Worldwide PC Shipments Grew Due To Work-From-Home Arrangements (engadget.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The PC industry bounced back in the second quarter of 2020 after its weakest quarter in years mostly due to shelter-in-place orders prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. According to both Gartner and IDC, PC shipments grew year-over-year in the second quarter -- the former says shipments totaled 64.8 million units (a 2.8 percent increase from Q2 2019), while IDC says global shipments reached 72.3 million units, which is 11.2 percent higher compared to the same period last year.
Both organizations attribute the growth to PC production ramping up after supply chains were disrupted in the first quarter and to strong demand, now that more people need computers to work or study from home. "After the PC supply chain was severely disrupted in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the growth this quarter was due to distributors and retail channels restocking their supplies back to near-normal levels," Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa said. The mobile PC or laptop segment did very well, in particular, due to people's remote learning and working needs. However, both organizations are skeptical that the demand would continue beyond 2020. Gartner and IDC also noted that traditional PC shipments exceeded expectations in the U.S. and in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. "HP and Lenovo topped the list of PC vendors worldwide, with Dell coming in third for both IDC and Gartner," adds Engadget.
Both organizations attribute the growth to PC production ramping up after supply chains were disrupted in the first quarter and to strong demand, now that more people need computers to work or study from home. "After the PC supply chain was severely disrupted in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the growth this quarter was due to distributors and retail channels restocking their supplies back to near-normal levels," Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa said. The mobile PC or laptop segment did very well, in particular, due to people's remote learning and working needs. However, both organizations are skeptical that the demand would continue beyond 2020. Gartner and IDC also noted that traditional PC shipments exceeded expectations in the U.S. and in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. "HP and Lenovo topped the list of PC vendors worldwide, with Dell coming in third for both IDC and Gartner," adds Engadget.
Also the end of Windows 7 (Score:2)
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Mac is becoming ARM so that is out the options for people who need x86-64.
What would one need x86-64 for that would be fine with using a macOS?
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People who use the Unix layer for scientific use and prefer the Mac interface. Also media production software with proprietary plugins written in assembly,
Unix isn't going away in arm Macs. Stop spreading FUD!
As for proprietary x86-64 plugins; those are supposed to be translated by Rosetta 2. They already specifically addressed that in the Keynote. Start watching closely at time index 1:26:02.
https://www.apple.com/apple-ev... [apple.com]
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OS X for ARM is just a straight recompile. Nothing is being lost.
What will be lost is most likely the UEFI firmware layer, at some point. As there would be no actual need for it if the hardware can only boot one OS , and the bootloader likely is locked to it.
With that said, I don't think Apple would drop UEFI ether. It will likely just drop all the x86 specific parts to it.
AMD came up with something new (Score:2)
Re:AMD came up with something new (Score:5, Insightful)
Only enthusiasts care about that now. PCs a decade old are fast enough to run today's productivity software, or if the PCs were any good, they are fast enough to run current AAA games using moderate graphics settings. Most people don't buy new computers because they are faster, they buy them because the software they want to run requires them, or because their old PC has become unusable and it would cost more to fix it than to buy a new one.
A handful of enthusiasts aside, people are buying these new PCs because they need them. They've been doing just fine with a non-PC device like a tablet, but now they're doing real work and need a real keyboard, and to run real applications that won't run on their toy tablet.
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It's not about "fast enough". It's about the fact PC hardware, specifically storage, will suffer a failure rate within 5 years of average.
Not in my experience. Back in the bad old days of ST-506 interfaces and 5.25" HDDs I used to have a lot of storage problems, but I haven't had a disk go bad on me in ages. The only component I've had fail in over a decade was a GPU.
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Any halfway decent hardware should easily make it the 5 year mark. Portables are a bit more iffy because they see more abuse and you've got the battery to deal with, but if it's not abused and isn't some ridiculous gaming laptop it has a good chance to make it (most gaming laptops run way too hot).
Even shoddy hardware, if it is good enough to make it past the first few months, also has a good chance to then make it to 5 years.
Now, a few years back this was less true. The early ROHS-compliant systems (mid-
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Any halfway decent hardware should easily make it the 5 year mark.
If only there was a way to identify "halfway decent hardware" upfront without waiting up to 5 years...
I've seen several HDDs fail over the last 15 years, cracked laptop cases, one failed laptop CPU fan that set off a cascade of other problems, dead laptop batteries that cost half the residual value of the laptop to replace. There are high-end Thinkpad laptops that have slowly dying USB-C/Thunderbolt ports [slashdot.org].
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Doctors aren't your typical customer. They're used to nerding out, albeit over medical stuff and not necessarily computers, and to understanding numbers. As for reports of Intel vulnerabilities in the MSM, the reports generally downplay the danger. They contact Intel for more on the story, and some PR flacks say some comforting things to them about mitigations. Then the talking heads repeat what the other talking heads said.
Your average person doesn't replace their PC until it doesn't run what they want to
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Well, feel free to compare the dual-Epyc to the dual-Xeon Platinum in any HPC or scientific benchmark. Sure, it can push lots of integers to calculate, but we have GPU's for that. They still fall far short when it comes to true multithreaded applications and high-bandwidth memory applications (eg. RDMA to dual-100Gbps InfiniBand).
Not saying the Epyc is bad, but you won't see it much in servers, in fact it only picked up 0.2% market share last quarter.
I also don't see any mobile AMD, besides bargain bin or d
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Well, feel free to compare the dual-Epyc to the dual-Xeon Platinum in any HPC or scientific benchmark.
O, you mean like these Intel-recommended benchmarks? [phoronix.com] I'd say it worked out quite fine for Zen 2 EPYCs.
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Let's do that [phoronix.com]. Oops, it's inconsistent with your claim.
You also didn't respond to my question in the other response, why does Intel keep losing HPC bids? [servethehome.com]
"Last quarter" was 2Q2020, not 4Q2019 as you cite. What happened that quarter [tomshardware.com]? The 7 nm Epyc chips were introduced. The ones cited
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AMD still has no (good) mobile or server chip
Welcome to 2020, time traveler from the past!
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My Ryzen 3 laptop says pooh-pooh to you. Cheap, fast, decent integrated graphics, low power which is good because the battery in this thing is dinky. And Ryzen 4 mobile chips are out now, but I was buying a cheap laptop and all the Ryzen 4 examples on the market at the time were over $1,000.
AMD also has the fastest server chips now, but I don't own any of those.
Re:AMD came up with something new (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, no.
Wrong on HP [hp.com].
Wrong on server chips [hardwaretimes.com]
Wrong on implication that only AMD chips "require" water cooling [arstechnica.com]
Then why does Intel keep losing new HPC bids? [servethehome.com]
This was completely unexpected (Score:2)
Because people who are suddenly forced to stay home for months usually do not not buy new communication or work-from-home devices.
I want one! (Score:2)
More like jerk-from-home, right, boys?
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Study at home, for us (Score:4, Insightful)
I just ordered some of the parts to build my first PC in over 10 years, specifically because we're going to have 3 children at home doing school online for at least the first part of the school year, as well as me telecommuting.
Especially in families where the model has been one family = one computer -- which may not be the norm for us on Slashdot, but I'd guess is pretty common -- the need to have multiple family members online is going to be driving a lot of sales.
Work, you say? (Score:4, Insightful)
This should reveal a truth: mobile devices are for consumption. Production requires PCs.
Power Supplies (Score:2)
Stuff that used to be $20-40 after rebate not long ago (eg. Corsair CX, eVGA bronze, et.c) are now closer to $100.
Thankfully, just as with any self-respecting techie, I have a spare stash for replacements / new builds.
Games (Score:1)