By Dinesh C Sharma, 21 May 2004 09:30
NEWS Nearly 100 million PCs are likely to be replaced this year, with 120 million being swapped out in 2005, according to data from research firm Gartner released.
The volume of replacements in the next two years will surpass the number of units replaced in the run-up to Y2K in 1998 and 1999, Gartner said. In 2004, replacement units will drive global shipments to 186.4 million - an increase of 13.6 per cent over 2003.
George Shiffler, principal analyst for Gartner's client platforms research, said in a statement: "Our first-quarter results suggest the... replacement cycle that vendors have been anticipating for more than a year is under way."
Gartner analysts said more than 30 per cent of installed PCs are now at least three years old. Many of those machines run older versions of Windows operating systems, for which full technical support may not be available. This, they said, will play a major role in pushing sales of replacements. Strong economic growth in the US, the Asia-Pacific region and Japan is also likely to boost sales of new PCs.
In a forecast it issued in February, Gartner had said consumer sales would be driven by upgrades to new desktops in order to handle new applications like digital photography or multimedia.
The market researcher said PC shipments for the second quarter of 2004 are projected to increase 14.3 per cent from the second quarter of last year.
Dinesh C. Sharma writes for CNET News.com
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1. Guy Kirkwood
When are we going to learn that newer does not necessarily mean better. Worse, what Sasser and it's ilk demonstrates is that the bigger an operating system gets, regardless of the power of the PC, the more holes and vulnerabilities there are going to be.
Two examples:
1. Sasser only affected XP and win 2000 systems, win 98 and NT were completely immune.
2. I have a Toshiba Libretto which weighs less than 1kg, has 32mb of RAM and a 100MHz processor. I run a stripped-down version of 98SE (using the unconscionably wonderful 98lite) and office 97, with a combined GPRS/Wi-Fi card. My colleague has the latest Toshiba Tablet, weighing almost 3kg, with 512mb of RAM, running at 2GHz with office 2003.
We both have the same functionality but my old Libretto is twice as fast as the Tablet at booting, connecting to a hot-spot and loading the same document both online and from the hard drive. Where is the progress in that?
If you do not want to use your PC for games, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade. I recommend that anyone who is serious about getting the maximum value from their investment in a PC should visit tinyapps.com. It is the best repository for small, functional and well-written applications that have all the functionality of certain firms' bloat-ware, without the costs - in space, time, money and pain.
2. royston
to the last post..........its called the technical evolution of mankind. you can keep your model t ford i will drive in comfort thankyou. its people like you that want to keep mankind in a dark age.i hated programing in machine code yrs ago but thanks to the visionary few it takes me minutes instead of days, soon to become seconds.sorry if these visionarys are doing things a bit too quick for you to keep up but your outdated machine keeps you going with what you have to do but for some of us we need to get much higher quality and speed to get things done wich we dont have at the moment.so that we can have more time for ourselves and a better quality of life with our familys.everything is advanceing we cant stop it as its a fact of life.if it wasnt for these advancements i wouldnt be able to work from home and i would not be able to work.i thank and praise the visionarys that have made this possible for me to live and be a part of things because i am disabled, otherwise i would be very poor and very ill if it wasnt for the clever few that enabled it.THESE FEW INVENTED YOUR LAPTOP REMEMBER AND ITS OS.so let them find a way to make things better for you and the rest of us eh or cant you be bothered?you have a distinct lack of vision and thats the simple fact of life for you.and perhaps youre friend has other things he does with his laptop that yours cant do maybe.of that i am sure.the right tool for the job is what you have.use it for another job and it wont be but your friends can probably do new things that yours will painfuly let you down on. ADVANCEMENTS.