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No .Net applications, but the cost is negligible. The time it would take to learn and migrate to a new system would quickly eat up any cost savings. https://www.microsoftstore.com...

> First off the AMD graphis is an RX 450!

The low end 15" costs 2400 bucks and has a "Radeon Pro 450". The high end 15" costs 2800 bucks and has a "Radeon Pro 455". Both can be upgraded to the "Radeon Pro 460". You are correct about the "1 teraflop" in the low end one. I don't *think* you can straight compare to the desktop RX cards, and I don't *think* that teraflops is the best metric (especially when comparing to consoles). That being said, it is absolutely clear that these are not super powerful cards, and are not all that powerful when compared with what you can jam in an alienware or other top branded system. It's also clear that Apple made a bunch of choices based on battery life, and also that by not competing in the 17" laptop category, they are kind of telling you what to expect.

> Only a dual core skylae? You're kidding for a $2700 system?

Not sure what you mean. The 2400 dollar and 2800 dollar system both have quad core skylakes. They have the Radeon 450 or 455 (or 460 for more money).

> The CPU is terrible too. For a reference I own the haswell version of this chip on my Surface Pro 3

I'm a little less than certain that you know what you are talking about here, given the above mistakes. But, here's the surface pro 3 page:
https://www.microsoftstore.com...

The "799" option may be the 850 one you are talking about (the other options are all more than 850, and you say you paid that much, meaning probably with tax?). It has a "Intel Core i3 - 1.5GHz". That's much slower than the one in the cheap version of the 13" macbook. It isn't the equivalent of the price point you are talking about, and isn't the equivalent of anything Apple is talking about, as far as I can tell.

Basically, your post at LEAST is counting the premium macbook pro prices ("$2700 system") with the low end macbook pro components ("dual core skylake", "haswell version"), and may have even more errors.

> the escape key is gone for VIM and Emacs

The escape key is present unless the application overrides it. Why would vim and emacs override the default escape key? The bar defaults to normal keyboard buttons, and changes based on the application. It should run console stuff A-ok. I'd me more concerned about it not behaving properly in Linux or Windows, but it is very likely that it either has sensible hardware defaults or drivers- but that's still a risk if you wanted to dual boot, until someone checks it out.

> Apple dropped the bomb big time and should have waited and used 32 gig dimms

Remember that they update these things every year, and not on Intel's schedule. The last Macbook Pros used a mix of broadwell and haswell, the year before that was all haswell, etc. That means that next year will have whatever is out when they do their refresh, which will probably be kabylake, and it might have the new RAM type by then. Basically, if you have a use case for a laptop with 32 gigs of RAM, dude, you're getting a Dell. Or an anything but an Apple. Or waiting until next year.

Apple fans (their actual paying audience) are spending most of their time complaining about the four USB-C ports, but you can at least defend that decision from a technical perspective, even if it does mean that everyone will have a little pouch of dongles to carry with them for the next four to eight years. Some are also distressed about the 32 gigs of RAM, but I think some of that is bleed over from the Mac Pro being very suspicious in its age.

Agree on the up to $650. I went to the trade-in site and see an old Macbook A1181 trade-in is only $75. Of course that device was released in 2009.

It'd be interesting to see what the actual technical reason for this is, but I know the business reason.

Microsoft's Signature program (described here, is essentially an agreement with manufacturers that they won't load crapware on the PC. It's doing for the consumer what the technical among us do whenever we buy a new Windows PC -- wipe the hard drive and do a clean install-from-media of Windows.

Manufacturers of low-margin consumer hardware make up some of the margin by bundling garbage software like firewalls, AV, "helper" programs, etc. Without that source of revenue, I'll bet they're relying on payments by Microsoft to cover what is lost. The interesting thing to see is whether or not all Signature PCs have clever restrictions that make it just difficult enough to install Linux that no one will bother.

But the people who still use Office (often because it's a requirement from school) are stuck with a monthly subscription.

No they aren't. Why would they be stuck with a monthly subscription when you can just buy the standalone perpetual version?

You can buy them unlocked directly from Microsoft on their website. No need to get the carrier involved.

Also, why would anybody ask to see the phones if they are in the back? Most people would probably assume that the only phones that are available at the store are the ones on display.This is probably a lot to do with why they aren't catching on more. People don't see the phones at any of the stores, so they don't even think about getting one.

Personally, I like Windows phone a lot more than iOS or Android. The whole experience is a lot better, and I get updates much more often. With my old Android phone, I never got a single update from the way they shipped it from the factory.

>apparently these days cheap is all that matters - quality doesn't

Oh shut up. First of all, the tablet the OP wants exists, go ahead and pay three grand for it if you want. The battery won't last two days of usage because there's no battery technology that is dense enough to allow that without making the tablet enormous and/or super slow.

The claim itself is of course extremely stupid, but I'm not going to spend time on it as I'm getting a feeling that this was a very masterful troll that got modded up somehow.

I'm still waiting for that to happen. I'm not going to pay CAD$149.00 for the OS of a gaming PC.

You're forgetting one tiny little thing:

Us geeks influence friends and family.

I got my whole family switched over to Macs ~ 10 years back. It was an dead easy "sell" as my Dad was so fed up with Microsoft's constantly nickeling and diming. IF Microsoft would be reasonable and sell Windows (licenses) for $20 instead of $200 Windows 10 Pro USB flash drive then MAYBE people would stick with them but that ship has sailed LONG AGO in our family. Macs are just easier to use & support for non-technical people.

I am sticking with Windows 7 Pro only because of a few Direct3D 11 games and I need a version of Windows for game dev that supports my 32 GB RAM. But future Microsoft upgrades? Fuck 'em. I already have used two MacBook Pro's from work that I've been using for the past 4 years and absolute love them; I just bought my own MacBook Pro once I found out I can I can use my GTX 980Ti as en eGPU.

I tell my friends, "Sorry, I no longer support Windows past ver 7. I recommend a Mac or Linux box unless you have a specific reason you _need_ Windows. Microsoft has no respect for your privacy nor for empowering the UI. Why would you continue to give them money to allow them to constantly abuse you??"

I work for a Fortune 50 company -- you would be surprised at how many Mac's we have here. WAY, WAY, more then I would ever expect. The IT guys love Mac OSX significantly more then Windows. Hell, we're STILL upgrading Windows XP systems to Windows 7 systems.

The harder MS pushes Windows 10 the more people they are going to piss off. Push too hard and they could find themselves irrelevant much like IBM is today. Don't think this is a possibility? Consider the facts:

Android is already used by over 1.4 Billion people.
* http://www.theverge.com/2015/9...

Linux powers 98.8% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world; this is something Microsoft can only *dream* about.
* http://www.top500.org/statisti...

Free is eventually going to win over corporate greed. It doesn't really matter how long it takes; Microsoft's days are numbered. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but 20 years down the road MS will be struggling to maintain any sense of relevancy.

So yeah, MS _does_ undermine themselves. They are just to big to recognized it and they don't care. That's fine. I'll just take my business elsewhere. Apparently a lot of us geeks do as well.

--
Microsoft Windows 8 and 10, noun: A 64-bit compilation of 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition with 0 bit of understanding good UI.

I don't have a problem with Windows 10. Overall I like it, much better than 8, and clearly more "futuristic" than 7. Free is a great price.

Windows 10 costs $119.99 to purchase.

i'd like my laptop to have cpu in the screen part so it can use the lid as its heatsink.

The only problem with putting the workings into the screen is that it makes it top-heavy, which changes the balance when hold it. It can be slightly more prone to falling over too, although none of these problems are really horrendous. I guess if you kept the drive and battery in the base it would counter-balance the computer.

I have an ASUS Transformer Book T100 (which has a detachable screen that can be used as a tablet). The weight problem is not too bad because the entire computer is so light. I do want to try a Surface Book, which also has a detachable screen (and so has to have the CPU in the screen). But it also has an extra battery and graphics processor in the base to give it more grunt when using it in a traditional notebook format. I'm quite keen to see how the balance is with the mix of parts.

So they make phones, tablets, consoles, their own laptop, fitness bands and keyboards and mice but they aren't in the hardware business?

Loss leaders to generate service revenue. Direct revenue from hardware sales is a drop in the bucket. That bucket is growing quarter over quarter, but so too is cost of revenue. Profit margins are low in hardware. But more importantly, and far more relevant to the "forced upgrade" argument: they do not sell PC's or server hardware that would be affected by killing SHA-1.

Windows 10 was free,

For one year and only for consumers.

When MS shuts off SHA-1 on July 1st, Windows 10 will still be free.

and MS is betting its future revenue on cloud services instead of Windows Server licenses.

And yet those licenses are still a big portion of their revenue and revenue from that grew 6% just their last quarter.

But with $15 billion invested in PaaS, there is nowhere to expand except by cannibalizing existing Windows Server revenue.

Considering MS is not in the hardware business

So they make phones, tablets, consoles, their own laptop, fitness bands and keyboards and mice but they aren't in the hardware business?

Windows 10 was free,

For one year and only for consumers.

and MS is betting its future revenue on cloud services instead of Windows Server licenses.

And yet those licenses are still a big portion of their revenue and revenue from that grew 6% just their last quarter.

Is it possible to test on Safari without buying a $499 Safari license? And if you're testing on Safari, is it also possible to test on Edge without paying another $199.99 for an Edge license?

Windows 10 is Malware. "Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user." Will Microsoft top managers be the targets of a court case? Other spyware makers have been convicted. Will there be an anti-trust case against Microsoft's virtual monopoly?

Apparently Microsoft is moving towards these arrangements: With Windows 10, Microsoft has complete control over any computer connected to the internet, so Microsoft can use its spyware, which it calls "telemetry", to gather personal information to be sold to advertisers. Eventually there may be monthy payments to use Windows, as with Microsoft Office-365. Apparently Microsoft is paid by secret agencies of governments to steal personal information.

As many people have said, putting spyware into Windows 10, and not allowing people to know the purpose of "updates", will obviously be bad for Microsoft, eventually. So, why is Microsoft becoming even more offensive? It seems that the company is amazingly badly managed. For example, the cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.

Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."

Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)

Articles about Microsoft abusing customers:

How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?

NSA Backdoor Exploit in Windows 8 Uncovered

Microsoft Gave the NSA Direct Backdoor Access to Outlook, Skype

Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches. Each update is a black box, and it's going to stay that way.

Leaks show that Microsoft writes release notes, so why can't it publish them? The lack of documentation of Windows' updates is a baffling move on Microsoft's part.

Microsoft [lack of] Privacy Statement

Here's how to Block Windows 10 "Spying" (But, of course, Microsoft can change the spyware to avoid blocking.)

Any reason I should stop MS from upgrading me?

Because if you were the customer, MS would be charging you for the privilege of purchasing their product.

You are the product, and MS is trying to downgrade functional Win 7 machines (general-purpose computers that run software at the user's discretion and transmit telemetry only when the user misconfigures them) into telemetry-gathering nodes on something that is becoming increasingly-indistinguishable from what we used to call a botnet.

Microsoft will gladly sell you a copy of Windows 10.

- Gears of War 2 and 3 (almost certain candidates for an HD remaster at some point, I guess).

I'm not very familiar with the series, but had been looking at the available console bundles, and the gears of war bundle *appears* to include all of the 360 collection of gears of war:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/...

• Full game download of original Gears of War remastered in 1080p
• Get the entire Xbox 360 Gears of War collection to play for free

They also have the ultimate edition on xbox one as a stand alone game. I don't know if it includes 2 and 3 though.
Are these the same?

Microsoft's 1TB Surface Book will cost you $3199 (plus tax), which seems a bit steep to me.

And people whine about Apple gouging for "commodity PC hardware"?

My God, the most expensive MacBook Pro will only set you back $2499. The equivalent Surface Book costs $200 more, but it still has the same integrated Intel GPU as the MBP.

And of course the MBP has an OS that both respects your privacy and knows that its a Desktop OS.

But I guess if you are trapped into the MS ecosystem (which you could also run on an MBP, if you wanted), then the 1TB Surface Book may be what you want... When it finally ships in January, 2016.

By the way, it seems like spec for spec, the MBPs and Surface Books are priced pretty closely; so maybe, just maybe, Apple hasn't been "gouging" all this time, and it really does cost a little more to up the build and component quality, eh?

I guess a $200 Android phone really is amazing to someone who has never seen a Windows phone for +/- $100. Like $49 for a 530 on T-Mobile or $129 for an unlocked 635. No contract on either.

MS or Pepsi: tough choice.

Nope. That one has a 512 MB RAM, and 4GB internal memory (Win 10 is likely going to require 8 GB, despite what that amazon page says). If you want a cheap & good windows phone, you get a Lumia 640 for $79. The sunlight readability feature alone is worth it.

I'm tired of hearing "Windows 10 upgrade is free" from Microsoft fanboys. Not everyone is using Windows. And a lot of people are still using older versions like Windows XP.

From http://www.microsoftstore.com/...

Get Windows 10
Free upgrade available only to qualified devices currently running Windows 7, 8, or 8.1.*
For system builders or Mac users, buy the full version of Windows 10.

CAD$149.00 (Download or USB)

I don't call that free at all, so fuck off.

MS has no control over what PC vendors install on the machines after they install Windows. If they tried to exert that kind of control, I'm sure more than a few people would scream "monopoly". The PC vendors themselves are the ones who choose to install junkware on the machines. Microsoft is even starting to push their signature edition PCs without all the junkware loaded on to try and get their good name back. I think MS would like nothing better than to be able for people to have a good experience with their Windows computers, but Lenovo, HP, Dell and others are ruining the experience in the name of ever lower PC prices, no matter what the experience.

Last year I got a phone with Windows Phone 8 for $59* (I still can't believe it that's possible) just to mess around with. Even as a hobby, I couldn't stand to use it. The OS was JUST THAT HORRIBLE. It was stupid and annoying and deeply flawed. If my choices were a) that phone for $59 or b) an iPhone for $650, I would choose b) in a heartbeat. Oh, wait, actually, I did. (I'm on T-Mobile so I actually pay full price for my phones.) I returned the phone within 30 days.

Paying $700 for a good phone vs. $200 for a crappy one is really not that hard to imagine. Look at what people spend on cars.

Note: I haven't used Android heavily, so I can only speak of Windows, but from what I've seen of Android, I'm pretty sure I'd still stick with an iPhone. My point is, price is NOT everything.

I'm not saying iPhones are the best for everyone, or that everyone should buy them. Apple has grown their desktop and laptop sales greatly in the past decade despite "perfectly good" competitors existing for ~1/2-1/3 the price, so I have no reason to think a flood of dirt cheap phones will greatly harm their iPhone business anytime soon.

* I got a Lumia 520. This current one is similarly specced and priced. http://www.microsoftstore.com/...
The hardware was awesome. I still can't believe you can get something that good for so little. But the Windows Phone OS is just so, so, so bad. Not even worth keeping as a toy.

Amen to that!

Office 365 is $99 per year for the Home edition. There is no justification for that - unless you have some Chromebook.

I bought Office XP back in '02 and just stopped using it in favor of Office 2011 for the Mac because I wanted the new cite feature and a native Mac version (Office XP in Parallels was god aweful slow.) It cost me $115 which will last me the life of the machine.

I paid $149 for Office XP in '02 and dividing that over 13 years, It cost me about $12 a year. Now M$ wants to rent me Office for $99 per year?!

Fuck that!

The only reason I have MS Office in the first place is because it is still the standard in the publishing world and no, Open/Libre Office is NOT compatible.

Just looked at the tablet, and on the Microsoft Store the unit is $79. Pretty wild, how's the screen on this?

Signature Edition PCs are tuned for fast performance from the second you turn them on. They include free anti-virus software that never expires and have no junkware or trialware, ensuring that your new PC is always clean, fast, and protected.

It seems that MS realizes there is a problem with junkware included with their OS. They can't force manufacturers to not install junkware on the computers they sell, but it looks like MS is trying to do something to alleviate the problem. It actually looks like the machines sold on the Microsoft Store are actually quite competitively priced.

I don't know how their Office subscription is doing though, so maybe they've snookered some people into getting used to it.

I like the Office 365 subscription. It's $10/month (versus $400 for Office Pro), I get regular updates, and I can install it on 5 machines and 5 phones. I currently have it installed on 4 laptops and two phones. To do those installs via hard media would be $1600. It'll take over 13 years of subscription to meet the price of buying the equivalent suites for my installs. And with Microsoft rolling significant updates every couple years, this is a vastly cheaper way for me to keep up with the releases. Not sure how the leads to being "snookered"...

The Lumia 520 I'm seeing on Amazon for $29 is a carrier locked phone. The one being sold directly from MS is unlocked.

Here is the tech spec page for Microsoft Surface: http://www.microsoftstore.com/...

Note that it clearly states how much storage is actually available for use, accounting for the OS and other software.

Here is the tech spec page for Apple's iPad Air 2: http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad-a...

Note that it doesn't mention how much usable space you have after the OS and all their bundled apps have taken their share.

You can even get 4K PC monitors for an attractive price

Citation needed (...please!)

Dell 28 Ultra HD 4K Monitor on sale for $300. I don't know about you, but that is a very reasonable price to me. It is certainly not the best. You get what you pay for. But this one has the 4Ks.

I know I was going to quit Slashdot, but then I saw that the Linux Learner Bundle is 91% off right now! Who could resist that deal? I mean, it used to cost more to learn Linux than to simply buy 3 copies of Windows 8.1 Professional, but now I can learn to Linux for less than fifty dollars!

"Visual Studio products are offered through a variety of retail and volume licensing sales channels. Except for direct purchases through MSDN Subscriptions or Microsoft Store, licence purchases are made through a software reseller." ref

Visual Studio Ultimate costs $13,000. It doesn't include the entire MSDN suite of MS tools, although it does include the ability to re-wind your code and run it again. Really slow stepping through your code when that is on.

VS 2013 $499.00 direct from Microsoft. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Visual-Studio-Professional-2013/productID.284832200/

VS2013 Professional is currently available in the Microsoft Store for $499. No MSDN subscription required as far as I can tell.

Regardless, I genuiunely don't care enough to pursue this line of questioning.

Then stop hitting the reply button.

It would however serve you well to remember the things you learn here in the future, because you showed several quite dangerous misconceptions both in terms of your legal right and legal obligations, as well as lack of understanding of concept of fraud.

As a professional computer technician with 15+ years of experience, I know what my legal rights and responsibilities are. It's painfully obvious that you're not familiar with using Microsoft products in the real world.

You don't need to be "familiar with pirate bay" to know that most of the modern pirated versions of windows have long ago solved any microsoft DRM problems.

You falsely accuse me of committing crime and fraud, and insinuated that I'm familiar with the various techniques for pirating Windows. I buy my Microsoft products from Microsoft and Newegg. I don't need to know how to pirate Windows when I already bought Windows through legitimate channels.

Windows 8.1 is not free. http://www.microsoftstore.com/....

Nor was Windows 7, nor Windows Vista, nor Windows XP. By getting our home PCs custom built, we traded the Windows license and installation for an extra disk or extra RAM. The Windows license used to be worth a 1TB disk, now it's worth a 3TB disk. In between, it was worth 8GB extra RAM. Unfortunately, this did not work for our laptops, and that's where this Italian legal decision may bear fruit.

Windows 8.1 is not free. http://www.microsoftstore.com/....

meetings

Ugh.

their code sucks

No, that's just you.

my code sucks

No, that's just them.

Visual Studio... costs over $10000 for the full version

No, it doesn't. You're thinking of the Ultimate You-Don't-Need-This Edition. That is by no means the "full version". The full version is the first one that isn't the "trial version" (i.e. Express Edition) and isn't gimped in completely marketing-driven ways (like requiring you to download umpteen different versions, one for each language you use and one for each environment you target). Instead, it's only missing a bunch of tools nobody really needs outside of some ridiculous corporate environment anyhow.

figuring out what customers, management, vendors all want is another issue (and it's important)

I just want to sit down, get my job done. Let me program. Instead I end up talking to a bunch of people.

You haven't figured it out yet? That is your job. If it makes you miserable, find a different one.

I can't figure out (the) strange emotional attachments they feel towards Visual Studio (even though it costs over $10000 for the full version).

Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 with MSDN ($13,000) seems quite clearly designed for teams of developers oriented towards enterprise-grade applications and deployments, not the lone-wolf programmer.

modern computers start with 8gig of memory

Is the ASUS Transformer Book, a 10" convertible laptop computer, not "modern" because it ships with only 2 GB of RAM?

Besides, not all computers still in use are modern. I do most of my web browsing on a four-year-old Dell Inspiron mini 1012, a 10" laptop that came with only 1 GB of RAM and runs Xubuntu. Flashblock helps keeps Firefox below half a GB, after which point the bottleneck is not memory but the fact that Firefox uses only half of the CPU. Though an Atom has two-way simultaneous multithreading, Firefox is still single-threaded which brings a longer wait for complicated JavaScript and CSS to finish processing, especially on things like Cracked.com or Slashdot beta. My first-generation ASUS Nexus 7 tablet computer is stuck at 1 GB as well.

and then there's the page file/swap space.

A lot of computers without a rotating hard drive, such as my Nexus 7, can't afford to swap. Instead, they have a harsher OOM killer.

Firefox is a browser meant for browsing... and if that's what you're doing with it, that 1gig of memory is nothing. What background apps are using up the other 7gig?

I'm guessing that when no application is using part of the RAM, the chipset could power down unused RAM to prolong battery life.

You can buy such a computer direct from Microsoft. They call it Microsoft Signature.

I know how shitty the old ones were, I won't consider buying anything from Microsoft called "Surface" -- ever.

Most of the reviews for the Surface Pro have been good. See this for example. The primary drawback that I've always seen mentioned is price.

For $400 a lot of people would like this tablet, but at $800 for the cheapest, it becomes less interesting. On the supply and demand curve, they just pushed demand down by increasing the price.

$799 gets you the i3 with 64 GB and no KB. the i5 128 GB costs $999 and the KB will add another $129.99 so the difference isn't all that much when you factor in all the things the Helix has that are not offered or cost extra on the Surface Pro 3.

The problem is Outlook and Exchange. The users see the mail client, calendering, and the like, as essential. The word processor and spreadsheet are secondary to that. Once some exec starts talking to sales about getting just Outlook, they are sold on the wonders of getting the whole MSOffice suite.

If you look at Microsoft's pricing, it's fairly obvious why. If you're first getting Outlook for 135 euro then another 135 euro to get everything else is an easy sell-up, particularly since I'm guessing the sales reps will give you a volume rebate on the Office suite but never on Outlook alone. For at least a decade I've heard product after product being called "Outlook killer" but they all seem to fizzle and my impression mostly because they focus on being POP/IMAP clients. Calendaring is probably more essential to an organization, and I don't mean the simple one-off meeting.

When are people available and what meeting rooms are available. Setting up recurring meetings (like say a weekly staff meeting) that lets you easily modify single instances (because this week is easter), calendar sharing, forwarding events with proper notification to the meeting owner, overviews of who will/will not attend or haven't answered, including the agenda or attachments, corporate directories, personal directories, all that practical stuff like that if I start writing a mail to someone in-house it warns me right away they're going to send an away message instead of waiting for me to send it, get the auto-reply, realize what I just send won't work, then another email to say forget that, let's do something else when you're back on Monday.

Geeks hate meetings and scheduling, every one of them myself included. Good calendar software which makes it easy to drown people in meetings is just begging to be swamped with them so it's not exactly an itch we'd like to scratch. We're very busy trying to invent and push non-meeting solutions like email or IM and claim we're solving it better. I'm not going to fire up debate, but the fact of the matter is that getting all of the people involved in the same room at the same time to discuss/decide matters is still a very popular idea. And if you want to get rid of Office, you need to get rid of Outlook and if you want to get rid of Outlook you must handle this well. I'm sure there's lots of people who'd like to drop Exchange and the CALs, using non-MS products despite still sending around MS documents so it should be easier than taking down all of MS Office at once.

The problem is Outlook and Exchange. The users see the mail client, calendering, and the like, as essential. The word processor and spreadsheet are secondary to that. Once some exec starts talking to sales about getting just Outlook, they are sold on the wonders of getting the whole MSOffice suite.

If you look at Microsoft's pricing, it's fairly obvious why. If you're first getting Outlook for 135 euro then another 135 euro to get everything else is an easy sell-up, particularly since I'm guessing the sales reps will give you a volume rebate on the Office suite but never on Outlook alone. For at least a decade I've heard product after product being called "Outlook killer" but they all seem to fizzle and my impression mostly because they focus on being POP/IMAP clients. Calendaring is probably more essential to an organization, and I don't mean the simple one-off meeting.

When are people available and what meeting rooms are available. Setting up recurring meetings (like say a weekly staff meeting) that lets you easily modify single instances (because this week is easter), calendar sharing, forwarding events with proper notification to the meeting owner, overviews of who will/will not attend or haven't answered, including the agenda or attachments, corporate directories, personal directories, all that practical stuff like that if I start writing a mail to someone in-house it warns me right away they're going to send an away message instead of waiting for me to send it, get the auto-reply, realize what I just send won't work, then another email to say forget that, let's do something else when you're back on Monday.

Geeks hate meetings and scheduling, every one of them myself included. Good calendar software which makes it easy to drown people in meetings is just begging to be swamped with them so it's not exactly an itch we'd like to scratch. We're very busy trying to invent and push non-meeting solutions like email or IM and claim we're solving it better. I'm not going to fire up debate, but the fact of the matter is that getting all of the people involved in the same room at the same time to discuss/decide matters is still a very popular idea. And if you want to get rid of Office, you need to get rid of Outlook and if you want to get rid of Outlook you must handle this well. I'm sure there's lots of people who'd like to drop Exchange and the CALs, using non-MS products despite still sending around MS documents so it should be easier than taking down all of MS Office at once.

Apple recently made their iWork office suite free. New Macs now come with it pre-installed. That's a pretty good deal compared to the prices for MS office: http://www.microsoftstore.com/...

Is it free as in bundled with an expensive Mac, or can I get it for free without buying a Mac (download link?)

Umm according to http://surface.microsoftstore.... The lower models come with 4GB of ram and the higher models come with 8GB of ram.

Yes you can plug a standard ergo USB keyboard into a laptop, but that setup requires a desk as it is too big for my lap.

I feel your pain, been there. If you're talking about having to have a place to put the laptop, I can't help you. But if you have a place to put the laptop and it's the width of the keyboard that is causing the problem, you might want to try the new Microsoft Sculpt with the separate number pad. The main keyboard section fits nicely in my lap, between the arms of all the chairs I've tried.

(I kind of hate the billiard-ball shaped mouse, though)

disclaimer (claimer?): I'm a Linux user and a passionate foe of distorted markets, so I only recommend Microsoft products that have substantial distinctive value and are sold in a competitive market segment. I think their keyboards qualify.

What changed in 4.4, other than Android Browser dropping plug-in support?

Apparently, Google removed some deprecated APIs; I'm not sure of the details. There is someone who released a modified version of Flash yesterday that will work in the Dolphin Jetpack browser (link), so saying that you "can't" use flash on a newer device is no longer strictly true. Saying that it's completely "unsupported" (both by Google and Adobe) seems to be accurate, though.

So how should hobbyist game development continue in the era of...

"Hobbyist" development never meant "free" development. You've always had to buy the computer, keep it fairly up-to-date, buy your development environment (unless you worked in something with a free compiler/interpreter), etc. A hobbyist is more likely to work with what they have (since, yes, they're more likely to want to minimize costs). For instance, someone without a cellphone (or uninterested in mobile development) might start playing with WebGL and HTML5 for a desktop's browser (or work in a compiled language, like I do).
Android has the lowest barrier to entry to develop at the hobby level, with free, multi-platform tools, including a system emulator and non-cell devices of various descriptions and price points.
Apple provides free development tools, as long as you're not planning on releasing to the App Store. A hobbyist can develop on their own device. Of course, that requires either a Mac or the knowhow (and disregard of EULAs) to set up an OSX VM.
For Windows Phone, Microsoft offers AT&T and T-Mobile phones with no contract. Microsoft also provides a phone emulator in the development kit. Of course, you'd need a copy of Windows in the first place, and apparently Microsoft wants you to pay a subscription to even be able to transfer the app to a physical device. Then again, Adobe software has always needed a Windows or MacOS system to run on, anyhow.

So, Android seems like the cheapest solution. If I were a wannabe mobile app developer starting with nothing, I'd buy a cheap PC, a cheap Android tablet or personal video device (OK, so just the cheapest that should be able to run what I want to write), and work from there.