And so we are here at the end of another year. I often reserve the last column of the year to review trends in the PC industry, and the first column of the New Year to forecast what I think are going to be the coming trends. Looking back at my column of 12/29/2004, I see that I predicted that PCs in 2005 would be commodity items, with low prices forcing the repair vs. replace decision to shift towards the "buy new" side of the equation. I think this has happened, and often this year counseled my clients to replace rather than repair.
I discussed the emergence of the "thumb" USB storage devices, and now they have become very common. Most of the main PC manufacturer's have stopped shipping diskette drives with new PCs, and I routinely see people using the "thumb" drives instead.
I predicted that PC performance would not increase much in 2005, and I was off a bit. Intel embraced dual-core PCs heavily to attempt to beef-up their revenue, but they still fell behind AMD's 64-bit offering. PC makers are now shipping dual-core AMD 64-bit units, which are really wiping Intel out performance-wise. But the 64-bit Windows has faltered, mostly because of problems with device drivers. Any of the 64-bit units I see out there are still running the 32-bit Windows, albeit somewhat faster.
I had little faith in the effort to have a Media Center PC as the center of your living room's stereo system, and I was correct again here. Although manufacturers are shipping Media Center version PCs, they are just being used as regular PCs and rarely show up in the living rooms that I have seen. This is not going to get any better in 2006. A big yawn…
Sales of music on the Internet have come a long way, especially with the popularity of the iPod and iTunes. But I am still not sure that any significant money is being made in this business yet. The music CD is still alive, although gasping, but music DVDs have not become the trend I expected - the "labels" just can't figure out how to fill the much higher DVD capacity without raising the price proportionally, which people will not pay.
Virus, spyware, and scams still pervade the Internet and the numbers of these far exceed this time last year. And, yet, the FTC recently boasted in its yearly report as to how the spam situation is much better and how successful they were are prosecuting spammers under the Can-Spam act. Right, let's all pat ourselves on the back for a job not done.
I predicted the demise of the home phone, replaced by digital phones or Internet phones. This has been a real success story, with many people switching to the Road Runner digital phone offering, or Internet phone services such as Vonage. The traditional phone companies have tried to bounce back with all-in-one pricing, but I think this is too little, too late.
One trend that I didn't predict was the rise of "boutique" PC makers. Apparently, even in the commodity PC age, there is still a market for (perceived) upscale PCs, mostly for gaming purposes. Somewhat higher performance, coupled with trendy (or reduced size) PC cabinets, dual display adapters, and fancy water cooling systems abound, and a number of new manufacturers have appeared to fill the market requirement. You can buy a perfectly good PC these days for well under a thousand dollars, but there are still some people who think that a $4,000 unit is better. Not me….
But, all-in-all, it's been another boring year for the industry. Hardware has not advanced tremendously, and no new software "killer ap" has blazed its way onto the scene. But perhaps boring is good; PCs have become a stable tool for both the home and business. Next week: my predictions for 2006.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)