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The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

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Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#71

Post by spartango »

bhouston wrote: post #15

CPUs have not gotten significantly faster in the last couple years, especially at the high end. Back in Q1 2010 I got an Intel Core i7 980X which benchmarked at 8911 according to http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980+... Now in Q2 2013 (3 years later) the very top of the line processor available, an Intel Xeon E5-2690 v2, is only twice as fast at 16164: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=In…

Anandtech has a nice analysis of the progression of CPUs over the last 9 years: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-...

Depending on what you're doing with CPUs there have been improvements, even at the high end between Nehalem and Haswell (on the Intel side). Anandtech's data shows a nearly 2x improvement between those generations for certain tasks.

But the reality is that for other tasks (e.g. the winrar compression benchmark) the speedup is minimal compared to previous years (see Haswell vs Prescott). In many cases where there is a speedup, performance is already so good that you wouldn't notice.

It's pretty crazy to see that in the consumer world, not even games are demanding so much performance from our CPUs.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#72

Post by ivanhoe »

This is all true, I still can do pretty much everything on my 2009 PC, but truth is also that I do it rarely, specially since I've got a new console a few years ago and stopped playing on PC... everything work related is on my laptop, playing games on console is nicer, PC desktops are simply not needed anymore (for what I do, and also for majority of not-tech users)

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#73

Post by rallison »

fiatmoney wrote: post #23

"For what" is the obvious question. Web development with a remote testing environment, office applications, email, web browsing - sure, a Core 2 Duo is more than good enough if your software environment is kept in order. Audio / video / photoshop, gaming, developing software that does math, data analysis - you can never get fast enough. The limiting factor is if your computer's feedback loop is tighter than your brai…

Indeed. I work with RAW photographs fairly often, and simply exporting an album with a few hundred RAW files to JPEG takes a surprising amount of time with fast, modern hardware.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#74

Post by wahsd »

That's why we all needs tablets. A tablet for you...and a tablet for you...And you get a tablet....and you get a tablet....We all get tablets..... Oh! these tablets kind of suck to actually produce or do anything on. ....... ok, back to laptops and all-in-ones.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#76

Post by robmcm »

UVB-76 wrote: post #46

People snack on smartphones, dine on tablets, and cook on PCs. A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets. Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell for the PC.

It's as if the PC is some sort of professional tool, like a truck.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#77

Post by devx »

UVB-76 wrote: post #46

People snack on smartphones, dine on tablets, and cook on PCs. A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets. Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell for the PC.

Great analogy.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#78

Post by zeidrich »

A tablet is a PC. Especially as x86 processors start taking over arm processors.

Just because it doesn't sit in a big box doesn't mean it's a different class of system. The difference is really the openness of the platform, comparing something like iOS to Win 8 pro.

That said, many tablets are basically what we would have thought of as PCs before. Consider something like the Samsung 500T or similar, or thinkpad helix. Components are small and cheap enough that they can be packed behind the LCD, and you have essentially a laptop that doesn't need it's keyboard.

Will iPads take over PCs? No. They are too limited, not because of hardware, but because of OS limitations. Will tablets take their place though? Quite possibly. The portability is quite handy. That I can dock a tablet with a keyboard and have a normal PC experience, but have it portable when I need it is a selling feature.

The obvious cavaet is that a limited OS is fine as long as the majority of data is cloud based. In that case even development can be done on a closed platform, and the tablet becomes something more akin to a monitor or keyboard. More of a peripheral than a computing device. We might get to that point, but that's not the cause of the current trend.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#79

Post by djrogers »

fiatmoney wrote: post #23

"For what" is the obvious question. Web development with a remote testing environment, office applications, email, web browsing - sure, a Core 2 Duo is more than good enough if your software environment is kept in order. Audio / video / photoshop, gaming, developing software that does math, data analysis - you can never get fast enough. The limiting factor is if your computer's feedback loop is tighter than your brai…

None of those use cases are going to grow the PC market. The things you're describing have always been a niche (remember Workstation Class PCs?) that may add a few $$ to the bottom line, but they are not going to drive growth.

The PC market has relied on end users - consumers and business users - for it's growth engine for decades, and that appears to be drying up. One of the reasons for that is outlined in the article, for most use cases we don't need faster.

Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

#80

Post by asveikau »

JVIDEL wrote: post #53
fiatmoney wrote: post #23

"For what" is the obvious question. Web development with a remote testing environment, office applications, email, web browsing - sure, a Core 2 Duo is more than good enough if your software environment is kept in order. Audio / video / photoshop, gaming, developing software that does math, data analysis - you can never get fast enough. The limiting factor is if your computer's feedback loop is tighter than your brai…

In what planet? I'm not even going to use myself as an example because I do other heavy stuff with my PC, I'm going to use my non-tech friends: one of them got a new laptop with 8GB of RAM, why? because she was complaining about webapps using too much memory and slowing down her previous system. Regular users don't know or care about memory management, they don't even close old windows or tabs, its about convenience.…

> one of them got a new laptop with 8GB of RAM, why? because she was complaining about webapps using too much memory and slowing down her previous system.

I suspect a few people on HN will be reluctant to see their role in this arrangement. ducks

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