Can Newegg Survive the Post-PC Future? 559
jfruhlinger writes "Upgrading your desktop PC's video card was once a rite of passage for many Slashdot readers — and could also be a gateway to building your own computer from the motherboard up. And more often than not, you bought the components from Newegg. But the tablets and ultrathin laptops that are today's hot sellers don't let you so much as swap in more RAM. What's a component retailer to do in world without user-serviceable components?"
Re:Did the market really shift? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no reason to upgrade every year or two like there used to be. That's got to hurt their business even more than tablets and netbooks.
Re:YES (Score:5, Interesting)
Tablets don't have to be a fad. But Windows may yet kill the perception of tablets as useful, in the public's eyes, and then we'd be back to only Apple fanbois carrying tablets. Which would be ok, I guess, except for those of us who need an SD card slot. Or a USB port. Or a replaceable battery. Or Flash support. Or a form factor smaller than 10". Sorry, I meant to stop at SD card, but I always get carried away. Parenthetically, do we know if Apple has shown any signs of relaxing any of these restrictions now that Jobs is gone? Just wonderin'.
I'd say that to us geeks, tablets are useful *in addition* to our other devices. I can carry a 7" Android tablet running Logmein Ignition and actually get work done on my home machine, or fix problems on customer's machines. (7" seems to be the optimal size for "always with you", as opposed to the cooler but more likely to be left at home 10" form factor) This is useful enough that I don't consider it a fad, but I am sure as hell not going to trade in my desktop PC just yet. As said elsewhere, tablets (*all* tablets) have barely usable screens and input methods, and laptops aren't a whole lot better. Their only real advantage is portability. For heavy duty work, PCs are still the way to go for a lot of reasons. (By "PC" I mean the hardware platform, irrespective of the OS, speaking as a Win7 user who's probably going to skip Win8, and who owns an OSX machine and finds it useful.)
Re:Did the market really shift? (Score:4, Interesting)
Blame the consoles. Since everything nowadays is a port, the consoles have been holding the minimum specs waay down for quite a while. The next generation if and when it arrives should be interesting for the PC world too
True, however you can't blame them for wanting to make money as easily as possible and the returns from the console are apparently better. I remember seeing Deus Ex 2 and how small the areas were... and the general console creep in many level designs. Next generation stuff: Battlefield 3, Rage, Skyrim to name a few.
While these titles do have console ports, Battlefield 3 is developed specifically with a focus on the PC [rockpapershotgun.com] and uses the new Frostbyte 2 engine [wikipedia.org]. Rage features the new Id Tech 5 [wikipedia.org] (although not as quite as impressive as it was shown few years ago). Skyrim uses what they've dubbed the "Creation Engine [wikipedia.org]". All of these titles are superior on the PC.