Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristianp | Hacker News Reader

It's not just intel's (and ipads) fault that pc sales are down.

I think the big mistake PC makers are making right now, is that the PCs they make aren't improving from generation to generation for their mass market products. Sure the processors aren't doubling in MHz like they used to, but the rest of the machine isn't improving either. If I go into a shop with $3-400 today and buy a laptop, the machine I get is the same as I would have gotten 3 years ago:

1. 768 line display

2. 5400 rpm hdd

3. 2 GB of ram (4 if I'm lucky)

4. Similar weight

5. Similar poor battery life

6. loads of crapware.

The pc manufacturers aren't pushing hardware manufacturers to improve the cheapest spec. Why don't cheap new laptops have greater DPI on their LCDs than 3 years ago? Because manufacturers haven't changed their main production lines. They are saving money on retooling, but on the other hand their product isn't improving, and now they're paying the price. Apple is doing the same thing with their Air line, which is only improving the processor generation, it has the same body and screen as years ago.

If manufacturers improved their cheapest line every 3 years, people would see enough of an improvement in their price range to buy a new machine every 3 years like they used to.

I'm currently shopping for a laptop and has my eyes set on the Thinkpad Carbon X1. I did a comparison between the current flagship model versus the flagship models from the past two years:

2014 Intel Core i7-4600U 1718 [0]

2015 Intel Core i7-5600U 1677 [1]

2016 Intel Core i7-6600U 1847 [2]

Two things stood out:

1. Single-thread performance actually decreased in 2015 for some bloody reason.

2. The single-thread performance of the 2016 flagship CPU is only 7.5% higher than the 2014 CPU, a negligible amount when it comes to purchasing decisions. Much of this improvement probably comes from the faster DDR4-2133 MHz RAM (vs DDR3-1600 MHz) rather than the CPU itself.

[0] http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4600U+...

[1] http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5600U+...

[2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-6600U...

I'd be inclined to agree. I do not know anyone who doesn't also own a laptop, even the most extreme mobile junkies. They may keep their laptop for longer, and perhaps do not bring their laptop everywhere, which means less coffee spilled on it. But they won't work, refresh their CV, plan the design of their new kitchen or build their budget for the holidays on a mobile or a tablet. Are mobiles and tablet really substitutes for laptops? They probably become obsolete more quickly. But even that is not really the case anymore as the slow down in iPhone sales is showing.

I went shopping for a laptop a couple of weeks back. Ended up getting the Microsoft Surface Book - not the manufacturer I expected walking in, but the specs are really good, even just ignoring the tablet aspect:

1. 3000x2000 display, touchscreen

2. 512GB SSD

3. 16GB RAM

4. Incredibly light and thin

5. 10 hour battery life

6. No crapware

Of course you'll pay for all that, but it shows there's definitely improvement happening at the high end - other manufacturers are getting there too, though they've got a way to catch up with MS (the HP Envy and the high-end Lenovos were both a lot nicer than anything I saw 3 years ago). Maybe the improvement isn't trickling down as much as it should, but there's room for it to - honestly I think you're forgetting how much more we used to pay for laptops. Time was when $1000 was a basic model. It's just that these days shops push the budget end a lot more, probably because that's what customers want.

> 6. No crapware

It didn't come with Windows?

I down voted this comment because it doesn't add value to the conversation.

I don't think 2GB of RAM is common anymore (it is not even possible with DDR4 I think). Most low end laptops now ship with at least 4GB.

Not sure why no one's selling to the general public a computer that's "twice as fast as the competition" because it has a SSD in.

I'm waiting for cheap usb-c powered laptops before buying any more

Probably because Joe Consumer only sees 1TB of storage vs 256GB (or more likely 128GB) and buys the one with more.

The biggest problem pcs face is that 90% of the stuff they are used for can be done with older generation pcs or mobile. People don't have a reason to buy new pcs. 2 times powerful processor etc won't make someone that uses the pcb for email, Facebook and wordprocessing

You can actually blame Intel, but also the OEMs and the consumers for those crappy specs.

Intel, because it charges so much for its chips, making it a big part of a laptop's BOM - like up to 40%. ARM chips are more like 10-15% of a phone's BOM.

OEMs for putting up with it. And consumers for always wanting the fastest (and more expensive) processor in a laptop at any given price, over virtually any other specification.

It's kind of how phones never seem to get more than 2 days of battery life, and bast majority only get 1 day. They value too much chip performance or big screens or high resolutions before they value battery life. There are $200-$250 phones out there with 6,000 mAh batteries and 720p screens, but they come from noname OEMs and most people aren't interested in them either.

Exactly the same complaints could be made about the bottom of the smartphone market ($100-200 range). Higher end smartphones may have improved more than high end laptops over the past few years, but mid-range to high end laptops are definitely nicer than they were 3 years ago.

You're also a bit disingenuous on your laptop complaints, the best selling laptop on Amazon in that price range has a 1080P screen, 4GB RAM, a decent i3 Broadwell (which is faster and uses less power than its equivalent Sandy/Ivy Bridge processor you would have gotten 3 years ago). Crapware is only a valid complaint if you choose to use Windows and are incapable of taking an hour to install a clean copy when you unbox it.

> Crapware is only a valid complaint if you choose to use Windows and are incapable of taking an hour to install a clean copy when you unbox it.

Isn't this most people?

Besides, it's forbidden to install a fresh version of windows on an OEM, unless you purchase a full $300 Windows license. Moreover, if you do so, you lose the warranty. PC manufacturers have only their shoulder to sob upon.

Is it? If you use the Microsoft provided media creation tool for Windows 10, it will automatically pick up OEM BIOS keys (including from earlier versions of Windows) and install the appropriately licensed version.

I did it last week on a laptop that I put in a new SSD in and hasn't had a Windows install in over a year (but came with Windows 8 installed when I bought it). I really don't think Microsoft would go out of their way to make this possible if it was against their terms.

> Crapware is only a valid complaint if you choose to use Windows and are incapable of taking an hour to install a clean copy when you unbox it.

Assuming you get a Laptop that actually works with GNU/Linux.

The only laptop that I still run with GNU/Linux on is an Asus netbook, which was explicitly sold with Linux support.

Guess what, it took more than one year for Ubuntu to properly support its WiFi chipset and I was forced to use a network cable if I wanted any form of networking.

My first GNU/Linux kernel was 1.0.9 with Slackware 2.0, so it is not I am that dumb in GNU/Linux land.

Nowadays I stop bothering and use Windows on all other laptops that I have.

My HP Spectre X360 runs fine with Apricity / Arch, including touchscreen / sound / wifi.

My 2014 X1 Carbon runs perfectly fine on Debian Wheezy, Jessie, and Testing. Also ran Linux Mint on it (forgot version, circa late 2014). Not a single problem, from touchpad to sleep mode to wifi. Even saw better battery life.

I believe that we're on the cusp of having a home server market again. There are number of technologies in play currently and when someone figures out how to string them all together we're in for something new.

We are nearly at the point where we don't need to give all of our information to someone else just to have it available to us from our cellphones and laptops.

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