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I think you're conflating things. A decline in sales does not mean a decline in usage. Arguably the biggest reason that PC sales have declined is because a PC f

I think you're conflating things. A decline in sales does not mean a decline in usage. Arguably the biggest reason that PC sales have declined is because a PC from 5+ years ago is now still 100% solid for everything outside of high end gaming and some esoteric tasks. And even in the case where somebody does want to engage in e.g. high end gaming, swapping out a video card is fine - and that's something that's not reflected in these reports which only count buying new preassembled machines from first party manufacturers. PC sales were at their peak when machines were outdated in 6 months and obsolete in 2 years. That era is completely dead. At this point there are likely literally billions of reasonably high performance machines out in the world. And I think also more people than ever have realized that 'building your own computer' is about as difficult as putting together a 10 piece lego toy, and you get exactly what you want, and you likely save a reasonable amount of money.

ghaff 8y ago
I was with you until your last sentence. Speaking as someone who built PCs for years. My impression is more along the lines is that you still often run into the same weird incompatibilities that you always did and that cause you to ask yourself "Seriously? What made you forget the two days you spent debugging that weird GPU driver interaction LAST time." As a result, the last time I decided I still needed a Windows box but both my old DIY systems were down for various counts, I just bought a 17" Alienware laptop which worked, reduced the clutter, and is just fine. (And I'm not sure it cost more than I'd have ended up spending.)
- ghthor 8y ago
  No one is going to sell me a pre built machine running arch linux as the host, with Windows 10 in a virtual machine with a vfio passthrough GPU and usb controller so I can utilize VR hardware. Did it take me 2 days debugging USB controller and threadripper pcie bugs in the linux kernel, yep, but totally worth it once I strapped on my VR headset and it worked flawlessly. Also the peace of mind that Microsoft is isolated from most of the hardware in my machine.

ghaff 8y ago

I was with you until your last sentence. Speaking as someone who built PCs for years. My impression is more along the lines is that you still often run into the same weird incompatibilities that you always did and that cause you to ask yourself "Seriously? What made you forget the two days you spent debugging that weird GPU driver interaction LAST time." As a result, the last time I decided I still needed a Windows box but both my old DIY systems were down for various counts, I just bought a 17" Alienware laptop which worked, reduced the clutter, and is just fine. (And I'm not sure it cost more than I'd have ended up spending.)

ghthor 8y ago
No one is going to sell me a pre built machine running arch linux as the host, with Windows 10 in a virtual machine with a vfio passthrough GPU and usb controller so I can utilize VR hardware. Did it take me 2 days debugging USB controller and threadripper pcie bugs in the linux kernel, yep, but totally worth it once I strapped on my VR headset and it worked flawlessly. Also the peace of mind that Microsoft is isolated from most of the hardware in my machine.