[kwlug-disc] OT: New Intel desktop/laptop CPUs

[John Van Ostrand]

----- "John Johnson" <jvj at golden.net> wrote:
> As with the posts about gamers and video processing, the user's
> application needs drive the need for increased capabilities in the PC.
> While admittedly not mainstream, these apps should not necessarily be
> looked at as "niche apps".

I've noticed for a while that PC sales are slow. My company is in the b2b market so this my view is a little myopic. The PCs that sell now often replace broken ones (either hardware or software,) are for net-new employees or are for gamers or other high-end use.

I've theorized that this is due to a few things:

- No "killer app" driving new sales. In the past there was the move from 16 to 32 bit Windows O/S with pre-emptive multitasking, then to a true 32 bit O/S. Along the way it was Internet browsers that continued to chew up system resources just to show pages to us. New versions of Office or Outlook also needed more resources.

- Saturated market. I think everyone who wants a PC has one now, at least in North America. Homes now sport multiple systems, networks and other shared resources as a result.

The growth seems to have been in cheaper, low-power systems, like Netbooks.

Personally, I'm happy with my 3 year old notebook. Would I like a faster one? Sure, but I cant' justify the cost when this one works so well. Shaving a few seconds off of a compile won't do. I'm not a gamer and I don't work much with multi-media so I'm not really pushing any limits.

Storage is where the growth is.