my old computer lasted 8 years(though it was basically a brick by its least 2 years).

My new computer is pretty decent- 2.7 GHz processor(i5), 8 GB ram, runs 1080p video smoothly. I feel as though this one will last until 2021-2025 easily.

I guess it's eventual doom for the hardware market. Unless a miracle happens, I don't see the market doing so well.

As for software, I know PC is still thriving

I kinda think that AMD can potentially make some kind of a splash soon. Zen/Polaris 11 based APUs can be a gamechanger in the low-end to mid-range market and if anything, this could entice people to upgrade their office PCs. Also, all AMD fanboys that had it rough the last couple years will be proudly switching CPUs and MBs this Christmas And lets not forget, we've got Polaris and Pascal coming out in two-three months, this will inject monies into the industry There is still money to be made here, though PC is an afterthought when compared to mobile, that's obvious.

There has actually been a few glimmers of hope in the PC industry...
Small form factor (Think: NUC), Enthusiast builds are actually increasing in sales... Which is why companies like Corsair and Newegg are still increasing in profits.

PC reached "Good enough" levels of performance back in 2006, 10 years ago for the majority of people who just use facebook, email and simple games.
People are thus less inclined to waste a ton of money in replacing it if it still works fine.

Ironically, mobiles and tablets have also reached the point of "Good enough" performance, people are less inclined to replace their mobile devices every year now... And that is affecting sales overall, pretty much any decent ARM A7 chip with a couple of gigabytes of Ram suffices for most.

However... If the PC sinks, AMD, Intel and nVidia falters and the entire market collapses... Then the flow-on effect will be massive for all other technology sectors, PC is where innovation tends to start, good luck with the next gen consoles using ARM SoC's.

What will happen from now on is consolidation and diversification, especially among ARM chip makers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSYBO1BrB1I

What do you guys think about this vid? I recommed watching it, it's starts slow buliding up for great arguments later on, I think it's incredibly interesting. AMD killing nVidia in the upcoming years? Taking on Intel after that? Gotta agree with the author that they are in a unique position on the market and may finally be able to capitalize on it. 90% of gamers use AMD graphics! 80% of PC market for nVidia doesn't look so scary anymore.

Don't know about you, but I plan to buy a Polaris GPU in the upcoming months and in less than a year build a PC for my father and I plan to build it around a Zen based APU, since their price to performance ratio can't be beat. And in the past I used to be a part of the "Green" team.

nVidia won't go anywhere, having an AMD monopoly is a bad thing.
nVidia also has some pretty hardcore fans who will not even contemplate using anything else, nVidia also has more money than AMD in their war chest with more profit.

Zen won't dethrone Intel, it's meant to catch up not surpass, even when the Athlon was pounding Intel in almost every aspect, performance, power and price... Intel still outsold AMD, why? Because Intel actually can advertise, it also has tons of deals with OEM's. It has consumer sentiment.

But that is fine if Zen doesn't take the performance lead, AMD doesn't need it. But they do need "Good enough" performance at the right price.
Today... In 2016 if anyone buys an FX CPU... They are insane in my opinion, they are woefully inadequate, if AMD can offer 90% of the performance, heck even 80% and at the right price, then they are on a winner, right now though their fastest can't even beat Intels mid-range.
That should also entice some OEM's, which leads to more AMD design wins.

Polaris is a mainstream product, not Fury's successor, it is not a high-end or enthusiast graphics card. - That won't happen until Vega drops.

I won't be buying Polaris. I'll be buying Vega. Four of them, Polaris isn't going to be fast enough.
I'll likely stick with intel for the CPU as Zen is just a catchup and I tend to go for high-end gear.

Now where things *do* get interesting is AMD's plan to drop a 200-300w APU, an APU that is going to be faster than the consoles, with HBM memory, this will be great for a Mini-ITX gaming build or HPC.

Don't get me wrong, I want AMD to succeed, but I also don't want them to win and take majority share, Monopolies are bad in the tech space, stuff stagnates, Intel is a prime example of that fact.

I know Zen will be weaker than Skylake, let alone Kaby Lake, let alone the next Lake And AMD won't overtake Intel in sales, but as you said, AMD is going to change the game somewhat with Zen based APUs, which can be a very interesting option for people not building a top-of-the-line PC. Current APUs are almost there in my opinion, but with Zen they will finally make the jump to being power efficient (not overheating!) and powerful enough, to be able to take a $50 MoBo, $150 APU, 8 GB of RAM and have a great PC for office stuff/web browsing and even some light gaming. I can see every budget PC being built aroung AMD CPU/APU, especially if Intel keeps an i3 with merely 2 cores as competition. High end is still going to belong to Intel and that's where the money's at.

An APU competing with consoles could also be a great solution for gamers. Sky is the limit and in this field they have no competition.

I know nVidia isn't going anywhere, just as Intel they have far superior image and brand power, but they will have to work hard to keep it and it will be harder for Greens than Intel. After all, AMD is currently on par with nVidia when it comes to performance, unlike with Intel. I think that once Polaris hits the market, GPU marketshares of 80-20 won't be and option anymore AMD is better with VR, multiscreens, has free Freesync and thus cheaper monitors. This snowball is starting to grow, but let's face it, 50% marketshare in GPUs will be a huge success for AMD and will take time to achieve.

I think I'm going to go with a 480 or 480X and be perfectly happy. All I want is 75 fps in 2560x1080p @ultra. I'm going to have to see the benchmarks and see which card gives that level of performance and buy it. Don't need to spend more on a PC, there's so many other things to do with money

A high end 300w APU isn't isn't going to be cheap, it's going to be targeting high-end gaming PC's, not budget machines which have Core i3 processors, AMD will charge a premium for it, because they can.
And Current APU's are horrible, anyone who buys one in 2016 is insane.

As for Multi-screens, AMD had the edge since the Radeon 5870 Eyefinity edition, it's why I chose AMD over nVidia that round, that got improved over the other generations... With that said, nVidia's surround vision isn't entirely lacking and is more than sufficient. - VR is yet to be determined, yet to see how AMD is going to have the edge, Freesync is only important to those who own/will own a Freesync monitor, right now it's in a minority of sales and will continue to be as most panels typically are cheap low-end ones where Freesync (And G-sync) are non-existent.

Also. "APU" is an AMD marketing term, it consists of a CPU and GPU being on the same die, thus Intel has had "APU's" for years, they just don't use the term, probably because it's an AMD one, Intel has also been investing heavily in it's IGP's, even throwing L4/eDRAM at the problem.

Also. AMD CPU's cannot overheat anymore, that hasn't been an issue since AMD's Palomino back in 2000, once it reaches a thermal threashold, the CPU scales back.

And remember that AMD will have competition from nVidia when it launches Polaris, nVidia has something equally as impressive known as Pascal which gets followed up with Volta, if you think AMD is going to be walking in and taking 80% marketshare when it has competition, no brand presence and a loyal following that numbers less than nVidia... You haven't paid much attention to AMD and thus ATI over the last few decades.

I hope AMD can do well, but you do need to set some realistic expectations, even when they have had superior performance, energy efficiency and price... They still have never had managed to gain majority marketshare.

I know the high end APU is going to be expensive, it's going to rival consoles, basicaly try to be the ultimate Steam Machine. I know current APUs aren't anything great, but with Zen cores they will be very interesting and offer great performance per $. And the current ones aren't terrible, just that they aren't for gamers. If you want to build a machine for browsing, office and playing stuff like Candy Crush, or old games, a PC with an APU is absolutely good enough. 

Freesync is free, so it can be included even in the cheapest monitors. It is becoming more popular and I can't see any reason why it shouldn't. Every company introduces Freesync monitors at different price points. When I was choosing my monitor, I was picking only between Freesync ones, the more people do like me and buy these monitors, the more there will be manufactured, since there is no reason not to put it into a monitor.

I know Intel has "APUs", but when it comes to (i)GPUs they aren't even close to where AMD is. Just like nVidia isn't anywhere close to AMD when it comes to CPUs. AMD is in the sweetspot, especially once they release Zen.

I know nVidia will come guns blazing, that's what they do. The 80% marketshare wasn't meant as AMD's future, but nVidias present - they have 80% of the market right now. I think AMD may claw back up to around 50% in the coming years, especially if they capitalize on all the advantages they set in front of themselves. It's their for the taking and it's great, cause the more of the market they gain, the more Intel and nVidia will be motivated to fight back

I find the easiest fix that often drastically improves performance for people with little cost is a RAM upgrade... it's a shame so many people make the inaccurate assumption that they could never understand the innards of a PC, as it really doesn't take much effort. Heck, I built my first PC using a "PC's for Dummies" book lol

If all you want to do is use Office, Candy Crush or old Games... Intel i3 is a better proposition as those tasks are typically lightly-threaded... And Intel's low-end will beat AMD's best every time in those scenarios.
Plus Intel is more energy efficient.
With that said... For things like that, you could get away with an Atom X7 8300 - 8700.

It may reach a point where it becomes *the* standard, which nVidia will then likely support it anyway.
It's a long way from reaching decent market saturation now or in the immediate future.

Depends. Intel's best IGP with eDRAM is faster than AMD, Intel also has the edge in power consumption.
If a game is CPU heavy, even if AMD has a faster GPU... It still looses to Intel.
See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9960/intel-for-mainstream-gamers-our-igps-are-equivalent-to-discrete-gpus

I think it really depends.

If you only use on average 2-3Gb of Ram and you have 4Gb, then dropping in 8Gb or 16Gb is a waste, you are likely to see nothing out of it, sometimes you are just going to  be CPU or GPU bound.
The *biggest* bang for buck upgrade is ditching the mechanical hard drive for the OS and getting an SSD.