The Death of My PC Is Not Greatly Exaggerated

July 28, 2014
Why PC Sales Have Stalled

The third group covers ages 40-65, and this group's primary device is still a desktop PC or laptop. Yes, many have smartphones or even tablets, but the phones and tablets augment their digital life while the PC and laptop still sits at the center of their digital activities. Interestingly, in consumers, this is this age group that are buying the most PCs and laptops to replace their older models. This group started buying PCs when they were in their early 20s, and until recently these were the only digital tools they had. For them, it is the most efficient and comfortable way to get things done.

You might think this is the end of the story. Not exactly.

There was a power outage at our house yesterday due to a fairly severe wind storm (just before the Seahawks game, but fortunately power was restored in time). I hobbled along on a 10+ year old obsolete desktop computer but that ended with the smell of smoldering electrical wiring. Stick a fork in that computer. It's done. The storm was too much for it.

Although I am in the favorable age group  (for PC purchases mentioned in the link above), I do not intend to replace my computer. Let me explain why. Here is the list of reasons I owned it.

1. Programming. I was a lead software engineer for quite a few years and I enjoyed writing code. Somewhere along the way I stopped doing it. The desktop is well suited for this task but it is a task I no longer do.

2. Finances. I tracked every expense on that computer (to the penny). I stopped in April of last year. That was when I got Shingles. I decided that life is too short to spend so much time on something that didn't really improve my quality of life. I'm a very frugal person. Tracking expenses doesn't really change my behavior. Should I wish to track my expenses in the future, the phone should actually make it easier. No more saving receipts only to reenter them at home. It was useful data to me, but the story isn't changing. I've pretty much seen all I need to see.

3. Bill paying. I expect the phone to work just as well. Time will tell.

4. Health. There was a time when I would track how much exercise I would do and how much I weighed. The personal computer is not ideal for this task. My new phone does a much better job. Heck, the iPhone even has an app that can easily check my pulse. It uses the camera lens and the flashlight to look at changes in my index finger. It also shows me a history of all my readings. I'm currently using it in conjunction with my 2015 goal of climbing 60 miles on the stair stepper. I check my pulse at the 30 minute mark during exercise (at 30 feet vertical per minute). What the trend will be over the full year? Down would be nice.

5. Email. The phone does a better job. The personal computer is obsolete for this task. As some of you may know, I could go more than a week between checking email on my PC. I check my phone at least once a day though (since it is almost always near me).

6. Surfing the web. The phone does a fine job and all from the comfort of wherever I happen to be at the time.

7. Music. I'd transfer data from my CD collection to my mp3 player. I'm currently using Spotify on my phone. I love it. I think of a song, any song, and chances are I can add it to my playlist. There are notable exceptions of course (AC/DC missing!). The phone is my music player now and the personal computer is no longer needed.

8. Gaming. This is a big one. I haven't played a game on a personal computer since the Playstation 3 came out, maybe even since the Playstation 2 came out. I find it much more comfortable to play games from the couch. Maybe that's just me.

And last but not least...

9. Blogging. I enjoy it but there are many things I enjoy. The other things just moved up the list, since most of them are free. Go figure.

So what does this mean? #9 was the only thing left from the original list. This could signal the death of my blog. Charting is what I enjoy most. My tools just died with my old computer. We'll see where it goes from here. Don't hold your breath though. I'm not really motivated to continue. The key here is motivation. I'm definitely lacking it.

One sign that the death of the PC is not greatly exaggerated is how little I have lost when mine died. I do not have much of a personal horror story to tell you. Most of what I've done on my computer still exists right here on this blog (and in the grand scheme of things, the universe would definitely not care if my blog died too). All I'm missing is some personal contact information (phone numbers and addresses) and some upcoming bill payment reminders. That's just about it. Go figure.

In some ways, the death of my PC is rather liberating. It should have died a long time ago. I was still running Windows 2000! I had the means to upgrade but the stubbornness to refuse. As one example of many, the thought of replacing Excel did not appeal to me at all. The old Excel was working fine for my needs. As an added bonus, I can laugh just a little harder every time I see some cheesy "fix my computer" and/or "computer running slow" advertisement on TV. As an even bigger bonus, one of my first thoughts was about this year's hiking season. The desktop anchor is now gone! Hurray!

Sorry Microsoft. It appears that I'm done buying your products (as of about 10 years ago or more). It's been an adventure though. I'll give you that. The blue screen of death adventure was the best of all. I realize that it's been a long time since I've seen one, but the post traumatic stress is with me to this day. ;)

I always liked Apple products better than Microsoft products, if for no other reason than I found them generally less buggy and cleaner (from a programmer perspective). I did far more programming on Apple computers than their Windows equivalents. There was a time at my company when I was forced to justify developing on Macs and simultaneously porting to Windows (vs. the other way around). To the best of my knowledge, we were the only team which did it that way. Upper management really didn't like that idea since most of our sales were not to Apple customers. It wasn't a very difficult fight though. Our team's tech support costs were at or near the lowest in the company. We never shipped with known bugs on either platform (so we must have been doing something right). They therefore let us continue developing as we had been.

In any event, they were wise to not press their point. I probably would have quit out of frustration. At the very least, our productivity would have dropped like a rock as we spent needless energy rewriting much of what we had done. That would have gone very poorly for us, me in particular. It would have been the equivalent of management asking the Captain of the Titanic to speed up just a bit, because they know best. I'm trying to picture what my performance review would have looked like and how many hours of overtime it would have taken to become unsatisfactory. Yeah, quitting would have been a good preemptive move I think. Nothing good would have come from staying. It's ironic though, because I did eventually quit and in hindsight, it was a good plan. Not much is left of that company now. As I left, I truly felt like a rat leaving a sinking ship (survived many rounds of layoffs, writing on the wall).

That said, it does bother me a bit, from a cost perspective, that I'm seemingly permanently trapped in the Apple ecosystem. Once in, it becomes difficult to escape. The cloud is here to stay. I've thought for years that my personal computer should simply be a dumb terminal, if for no other reason than what happened to it this weekend. It died and everything on it died with it. I have backups for much of it, but what good is it to have a backup if one does not plan to get another computer? Not much. No big deal though.

In summary, I cannot speak for others but my personal computer is dead. No amount of life support or heavily discounted sales will bring it back to life. I have no desire at all to replace it (at any price). I've been liberated by a mobile phone and there's no going back. If my phone can't do the task from here on out, then the task won't get done. That's all there is to it.

The irony here is that I'm typing this from my girlfriend's laptop (blogger doesn't fully support my iPhone's browser). I'm hunched over in the dining room. It's not all that enjoyable. This posture is hard on my back (my own fault). I'm making all kinds of typing mistakes since this keyboard has a different feel. This may very well be the last gasp of a dying blog! Those looking for ongoing trend failure charts will be sorely disappointed. Hopefully this economy has given you a lifetime's worth though, lol. Sigh.

Thanks to everyone for being so supportive. I couldn't have asked for better commenters! And for the record, it's not a dead blog. It's just dying. This is probably not my last post. I'm fairly sure I have at least a few more sarcasm reports left in me. Mainstream financial news tends to offer an endless stream of candidates. :)