maniac Posted October 24, 2011 Posted October 24, 2011 Well my home PC has started showing signs of terminal illness, hardly surprising as parts of it are well over 7 years old and the youngest part is 3 years old at least, so I start looking around for a replacement machine. I was struck by how little choice there is in the desktop PC market these days, without a doubt it is starting to become hard to find decent desktop PC's for sale. My local electronics stores barely had more than 6 models each on display, and on-line retailers barely seem to stock any these days with prices being relatively speaking quite high when compared to laptops these days. Have we now reached that tipping point where the traditional desktop PC is starting to become an endangered species? From my point of view it's annoying. Most of the world might want to go mobile and portable, but I quite like having a desktop PC to work at, upgrade and pull apart as I see fit; it seems it may not be this way for much longer. Don't get me wrong I like laptops and mobile devices, but I like the security a desktop PC gives me, as my data always feels somewhat vanerable on a mobile device. How long before they become so expensive that they are reserved only for specialist users and applications? Anyone else noticed this decline? Mike.
featured_spectre Posted October 24, 2011 Posted October 24, 2011 Most places seem to do customisable PCs nowadays rather than stock models as it is better for them to do so rather than just have models that nobody wants.
maniac Posted October 24, 2011 Author Posted October 24, 2011 Most places seem to do customisable PCs nowadays rather than stock models as it is better for them to do so rather than just have models that nobody wants. I'l give you a few examples. Pixmania have a grand total of 6 desktop PCs to choose from, but hundreds of laptops. E-buyer have 166 models, but a large number of these are thin client devices or high end HP workstations. They have 243 different laptops to choose from. Dabs have 240 desktop PCs to choose from, 20 odd of these are the high end HP worksations, but a whopping 456 laptop models. I knew Desktop PCs were set to decline, but I wasn't expcting it to be so sudden as barely 6 months ago there seemed a lot more choice.
bossman Posted October 24, 2011 Posted October 24, 2011 I haven't used a PC at home for about 2 years now, use laptop and IPad2 as its more convenient to watch the TV and manage phone as well as doing server work etc. Our house is not really large enough and the teenagers like to sit downstairs with their laptops also so no room for a desktop. Don't think that the desktop will die out altogether as education and business will always find that desktops are by far more resilient than laptops and more cost effective in the long-run.
Jamman960 Posted October 24, 2011 Posted October 24, 2011 Have to agree, I've still got the desktop PC I built years ago and can't bare to get rid of it - its worthless now but spent loads on new graphics cards, motherboards etc etc Have used laptops at home for the last few years to the point that today when I decided to see what data was on an old desktop I realised I'd gotten rid of all the keyboards I had
john Posted October 24, 2011 Posted October 24, 2011 I woudln't be without my desktop PC at home, fine I have my Macbook (running Windows 7 ) and my netbook but cannot live on just that I like many screens and all the shinyness I get with a full on desktop PC I always build my own PC however for myself (and may do for work as well actually) and then I can choose the bits. If you don't fancy building one Mike how about getting someone like CCL Computers to build you one?
maniac Posted October 25, 2011 Author Posted October 25, 2011 If you don't fancy building one Mike how about getting someone like CCL Computers to build you one? I've ordered the bits to build a new one now actually, I was hoping to avoid the hassle of having to put it all together as my time is quite stretched at the moment so wanted to just buy one ready built, but just couldn't find one that fitted my needs. In the past I've always built my own machines - the one that's just gone wrong was self built and upgraded several times in its life. I think I'll just take all the parts to work and ask one of my techs to put it together for me this time.
elsiegee40 Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 Our desktop is coming to end of life too. I would much prefer to replace it with another.
mtdmitchell Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I’m seeing a lot of Schools recently ditching laptops and going back to PC's...for reliability and ease of use. At Home PC's are dead ( I still have one and will always have one) Laptops and Ipads have taken over ...but for Business and Schools they will always be required.
newpersn Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I just brought a used base unit from eBay, first gen i3 with 3gb of ram. Upped the ram to 8gb, addded my 1tb drive. And a 20" screen and its great, I tend to kill laptops after 2 years, I take mine everywhere. It's been newcastle, London, Cornell, done a few partys with drunks,
Dos_Box Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 Well my home PC has started showing signs of terminal illness, hardly surprising as parts of it are well over 7 years old and the youngest part is 3 years old at least, so I start looking around for a replacement machine. I was struck by how little choice there is in the desktop PC market these days, without a doubt it is starting to become hard to find decent desktop PC's for sale. My local electronics stores barely had more than 6 models each on display, and on-line retailers barely seem to stock any these days with prices being relatively speaking quite high when compared to laptops these days. Have we now reached that tipping point where the traditional desktop PC is starting to become an endangered species? From my point of view it's annoying. Most of the world might want to go mobile and portable, but I quite like having a desktop PC to work at, upgrade and pull apart as I see fit; it seems it may not be this way for much longer. Don't get me wrong I like laptops and mobile devices, but I like the security a desktop PC gives me, as my data always feels somewhat vanerable on a mobile device. How long before they become so expensive that they are reserved only for specialist users and applications? Anyone else noticed this decline? Mike. I am curious, what is the spec of your old PC? As for choice, it doesn't help that many PC manufacturers have gone out of business in the past few years, and margins are very low now as parts are now almost commodity items although the hard drive shortage will bump up costs in that area shortly I suspect. It would be just as cheap, if not cheaper if you were to re-use your old case/DVD drives etc. to build a new one from scratch IMHO.
hermand Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I’m seeing a lot of Schools recently ditching laptops and going back to PC's...for reliability and ease of use. At Home PC's are dead ( I still have one and will always have one) Laptops and Ipads have taken over ...but for Business and Schools they will always be required. Schools, yes - and businesses to some degree but I haven't used a desktop in nearly 5 years. Both at home or work. Docking station at work has my peripherals and monitor connected - allows for far better hotdesking, too. I've got to admit - when I first got a modern laptop (That is a laptop that was equivalent to desktops of the time) I refused to let go of my desktop. Then, one day, I realised I'd not powered it up in 3 months with the exception of getting the odd file off it. I've got various chassis and bits at home which I've kept 'just in case', but they're all going this weekend when I clear up the spare room. I can appreciate why people want to keep their desktop, but I can't quite understand. Laptops are just so much more convenient and sociable. To be fair, I'm not really a gamer any more though. I have a few things I like to occasionally waste time on and they all work on my laptop, but for everything else the XBox is fine for me.
mthomas08 Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I still think the Desktop will still be around for a long long long time. We here prefer to buy Desktops then laptops at work, I always prefer to buy a desktop at home then spend more on a laptop. I dont think there is a decrease of desktops but more along the line of more people just buying laptops. If you think 6 years ago what the average of desktop per house hold was I doubt it has declined at all, only thing is more people are buying gizmo's gadgets and little cheap laptops to ski the internet. I would always prefer a gaming PC above a laptop. The laptops/gadgets per house hold has probably gone through the roof but then again most house holds probably didnt have endless amount of PCs every where to begin with. Just my opinion. When the same spec laptops are a lot lower in cost and less easier to damage then PCs then we shall see
dhicks Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 Have we now reached that tipping point where the traditional desktop PC is starting to become an endangered species? The traditional desktop PC as a packaged device sold on the highstreet? I shouldn't think they'll be around much longer - there's just more efficient use to be made of retail space, if nothing else, and as has been pointed out keeping a bunch of rapidly aging desktops in stock is far more risky than simply building them to order. I think the average home user is far more likly to want a laptop, tablet or all-in-one PC/TV these days, although I'm sure Dell, RM and so on will continue to provide more robust, static desktop machines for business and education use. I can see the business or education "desktop" becoming an all-in-one, though, with few user replaceable/upgradeable parts. I have no idea how large the top-end PC gaming market is these days (the sort of games that require a PC with twin water-cooled graphics cards), but I shouldn't imagine it's nearly as large as the market for games for dedicated consoles and would imagine it'll start to decline in a few years. The area that surpises me slightly that more people haven't gotten involved in is the home server market. I'd have thought there'd be companies queuing up by now to offer small devices to replace your broadband router that provide broadband, file storage/backup and a central point to connect/sync all your various devices. I think that is what your current home PC will eventually morph into over time - a device that sits at the centre of your home network and takes care of networking and file services. It probably won't have a display, and should be as small and discreet as possible (future motherboards will probably do away with expansion slots and use USB / Thunderbolt / etc connections instead).
Guest Guest Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 Don't worry, give it 2 years and laptop sales will look like that compared to tablets. To me unless you do a lot of travelling with work or are at uni I don't really see where a laptop will fit in. IMO as they start to hit <£200 people will swing towards tablets for their facebook/web browsing. People who do serious work/gaming will always need a desktop. Obviously there will be people thinking "but tablets are crap to type on, I'll be sticking with my laptop", but that was also said about laptops compared to desktops - in fact I know several people who still connect a usb keyboard to their laptop...
Brucy Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 although the hard drive shortage will bump up costs in that area shortly I suspect. it already has! The cheapest I could find 2tb drives for was £65, a few weeks about they were around £50 - regretting not buying them now!
jamesfed Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I think we certainly are seeing the rise of the notebook PC - pretty soon though our phones (especially now that Windows 8 is going to be ARM compatible) will be the ones taking over and just as been done already we will just plug our phone in to a dock and that’s your PC. Personally I will always custom build my PCs for the sole reason that I get precisely what I want. In school we have a notebook PC for every teacher (no desktops on the desks) with a healthy supply of desktops and notebooks for the students. The plan is to move away from both as much as possible to thin clients (space saving and so on).
gshaw Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) For any serious work I'd only do it on a desktop PC. Can't bear the thought of being hunched over a shallow laptop keyboard or even worse a touchscreen tablet! My primary device is a desktop and everything else I do on my phone, with a Lenovo x100e for if I need to take something out on business \ presentations. As for the future of fixed stations in education, at the FOTE conference I went to recently Universities were finding students want more of them, not less and BYOD wasn't universally favoured by students due to issues with transporting kit around. Lesson to learn there, add to the services you already provide not swap one for another Whether those fixed stations are VDI or traditional desktops is another matter... for me thin clients still don't make sense with the upfront costs for servers, licensing, proper thin client devices etc you have to put in on the promise of easier management and power savings in the long run. As for PCs on the high street, amazed they've lasted this long as most were poor quality, ridiculously overpriced tat, hopefully what will be left will be the custom builders who use quality branded components made to order. If you need a new PC look no further than PC Pro A-list where it's names like Chillblast and Yoyotech in the desktop section now. As it stands I'll be sticking with my new i5 \ 560Ti gaming box for the considerable future Edited October 25, 2011 by gshaw
pcstru Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 For business use I think PC's will just get smaller but will essentially live on regardless. Apart from anything else, some businesses don't want the devices going home at night. For home use there are people like me out there who absolutely MUST be able to have a powerful machine able to drive three large monitors while maintaining a decent frame rate. I think there are enough of us that the demand will continue to be met for a long time to come. Speaking of monitors though, decent 1920x1200 monitors seem to have become very rare items. Anyone recommend one larger than 24"? (preferable 26").
JoeBloggs Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I always build my own desktop PC because I get the spec I want and it's also enjoyable picking out the parts etc! I have a nice big desk at home and a nice big chair and find it very relaxing just chilling at my PC with big monitor, decent sound etc. I find it easier to study, play games and just generally mess around with this setup. I do have a netbook I use if I want to surt the web in the living room... and my GF loves her laptop. In my job (private sector) everyone has a desktop... more reliable, robust. The one thing I could see us using in the future though is tablets, just to show off products on a nice screen to customers, but untill a more reliable 3G connection (4G??) comes out, I don't think we will. Laptops or netbooks would just be too big for showing off pictures and floor plans. Yeah basically, I can't see desktop PCs, laptops, or tablets dying. Netbooks could I think though. I'd rather have a nice tablet over my netbook. but my lil Samsung cost me £180 like 2 years ago!
maniac Posted October 25, 2011 Author Posted October 25, 2011 I am curious, what is the spec of your old PC? As for choice, it doesn't help that many PC manufacturers have gone out of business in the past few years, and margins are very low now as parts are now almost commodity items although the hard drive shortage will bump up costs in that area shortly I suspect. It would be just as cheap, if not cheaper if you were to re-use your old case/DVD drives etc. to build a new one from scratch IMHO. The general spec is Cre 2 duo 2.4GHz, 2GB ram, 2 x 120GB hdd's in RAID with a 2TB drive for storage. Nvidia Geforce 8800 PCIe graphics. The case, power supply, 120gb hard drives and DVD writer are pushing 7 years old, and the motherboard, processor and memoy are 3-4 years old. It was a good spec when it was built, but it keeps blue screening now - I think the MB has had it. I've ordered the bits to build a new one now, but as I said I was trying to avoid the hassle of doing this as I really don't have the time at the moment so wanted to just go out and buy one - that's when I realised the market has just disappeared for them! New PC is a Core i5 with 8GB RAM so should last me a while I hope. @dhicks - I agree with you, I think 'home server' type devices will see a place in households, I expect them to take the form of a set-top-box a bit like sky+, but with more functionality. You can get obviously media centre PC's whch sort of do this, but they're all a bit clunky at the moment.
Guest Guest Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) The general spec is Cre 2 duo 2.4GHz, 2GB ram, 2 x 120GB hdd's in RAID with a 2TB drive for storage. Nvidia Geforce 8800 PCIe graphics. The case, power supply, 120gb hard drives and DVD writer are pushing 7 years old, and the motherboard, processor and memoy are 3-4 years old. Same sort of spec as my old PC. Got mine, god, 4-5 years ago and replaced it a year ago come xmas. Even now though its still a decent spec, and pretty much the same as just about any sub £800 laptop. My new PC is a i7 950 with a ati 6950 which even after a year is still more powerful than all but the most expensive laptops - and given theres been a new series of CPUs in that time thats not bad. I like to play games and do music production, so for me unless top end laptops take a serious plunge in price I'll always be buying a desktop/ Edited October 25, 2011 by Guest
JoeBloggs Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 Same sort of spec as my old PC. Got mine, god, 4-5 years ago and replaced it a year ago come xmas. Even now though its still a decent spec, and pretty much the same as just about any sub £800 laptop. My new PC is a i7 950 with a ati 6950 which even after a year is still more powerful than all but the most expensive laptops - and given theres been a new series of CPUs in that time thats not bad. I like to play games and do music production, so for me unless top end laptops take a serious plunge in price I'll always be buying a desktop/ I built mine last Nov, i7 950, ati 6850, SSD, stupid amount of RAM etc. But like you say... still more powerful than ££££ laptops!
GrumbleDook Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I recycled an old work machine (purchased when I left) as my home desktop-type machine. It is a laptop, but it is always plugged in, with external drives / kit connected and with external monitor connected, giving my 2 screens. I run it as most people would run a desktop so consider it as such and it is fixed in the home office. It is where my email is downloaded to, it is where my music / videos / books / apps are stored, it s where my devices sync to ... and I can't see that changing. It is just on 4 years old now and the upgrade to Lion is slowing down a little but I will hopefully get another 2 years out of it ... and then I will go back to a normal desktop style machine (and yes ... one that runs OSX but the OS is not important). I just have too much data to trust it to all be online at the moment. I am a bit mixed about whether to go for a machine I can add things to as I got bored of building my own stuff a while ago. I have still done PCs for my wife but for my main machine I have tended to stick with things that only have the RAM or HDD upgraded ... and that is down to what I can afford at the time and cheaper to buy in my own upgrade materials. I don't think I fancy going down the route of upgrading graphics cards, swapping out M/Bs and chips, etc. I do most of my gaming on a separate laptop and I am not a high-end gamer so I am not too bothered about that side either. For a mobile device I have the iPad2 for when in the house ... and that does pretty much all I need for simple stuff. I don't think that the Desktop PC is dead ... just that it is not the sole or even main option now.
TronXP Posted October 25, 2011 Posted October 25, 2011 I have a desktop at home for one reason... Gaming if not for that I would use my laptop or tablet.
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