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Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. I think most consumers buy laptops nowadays, but that shift started happening around 2005ish, not 20

by smabie 6y ago

Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. I think most consumers buy laptops nowadays, but that shift started happening around 2005ish, not 2000.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. Sorry I've got no idea what this means.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  You said regular people haven't bought PCs for a couple of decades. A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. Sales volume peaked somewhere in the mid 2000s. Since then the PC ownership rate hasn't really declined (it's still ~75%), but people haven't bought as many PCs because the rate of performance improvement has slowed so people haven't had as much of a need to replace their existing PCs. I think the phone makers are trying to avoid that fate now by discontinuing software updates for older phones or making it expensive to replace failed batteries, but eventually one of them is going to defect and offer a phone with in-kernel drivers and a replaceable battery and then win half the market when customers get wise to not having to lay out hundreds of dollars every three years instead of every five or ten.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    75% of people own a PC?! Sorry I can’t agree with that. I can’t remember the last time I saw a PC in someone’s house. Maybe ten years ago or more. People have laptops and macs. And conversely I don’t know anyone who didn’t own a PC in 2000. 2000 was the very height of the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom wasn’t fuelled by a tiny upper middle class - it was about everyone suddenly being online.
    - wmf 6y ago
      For the purpose of this thread, laptops and Macs are Intel PCs.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    >A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. This sounded wrong to me, but in the interests of not just making a kneejerk response, I googled and found total global sales from 1997-2000 estimated at ~400 million PCs[1] and also a claim[2] that at that time about 60 percent of US households had at least one personal computer. Also, since the 80s, affordable computers were available, and sold in the millions,[3] so I don't think it's valid to say the reason they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class at that point was because they were too expensive. It was more that people in the upper middle class used computers at work and could relate to why they were the future, and that future included them/their children, so they were likely to see value in a new computer rather than something else. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_computer_vendors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu... [2]https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml [3]By 1985, the Commodore 64 was selling for <$150, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

by smabie 6y ago

Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. I think most consumers buy laptops nowadays, but that shift started happening around 2005ish, not 2000.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Regular people didn't but PCs in 2000 that's just not true. Sorry I've got no idea what this means.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
You said regular people haven't bought PCs for a couple of decades. A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. Sales volume peaked somewhere in the mid 2000s. Since then the PC ownership rate hasn't really declined (it's still ~75%), but people haven't bought as many PCs because the rate of performance improvement has slowed so people haven't had as much of a need to replace their existing PCs. I think the phone makers are trying to avoid that fate now by discontinuing software updates for older phones or making it expensive to replace failed batteries, but eventually one of them is going to defect and offer a phone with in-kernel drivers and a replaceable battery and then win half the market when customers get wise to not having to lay out hundreds of dollars every three years instead of every five or ten.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  75% of people own a PC?! Sorry I can’t agree with that. I can’t remember the last time I saw a PC in someone’s house. Maybe ten years ago or more. People have laptops and macs. And conversely I don’t know anyone who didn’t own a PC in 2000. 2000 was the very height of the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom wasn’t fuelled by a tiny upper middle class - it was about everyone suddenly being online.
  - wmf 6y ago
    For the purpose of this thread, laptops and Macs are Intel PCs.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >A couple of decades ago PCs were still too expensive for regular people to buy, they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class. This sounded wrong to me, but in the interests of not just making a kneejerk response, I googled and found total global sales from 1997-2000 estimated at ~400 million PCs[1] and also a claim[2] that at that time about 60 percent of US households had at least one personal computer. Also, since the 80s, affordable computers were available, and sold in the millions,[3] so I don't think it's valid to say the reason they were mostly owned by businesses and the upper middle class at that point was because they were too expensive. It was more that people in the upper middle class used computers at work and could relate to why they were the future, and that future included them/their children, so they were likely to see value in a new computer rather than something else. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_computer_vendors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share_of_personal_compu... [2]https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml [3]By 1985, the Commodore 64 was selling for <$150, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64