Intels lower Q115 guidance

[mrmt]

Microsoft is ceding to several IT concerns with 10. Booting to desktop with keyboard and mouse present.

http://www.cnet.com/news/how-continuum-will-work-in-windows-10/

http://movietvtechgeeks.com/windows-10-worth-upgrading-this-time/

Not enough. Just look at the start menu and look at some interfaces like bluetooth.

W10 is a worse OS when compared to W7, it just sucks less than W8.

 

[Vesku]

Windows 7 is already out of mainstream support starting in January of this year, nice timing for 10 eh? Think what you want but it's very likely that business PC and laptop purchases are down more than usual due to a preference to delay large scale replacement so that they can adopt Windows 10. We'll see if I'm right based on corporate PC sales post 10 launch.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The problem is not that it doesnt boot to desktop. So you boot to metro. All you have to do is touch or click one tile and you are on the desktop. The problem is that the desktop itself is considerably less easy to use than previously, ie, lack of a conventional start menu and windows explorer is not as easy to use either.

I dont like Win 8, but it would not deter me from upgrading. I dont know about enterprise, but the problem with win 8 in the consumer sector is that the *perception* is that it is some impossible to use interface, and whether true or not, it has the effect of making users reluctant to upgrade.

 

[podspi]

Calling the change to W8 or W10 an upgrade is comical.

At least for Windows XP and Vista business computers it's pretty much a necessity due to Microsoft's support windows. Windows 10 is looking pretty good on a costs basis with Microsoft addressing some concerns with 8 and somewhere around an extra 5-7 years of support, i.e. security updates, over Windows 7. If an IT department is looking at it from the perspective of large scale client PC and laptop replacement I would be surprised if there wasn't a bit of momentum for delaying for Windows 10.

Not enough. Just look at the start menu and look at some interfaces like bluetooth.

W10 is a worse OS when compared to W7, it just sucks less than W8.

In what way is Windows 10 (besides being unreleased) a worse OS compared to Windows 7? Have you used it at all or did you just see live tiles and freak out? It is fantastic, and if Microsoft wasn't giving it away for free to Win8 license holders I'd happily pay to upgrade.

I would be shocked if Win10's reception was not only universally positive, but also gave the PC sector a bump like Win7 did. I use Windows 8 on my main computer (just as I did Vista when it came out, I typically don't use old software) - but I would be lying to everyone and myself if I didn't admit it was and mostly is a disaster in terms of UI effectiveness and consistency.

 

[Kuiva maa]

In what way is Windows 10 (besides being unreleased) a worse OS compared to Windows 7? Have you used it at all or did you just see live tiles and freak out? It is fantastic, and if Microsoft wasn't giving it away for free to Win8 license holders I'd happily pay to upgrade.

Yeah after installing and using classic shell with 8.1 I will never go back to 7.

 

[Dave2150]

The fact that Intel has been unable to release 14nm desktop processors yet is obvious to all, probably part of the reason behind this loss.

Haswell launched June 2013 - that's almost 2 years that Desktop chips have had the same old Haswell chips.

 

[mrmt]

The problem is not that it doesnt boot to desktop. So you boot to metro. All you have to do is touch or click one tile and you are on the desktop. The problem is that the desktop itself is considerably less easy to use than previously, ie, lack of a conventional start menu and windows explorer is not as easy to use either.

Booting to Metro isn't the main problem, bringing the Metro interface to places like the wireless network configuration or the side menus that ruin multi-monitor setups is. The functional start menu is now gone, being replaced by the messy app screen... dumb, very dumb.

With W10 Microsoft allows you to stay on the desktop only but you still need to revisit the Metro interface in places like the wireless network configuration and bluetooth, and the start menu has been deformed in order to acommodate the metroified start menu. Sure, it sucks less than W8 but certainly isn't anything someone would want to replace W7.

 

[Fjodor2001]

The fact that Intel has been unable to release 14nm desktop processors yet is obvious to all, probably part of the reason behind this loss.

Haswell launched June 2013 - that's almost 2 years that Desktop chips have had the same old Haswell chips.

And the full 14 nm desktop lineup will not be available until Skylake in 2015Q3. So 2Y1Q cadence. Tick tock at half pace...

 

[jpiniero]

The fact that Intel has been unable to release 14nm desktop processors yet is obvious to all, probably part of the reason behind this loss.

Haswell launched June 2013 - that's almost 2 years that Desktop chips have had the same old Haswell chips.

Nope. When it comes to Corporate users, there's really two types:

- Ones that only replace computers when it breaks or when the OS goes way out of support (eg: Windows XP), and even then they have to budget for it. So it shouldn't be that surprising that companies in Europe who are in the process of doing XP -> 7 migrations would slow or stop while the euro is weak.

- Replace the users computer in a periodic schedule, like every 3 or 4 years. So while it's important to release new products, they don't really have to be better... just incompatible (and the old parts are no longer available) so they have to buy fully new.

Yes, this means that Intel's new nodes mean nothing to the customers of the majority of Intel's revenue and profits.

 

[Dave2150]

Nope. When it comes to Corporate users, there's really two types:

- Ones that only replace computers when it breaks or when the OS goes way out of support (eg: Windows XP), and even then they have to budget for it. So it shouldn't be that surprising that companies in Europe who are in the process of doing XP -> 7 migrations would slow or stop while the euro is weak.

- Replace the users computer in a periodic schedule, like every 3 or 4 years. So while it's important to release new products, they don't really have to be better... just incompatible (and the old parts are no longer available) so they have to buy fully new.

Yes, this means that Intel's new nodes mean nothing to the customers of the majority of Intel's revenue and profits.

Nope, disagree. It's still clear to enough people that Intel has failed to launch a 14nm desktop CPU yet.

The desktop market is still strong, and is still one of Intel's main income markets.

 

[jpiniero]

Nope, disagree. It's still clear to enough people that Intel has failed to launch a 14nm desktop CPU yet.

The desktop market is still strong, and is still one of Intel's main income markets.

Who do you think is buying those desktops? Here's a hint: It's not consumers.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Who do you think is buying those desktops? Here's a hint: It's not consumers.

Why would corporate upgrade on a 3-4 year cycle if there is no tangible benefit? Going from Sandy Bridge to Haswell or Broadwell is pointless for the average office worker.

 

[Dave2150]

Who do you think is buying those desktops? Here's a hint: It's not consumers.

You're suggesting that consumers don't buy desktop CPU's?

Of course they do. Though cooperation's obviously buy in much larger bulk, the consumer market is strong.

Have a look through Intel's last earnings (google it), desktop market is strong.

 

[witeken]

And the full 14 nm desktop lineup will not be available until Skylake in 2015Q3. So 2Y1Q cadence. Tick tock at half pace...

Forgot that Skylake is both Tick and Tock, didn't you?

Tick-Tock at normal cadence .

 

[VirtualLarry]

W10 is a worse OS when compared to W7, it just sucks less than W8.

I agree with this. If they re-released a Win7 SP2, with integrated USB3.0 support like 8.1 has, and therefore extended the support dates due to the SP2 release, then I would think many businesses would stop waiting, and upgrade to Win7 SP2.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Forgot that Skylake is both Tick and Tock, didn't you?

Tick-Tock at normal cadence .

Another way to put it is that they are on a Tock-Tock desktop cadence. Weird clock...

 

[VirtualLarry]

The desktop market is still strong, and is still one of Intel's main income markets.

Somehow, I don't buy this. As far as design and R&D goes, desktop is an afterthought. You're either getting mobile chips that don't make their power bins, for consumer desktop chips, and server chips that have defective cores, for enthusiast desktop chips.

Desktop gets the "leftovers", no matter how you look at it.

And all of this "post-PC era", which really means, "post-desktop-PC era" talk... well, given Intel's lower-than-expected guidance, I'm starting to think that it has something substantial behind it.

The PC platform, even with "modern" OSes, is still pretty archaic compared to OSes like Android, as far as required end-user maintenance and administration.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You're suggesting that consumers don't buy desktop CPU's?

Of course they do. Though cooperation's obviously buy in much larger bulk, the consumer market is strong.

Have a look through Intel's last earnings (google it), desktop market is strong.

Uhm, if so, where are they buying them? Staples doesn't sell much in the way of desktops. Bestbuy doesn't either. Most of their offering are now laptops, that's how much of the desktop market has shrank.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Nope, disagree. It's still clear to enough people that Intel has failed to launch a 14nm desktop CPU yet.

The desktop market is still strong, and is still one of Intel's main income markets.

Sorry, I disagree with you instead. If you went to 100 random people on the street and asked them when Intel's 14nm desktop cpus were supposed to launch, I bet more than 90% would just give you a blank stare and not know what you are talking about. As long as the PC is cheap, reliable, and fast enough, they dont really care. And a SB pentium or anything newer fits those criteria. The consumer desktop market is being hurt by the "already good enough" metric, and also I think by a lingering reluctance to move away from windows 7.

I do think the delays and mixed, at best, performance of 14 nm has hurt intel in mobile a lot though. This is where performance/watt improvements are most needed, and where people would be most likely to upgrade for either better battery life or increased performance, or both. The core delays/marginal performance improvements and the 14nm atom delays have both cause serious problems.

Intel needed 14nm to be a game changer, a major step forward, to better fight ARM and to give people with current tablets, ultrabooks, and laptops a reason to upgrade. Unfortunately, we got delays and middling increases in performance and battery life.

 

[mrmt]

The PC platform, even with "modern" OSes, is still pretty archaic compared to OSes like Android, as far as required end-user maintenance and administration.

I don´t think maintenance and administration are really the problem. Apple sells expensive computers but with the same maintenance and administration problems of windows machines, but their sales are growing. The main problem is that the desktop PC with windows 8 or 10 are a chore to use, while the mobile OS are a pleasure to use.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Forgot that Skylake is both Tick and Tock, didn't you?

Tick-Tock at normal cadence .

No, it is not at normal cadence. At normal tick/tock, we would have had desktop broadwell instead of haswell refresh, and Skylake coming soon. *If* Skylake comes mid year and if it shows something like 15% or more improvement, then we are pretty much back on schedule, but I am not counting on that. Even from SB to Haswell we saw about 5% plus 8% increase, so Haswell to Skylake needs about 15% improvement to just keep up with the most recent tick/tock improvements.

And since normally each generation has slipped to about 15 months, what I am realistically expecting is Skylake by end of the year and 10% or less improvement vs Haswell. I hope I am wrong on both counts, but we will see. Intel talked a good game with Broadwell up until the very end, but continually made, shall I call it "overly optimistic"projections on both timing and performance.

 

[Cerb]

Why would corporate upgrade on a 3-4 year cycle if there is no tangible benefit? Going from Sandy Bridge to Haswell or Broadwell is pointless for the average office worker.

Reduced cost in terms of support. That cadence is low enough to be able to sell or write off value of the PC, about the time many users will need an OS reload, and getting into typical fan, HDD, and PSU failure time frames. The performance benefit is going to take 2-3 cycles to show up. The rest is that it's still cheaper and more effective than having a larger IT staff, or an IT staff that can't respond to issues relatively quickly, because they're too busy keeping all the old PCs running.

Also, the big OEMs sell stuff until they run out, so a 5-year old office PC might be a Core 2 Duo, and 3-year old one might still be a 1st-gen i3/i5. New PCs from Dell were mixes of IB and HSW until mid-2014.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Apple sells expensive computers but with the same maintenance and administration problems of windows machines, but their sales are growing.

Apple computers, require defrag utils, registry cleaners, anti-malware and anti-virus software?

 

[ehume]

Yeah after installing and using classic shell with 8.1 I will never go back to 7.

Agreed. With a few tweaks, Classic Shell is almost (but not quite) back to Win 7. And with the improved Win 8.1 back end, the combo definitely improves on Win 7. I wish they'd bring Classic Shell up to Win 7, though, and not merely up to Vista.

 

[mrmt]

Apple computers, require defrag utils, registry cleaners, anti-malware and anti-virus software?

Defrag doesn't really matter in the SSD era, registry cleaners, do you really use that? And I don't think antivirus software is such a hard issue to deal with you install and it does most of the job. A much graver issue is to have to switch context every time I need to open an app like you have to do when using Metro, or that I have to go back-and-forth between desktop and Metro interfaces if I want to do something as simple as configure a WLAN network.

Windows is a productivity platform, and Microsoft is thoroughly trashing the productivity side in order to transform windows in a bad content consumption platform. They will end up with a closed ecosystem like Apple, but one that nobody wants to use anymore.