I'm not sure how much of an effect this would have, but from a consumer's point of view, there isn't as much of a reason to buy a new PC every few years anymore. The laptop I'm using right now was purchased in 2011, and the prices in stores now are very comparable to what I paid back then. I've made up my mind to buy a new one a few times, but then when I go to the store, it just isn't worth it.
That's exactly it. The same performance isn't (that much) cheaper, and it's actually difficult to find any sort of high performance laptop (for cheep). Plus, the last few laptops I've purchased all seem to die JUST after the warranties (extended or otherwise) expire. Are they finally at least putting 1080p+ screens on these as a standard thing, or is everyone still stick on that crummy 1366x768 regression?
I went to a computer store recently, and told them that I was interested in dropping about 2k on a laptop, and I brought a list of specs (at least 16gb ram, lots of cores, etc.). He suggested I should get a gaming laptop and never gave any suggestions from his store.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds, because they're already getting close to the physical limits of what they can build in terms of processors. If they start slowing down financially, it may be the case that we'll still be using computers that are about as fast as they are today in 7-10 years from now.