I just upgraded my 5 year old computers from Windows XP to Windows 8. They still run fast enough for office work. No need for new PCs.

Dog Bites Man.

They've pretty well wrapped up phase 1: Everyone in the world who can afford one-- and a solid percentage of those who can't-- owns a personal computer.

It's now time for phase 2, Planned Obsolescence: Every self-respecting adult should replace their computer every two years, whether they need to or not.

Or, hm, maybe you could leave the OS vulnerable to carefully selected viruses so after a few years the machine becomes unusable and owners are forced to upgrade. Or... well, hey, there are lots of things you could do. This is the Foo forum isn't it?

It's da phones!

Plug it in, switch it on, and play with it, until something breaks.
Until then, I'll leave it alone.

My 2 boxes are over 5 years old, running XP, with no real problems. Why should I change them?

Phones, for sure, have a big influence, but even their sales dried up, somewhat, until they got 'connected'.
When everyone has one they are happy with, then what?

I would be more interested in seeing the trend in number of PCs in use, or the number of hours people spend on PCs.

I take it most of our websites are still predominantly getting desktop traffic?

I take it most of our websites are still predominantly getting desktop traffic?

Excluding those that are so huge, they've spawned free-standing app versions?

If there are app versions, you count app usage as traffic.

@tbear, Windows XP will EOL next year, so you will have to change something.

Around 70% PC browsers. 16% Chrome, 9% labelled "mobile browsers".

The trouble with PCs from the vendor's point of view is that they are now powerful enough to take what the customers want to run.

On a run of the mill mid-market laptop I can start up a DTP package to produce a magazine while having several large photos open in a picture editor, Firefox with several tabs to check emails and references and two databases and a couple of spreadsheets open in Open Office.

Of course the laptop will keep running on mains power when the battery gives up. Its battery life that causes me to replace phones.

At what point can we call a tablet a laptop? That's what they're evolving to.

@tbear, Windows XP will EOL next year, so you will have to change something.

EOL ?

Unless that means self destruct, I'll run with it.... ;)

EOL
= End of Life
= no more updates including for security and is considered "dead"
= no more 3rd-party software updates (security or otherwise)
= no more updates for your anti-virus definition files
= problems with compliance with PCI DSS, HIPAA and who knows that else.
= even more companies getting serious about moving off XP
= EOL for IE8
= bliss for developers
= total death spiral for XP