Now that Christmas is over and the sales are on (are they ever off nowadays?), some of you might be feeling a strong urge to finally go out and buy that PC or notebook you’ve been thinking of getting. Others might be considering buying a computer sometime this year. Before you part with any cash (or the credit card company’s money), it might be worth considering what things you need to look out for and what the typical system is likely to be in 2006.
New developments
For example, there are two big over-arching technology initiatives for people using Windows computers this year: Intel’s Viiv home entertainment PC platform and Microsoft’s Vista operating system (see panels below). Both are likely to have some bearing on what system, PC or notebook, you opt to buy in 2006. Liam Halpin, Fujitsu-Siemens Ireland channel sales director, doesn’t think Viiv will have too much of an impact this year. “You’re unlikely to see many products this side of September,” he says. “Mainstream products probably won’t arrive until the first quarter of next year.” A view contradicted by Adam Griffin, Dell Dimension product manager. “Viiv is an important issue for 2006. Over the next 12 months, you’re likely to see higher configured, more expensive desktops, driven by Viiv technology. Effectively, you’re getting all the elements of the digital home in a single device so you need to make sure it’s a powerful enough system.”
Momentum in memory size
<p>As for Vista, Halpin says Fujitsu-Siemens will be making 1Gb of memory RAM standard on its PCs in the next three months or so to make sure they are capable of running the operating system properly when it ships. “Vista needs a gigabyte and it requires a decent video card.” In the three months before the official launch of Vista, Fujitsu-Siemens will ship vouchers with its computers for a free upgrade to Vista.
Prices falling further
As with all other years, there is the prospect of further falls in pricing for PCs and notebooks, and it’s interesting to try and gauge just how low they will go. Paul Carter, marketing manager at PC World, says: “Prices are plummeting. We are already selling a complete PC packages at EUR*399, if the current price erosion continues we could see EUR*299 in a year’s time.”
Robert Crampton, consumer desktop category manager for HP, doesn’t see things falling quite so far. “We have started to see EUR*499 machines and with the current market conditions we would expect this to be the entry price point for most of the year.”
Maurice Muldoon, managing director at Cantec NE, says it’s important to have PCs in the EUR*499 bracket, but argues most people coming in looking to buy at that price will probably end up leaving the store with a PC costing EUR*799.
Turning to notebook pricing, Crampton argues laptops are “extremely unlikely to go below EUR*499 in 2006”.
Laptops hang low
Currently, the cheapest notebooks on offer retail at EUR*699, but people opting to go for such a low price should be aware of the limitations of such machines. One industry observer says: “You can buy a laptop for EUR*699, but the educated buyer won’t go for it because the technology is a year or 18 months out of date.”
Halpin has an interesting take on cheaper notebooks. “A lot of EUR*699 and EUR*799 laptops are going into houses where there’s already a PC. They’re not the primary PC. I think there will be less and less low-end PCs sold and more and more low-end laptops.” He argues home PCs will effectively become servers.
His comments raise an interesting issue, namely whether people are likely to opt for notebooks over PCs as prices continue to fall. Maurice Muldoon, managing director of Cantec NE, doesn’t think so. “I think most people will still opt for PCs for two main reasons: security and robustness. If you have a young family, you’re looking for control. With a PC you can put it in a particular room and control its usage. As for damage, if you spill a cup of tea on a laptop’s keyboard it can cost EUR*300 or more to replace. With a desktop, a replacement keyboard can cost as little as EUR*9.99.”
Crampton at HP agrees. “Although notebook prices continue to plummet there are still some constraining factors, the main two being storage and graphics. We are starting to see dual hard drives on notebooks giving up to 200Gb storage at most but these are in the EUR*1,500 price range. This storage can be bought in a EUR*600 desktop and some desktops are at 500Gb storage. Also, huge video content collections will require desktops. Dedicated graphics cards use a lot of power and we see very few mobile notebooks featuring high end graphics. You still get more power from desktops.”
Carter at PC World says laptops best suit someone within a limited space environment but “power, performance and usability are all compromised to attain this”.
But there is another dissenting voice. Oliver Carey, country manager for Toshiba Ireland, a company which doesn’t sell desktops, is firmly in the notebook camp. “Toshiba feels the flexibility and mobility advantages a wireless free notebook offers considerably outweigh any advantages you may have with a static PC. The market is increasingly led by notebook sales.”
Delivering the digital home
The consensus appears to be that home PCs are increasingly being pushed into the role of “digital entertainment hub”. Intel’s Viiv and Microsoft’s Windows Media Center both promote this idea and there is also a lot of work going on in the way PCs are designed to try and shift them into the living room. Two new form factors, the Shuttle and BTX, will help to make PCs sleeker and more stylish and move them away from the typical beige box under your desk in the study.
Dell has already put most of its home PCs into the BTX chassis. Adam Griffin, Dell EMEA Dimension product manager, says the chassis is more expensive but Dell has absorbed the costs to help drive better designs and quieter machines. “Desktops are starting to move away from being hidden under a desk in the study – now people want them on top of the desk, in the front room, the lounge or the kitchen. Aesthetics, look and feel, plays an important part,” he argues.
Carter claims PC World is “the market leader in this field with the introduction of the Digital Home experience in every store with Shuttle form PCs linked into 40” LCD TVs and 42” Plasma TVs. The first flat form media PC was introduced to our range six months ago and has now expanded to four different models. Our aim is to get the PC out of the corner in the spare room and into every family’s living room to form the centre of their digital lifestyle”.
Not everyone is convinced. Crampton at HP retorts: “There will be people who look for design but why put the desktop in the living room when you can stream the content to your TV from another room? Several vendors are introducing ‘slimline’ designs but this is more around saving space on your desktop rather than [putting it into] the living room.”
Muldoon is not completely convinced either. “I think people like to see something big and flashy. We sell a lot of the HP Pavilion product which is very well co-ordinated. I think if people want something small, they’ll go for a laptop.”
Pricing a PC
Returning to the pricing issue, it’s interesting to note that most believe the average price of a PC will either stabilise or rise slightly this year because the standard configuration will increase significantly in terms of specification to be able to run Windows Vista and meet Viiv’s requirements for the role of ‘digital entertainment hub’.
Muldoon at Cantec NE agrees. “We’ve seen the average order value drop 15% over the last year for PCs and by 13 to 14% for notebooks. I predict that PCs will stabilise. Windows Media Center will bring a new insurgence of higher end desktops into play.”
Will people pay more?
But will people be prepared to pay more for PCs even if the specifications are higher? History suggests otherwise. We have become accustomed to paying less for more when it comes to computers and it will be interesting to see how the manufacturers go about persuading us to do otherwise. The twin impacts of Vista and Viiv are expected to help shape the PC market in 2006, but whether they can turn the tide of price erosion that buyers have come to regard almost as a process of natural evolution is yet to be seen. For now, expect more of the same.
Standard desktop spec for second half of 2006
RAM: 1Gb
Processor: Dual core
Graphics/Video card: 256Mb
Hard Drive: 250Gb
Sound: 7.1 surround sound
Monitor: 19” TFT
Operating system: Windows Vista
Price: EUR*999 to EUR*1,099
Entry-level desktop spec for second half of 2006
Processor: Celeron/Sempron (over 3GHz)
RAM: 1Gb
Hard Drive: 160Gb
Graphics: integrated graphics
Monitor: 17” TFT
Operating system: Windows Vista
Price: EUR*699 to EUR*799
Standard notebook spec for second half of 2006
RAM: 1Gb
Processor: Dual core
Hard Drive: 100Gb
Screen: 15.4”/14” widescreen
SLI Graphics, 108Mb Wireless, longer battery life
Price: EUR*999 to EUR*1,099
Entry level notebook spec for second half of 2006
RAM: 1Gb
Processor: single processor
Hard drive: 80Gb
Screen: 14” widescreen
Price: EUR*799
Will this be a wonderful Vista?
Vista is the next version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system and is due to ship before the end of the year, possibly as early as August/September. Among the features promised are much improved graphics, virtual folders, live icons, snapshot technology, user account protection and Windows Defender anti spyware.
The advances come at a price. To run Vista, PCs will require a minimum of 512Mb RAM, a high end processor and a graphics processor with 256Mb or better that supports the Windows Vista Display Driver Model. According to Microsoft, Vista works best on a system with a video card that has more than 256Mb, 2Gb of DDR3 memory and a S-ATA 2 hard drive.
Another potential source of confusion is that there will could be as many as seven versions of Vista. Four are planned to be targeted at home users: Windows Vista Starter Edition; Windows Vista Home Basic Edition; Windows Vista Home Premium Edition and Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers