Ho ho ho - Christmas is coming and the PC-business is slowing down ... Wait a minute! Isn't the pre-holiday season supposed to be a particularly busy time? Aren't there enough new products? Maybe there are too many. Are people confused, losing faith? Are they out of money, or simply out of desire? Could it be that people simply don't need new products, because their current PC is simply fast enough?

Whatever it is, at least we here at Tom's Hardware have a good excuse why the last days were a bit sluggish. With all the changes that we have been going through in recent years, one thing has remained the same. Tom's Hardware does not function without Thomas Pabst. If I am tied up with bizz-stuff or with traveling (home to Europe for Christmas of course), it's very difficult to authorize or even write any new stories. While the bizz-stuff continues until we finally hit Christmas, I've at least reached my hometown and family by now, so there's one reason less to keep new articles from coming.

So far about the more or less acceptable excuses for Tom's Hardware. Unfortunately, those excuses can hardly be used by the PC-business, which is currently experiencing a major slow-down, the first one of this kind for years. The most recent in a long line of profit warnings is the announcement Microsoft made on Friday . PC-systems as well as components don't sell that well this Christmas. I would like to give a few speculations why that is and what we should make out of it.

Unless you are a Pentium 4 fan with a lot of money, you might be rather disappointed that a lot of the products that were announced in the last weeks and months are still unavailable. AMD Athlon and DDR-memory fans are hit particularly hard. It's still close to impossible finding motherboards with AMD760 chipsets . The same is valid for platforms running with ALi's MaGiK 1 chipset. Even Athlon's with 133 MHz (or 266 MHz DDR) FSB are still unavailable. VIA's DDR-products haven't even been announced yet. Basically, the well-informed buyers have good reasons to hold out for the time being.

The diversity in the PC-market has grown and Intel has lost a lot of its reputation as the technology leader. Many people aren't quite clear about what to buy and thus they are holding out as well. What is better, an Intel or AMD-based system? Which platform should be used - VIA, Intel or something else? The 3D-chip market will see new chips soon too and the prices of the current offerings will drop. Is it a good time to buy right now?

The third and maybe most important reason for the reluctance to spend money on new computer systems may be the simple fact that it is hard to justify the purchase. What is all this magnificent performance offered by the latest products needed for? I am a performance-freak myself, but I can't see why my system would need a Pentium 4 or even an Athlon 1200 right now.

What all this boils down to is that you as the consumer are in a pretty good situation right now. If the systems and products targeted at the Christmas market can't be sold this year, they will become available at significantly reduced costs early 2001 to clear the huge stocks that were built up. This will get a lot of PC-businesses in trouble, because they might lose a lot of money and we will have to see how many of the players will survive the next 6 months. For consumers, the advice can only be to wait with the purchase of new systems or components until January/February 2001. By that time the prices will have dropped and long anticipated products will finally become available. AMD760, ALi MaGiK1, VIA Apollo KT133A (also for 133 MHz FSB, but only for SDR-memory) and VIA's DDR-memory solutions will offer interesting and well-performing new alternatives to the current platforms.