Dell to layoff 6,650 employees as demand for PCs plummets
theverge.com
theverge.com
Somebody gave me an ASUS laptop from a few years ago, probably about 2017. I wasn't expecting miracles, it was a Celeron N3350 (2016), but I wasn't expecting the i5-560 in the M4500 (2011) in the garage is about 2x as fast. Still shipped with an 5400RPM HDD as well.
The low end is still as garbage as it was in the past - barely a usable system at the time of purchase.
And that's not low end. That's still a $500-$700 computer depending on what we're doing about gpu.
And I disagree that lowend is still garbage. I picked up a used business machine from Microcenter for $250 that had Windows, a multicore processor, 8GB ram and a SSD. I'm not quite sure what you want from an emailchecker and youtube watcher but the parents are very happy with it. Maybe that's a bad example but the bottom end feels better than ever for light use.
To me the real question mark is high end. $1000 processors? $2000 graphics cards? What in the world is happening?
Real garbage tier barely has enough ram to run the OS. W11 officially requires 4 GB of RAM (which is insane), and you can find plenty of 4GB laptops on Amazon : https://www.amazon.com/Acer-A515-46-R3UB-Display-Quad-Core-P...
Now, that's shit tier (at least if you're running Windows.)
I'm watching a youtube video review of the exact model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6GIE-bcSQg and even doing the 7 minute 4k video edit over ethernet in Adobe Premiere Pro, it stutters at full resolution but can handle basic tasks at 1/2 resolution.
Is this thing really shit?
However, it is likely around double the CPU/GPU performance vs the older Celeron laptop I brought up, plus it has an NVMe. Not even the same tier in my mind.
If you could put another 4GB RAM in, it would probably be just fine for basic use. It might be an example of where budget machines "caught up" to software again.
I would consider something that only allows me to run stuff from the Microsoft store to be "garbage", but what do I know, it probably fits a lot of people's use case.
The problem is that they were putting those in $300 and $400 Windows laptops and selling them to people who didn't know better at BestBuy. Shouldn't a new $400 laptop be able to open Outlook in less than a minute?
There used to be enough improvement over time where a budget chip would at least be comparable to a decent chip from a few years back. Now you're stuck comparing chips across most of a decade to see if performance is actually any better.
I bought two more for my kids at the start of COVID ($75 ea plus a $75 SSD); they're perfectly usable for all educational purposes, YouTube, light coding, and light gaming (Minecraft and the like) and way better than whatever $250-350 will buy at the low end of the new machine market.
I did check eBay for 8300's and saw there is quite a family of machines — some taking at least half0height graphics cards (for which I saw some used Radeon R5s on eBay going for $30 or so).
I've found Craigslist and FB Marketplace to be a better source, since shipping is a killer (but I'm in easy driving distance of Boston; if you're far away from a major office city, that might not work as well).
The i7-4790 Dell 9020 can't do TPM 2.0, so a few games will be locked out by anti-cheat mechanisms, but you can drop an 6650 XT or RX480/580 or cheap nVidia card into one and play the Minecraft/Fortnite/Rocket League and other light/medium games just fine, especially at only 1080p.
I probably wouldn't bother with a half-height R5. The Intel HD 630 iGPU will outperform an R5 and the Intel 4600 iGPU is 2/3 the performance of an R5 430. if you're out shopping for something new (to you) to buy, I think you can buy a computer with a better iGPU rather than buy a lesser CPU and add an R5. (If you can swing it, I'd probably target at least 8th gen CPUs at this point. Or target 4th gen if significantly cheaper in your area and plan to upgrade 3-4 years from now.)
And that's the problem for Dell in the consumer space, going to best buy and picking up a new Dell is no longer the best deal, the best deals are all on used hardware that used to be 5-10x the price when new. Really the only consumers they appeal to are those that aren't technically savvy enough to buy a used computer online.
Funny, people said something similar decades ago but it was more like "the only consumers they appeal to are those that aren't technically savvy enough to build their own."
IMO, the new Mac Mini is a pretty killer deal for that use case.
At $600, you get a modern CPU that:
* sips electricity
* is whisper quiet
* supports 2 4k monitors
* comes with a pretty good SSD
The price is pretty close to what you paid if you need to install a graphics card and an SSD (although to be fair you'd probably get a lot more capacity with a 3rd party device), and the modern CPU gives it a lot more longevity than a 10 year old machine.
Of course, a potential downside is that you have to run MacOS. But I've found that it isn't that bad.
IMO, it's not nearly as big of a deal to use an external drive with a mac. But the ram thing - for sure. 8 GB seems like it should be pretty limiting.
In practice I don't find 8 GB to be very limiting - I think probably because the SSD is so fast and makes up for it. I suppose no one knows what the future has in store.
To be fair, I don't tend to run a lot of electron based apps, so I probably have less memory pressure than many people.
There will come a time when you and me will be the old guys with a milling machine and a metal lathe in our garage wondering why people don't make things anymore.
Or perhaps like the radio Hams. :-(
Aren't we already at that point? How many people can fully explain how a modern computer works, from the transistors up?
But the same is true for cars, airplanes, microwaves, HVAC equipment, and most complex technologies.
Then tried to get into forreal modern X86... and tapped out. Like, whoa.
Now they're saying kids don't know how to type b/c their primary interface is a phone keyboard.
Next step is probably Neural Link type connections where we eventually say "people used to user their HANDS to do things??"
"You mean you have to use your hands?" "That's like a baby's toy!"
They had one, but it is something like my drill. It gets dusted off once every few years when there's no other option but otherwise sits on the shelf.
There really isn't much you can't do on a phone, it's whether or not you can take advantage of the facilities offered by the laptop/desktop.
To be fair, the university had a very strict honor code and the amount of people that would try to plagiarize on longer writing assignments definitely led to pressure for professors to not assign essays as homework. Those were exclusively meant to be handwritten into blue books on exam day.
"here, do a copy... now paste... right click or use ctrl-[whatever]" boom. done.
those who don't know file structures are gonna require a little more help, but again that's not like rocket science. I could get a reasonably sharp 16 year old on that in a day or two.
It's not like driving a stick shift, in which case the noob will annihilator my transmission by not knowing; I can make the file system noobs create, delete, and move dummy files all week with no overhead.
Like it's more a way to save money than DIY (or perhaps there are STL figures that fill a niche that corporate Warhammer is not fulfilling?).
There is hardly anything that I need, although I prefer native 3D APIs it isn't as if my hobby coding skills need to match AAA ray tracing hardware, 3D Web APIs due to their hardware baselines work just fine (one of them is modern enough for WebGPU), same applies to compute coding.
Also with the way Microsoft burned everyone that actually believed into WinRT, I lost any interest into updating to Windows 11.
Same applies to smartphones, if they aren't broken or lost, I am not getting new ones.
They certainly are getting better, but the pace of improvement isn't very fast. There's not much need to replace a 5 year old computer, but for the most part, the replacement will be better or cheaper or both. If you were already buying low end machines, there's not really room for price improvement though, just a better performance floor.
Intel is still coming out of their pipeline stall, but if they get a couple years of consistent product delivery, we may have a competitive market again.
It sucks because Dell used to be awesome. My dad is still using a 10 year old XPS.
Gamers are an exception but hard core gamers often do their own builds or go with gaming brands.
That being said I’ve had 4-5 of their Poweredge servers and like/trust Dell’s enterprise gear a lot.
I usually go for Lattitudes when I'm buying, but this is what the company sent me.
There's no USB-A let alone a 15-pin VGA socket that I use regularly. To quote part of the spec:
'USB-C to USB-A 3.0 adapter (included in the box) USB-C to 3.5mm headset adapter (included in the box)'
How the hell do you actually use it? You can't even plug in a standard USB-A thumb drive without an adapter—an item that's easily lost when traveling about. Same goes for the 3.5mm audio connector. Has Apple planted a Trojan horse inside Dell? It seems like it.
This has to be some kind of joke. If Dell thinks it can sell laptops that aren't very flexible to use—especially high end models—then it's little wonder people aren't buying them.
What's gone wrong with these PC companies that they are so far behind? For instance, it's only now that OLED screens have hit the laptop market and only then on high end devices—that's years after TVs and smartphones had them.
If companies like Dell don't supply us with what we want then we'll go elsewhere.
I'm very relieved that the XPS13 series does not include a VGA header. That would have been a huge design error on their part. This particular need of yours does not match the market need.
> There's no USB-A ... 'USB-C to USB-A 3.0 adapter (included in the box)
I will agree that this is occasionally inconvenient. I don't have as many USB-A devices anymore but when I need to plug one in, it's a bummer to have to go get the dongle. I suppose there may be challenges finding room for a USB-A port while trying to make the device thin and tapered.
> Has Apple planted a Trojan horse inside Dell? It seems like it.
I don't think it's a trojan horse -- but Dell has followed Apple's lead here in ditching USB-A.
The fact is that header is used regularly by many people, especially those who do presentations/use overhead projectors. Moreover, it's been a part of every other Dell laptop I've owned and that's been quite a few.
That's the trouble with this industry—fashion and saving a few bucks by not installing headers in preference to longevity and compatibility. Many of us are tired of that and this planned obsolescence is contributing to e-waste. Dell has a responsibility here.
Dell could have done both but they chose not to. Now we're marching on mass elsewhere.
I can't understand why you and Dell don't get that.
BTW, I've dozens of USB-A thumb drives and it's almost impossible to buy USB-C ones or the dual type where I live (I search everywhere for them because I want them for my smartphone's OTG). As much as I'd like USB-A to disappear it's everywhere and there's no sign of it dying especially on chargers (and I use laptops to charge everything including my smartphone). You must have limited needs and also be very organized to avoid them. Most of us aren't that lucky.
If Dell doesn't understand the market where I live then tough. For starters it's lost me a longstanding customer, and as an IT professional I recommended equipment. Right, Dell's foolhardiness has flow-on implications. From this story it seems that I'm not alone.
HDMI seems to be the right choice there, maybe for the last 5-10 years. Display port might be better, but HDMI has ubiquity.
I'm with you on usb-a and headphone jacks. I hear usb-c is the future, but afaik, mice and keyboards are still mostly usb-a or wireless (which I don't want)
(I've been thinking for a while it's time I paid another visit to Akihabara, that's almost a perfect excuse.) :-)
I'm hoping my current one will last until asahi linux is more usable and then I'll buy an M1 mac.
Asus - they have lots of product lines to choose from, from cheap (and therefore not great) to gems such as the ROG Zephyrus line. I have an old UX303 that is still going strong after 7 years of use, a just updated to a ROG Zephyrus G14 2022, and i really like it. Similar dimensions (slightly thicker) and weight to my work issued M1 MBP, works flawlessly and is a pretty good gaming machine (of course being loud in the process, but silent for everything else).
I doubt it, I've been looking for ages and they all have stupid limitations that could be easily fixed such as insufficient ports—see my earlier reply to wyldfire.
When or if you find one then please let us know.
I'd expect. Most of those PCs are still working and are powerful enough to handle typical demands for several more years. They should have predicted this.
It depends on what side of the layoff you are on and how these positions were signaled. It is what it is - I just think that these things should be considered by all employees in the future when jumps in market demand happen - especially all of these companies participating in mass layoffs.
What I don't particularly like is how companies will signal that the massive rise in business is because they're such a great company and are doing so well. Then they'll turn around and shit-can thousands overnight with justification that it was an unforeseen market shift that they could've never prepared for.
I loved working in the trades, but couldn't weather that frequent storm that had evolved to become the norm. I'd hate to see that become the norm in tech. Not to mention what high supply / low demand does for wages.
Corel (if you’re old enough to remember Corel Draw) had a bit of a name for hiring a ton of new employees when a project was starting or needed headcount, and then laying them all off when they pushed out a major release.
For me (personally) to consider Dell again, they would have to replicate everything that Framework does and ship Linux with support.
Edit: can I also add that they suck for business too? The slim form factor has NO place in business, slimming down the chassis and removing ports is an anti-pattern. I couldn't give a shit how thin my work laptop looks, my job doesn't involve taking pictures of unrealistically minimalistic office desks. With Dell you either get a dainty oversized netbook or a rugged behemoth (which is a little too rugged unless you're in telecom and roll in a van). Where's the middle ground? Nothing needed to change from the old thinkpad.
You can't do anything remotely intensive for longer than 15-30 seconds before the thing thermal throttles and becomes a hot paperweight.
Define "business"? A salesperson that frequently travels to customers needs a thin laptop more than they need a powerful one. The opposite is true for a developer that would need more power but doesn't require the best GPU and screen, which a design person probably does. Dell offer all sorts of laptops fitting each of those use cases (unlike say Apple where e.g. the screen is non-negotiable).
It's arguably the most important attribute for quite a significant chunk of the business world. Work laptops need to be transported at least twice a day and most business tasks aren't at all demanding.
My dad's work mandates that he has to replace his laptop at most every 3 years and he has always picked the lightest macbook Apple sells. For a long time, it was the 11" Macbook Air and then it was the much derided 12" Macbook with a single port which he loved. Now, he's on the extremely well reviewed 13" M1 MBA and it's the least favorite of all the macbooks he's ever owned and he keeps asking me if this is really the smallest laptop in Apple's lineup and to let him know when Apple launches a smaller one so he can switch immediately.
Any normal IBM clone pc is gonna be fully moddable / upgradable. For example if u wanted to check if u could put a new bigger GPU in, the main thing is just check if the mobo has big enough pcie slot for the card (x2, x4, x8, etc.) and also check if the PSU can provide enough wattage (If theres already a big GPU in it then its probably fine, newer GPUs tend to perform better without using anymore watts)
I just go on 2nd hand sites like adverts.ie (I guess in USA maybe craigslist is similar?) and search for "gaming pc".
There is definitely a learning curve to choosing new components to swap in. But if u just buy a 2nd hand gaming pc that can already play games then u cant go wrong, no upgrades necessary.
https://wraltechwire.com/2022/12/09/blindsided-lenovo-confir...
My main grief with Dell is that they still practice inflating catalog prices of their business SKU to allow their B2B salespeople to grant "outstanding" discounts. They aren't the only ones doing that (I'm looking e.g. at Fujitsu) but at least Lenovo and HP offer business laptops at competitive prices without having to deal with a pushy salesperson.
Last year I checked it again and I saw they made great progress. Not quite Apple-style yet but a good step forward.
I hope they trim their product line a little more and start producing better hardware. I find their design the most appealing among non-Apple devices.
I myself moved to an apple arm laptop which is 100x better.
Dell thinks it's bad now? It's only getting worse.
Q4 2021 was ~60% more units shipped than Q4 2019, this is a reversion to the mean.
And now laptops are commodities - rarely do you need something that isn’t just off the shelf.