Replies to post #14507 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[Phil(Hot Rod Chevy)]

Bob,

When someone like me thinks "No, I don't need an upgrade. My computers are many times faster than I need as it is.", I'm sure lots of people are thinking that, and it spells "deep hurting" on the horizon.

I have thought that for a long time.

I still have my first 'puter, a 166, on my network, and it's but slightly slower on the Internet than my newest, a 1.4GHZ.

The newer one is lighting fast on games where the 166 is a lot slower, but I don't play very many games.

My kids relegate me to the 166 when they want to play games.

I have never seen the need for the average person to have the latest and greatest until the technology of delivery catches up.

I am sure daytraders want the fastest they can get, but they are still limited by the pipeline.

The main difference that I can see is in the ability to have more RAM with the newer motherboards.

Have fun,
Phil

[Bird of Prey]

When someone like me thinks "No, I don't need an upgrade. My computers are many times faster than I need as it is.", I'm sure lots of people are thinking that, and it spells "deep hurting" on the horizon.

I've been in that mode for quite some time now. And I'm in one of those professions that NEED the latest and the greatest. But,(for now) I'm not even upgrading AutoCAD. I am already producing work that used to take hours on the computer in a matter of minutes. I can't justify the extra expense of an upgrade when it won't improve the situation any further.
I have one type of project that used to take 4 hours to complete back in the days of the 486. Now it takes 20 minutes, mostly because I'm that slow with the input. The only thing I'm really considering upgrading at this point is the printer (could possibly shave 4-6 minutes off the 20 minute project). Other than that the only thing I might do is bump up the RAM in the video.
Every time I've bought computers and tell the sales staff what I need they always call me a "power user". I don't know if that's true, but until the PIII's came out I could always count on "short breaks" waiting on the machine to do something. As long as I'm not waiting on the machine...why upgrade?
If the rest of the CAD departments out there are thinking this way...deep hurting may be an understatement.


The Bird of Prey

[j.c.]

Price cuts clear the way for new PCs
Fri Jun 7, 9:12 PM ET
John G. Spooner, Staff Writer, News.com

PC makers, facing higher inventories in retail, are likely to begin spring cleaning soon to sweep out older PCs.

April was one of the worst PC sales months in recent years, with sales down 22.5 percent for U.S. retailers, leaving the largest retail PC seller, Hewlett-Packard (news - web sites), with 10 weeks of inventory for Compaq (news - web sites) PCs and seven weeks for HP PCs, according to NPD Techworld. Normally, three weeks is considered ideal.

Sony's inventory was also slightly higher in April at five weeks, up from 4.5 weeks a year ago.

With little improvement seen in May sales, analysts expect PC manufacturers and retailers to begin aggressively discounting PCs to clear inventory of current PCs and prepare for new back-to-school models.

PC makers have already begun to take action by adding a new round of rebates, given to customers who buy a PC bundled with a monitor and printer.

HP has lowered some desktop models up to $100 in the past two weeks, while others such as Sony have made more modest $50 cuts, according to ARS, a firm that tracks retail sales. These new lower prices are a direct reversal of the round of PC price hikes seen earlier in the year.

But if these price cuts and rebates don't motivate demand, manufacturers will be forced to use a more aggressive measure--the instant rebate, said Toni Duboise, desktop analyst at ARS.

So far, manufacturers "haven't taken the extra step...where we're seeing instant rebates," she said. But "that's the next step we'll probably see in the next few weeks."

Instant rebates, which haven't been seen much since the 2001 holiday selling season, typically reduce the price of a PC by $50 or $100 at the time of a sale.

They are powerful incentives as they reduce the out-of-pocket cost for a PC, Duboise said.

The prospect of a $799 PC suddenly becoming a $699 purchase is more satisfying to most customers than collecting receipts and mailing away for a rebate check.

Drastic measures
Indeed, HP will have to do something drastic, its senior executives said, to reduce its inventory.

The company, which plans to roll out its summer PC lineup for both HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario PCs at the end of this month, will make adjustments to reduce its inventories, HP President Michael Capellas said at a meeting with analysts in Boston earlier this week.

"HP has seen slower-than-anticipated sales...in the consumer market," Capellas said. But "we will adjust sales and drive inventory down."

But even steep rebates might not be enough to pull people away from the beach this summer.

"You're in a tough spot this time of year...people are on vacations. It's tough to get people to think about buying" a PC, NPD analyst Stephen Baker said.

Sales may not increase much until the end of the year, Baker said.

Because of this, "Indications are that manufacturers will rebate PCs more steeply through the summer and back-to-school period," he said. "You may be talking about some aggressive promotions through November, depending on how sales fall out."

Meanwhile, the PC market faces a more fundamental problem, analysts say, in balancing the need to adopt the latest and greatest technology with slowing sales.

While PC lifecycles--the amount of time a company or individual keeps them before upgrading--are lengthening, the speed at which chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices introduce new chips and other technology has not slowed.

Even though new products such as the new 845G chipset from Intel are considered major improvements, they often come so close to other chipsets that it can be difficult for PC makers to keep up. A chipset provides the backbone of a PC, shuttling data between the processor and memory, and controlling input/output functions.

Many manufacturers, like Sony, try to slow things down by picking and choosing components. The company tends to stay with more mid-range processors, for example, instead of trying to offer the latest speeds.

As the PC market matures and people keep their machines longer, manufacturers could learn some lessons from consumer-electronics makers, Baker said.

These companies have learned to profit in markets that sell a smaller number of products, such as color TVs, by making more gradual changes and keeping models on the market longer.

"If the length of time that people own computers is increasing, you can't be changing your models as often," Baker said. "Who replaces their TV every three years?"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=73&e=3&cid=73&u=/zd/20020608/tc_zd/...