I think your gripes have nothing to do with the state of the PC industry. It's not like after calling Dell and not getting an answer to your question "How do I set up quad 4k monitor off a laptop", you say "Oh, fuck it - I'm going to do gardening instead". You are still going to buy a laptop because you need one.
Instead the major determinant is how good is your last laptop - is it good enough? In the early days computers used to get better very fast - so upgrading was required. Today whatever was built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today, hence less need to buy new PCs.
> how good is your last laptop - is it good enough?
No, it is not.
My last "perfect for the moment" laptop was the latest G3 iBook (late 2002).
After that nothing as been "perfect" anymore. I went thought many "good" laptops but I have always found hardware glitches (NVidia card overheating), missing ports (dear Dell, where is the SD card reader?), proprietary ports (Samsung and its three proprietary ports for video out _on the same laptop_), annoying keyboard layouts, glossy and too wide screens, chargers with connectors that are produced only for six months, firmwares with weird-but-well-known bugs that will never be solved.... There is always something.
> It's not like after calling Dell and not getting an answer [...], you say "Oh, fuck it - I'm going to do gardening instead".
Perhaps not, but it influences the answer to your next question:
> Instead the major determinant is how good is your last laptop - is it good enough?
The more effort it takes to buy a new computer (given that I already have one), the less likely I am to buy one. Eventually customers get to the point of need, and buy. But sales could probably be noticeably higher if the purchase experience were straight-forward. In addition to the need-based sales, there'd be want-based sales.
Yes, I still need a laptop and I bought one. I bought a Macbook Pro and I'm very unlikely to ever go back to the MS ecosystem. Perhaps this is why Macs are increasing in sales and PCs aren't.
I wanted NOTHING more than to buy a PC. I had a crappy Lenovo T500 that I loved but after my son destroyed the keyboard, I decided I'd turn it into a headless server for music and pick up a $1000-1500 laptop (used, of course - I refuse to buy new laptops due to insane markup and immediate depreciation).
All I wanted was a $1500 laptop that could run Windows 7 and Ubuntu out of the box, had awesome resolution, and decent specs. What I found was an ocean of bullshit, and having used a MBP Retina at my previous job, I finally sighed and bought a MBP Retina off of Craigslist for $1500. I'm typing on it right now, and sure I have a desktop battlestation with overclocked i5-2500k downstairs with two 30" monitors, but this is my road warrior and I use it for writing, video editing, and light gaming. I'll never buy another PC, and just a year ago I could never see myself buying an Apple laptop. Frustrating, but the PC world has earned its place when it comes to laptops: Irrelevance.
Did you look at the Lenovo yoga series? For 1500 you can buy it new with high-end specs, and it has a retina screen. There are other options out there. I must admit i don't know what the linux compat story is, but I am tired of people saying there aren't any decent non-apple laptops when I see a ton of them on the market from just about every manufacturer.
>I must admit i don't know what the linux compat story is, but I am tired of people saying there aren't any decent non-apple laptops when I see a ton of them on the market from just about every manufacturer.
Huh? That's HALF the reason I bought a MBP. You can't just handwave over that considering I listed it right up front.
I have a Thinkpad T60. An IBM Thinkpad T60. Retrofitted with a 2048x1536 LCD from an even older R60, a 512MB SSD, a 64 bit processor, and maxed out to 3GB of RAM. It's running Linux. I'd love to swap that thing out for something modern. My requirements:
* Same resolution or higher
* Trackpoint
* Same battery life or better
* Runs Linux without headaches
* Reliable
There are no laptops on the market which are anywhere close to this profile. With the exception of the Retina MacBook, no high res laptops have sensible battery life. No high res laptops whatsoever have a trackpoint. All of the high res laptops, when I last looked, either had headaches for Linux support, or no information.
That's not even to talk about the nice-to-haves (quiet, drives external 4k display, swappable battery, and reasonably maintainable). On most of those, you can't even get information.
I'd love to upgrade my desktop too, which is almost as old, but figuring our processor speeds and graphics card compatibility makes it more hassle than it's worth.
> Today whatever was built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today, hence less need to buy new PCs.
You're right that things built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today. That's exactly why the PC industry is dying, and it is exactly a measure of stagnation and lack of progress. Today's programs and computers ought to make us more productive by having e.g. quad 4k monitors. If you sold computers like this, and they had even a 5% boost to productivity, businesses would easily drop $5k each on them. My business would buy a hundred of them, no question. Sadly, neither software nor hardware has kept up with high-res multi-monitors. These aren't hard problems to solve. My 2048x1536 15" panel is nearly a decade old. Heck, cell phones now hit 2560x1600. Microsoft wouldn't move without the hardware vendors, and vica-versa. Everyone was waiting for someone else to move, no one did, and now, they're all dying.
Instead the major determinant is how good is your last laptop - is it good enough? In the early days computers used to get better very fast - so upgrading was required. Today whatever was built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today, hence less need to buy new PCs.