Lenovo And Dell Seeing PC Growth in US, But CPU Shortage Takes A Toll On Overall Market (crn.com) 65
Lenovo's resurgence in the U.S. PC market continued during the final quarter of 2018 with gains in both shipments and market share, while Dell also saw growth in the fourth quarter in spite of supply chain and market challenges, according to research firm Gartner. From a report: It marked the third quarter in a row that Lenovo enjoyed strong growth in the U.S. PC market, solidifying the company's position as the No. 3 player in the market ahead of Apple and Microsoft--but still trailing well behind HP and Dell. However, overall PC shipments in the U.S. slid 4.5 percent during the fourth quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, Gartner reported. In a news release, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa blamed the decline in part on market uncertainties -- given that the quarter is "typically a buying season" for businesses looking to use up budget money by the end of the year.
new intel CPUs not hyperthreaded (Score:2)
I haven't seen a lot of discussion about when an I7-8700 is faster than the new I7. Whereas threadrippers are going in the opposite direction.
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AMD = threadrippers
Intel = threadrippedout
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Intel = threadstripper
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Add an "s" to the end of that and you've got yourself a sale, mister!
For me the bigger news (Score:2)
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However the thing is most employees already have their own devices. It isn't like the 1980's where it was a big deal for someone to have their own Computer, especially something compatible with the business, nearly everyone has their own computer that is powerful enough to do the work they need to do.
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However the thing is most employees already have their own devices
That's no help for people outside the "most", particularly someone seeking a job to earn the money with which to buy a desktop or laptop computer in the first place.
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You can buy a serviceable used laptop on Craigslist for a under $100
For example, I bought a ThinkPad X61 tablet laptop with a Core 2 Duo CPU on eBay for $101 shipped. But for some, finding that $100 before a job may itself cause a problem.
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Its just someone has to pay for and design the new production lines.
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Peak PC was 2012. [wikipedia.org] The PC market declined at a 4% compound annual rate after that. Unknown if this will continue.
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The PC market is still big, one of the world's biggest markets. New products are still coming out. But it is shrinking, so far it has shrunk 25% from its peak. This is the meaning of "peak", just to be clear.
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Until then the market will move up and down with changes in CPU and GPU demand.
That "peak" will move up and down with the demands of math, the skill of designers, what people expect from advanced new content and games.
4K, 5K, 8K video encoding and decoding is on the way at consumer prices.
4K, 5K and 8K computer game support at the expected refresh rates will need new hardware support.
The ability to store, work with a
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No, sorry, peak PC already happened six years ago. This is reality, not sure what you're going on about.
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That will need powerful computers... again. Just like past generations found with HD content and new codecs.
Every decade feels it has its own special "peak PC" due to low sales numbers until everyone creative, interesting and smart needs a new powerful computer.
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Some will be making content while most just consume it. This decade doesn't just feel like peak PC, the numbers back it up. There is nothing comparable in earlier PC history.
Intel is up shit creek good thing they locked appl (Score:2)
Intel is up shit creek good thing they locked apple into no AMD.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Last time I looked, AMD was responsible for around 20% of total CPU shipments.
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The more they shift to TSMC the easier it gets.
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There's a lot more than gaming computers. Many, many businesses run on Intel and will not move away from it until AMD can implement the same instruction set. Yes AMD has a mostly compatible instruction set, but that doesn't mean everything about it is exactly the same, AMD is pretty opinionated when it comes to how to implement some things "better".
Way back when, IBM built a drop-in compatible 80486DX33 chip as well, but it wouldn't run WfW 3.11. AMD won't run with certain virtualization platforms, I don't
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the likelyhood anyone at Lenovo or Dell has the muscle to steer the ship away from Intel is pretty slim
Not only is it likely, but it already [lenovo.com] happened. [bestbuy.com] AMD PC products are in the channel but we haven't seen them in bestseller lists yet, that's the next milestone.
Budget money (Score:2)
The first time I heard about this, I tought it was a completely idiotic way to manage money that can only insure ALL the fucking money will be spent.
Seriously, who came up with that "solution" to managing funds in a company? This sounds like something first-graders would come up with.
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"But if you don't spend the budget, your budget gets reduced next year."
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That's the idiotic, "first-graders" part.
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As another poster points out, if you don't spend the money, it will generally get reallocated the next budget year.
The idea is that if you managed to go without spending what you were allocated, then you didn't REALLY need that much, so if you made do with less once, you can do so again.
A similar thing happens with employee/position vacancies too. Around here we try to fill an open position ASAP, even if you eventually end up filling it with someone who is nearly useless. The idea is that once you've gone
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Add to that that 'dead weight' is often used as buffer in the event of layoffs.
Big businesses are highly dysfunctional, lots of wasteful spending and hiring to counteract braindead executive behaviors.
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I have never heard of a private business that "burns up" unspent money. Anyone caught doing that would jeopardize their job.
But it is a common practice for government departments, where it is much harder to fire anyone, and there is much less concern about saving money because managers are judged by the size of their budget (what they consume) rather than what they produce.
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What companies have you worked for where not spending your budget in one quarter gives you more the next quarter?
Profitable companies.
Maybe they should build better laptops, ... (Score:2)
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I don't think they are crippling the Ryzen for Intel, they do the same thing to Intel processors a lot: impose a lower TDP envelope than you'll see on the spec sheet to try to deliver 'good enough' in a slimmer-than-needed form factor.
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You know what I want in a laptop? One that's function over form again.One that's function over form again. It can be an inch thick for all I care if it means a good battery and airflow so it lasts forever and doesn't throttle the cpu all the time. I want more screen options than just aspect ratios meant for watching movies. I want ports so I can hook up peripherals again. I want some level of upgradeability where I can install a pointless amount of ram and extra drives if I so choose. I want a decent ass keyboard that doesn't feel like oatmeal when I type and has a sensible layout.
That's why my last three laptops have been Dell Precision M laptops. I used my last one for 5 years. I would still be using it, but I needed more then 2GB of video RAM. It did need a new battery, but if not for that and the VRAM I'd still be using it now.
My last one weighed 10 or 11 lbs. The new one is 7 lbs. My biggest complaint is that I couldn't get it with a built in optical disk drive this time. My second biggest issues is that Windows has some issues with scaling on a 17 inch 4K display. It's anno
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The 12nm Ryzen APUs with better power efficiency will do a lot to boost AMD on laptop. These are just starting to land in retail this quarter. Then 7nm APUs towards the end of the year will open up a power efficiency gap that Intel can't answer as yet.
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Not with stupid keyboard and layouts where you accidentally keep pressing page up/down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Hey, at least it has dedicated PgUp/Dn keys which is a luxury these days ;) A lot of laptop keyboards only have Home/End/PgUp/Dn accessible via Fn on the arrow keys, and I've seen these since the early 2000s. I agree that laptop keyboards in general are crap [iki.fi], though. Thinkpads were nice until 2013 or so.
There is no CPU shortage (Score:2)
just a shortage of Intel CPUs...