Gartner, IDC Agree that PC Sales Are Up -- But They Don't Agree What a PC Is (arstechnica.com) 73
We've been hearing for quite some time that the traditional PC is dying, but it's not quite dead yet. Business analyst firms Gartner and IDC tackle the numbers differently, but both agree that sales of traditional PCs were up -- in some regions, way up -- in Q2 2019. From a report: While both firms reported market growth in year-on-year PC sales, their actual figures differed. IDC reported a 4.7% growth in Q2 sales, where Gartner only reported 1.5%. The two firms' numbers for US regional sales differed even more sharply, with Gartner claiming a 0.4% loss and IDC claiming a "high single digit gain." We spoke to IDC's Jitesh Ubrani about the difference, and it turns out the two companies don't quite agree on what is or is not a traditional PC. IDC counts Chromebooks as traditional PCs but doesn't count Microsoft Surface tablets; Gartner does count Surface but doesn't count Chromebooks. The higher numbers from IDC indicate a stronger market for Chromebooks than Surface, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with children in North American schools, where the inexpensive and easily locked-down Chromebooks are ubiquitous.
What's a computer? (Score:3, Funny)
Asks the androgynous little kid who probably spends a lot of time dodging bullies.
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Middle school student: (looks up from iPad) "What's a computer?" [youtube.com]
I'd say: "A computer is what people use to make the apps that you use on your iPad. It's a bit like an iPad the size of a TV, but it has a remote control called a 'mouse' that you slide around on your desk instead of touching the screen, and it has some apps that your iPad will probably never get."
Does that description of an iMac sound easy enough for an iPad-using middle school student to understand?
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and you would be wrong. A computer is a device that computes.
A personal computer is one design for personal use.
I can make apps on an iPad, just so you know.
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"It's a bit like an iPad the size of a TV"
Your person computer is 65"?
AN iPad-using middle school student is probably better informed, and more astute, than you.
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"It's a bit like an iPad the size of a TV" Your person computer is 65"?
Your TV is 65''? I'm so sorry.
“Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries.”
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“Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries.”
I read on a Kindle, you insensitive clod!
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I can make apps on an iPad, just so you know.
Using Swift Playgrounds, or something else? If Swift Playgrounds, then how does an app built in Swift Playgrounds get to a store so that others can use it? If something else, then what else?
Chromebooks aren't PCs (Score:1)
They were almost PCs, but then Google decided to cancel their Chromebook-as-PC project [slashdot.org]. This is my surprised face :|
Newer Chromebooks run Crostini (Score:2)
As long as a Chromebook has a kernel new enough to run Crostini [googlesource.com] (paravirtualized GNU/Linux inside Chrome OS), it still fits my personal definition of a personal computer as a device where the person who owns it controls what computing is done on it.
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A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use
they are personal computers.
As our macs, apple IIc every IBM descendant. cell phones, iPads, MS Surfaces, an so on.
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A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use
A Chromebook is not a multi-purpose computer, it's a single-purpose computer. You can browse, or you can browse. You can load something else onto it that is less restricted, but it will eat itself if you slip up, which makes it unsuitable. That doesn't make it useless, but it's not a PC, either. Google wanted us to believe that a Chromebook is a different thing from a PC, and guess what? I do, just not for the reasons they want.
Their ads which are all over Youtube (Score:3)
sure try to make it look like a PC. They make fun of Windows and OS X issues (bsod, crashing shit, spinning wheel). Then they're like "Ain't nobody got time for that shit! Chrome!!"
Of course, it doesn't tell you it doesn't run any of your existing software, unless all you care about is a web browser.
How about neither ... (Score:1)
Neither Chromebooks nor Surface TABLETs are PCs. So they are both right and both wrong at the same time...
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I guess I have to disagree with that. If it doesn't have a IBM compatible BIOS and can't run DOS on the bare metal, it ain't a PC.
Biz (Score:2)
PC's are still the primary computing tool used by office staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There's too much specialized software written for Windows, and the famed MS-Office compatibility issue still lurks. You have to mirror MS's bugs to be fully compatible.
If Google/Android/Linux/Web-based companies want to eat into that, they'd have to solve two problems. First, the MS-Office compatibility problem described above, and second create a decent network-friendly GUI standard. Getting web-based
Client vs. Server [Re:Biz] (Score:1)
Human labor has proven more expensive than hardware for many tasks. It would be nice to leverage the CPU of clients better, but such often creates maintenance and security headaches in practice because the "engines" that a client is running may not be up to date and are often easier to compromise.
It just has proven easier to manage and control what's on servers than what's on clients because you are dealing with one
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I agree. But because most icons will be images in practice, they still may appear a bit blurry compared to native pixel screen mapping. But the option of a vector-based icon perhaps should be included, perhaps using SVG.
Maybe sub-pixel anti-alias image rendering (similar to MS-ClearType) would reduce the problem with bitmapped images. I haven't tested enough samples myself to render a judgement (pun intended). However, the (questionable) patents on that make it legally dodgy to use.
Patents expire within a human lifetime (Score:2)
Which patents on subpixel rendering are you thinking of? Windows XP had ClearType text rendering and was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001. Any patents filed before July 1999 have expired by now, barring extensions granted for undue delay on the USPTO's part. This leaves about two years' worth of filing time between then and Windows XP RTM.
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Previous GUIs (eg IRIX) were vector based, of all the platforms out there windows was about the worst at handling displays with variable DPI.
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"PC's are still the primary computing tool used by office staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon."
This, in a nutshell. On one of the Windows Weekly podcasts, I think it was Paul Thurott who said that PC's are "back to being what they originally were: machines for productivity". The day where PC's were used for everything is over thanks to the smart phone, but I don't think we're going to see a replacement for PC's and laptops when it comes to doing actual work.
What'll it do to PC prices? (Score:2)
I don't think we're going to see a replacement for PC's and laptops when it comes to doing actual work.
Now that the demand for PCs has been reduced from "everything" to "actual work," won't that cause economies of scale to result in PCs being priced as specialty items?
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"won't that cause economies of scale to result in PCs being priced as specialty items?"
Probably not, or at least not as much. Once you get past a certain production number, the cost of making them doesn't change much. And since thin clients couldn't kill off the PC as a workplace desktop, then the numbers needed will continue to be steady.
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Prices will only seem to go up because the ultra cheap junk tier consumer PCs will no longer be around. Business PCs have never been "cheap" although they have gotten cheaper than they once were.
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We spend roughly half our time at work (non-sleeping hours). That's a lot of PC-ing going on.
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Why wouldn't 12TB of storage be on the network?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the scenario you imagine appears to involve putting 12 TB of storage in a network-attached storage (NAS) server on the office LAN while preserving the ability to read and write it while away from the office. This scenario might run into two problems. First, the office NAS might be behind an ISP-controlled NAT and thus unable to accept incoming TCP connections. Second, the cellular ISP probably imposes a monthly data transfer quota of some sort in the single or double digit GB pe
Sounds a lot like X Window System (Score:3)
For one, let the server compute layouts/flows; the client just plots absolute coordinates per panel.
If you want X, you know where to find it.
But how do you plan to support devices that are not connected to the Internet 24/7? At least a web application can keep running offline if it has a Service Worker, as can a native application installed on the computer. If the server is computing all layouts, and the user disconnects from the Internet and then does something, what will the GUI browser see?
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X Window has at least 2 problems. First, it's pixel based instead of vector based. Second, every keystroke has to go to the server and back before being displayed, creating input feedback latency. Buffering of input widgets should be available. Maybe there are potential work-arounds or standards upgrades. If you know of such, I'd be curious to see them.
Typically it would
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let the server compute layouts/flows; the client just plots absolute coordinates per panel
If you want X, you know where to find it.
X Window has at least 2 problems. First, it's pixel based instead of vector based. Second, every keystroke has to go to the server and back before being displayed, creating input feedback latency. Buffering of input widgets should be available.
For local text editing, at least the fonts have to be client-side, and the client has to do line-breaking. If a particular form specifies that a text area shall have elastic height depending on the length of the text that the user has entered, the client ends up having to do a lot more of the layout, and you're already halfway to at least a CSS level 1 layout engine.
Typically it would be on an intranet, not internet.
Which raises the question of how a mobile user on a phone or a tablet-with-keyboard would carry around the computing device in addition to the
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The GUI browser would support a basic multi-row edit box comparable to HTML's TextArea, perhaps optionally supporting bold and italics and maybe "H" headings. This would typically "buffer" on the client side, perhaps with an optional periodic auto-send option in case connection is lost, although this may be at the form level. It's not intended as a word processor*, though. (Perhaps a standard for connecting up with a client-side HTML editor could be defined for fancier documents, but the standard would not
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Computing device? I don't understand.
I meant the server on a LAN, particularly a home LAN or mobile personal-area network, to which the GUI browser would connect.
The "GUI browser" would be a mobile app.
Unless the mobile app connects to an equally mobile pocket-size server, it isn't too useful to users who have run out of cellular data transfer allowance for the month. Running the server on the client (with Service Workers) would at least let the user continue working until the user reaches Wi-Fi and is able to sync.
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If it's local-only, you just have mock connection. Can even be in the same executable. That should be obvious. Maybe it could be a URL such as "http://local-mock-connection.mydevice/do-a-thingX?myParameter=foo".
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X Window has at least 2 problems. First, it's pixel based instead of vector based.
So draw with OGL
Second, every keystroke has to go to the server and back before being displayed, creating input feedback latency.
Isn't it asynchronous? There might be feedback latency, but as long as it's not blocking, the user can adapt. Besides, that's true any time you're remoting. Even over ISDN, this was not a problem for me in practice. It would irritate me now since I'm on GEO satellite, but most people would not have a problem.
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Not sure how well that mixes with typical GUI widgets like data entry boxes, buttons, tabs, data grids, frame panels, etc.
The standard I envision would not use or copy remoting. It would handle input more like HTML forms rather than remoting.
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So draw with OGL
Not sure how well that mixes with typical GUI widgets like data entry boxes, buttons, tabs, data grids, frame panels, etc.
You'd need a new rendering engine for old interface libraries, or new interface libraries. Intel's Moblin (which begat Meego, which became Tizen) had an interesting OpenGL ES-based interface called "Clutter". It was pretty, and it was smooth even on crappy single-core (double-thread) Atom netbooks with atrociously poor GPUs, albeit at fairly low resolution (720p or even less.)
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PC's are still the primary computing tool used by office staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There's too much specialized software written for Windows, and the famed MS-Office compatibility issue still lurks.
I don't use windows, but it is still the same answer; a tablet doesn't replace a PC for office tasks.
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PC's are still the primary computing tool used by office staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There's too much specialized software written for Windows, and the famed MS-Office compatibility issue still lurks. You have to mirror MS's bugs to be fully compatible.
PCs are basically back to what workstations were, though with much broader price-points.
Even ignoring Windows and MS-Office, workstations are better for work than phones or tablets. Even though everyone at work has email on the phone, the vast majority of people send emails from their PC, though they may check their email on their phone. Web interfaces to ERP or other systems is much easier done on a PC, if one is available. Let alone specialized applications like CAD, IDEs, etc.
Phones and tablets fill in a
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As Ballmer might say, "Compatibility, compatibility, compatibility!"
PC's aren't dead... (Score:2)
... the reality is performance hit a wall and so we've gone "sideways" (smart phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc).
There are plenty of killer apps yet to be made and the PC space is in a lull because the R&D you need to get the next phase of computing is taking longer in terms of time and resources. Like going towards the speed of light, you need more energy to resources to get less performance improvement.
It will probably another 50-150 years before we see some new computing substrate materials. Note t
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... the reality is performance hit a wall
What? I have eight cores in my PC, and yet if I spent what I spent on this PC to build another one today, it would be literally twice as fast. Wall, my ass.
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You are? You must have a very old PC. The OP is right. Performance has hit a wall. It is just Physics, nothing personal.
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You are? You must have a very old PC.
By "very old" do you mean 5 years?
It is just Physics, nothing personal.
If its nothing personal, then why the lie about it?
My guess is that you arent factoring in the equal cost factor in your response. That you are comparing in your head yester-years $2500 build with todays $900 build. My guess is that you arent bright enough to keep all the important factors in your head while spitting bullshit out of it. Its not personal, its just the way you are.
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... the reality is performance hit a wall
What? I have eight cores in my PC, and yet if I spent what I spent on this PC to build another one today, it would be literally twice as fast. Wall, my ass.
Performance has hit a wall, you don't strike me as someone who understands how computers work. 99% of work we care about is done via single threaded programs, aka A depends on B depends on C, aka there is no way to parallelize the work and computations you want done, so that makes all your many cores useless. Multiple cores only help you in situations where work can be split up. So that means for 90% of programs your cores are sitting idle wasting die space.
Much resources are being poured into creating ne
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Have you seen the latest numbers from PCPartPicker?
https://twitter.com/PCPartPick... [twitter.com]
Maybe the (former) Intel CEO should have spent more time doing his job and less time trying to get employees to sleep with him.
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AliExpress is flooded with LGA 2011 and 1356 systems right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Videos like that are helping move product of course.50 bucks for a 2689 with 8C 16T. Hell, a lot of the sellers are offering bundles where for ~$200 you get CPU, motherboard, 32 GB of quad-channel RAM, and a CPU cooler.
Everyone Knows Except Entrepreneurs (Score:3)
Everyone knows what a PC (personal computer) is. Even if it's a "I know it when I see it" situation, they know. The only ones who don't know are just feigning ignorance because they don't want to admit that their device du jour is NOT a PC. Here are the functional requires for a PC:
- Hardware: Almost doesn't matter, but typically contains a processor, some amount of RAM, and storage for application installations.
- Peripherals: Must be usable with a keyboard. Mouse or touchscreen are a high expectation.
- Software
--(1) Base operating system (ex. Windows, MacOS, desktop Linux) with a user-accessible file system and networking.
--(2) Ability to permanently install applications (not just run from RAM)
--(3) Software capability minimum expectations: Word Processor, Internet Browser, E-Mail Client,
- Networking: Must maintain functionality when NOT connected to a network (pending software shortcomings).
Anything running primarily on iOS, Android, or ChromeOS is a device. Full applications cannot be installed on those devices-- only truncated "Apps".
Anything locked in a "kiosk" mode is not a PC unless the "kiosk" allows all the functions one would access via a personal desktop computer.
Yes, you can find some really shitty PCs out there that meet these criteria... but they're still PCs. Shitty, but still PCs.
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A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use
(1) networking doesn't matter for the definition.
(2) Fasle. Doesn't need to be permanent. My fully emulated win 10 on RAM drive is a PC.
(3) Just needs to be multipurpose, not specific applications.
- False, it can be network only.
"Anything locked in a "kiosk" mode is not a PC unless the "kiosk" allows all the functions one would access via a personal desktop computer."
Using the word ins
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Everyone knows what a PC (personal computer) is.
Most people don't know jack about shit, and exactly what a PC consists of is the very subject of debate, so clearly "everyone" doesn't "know".
To me, to be called a PC without further qualifications, a machine should resemble the IBM PC model 5150 in at least all the most important particulars. That's why we refer to laptops as "laptops" or "laptop PCs" and we don't just call them PCs. It's why x86 compute sticks are called that, and why tiny unexpandable PC blobs are called NUCs. Anything that's virtually a
Not Gartner and IDC crap again... (Score:2)
Over the years, Gartner and IDC have been shown to be widely, wildly wrong about many things. Don't touch their data assessments with a 3 meter pole. Groklaw, Tomi T. Ahonen, and many others have shown those two outfits and others like Forrester to be useless for anything other than clickbait headlines.
It's not hard: (Score:1)
"A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use"
Full stop.
Kernel doesn't matter, size doesn't matter, platform doesn't matter, location in your home doesn't matter.
and yes, that included may smart TVs.
People are way to hung up and trying to change the definition of "PC" so it neatly fits with what it was when they were a kid.
Just stop it. The PC is everywhere now. So try to use it for good, where ever you use it.
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You just included every memory stick, microwave, washing machine and every fucking smart toaster, because almost EVERYTHING smarter than a hammer has a general purpose CPU in it. It's just cheaper to mass produce general purpose computers (even if they are only 8 bit) and write firmware than it is to build truly custom circuitry.
It does not make them a PC.
It makes them a device
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"A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use"
You just included every memory stick, microwave, washing machine and every fucking smart toaster, because almost EVERYTHING smarter than a hammer has a general purpose CPU in it.
They explicitly excluded every memory stick, microwave, washing machine and every fucking smart toaster, because they said "multi-purpose computer". Then you actually quoted that text in your misbegotten reply, really hammering home your lack of reading comprehension ability.
They may be multipurpose CPU's but they are not PC's, so some definition is still required.
Multi-purpose COMPUTER, not Multi-purpose CPU. For fuck's sake, are you new?
confusing (Score:2)
We don't buy, we build (Score:2)
PCs are probably undercounted to a pretty large extent, especially in the high-end range, as people can buy the parts rather than a factory-assembled machine. Also, office PCs that reach end-of-life are often given a second life in the used/refurbished market (they're usually a great value, slap in a good video card and you'll have a badass gaming rig for cheap).
Slowdown was due to SSDs, but it's over now (Score:2)
So I just replaced an 11 year old computer (a "Core 2 Quad" processor) that was actually chugging along just fine for what the family needed. I upgraded it with a SATA SSD about 4 years ago and I was surprised how much of a difference it made. It handled all the mundane tasks except any serious gaming, but we didn't do any serious gaming.
I just replaced it with a Core i5 9th gen and a decent video card, so it can play some newer games. The really big deciding factor, though, was the newer NVMe, PCIe, M.2
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Most people don't need to execute more than about four processes/threads simultaneously to get good performance with the things they are doing. Once we got to quad-core (or dual-core with hyperthreading) most people stopped noticing the improvements in CPU power, and as you have noticed, everything was storage bottlenecked all the time.
I'm still using a SATA SSD, and it would be nice to upgrade, but it's hardly worth spending the money for shorter load times. I'll probably have to upgrade for my next machin
Sugestion (Score:1)
1: is it mainframe?
2. Is it a minicomputer?
3,: is ir a phone/tablet?
4: Is it an embeded computer?
4 rarher easy questions if ir is non of the above and it's intended for personla use, well then it’s a pc
IBM-PC (Score:1)