Mirroring Intel's Q1 results, Gartner says that notebooks outdid themselves in the first quarter, up 43.4% to 50 million units, their best year-over-year unit growth in eight - count ‘em - eight years thanks to the blessed consumer, who apparently went for the cheaper netbook models (up 71% in units) since generic ASPs were down 16% to $732 from $868.

Still sales were up 21% to $36.1 billion with HP the top vendor at 19.2% of the market. Acer was on its heels with 18.5%. Dell was third, Toshiba fourth and Asus fifth.

Gartner believes netbooks may suffer from tablet competition over time although it's betting netbook shipments will be up 30% this year to 41.8 million units and media tablets should hit 10 million units.

Sans tablets, it's projecting PC shipments this year will be up 22% to 376.6 million units with PC spending up 12% to $245.4 million.

It says consumers, who will still drive the bulk of the demand, now see PCs as necessities, not luxuries.

Gartner's pushing the bulk of the great enterprise upgrade cycle into next year and thinks Windows 7 migration will stretch through 2012.

It says China and the U.S. will account for half of the world's PC consumption next year.