the worst console meaning that as long as you have greater performance than the worst mainstream console then your not going to run into performance problems)
The (non work) system I use most is a fanless Wyse 5070 system running FreeBSD - it's perfectly viable for web browsing, Libre Office, Youtube, VS Code and running some (very old) games. 20GB RAM and 1TB. Cost : under 200 quid [1].
My main system is a top end system for 2013, partly new, partly second hand (Dual E5 2667v2, 64GB RAM, Vega 56) which generally gets used for gaming and was intended for virtualisation. The only reason I'm considering another system is because I'm getting back into VR, I don't think it'll run the latest games, and I want a dedicated system rather than running cables into another room as I am currently (Rift CV1. Yes, I know Airplay on a Quest 2 is an option).
I also have a Core2Quad system that was used for Blurays and Britbox. However, a PS3 now handles Blurays without hassle, and since I upgraded my FireTV to a second generation box the Britbox app now works - so I don't need a power guzzling PC on.
[1] Upgrade the BIOS before using larger memory modules otherwise it won't work.
"The (non work) system I use most is a fanless Wyse 5070 system running FreeBSD - it's perfectly viable for web browsing, Libre Office, Youtube, VS Code and running some (very old) games."
Funny enough, the Dell Wyse 5070 is also seen by Windows 11 as "supported" system, despite the processor not being on the list. I'm running a 5070 Extended with J5005 processor as small Windows PC, and Windows 11 runs perfectly fine without any hacks or tricks.
Just be aware that when running Windows, the max RAM these things can take is 16GB (2x8GB) while under other OSes they can take up to 32GB (2x16GB). With more tnan 16GB and Windows these systems will BSOD fairly regularly. That's a limitation of the hardware, though, not Windows.
My recording studio computer is a circa 2012 core i7-2700K. The only upgrades I've done in 11 years are SSD storage and a low-end nVidia card. It runs Windows 10 Pro 22H2 smoothly (W10 was a clean install vs an update from 7). The current versions of my digital audio workstation software and plugins run flawlessly, and feel fast and responsive.
Artificial benchmarks suggest that newer machines are 6x-10x "faster" than my Ancient One, but unless you need that horsepower for specific applications the added juice doesn't really translate to a better user experience. In my limited experience with W11, the UI felt less responsive, which I'm guessing is due to the overhead of a forced permanent connection to a Microsoft account.
But hey, the PC manufacturers aren't making their numbers; so let's all landfill our working hardware and buy new machines that will feel slower.
Funny how greybeards used to brag about having the latest and greatest. Still is, in some communities.
Now its about what kit "just does the job intended". Upgrade Macbook Pro from, um, 2012ish (extra memory, ssd). Not a problem - ever. Although my needs changed and have the last Intel iMac 27 inches (and my eyes got worse, a lot worse). Between the two I got through 3 solid Corona years also studying. 1 mac at the start of the decade, one at the end. Same with Ipads. Ipad Mini 2 at about the same time as the macbook, just splurged on the M2 based Ipad. For sure I am going to nurse that through 10 years.
But there is a giant Dell laptop luking in the cupboard that is used occasionally. And, battery aside, it still runs. That is nearly old enough to remember a Bush as US President.
Funny how greybeards used to brag about having the latest and greatest. Still is, in some communities.
There was a point when an improvement in hardware led to an increase in performance. Roughly from the earliest days up until multi core processors came about.
When you had a single core, and something thrashed it then you really noticed. With even a 2 core processor then anything totally using a processor core doesn't actually stop you using any other program on the computer.
As others have pointed out, new PCs offer no practical performance or functional improvement for my uses. Indeed, different PSUs, connectors and interfaces on new Macs will require a significant spend on peripherals and adapters when I eventually upgrade, so I'll be putting it off as long as possible. Phones are just getting stupidly big for no added benefit (for me) and, fingers crossed, I'll be hanging on to my current one for a few years yet until the security upgrades stop.
Forget thin and light...my friend gave me his ~5 year old gaming laptop which is no lightweight, and I bought a "new" battery for it. Only problem is, obviously all the batteries were done in one run so the new battery is only barely better than the old one. This machine has a 1070 in it, so it's hardly outdated.
What annoys me the most is that low-mid specs computers have stagnated in the last 13 or so years. The only thing new is the processor, but RAM and storage offered are more or less the same, for the same price: Some weak Celeron or low end i3, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD or 500GB HDD.
I had a little Dell system as a media PC and that was impossible to update for Windows 11, so I swapped it for my main machine which was a six year old Ryzen 7 1700. I updated that old machine to Windows 11 Pro, which required adding a TPM to the Gigabyte motherboard.
I am not updating my 2014 Dell M6800 laptop because that installed Windows 11 Pro quite happily and is still fast enough.
That's the thing with most of these machines, I use at work and home, they are fast enough. My work laptop gets changed every three years, but my other assets, the lab machines, they soldier on for at least ten years. We mostly use them as serial terminals into embedded hardware. So a twenty year old machine would do if we could get the updates for security requirements. We only keep the FPGA development and science machines up to date, because those take significant time to run their compilations and to execute their models. I don't need a 13th generation processor to run Word, Outlook, and MobaXterm.
Similar story here. The machine at work has to compile so I'm happy for them to upgrade that thing whenever possible. However, I connect to it with a Sandy Bridge CPU (motherboard from a jukebox unusually). I also have a passively cooled Zima board in the workshop, which is perfectly fine for anything I need to do down there. The only PC I personally keep with decent hardware is my main desktop, and that's only because I use it for games (and sometimes a graphics development side-project).
Windows 11 (especially the consumer flavors) is a vehicle to monetize the user after the sale. MS Office is all about "Pay Forever" licensing (ie: subscription).
Consumers are sick of the forced built-in advertising in the OS. They are getting wise to handing out their credit card permanently. There is no real technical innovation to encourage consumers to migrate.
The only remaining driver is pushing the "OMG, you won't get any more updates and the hackers will eat you" mantra. Chrome has recently started spreading FEAR on my Windows 7 machines with a top page warning banner. (Gee, thanks Google, I had no idea Win7 was EOL after years of clicking X on the Win10 update nag).
To my point...Maybe consumers are simply saying Foxtrot-Oscar to the so-called 'innovations' which are really just hooks in to their wallet.
My laptop was bought in 2014 and I will keep it using until it dies. I have a 15 year old desktop that use as an emulation box for games even if it can't run anything powerful due to only having 4 GB of Ram.
I still use my Samsung Galaxy S5 with Wifi to watch videos even if I no longer use it for phone calls.
I could use a newer laptop or desktop but I just don't have the money - -
Outside gaming, VR, and transcoding the only reasons to buy new kit are guaranteed support and lower power usage.
Second hand workstations go for comparative buttons online and are usually solidly built. Buy one and a laptop so you have backup in case it fails - it'll still be cheaper than one new system and avoid e-waste!
High end modern systems for gaming are notably faster, but if you're not chasing maximum detail with substantial frame rates at high resolutions, the older systems are often good enough.
"High end modern systems for gaming are notably faster, but if you're not chasing maximum detail with substantial frame rates at high resolutions, the older systems are often good enough."
Not just "good enough". A while ago I did some benchmarks with a number of games on older systems, the oldest being an Ivy Bridge based XEON E5-2667v2 workstation using a modern GPU (RTX 2060 Super). All of the games I tried, including Assassins Creed Valhalla (which is one of the more demanding modern AAA games), were constrained by the GPU, not the CPU (which was mostly twiddling thumbs, even at high resolution/high detail levels).
Granted, all systems had lots of RAM (128GB+) and fast NVMe SSDs, but it shows that a modern GPU is pretty much all that's needed to play the latest games on an older system.
Even physics heavy titles like DCS barely touch the other CPU cores. Going parallel is one of the current routes the developers are working on, along with a move to the Vulkan API.
If games didn't work on average hardware they simply wouldn't sell well. CPU-wise you can use something as comparatively ancient as a 6700K and not notice provided you give it moderate quantities of RAM and don't load the thing up with crapware.
Even in GPU land a "good" but couple of generations old card is perfectly acceptable for a lot of stuff. Currently running a 5700XT and absolutely no need to upgrade for the forseeable.
There are entire genres which can be bottlenecked by the CPU though. Lategame Stellaris is enough CPU bound to spike at the start of the years on my Ryzen 3600x (and that's without mods adding more functionality), but all the other Paradox grand strategies can pull this off. I wouldn't be surprised if the other current-gen real-time strategy games also do this, but I don't have time for them.
Some of the older games (Sims 3 and C&C Generals, I'm looking at you) are also thread-bound. The single-thread perf difference for these games was the reason I decided to upgrade from my i5-2500 in 2020, having enough generational leaps made the difference measurable for me (and that was before I ventured into PDX grand strategy land). I do expect the next rebuild happening around 2027 for the same reason.
TBH, Sandy and Ivy Bridge still holds up a LOT these days, if there's enough threads in the system, partially because how both Intel and AMD slumped for half a decade. The aforementioned i5-2500 is still used by my brother's gaming PC.
You're not wrong provided the games are GPU limited, and broadly if not looking to explore RTX. That's the case for most games these days and the 2667v2 is good enough for 60fps gaming at 1080p and usually even 1440p - but not true for all games.
There's benchmarks online that do show substantial gains in Assassin's Creed Odyssey for a modern (2020 onwards) CPU vs an E5 2667v2 (see : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FZTLf7eL1c) - so if you're unlucky enough to find an unoptimised game a more modern system is the way to go.
It's also unarguable that even with a large number of threads for things such as rendering or transcoding a modern CPU is going to win substantially. However, the older Xeons are much cheaper!
It should be noted a number of the workstations (at least HP and Lenovo) use specialist PSUs and motherboards. It is possible to swap in more modern PSUs with an adapter but it may also cause space issues due to PSU size. I'd have to check on the Dell workstations - some tend to have PSUs large enough not to require swapping out, but there's multiple PSU options for various models and it's not always easy to see which one is installed in ebay listings.
Really true at least here (AU) picked up USD280 xeon workstation with nvidia card (3000 cuda cores), 32gb ecc ram + USD55 extra 32Gb. (Actually in AUD but converted for the reader.)
Apparently can run win10 - not that I would.
Only downside is the power bill if you were pushing the GPU cores.
When everyone was forced to WFH and every Tom, Jane, and Henry suddenly needed a company-provided laptop device manufacturers couldn't push them down the channels fast enough. And then they failed to predict that those 2 year old lappies would have a bit of life in them after the lockdowns (and quite a few would not be needed at all, civil service excluded)?
The boom has dropped and it seems you can now get all you want on eBay for $130 or whatever.
To refresh everyone’s memory this was the 2016 edition that only used about 75W and originally had a MSRP of like $7,000!!
On the other hand, working-condition RTX-2080 is going for about $300 or so (and can play “Microsoft” Flight Simulator with aplomb). Disadvantage, it can draw about 250W.
(Or how about… one of each??)
(I guess it doesn’t matter either way, my $50 Z800 comes with a 1100W power supply!)
> Businesses are likely to sweat device assets for longer this year as they spend conservatively in a weakening economy
Maybe what businesses need is a new version of their O/S that is so bloated and slow that it demands an entire new range of power-hungry PCs to run it.
Isn't that how it's always been done in the past?
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