Desk top PCs are more of a durable good than smart phones, and any type of portable computing device.
I am typing this on a dual core 2ghz machine with 2G ram that was made in 2006.
In the back room, I have a single core 2ghz machine with 2 gig ram that was made in 2001.
In the early years around the late 80’s to 90’s you would be worrying about upgrading about every 3, 4, or, 5 years. Since, 2000, It seams as though the drive to upgrade has disappeared for a lot of people. My 11 year old computer is perfectly capable of running the most current release of windows. That statement would have been ludicrous back in 2000 Most of the computers I deal with on a daily basis are older than 5 years old. There is only one person I know of that has a computer that is only a year old.
It seams the desk top computing power has hit a plateau. More power is definitely available, but most people just don’t need it.
Look at the minimum requirements for win 8. 1Ghz cpu. 1G ram, 16G HD, DX9 graphics. Heck, one of my old late 90’s computers that I have in storage has that amount of power.
That has to do with the fact that MS has cleaned out the glut to a large degree. They have streamlined and optimized the code and OS design. To the point that Linux based systems seam bloated by comparison now.
That is my opinion as to the cause for the slowdown in mem chip use. The memory going into an I pad will be around for a year or two. The memory in a desktop will be there for a decade.
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