Budget notebook PC demand crashes after riding the pandemic wave

Just well-nigh everything that goes up has to come downwardly at some point, especially when it comes to supply and demand economics. Such is the case with budget notebook PCs, which accept seen demand reportedly plummet back to pre-pandemic levels.

The news comes from analyst firm Mercury Research (via PCWorld). Though specific figures are deficient, the broad strokes of the need shift are that cheap laptops were riding high with 180% growth across quarters Q4 2022 to Q2 2022. And so, Q3 2022 came along and sunk the ship almost instantly, returning Chromebook and notebook PC demand to what it was earlier 'rona times.

Mind y'all, that doesn't mean notebook PCs as a whole are suffering or are in some state of peril. Strategy Analytics has good news to share near the health of the sector on the whole, though it also notes that Chromebooks in particular aren't having the outrageous successes of previous quarters. Even then, the figures on display are far from doom-and-gloom territory.

Not just are notebooks equally a whole doing well, merely as logic may suggest, the companies behind said hardware are also enjoying fruitful quarterly and annual results. Lenovo in particular had a strong past quarter, managing $17.9 billion in acquirement, successfully trouncing whatever whispers that supply concatenation delays and shortages could derail success. With that said, the global semiconductor crisis did have an impact on Lenovo — simply information technology was more in-line with a crash-land in the route than an all-out trainwreck.

Microsoft as well had a successful previous quarter, though its Surface laptops took a bit of a hitting due to similar supply bug.

An internet connection will soon be required when setting up Windows 11 Pro

UH OH

An internet connexion will soon exist required when setting upwardly Windows 11 Pro

Microsoft has announced that later this twelvemonth, users volition be required to connect to the internet and sign-in with a Microsoft Account during the out of box setup experience on Windows 11 Pro. Microsoft has already been enforcing this requirement on Windows 11 Home since launch last October, and Windows 11 Pro is at present expected to follow suit shortly.

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