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Spotlight On Windows-Powered Gadgets And Gizmos
An anonymous reader writes "WindowsForDevices has published a big article showcasing seventy-three consumer devices that were on display in Microsoft's device expo at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Each device runs Windows CE, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC, Smartphone, etc.), or Windows XP Embedded. A photo and brief description are provided for each. Some cool stuff!"
Does it run linux?
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
Here ya go: http://www.linuxdevices.com
(humming the tune "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better...")
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Now the worlds most hated technology item. can be combined with world's most hated OS!
It already did!
Each device should be spec'ed with its estimate of MTBR (mean time between reboots).
what about the [far superior] devices that run linux? :-/
And what about the perpetual motion device, anti-gravity machines, and the fountain of youth too? Why aren't we hearing about them? Sounds like a conspiracy to me, and you've blown the lid off of it, Mr. 'tuxismyfriend.'
Here ya go: http://www.linuxdevices.com
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Especially the MobilePro 900c. It says it has a "nearly full size keyboard", so it must really look like half a laptop, with a really shitty screen. The point is...?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Dunno if this was one of the amazing devices shown, but recently an LCD display was installed outside of a food court at my school. All it seems to do is go through a powerpoint-like slideshow, telling us all of our lovely options in eating. For the past two days, however, all it has displayed is the Windows XP default screen saver.
Oh, I'm glad the money I'm paying for my education is going somewhere useful. Though this Windows-based LCD advertisement probably cost thousands of dollars, it's worth every penny in its ability to cause me to ignore the dining halls and make my own food.
Somehow, an advertisement running Windows seems to enhance my ability to ignore it - I'm ignoring two birds with one stone!
-agent oranje.
My wife has a Samsung SPH-i700 wireless phone from Verizon Wireless (motto: I am your father, Luke), and while it is a great tool to retrieve email remotely, it is an absolute JOKE as a wireless phone. To make a call, you must tap the start menu, then select "Phone" from the menu. My wife, a relatively small woman, finds the handset clunky and impossible to hold for more than a few minutes, so she uses speakerphone for almost every single conversation. The thing also loves to be tethered to an electrical outlet at every opportunity, battery life is dismal.
People who want to create features for wireless phones need to realize that ringtones in the workplace or in the presence of anyone over 14 make the owner of a ringing phone look asinine, camera phones are for perverts, and that anything that chews batteries generally makes my phone less useful.
Give me a phone that is lightweight, gets decent talk time off a single charge (I'd LOVE to be able to carry my phone an entire work week without charging), and that has features I'll actually use, and I'll be a customer for life.
Give me a PDA with a sorry excuse for a phone built-in, and I'll go find another vendor.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
I dunno if anyone else feels the same way, but I hate those touch-screen lcd ATM machines. They seem to go slower, the touch screen doesnt always line up with the pad, and some even play advertisements! I don't care if these things run Windows (I believe they do) or Linux, I just wish theyd go away.
an actual quote from one of the devices
"They also wanted to reduce the footprint of their OS image to further harden their OS image from viruses & hackers, just another reason they chose Windows XP Embedded for their device. "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Has anyone used the Poma Wearable PC ??
/.
Description: The Personal Optical Mobile Assistant (POMA) Wearable PC is a small wearable PC in a headset form factor for browsing the Internet. There is no boot time and gives the wearer the ability to privately view websites and access information...
I would like to see a review of this and any similar device posted on
The X-Box is not in the list, doesn't it run a version of windows too?
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
...the Poma wearable PC still looks dorky!
While everyone (here at least) would rather see *nix running on these devices, I'm none too suprised that Microsoft is pushing embeded Windows.
Their basic strategy from their inception has been to throw money at a problem untill someone finds a fix. Look at the X-Box (the lack of a Japanese market) or any number of their other projects.
Since Microsoft already has strong ties with most of the vendors, and plenty of money to throw at promoting embeded Windows, it only follows that they will continue to grow in that market.
"See you, space cowboy." -Spike
The Maron-1 consists of a drive mechanism, a camera that can rotate left, right, up, and down. With the robot you can take pictures and relay them to the phone's screen, so that the owner can check conditions at home. It includes an infrared remote control capability that can be used to operate appliances such as air conditioners, televisions and VCRs.
I think a more likely situation is that it's so small that somebody will step on it, or its the first thing to get stolen in case of a robbery!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Some products (eg the XPDA-9) must be real sincve they appear on the list more than once.
Many of these are more development/experimental devices than real products. Quite a few, eg. Cerfcube run WinCE or Linux.
What is most interesting with WinCE is to see the number of "design losses", rather than design wins. Many products went first generation on WinCE and then were redone on Linux. I have not heard of the reverse, but I expect there might be a few cases.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I note that a bunch of these items are not yet shipping, including the Phantom Gaming System that came in 3rd in this years Vaporware Awards
Now, you don't have to settle for just your ATM being infected by the next Blaster worm.
You can now enjoy the comfort of experiencing MS Blaster on your new Artista 200E Sewing System! Imagine the luxury of devising creation after creation with only 60 seconds to make it! Only Microsoft could possibly think of this... :D
Sewing System
I am about as big a Linux bigot as anyone, but give me a break. Can't you appreciate innovative devices or new ideas for their own sake? There are some cool devices there and for whatever reason windows CE got the design win.
BTW, I'm pretty much pissed at MS for the fact that I'm 3 hours into a cleaning of my employer dictated development platform right now because of MSIE vulnerabilities. But at least I can look at another engineers work and appreciate the appeal of their product without belittling it just because they didn't use my preferred OS.
thanks! now i can't view the pictures at moblog! *scurries off to another site*
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I've got a Casio Cassiopeia EM500 PDA with Windows Pocket PC. I dont know who was responsible for choosing the software setup on the ROM but who ever it was id like to think they are jobless now. It comes with a memory eating AOL setup tool - at most your going to use that once, at most! So now you have an ugly AOL icon sitting there and the software is on the ROM chip wasting space. Similarly other useless applications, and things that Casio have added that just duplicate windows apps that are already on there - eg there are two address book apps - one by casio, one by ms!
Microsofts motto when developing PocketPC was that apps stay resident in memory when you open them - so if you want to close them you have to go to the memory manager. The idea is stupid because apps load almost instantly anyway and while running in the background some of them seem to eat CPU power even when the PDA is off!! so the battery dies. Luckly other non ms software writers just put Exit buttons in their apps.
Microsoft is just not good at.. erm.. anything really.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
here
Engineering is the art of compromise.
do you /. geeks count as a linux device?
Intervideo is the company that makes WinDVD, InterVideo Home Theater, and a bunch of others. The story is at New Scientist. Basically it is an "InstantOn" PC with LinDVD (which is developed by InterVideo) that fits on a read-only memory chip. Linux handles TV, DVD, CD, MP3, radio. The twist to this product is that it also has a bootable MS Windows XP OS so you can run any of the MS Windows app that you still want/need.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
rofl...
Well, lessee.... I haven't needed a reboot in years. Productive and efficient, I take up minimal space, and I don't crash.
Well I sure ain't runnin' Windoze, brother...
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
They list the InFocus LiteShow and then have a description of something else (some projector, maybe?). And they refer to "The Infocus is...". Hello, InFocus is the manufacturer, not the product name.
LiteShow is a wireless projection system that attaches to any InFocus projector with an M1 adapter (i.e. any recent model they make). It allows you to use an 802.11b/g card in your computer to wirelessly project (i.e. no cable). You don't have to attach anything to your computer. The thing in the picture attaches to the projector, not your computer.
It works on Windows and MacOS X. Sadly, there is not a Linux client available yet. (If you want one, I suggest you call InFocus and ask for one. If they get enough requests, they'll probably start making one!)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Is that some kind of record? You used the same post twice in the same thread, and scored both a +5 Funny and +5 Insightful out of it.
What is your company making? What OS project did you make use of?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
The difference between a PocketPC Phone Edition and Smartphone is the later is phone first, pda second, the former is pda first, phone second. So do your research and buy the righ tool for the job.
Linux Resources
I just got myself a Treo 600 for Christmas and I think it balances pretty well. True it is a Palm first with a phone built into it, but it works. One of the palm applications buttons is a phone button. Once on the phone screen you can make a call either by using the direction-pad thing to scroll to a contact / favorites list or by dialing on the keyboard. True it has a built-in camera, but I'll probably end up ignoring it. The battery life's great from what I've found so far (couple of days easily). The only downside to it is the keyboard buttons are a little small untill you get used to them.
Seventy-three
- new reasons to hate Bill Gates.
- new songs to watch Steve Ballmer dance to on stage.
- new areas of significant exploit vulnerability.
The microsoft wireless residential gateway. $110?! You've got to be kidding me. Must mean you're paying for an XP home licence??!! I have to wonder how often that POS locks up.
No, not the boys....
Some of us like to find out about new Windows devices. That way we have something else to put Linux on (yeah I know, -1 Redundant / Flamebait...)
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
I wonder why he chose to be anonymous?
Quotes that stuck out for me;
Note that there is no comment on what "Professional Plus" licence costs are. These licences cover;
Note that the last part of the sentence is "viewers ... are available as extra-cost components" meaning per-item costs.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
XPDA-9 POS terminal .. $US1500 .. Free
.. Priceless!!!!!
Credit cards to skim
Holidays in the Caribean, paid for by some unsuspecting dupe
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
1998 called, they want their unstable Windows jokes back.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
For posting news about windows on slashdot. ;)
Okay now mod me up
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
Ok, which one of those pages came first? (LinuxDevices.com or WindowsForDevices.com) They both look amazingly similar.
:)
I guess I could check register.com, but that would require actual work, which I obviously am not capable of since I am posting on Slashdot while 'working'.
/.: why the hell am I here?
It looks to me like Motorola's i.MX Reference Design PDA is running Linux and the Qtopia embedded windowing system from TrollTech. The device is about halfway down the page.
Or, the (crappy) picture can be found here.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
And the brethren went away edified.
Actually, look at the "i.MX Reference Design PDA" on their list. They mention it running Win .NET, even though their screenshot is Qtopia on Motorola's Linux PDA.
Is it just me or are these predictable blue screen comments getting boring? I've been using NT4 > Windows 2000 > Windows XP > Windows 2003 for 6 or 7 years now, and I can recollect 4 or 5 blue screens, most of them on NT4 and in all cases running dodgy software. I don't know anyone who does get regular bluescreens on the NT kernel based windows.
I dual booted and installed Redhat 7.1 a few years back and got 2 kernel dumps in 2 days... sure, I probably did something wrong, but the machine was running windows fine.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
(I seriousely cant remember but...)Doesn't Windows NT stand for New Technology? If so, watching a startup screen that says "Powered by NT Technology" must really piss you off.
Great so on the embedded version instead of giving you the blue screen (a pretty much constant occurance on XP, according to Bill G. most of their users experience OS crashes 2-3 times a day). The device reboots, even when the error was possibly recoverable. Great.
That means less pictures of blue screens, but the same number of problems, in fact since rebooting at best accomplishes that same as a blue screen the goes away and at worst causes more damage, that means MORE problems.
If the system is in a state where the code that makes it reboot executes properly it's pretty much guaranteed NOT to be in a state where it should be shut down. That would cause severe problems with things like ATM transactions.
We were looking at using the X86 version of Windows CE for a kiosk application. I tried to explain why this was a bad idea to the less technically inclined with the following metaphor:
Picture a Steam Locomotive. Its big, robust, kind of ugly, but purely functional. It requires a lot of finesse to operate one, and if you are not careful, you can blow yourself up. On the other hand, it has a rugged, simple design, being mostly a network of pipes. As such, anyone with a pipe wrench and a basic understanding of plumbing can repair a steam locomotive. This is what Linux is like.
Now imagine a Diesel Locomotive. The whole thing is controlled by a simple lever. Push the lever forward, it goes forward, pull it back, the locomotive backs up. The diesel can't pull as much as the steam locomotive, and diesel fuel costs more than coal, but anyone can operate the diesel. However, the diesel engine itself and its accompanying systems are very complicated. Most people (even people knowledgeable about trains) cannot fix a diesel locomotive, because they do not have access to the special tools and knowledge needed to fix the diesel engine. That is what Windows NT is like.
Now picture a handcar. You can't see how the handcar works, but you know that when you pump it up and down, it moves down the track. So you can kind of imagine how it works and use it effectively. Anyone can use it, but most people don't have the patience for it anymore. That is DOS.
Now, to understand Windows CE running on an X86 processor, picture a pleasure yacht sitting on the railroad tracks...
We all had a good laugh, but deployed what may be the world's only X86 CE application anyways.
Unknown host pong.
At our nearby Wegmans they recently replaced all of the produce scales, which you enter the product code and it prints a sticker with the price & UPC, with a new model running some version of Windows. Twice already I have seen them completely lock up. Once when I went to print out the sticker it got jammed, but rather than display a message saying to clear the jam and try again, the application running quit, a typical windows-like error ("the address at 0x0592FC could not be 'read'" or whatever) appeared and the whole thing completely froze. Here's to progress!
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
I thought it was interesting that the Digi Fi "hard drive audio player" is clearly built on the same base as the hush PC. Who is the OEM here, and where can I buy their chassis wholesale? Hush PC is, IMHO, way too expensive (although a great concept). There has to be a Sager equivalent making their stuff. Anyone know?
Heh.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I found that it's been pulled off all the shelves here too. Your best bet is eBay unfortunately. I went EVERYWHERE and couldn't find it...
If you wanted a Phone that is also a PDA (not the other way around) you should have gone for the Samsung i600. I'm a big Linux guy and I love mine... much better then my old Palm based phone. (The only OS LESS stable then Windows) There's not as much software out there yet but everything I need is available. Plus it's just a regular phone size wise and a Verizon phone. (the Motorola MPx200 /w AT&T/T-mobile didn't cut it for me.. no signal anywhere)
Of
You do now. My primary machine (provided by work, using a mostly standard image) runs Windows XP. It has had 3 or 4 blue screens just since I got it last July.
Worse, Microsoft's claims of increased "reliability" are, I believe, based strictly on the OS performance. Now, instead of the OS going belly up, I get an average of one crash a day at the application level. Normally, I'd say fine -- it's an app that doesn't behavior properly under Windows. But it's Outlook! Maybe I don't get it, but whether it's Microsoft Windows that crashes, or Microsoft Outlook, I still lose a lot of work.
Give me my cookie, and a few other dozen for the rest of my firm. It freezes, crashes, and just plain is horrible. Not sure if its so much the OS as it is the apps on it, but before I switched everyone over to Mozilla, their computers were easily crashing once a week. Now the only thing I really see problems with is PCAnywhere. But many apps will crash XP, i.e. ZoneAlarm is known for that as well as some versions of one of the big two Anti-Virus companies. Also, there was a glitch in the first service pack that caused many servers(including mine) to make the STORE.exe in Windows 2000 server use all of the ram in the system and completely freeze the server, it happened as often as every 3 days, but sometimes you could get 14 days straight with it. I had to write a script that will restart the Information Store and flush the ram daily to keep my server uptime over two weeks. I don't mind though, its really great for convincing the higher ups into switching everything over two Linux. In Decemeber I did a two week testrun with two employees and Liux as a desktop, the results were great. I suspect that 2004 is the year of Linux for my company.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. Yea I know that the server isn't XP, but its a MS operating system and they've had similar problems with XP. I don't use XP(yes I'm a linux zealot), but have more then enough exposure and experience with it through work to know that you are full of it. A skilled user can keep it running for 88 days, but in the scheme of things most users aren't skilled.Also 88 days is nice, but I've had Linux up for years now on some computers.
I think we're entitled to anyway, after the hell microsoft put us through with their (initially) unstable products.
This thread is loaded with flames and trolls, but I have to say that my recent experience has been interesting. When I upgraded mobos, ram and cpu, all my windows crashes dissappeared completely. I still prefer linux for a variety of reasons, but generally speaking, windows has ben much more stable.
I am beginning to think that some of the trouble is not just windows, but also tied to poor hardware. All said, I am glad that my machine is more stable.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Wouldn't be a Compaq (Comcrap) would it? They're the new Packard Bell you know. Crappy shitty bug ridden machines, the company I work for blows through them like toilet paper on a diahrea day.
Seriously though I build machines on a fairly regular basis, I have 4 in use almost constantly in my home and I run support for all the machines I build.
The last time that I, myself, had a BSOD was 4 months ago when I tested a piece of software a customer wanted on their PC (bad shareware - real bad). If my wife or son saw a BSOD they'd freeze in place until someone fixed it. So I'm going on 1 BSOD in the last six months for 10 machines (mine, my 2 work machines, and 4 others I support). So that's well around 99.9999% uptime.
Please take me seriously. The electriconic engineers which design these products are no idiots. They choose the right tool for the job, and I'm certain that almost all of them are well acquainted with Linux.
However, it seems that embedded Windows CE is winning the embedded devices race - by quite a good margin. Now, there is no big reason for embedded devices to share a common operating system (as 95% of the PCs in the world now do), but Windows still comes out on top.
Let this be a lesson. There is a reason why Windows is winning this race, and it has absolutely nothing to do with market-dominance. Windows CE must be a hell of a lot easier and practical to intergrate into embedded devices.
This is especially apparent in the fact that embedded linux costs nothing. If linux and CE were equally good, linux would be the natural choice. But CE must have some sort of edge.
Don't get me wrong, an embedded OS will always offer advantages over "traditional" electronics, but right now it seems that CE offers more advantages. (Linux has its advantages too, specifically, networking, as shown in the proliferation of Linux in consumer routers)
i hope this can be a lesson to all of the Linux zealots. I really want Linux to succeed, but the attitude of the linux community simply prevents that - it is true that even IF linux were superior to Windows in all respects, we still might not see it on the desktop for a long time. However, the same does NOT hold true for embedded devices. Right now, microsoft has a better produce, and the only people the Linux developers can blame for this are themselves.
That being said, I will say that I've used Linux pretty extensively, run Windows XP on my PC, but the only true OS in my heart right now is OS X.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
1997 called, they want their "[year] called, they want their [joke] back" joke back
Put identity in the browser.
I was in a building once where the lifts had an LCD display above the door saying what level you were on.
:)
Found out that these displays were running windows.
How I found out - got into a lift and saw 'this program has executed an invalid instruction'.
The Blue Screen of Death does not inspire confidence when stepping into a metal cage hundreds of feet above the ground!
You forgot to mention ugly, unstable, bloated, poorly designed, and the fact that noone cares about you... lying by omission?
Apparently the selling point of every new portable gaming system is its ability to play some version of Tomb Raider. Otherwise looks like they've already built most of the toys I'd build myself if I had time to do so....
2001 called, they want their "1997 called, they want their '[year] called, they want their [joke] back' joke back" joke back
"Device type: POS terminal" Peice Of Shit terminal
What's up with the Bally's casino machine, it claims to have a Pentium IV 4 GHz... typo probably (2.4 GHz?)
Phhbt. Get real, mine's been playing(not just downloading) video for years.
Oh, and nominee for "worst named product" of the bunch: "Beetle iPOS." Visions of a mid 60's beetle in a junkyard...
Please help metamoderate.
2003 called... Oh, fuck it!
Put identity in the browser.
I doubt it, but it can probably play Ogg. Performance in a cluster has not been reported.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Product design and market research services, courtesy of Microsoft
If I sound like Darl McBride dropped his private stash in my peanut butter, please let me know, but I suggest that all the anti-Microsoft and/or open source/free software advocating Slashdotters should welcome news of new Microsoft and Microsoft-pimped products on Slashdot. You want to know what the competition's doing, don't you?
Microsoft may be a lot of things, but dumb and impotent they're not. If you see someone doing something smart, stand on the shoulders of giants (even evil, grind-your-bones-for-bread giants) and build on it to do something smarter. And when they do fumble, take time to figure what's dumb and why, and whether it creates a vulnerability in Microsoft's business plan that you can exploit.
Native Americans didn't refuse to run down their oppressors with horses and shoot them with guns just because their oppressors thought of these tactics first.
Every Slashdot article on MS stuff could be the seed for useful analysis of what ideas are good enough to be stolen as much as the law will allow. Shouldn't the bazaar be able to find ways to do what Microsoft does better before Microsoft even has time to patch their first bugs? How's that for embrace and extend?
Take this embedded device article. Why don't we figure out what's worth copying, work with companies that already have the manufacturing infrastructure, undercut Microsoft on embedded OS license price ($0.00) and outperform them on speed and stability. (I'm not smart enough to come up with the legendary Step 2: ???, but collectively we ought to be).
Maybe people who post serious analyses (and no, I'm not saying my post qualifies. I'm talking about something of business presentation quality) of, or heck, a link to a new SourceForge project for, a new open source product should modded-up +1, Open Source Opportunity.
I want to be able to compute my way, in every arena. I like a (good) Micro$uck joke as much as the next guy, but let's not laugh so hard that we end up with Microsoft Home, Microsoft Car, Microsoft Secure Digital AM/FM/CD/MP3/Karoake, and Microsoft 911 by the time we unclench our bellies and look around.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of open source product analysts.
I gave in to impulse and bought one ($199 plus $59 per year MSNDirect service).
It's actually pretty cool (and I'm no Mircosoft fan). If I could have found one that didn't rely on MSN for the content it would have been better, but it works pretty well. I only wonder if it will turn out to be the bomber that was Fossil's Wrist Palm.
In any case, does anyone know what the watch actually runs? I can't find anything in the documentation.
Most people's computers are so loaded down with spyware, crapware, and general garbage that I'm surprised they can run 2-3 minutes. The NT kernel is actually pretty stable, especially compared to DOS/Win9x. Although I prefer *nix on servers, most of my desktops run Win2K or XP, and BSODs are rare. Every time it's happened, I've been able to trace it to a bad driver or something else that's not part of the OS.
The default of rebooting after a BSOD is dumb on a desktop IMHO, but it can be turned off (System Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery; uncheck "Automatically reboot").
It's an operating system, not a religion.
Of course they're getting boring. No knowledgeable Windows user actually gets BSOD's on a regular basis anymore. What you need to understand is that trolls such as those posting these comments are not worth wasting your time on. Just add them to your list of foes and move on.
It's a fact that 99% (possibly more) of BSOD's in modern day Windows operating systems are caused by bad hardware or bad drivers. Third party drivers. Now, the zealots would no doubt argue that a faulty driver shouldn't be able to bring the whole operating system down. Well, this is not a characteristic unique to Windows. Linux cries like a stuck pig over bad drivers, too. At least for Windows, I can find drivers for _all_ my hardware. For that, I'm willing to stand having to dodge a few BSOD's, just like most Linux users have nothing against spending hours tweaking text-based config files getting their systems running properly.
I've never received an unfair metamod for modding down an anti-MS troll, btw, so most Slashdotters (the ones dedicated enough to metamod, anyway) probably agree that BSOD jokes no longer have a place here.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Really.
For all the bitching I hear about WinCE/Palm being awful environments to develop, I don't see much work for the Embedded Linux side. I can assure you your work would be appreciated. And we'd pay for good, solid apps.
MS is eventually going to have to do something, because it's not getting any better. The line between virus and legitimate program is getting blurred. Maybe this trend will push people to Linux. If companies tried to make spyware for KDE/GNOME, the open-source community would come out with a spyware remover program within three days, and it would be installed in the next release of every major distro.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Slashdot is the only place I know of where the BSOD is still a prevalent meme. It's one of those things everybody talks about happening constantly without ever really seeing. Sure, now and then someone gets one due to a driver, but let's get real.
It's the same with Clippy jokes, even though I haven't seen Clippy in close to six years in ANY Office installation, and he never installs by default anyway. Never mind that telling him to "Hide" always got rid of him anyway.
Last year at the calgary international, they 'modernized' all their arrival and departure screens with portait oriented flat screens running Windows XP to cycle through the flights. For the first few weeks, it was next to impossible to find a feild of view that did not include a sideways XP boot screen as it kept booting, crashing, and trying again. Was a CCTV system really too outdated to justify setting up so many terminals? (not all departures or arrivals would be down at once, so yes, there were a lot of individual systems)
Possibly BSOD jokes are no longer relevant, but seeing the pathetic state of justice in america, my contribution is total boycott of microsoft products.
Perhaps the new OS is ok, but 98SE and ME with all updates are still BSOD jokes worthy. And look at statistics about running windows systems. Perhaps for you, it is ok, but I'm sure more than 50% peoples use still system where BSOD is a reality.
Is it possible to buy one of these devices and put Linux on it? Any of them? Would a new distribution need to be made for each, or is there one distribution for a particular CPU family that would work on many devices using that CPU?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Fair point. Though it can be argued that people still running those ancient Windows versions deserve what they're getting by not upgrading (that's what Linux users whining about poor features and instability in Linux versions released around the same time as Win98 would be told, anyway), many are no doubt "forced" to run Win9x/Me at their workplaces and/or at home because of policy or because their hardware is too obsolete to run anything else.
I also know of lots of folks that run Win9x with "no instability problems whatsoever" according to themselves. Whether they are in the majority, however, I can't say (and frankly, I doubt it).
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
for(int r=-1,c=0;r!=38;c++){if(c>r){r++;printf("\n"); for(c=38;c!=r;c--)printf(" ");c=0;}printf(~r&c?" `":" #");}
Nice sig! But isn't there an easier way to create a Sierpinski Gasket ?
Arf!
I've never received an unfair metamod for modding down an anti-MS troll
How does one find out if the comments he moderated were later rated fair or unfair in meta-mod?
In Preferences, Messages tab, set Metamoderation results to "Web" or "E-mail".
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
It's a fact that 99% (possibly more) of BSOD's in modern day Windows operating systems are caused by bad hardware or bad drivers. Third party drivers.
I agree.
At least for Windows, I can find drivers for _all_ my hardware.
At least in Linux, I can FIX the bad drivers.
Particularly so when the cheap shiny toilet paper was provided also..thermal fax bog roll??
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Sir, I must object to these claims.
No knowledgeable Windows user actually gets BSOD's on a regular basis anymore.
That is so funny! I was walking down to the railwaystation in Oslo sometime this fall, and what did I see on the newspaper Aftenposten newsscreen? You guessed it! A BSOD on the huge 40 m2 screen. So, not only do the BSODs appear, they appear in places where persons take extra care to not have them there. Like this newsscreen.
It's a fact that 99% (possibly more) of BSOD's in modern day Windows operating systems are caused by bad hardware or bad drivers.
To this I agree.
At least for Windows, I can find drivers for _all_ my hardware.
To this I do not agree. I tried to install the Microsoft Bluetooth Cordless (duh!) Mouse on an XP computer. It did not work, since it needed XP SP1. 1/2 hour later after installing SP1 + a couple of reboots, the driver CD (why would you require a diver for a mouse?) went in and promptly told us that since the PC wasn't using one of the languages on the driver disc, your were shit out of luck(tm).
This bluetooth mouse is now employed at my moms iBook, where it needed no (None, zip, nada, nichts) drivers to function from the get-go.
And oh, the mouse worked on my Debian setup too. Infact, the only place the Microsoft mouse hasn't worked is on a Windows system.
so how does one fix binary only video drivers from ATI or nVidia?
I feel like I am back in high school when people get upset and they resort to calling each other "fag" or "homo".
Boring but true. I've had to reboot my iPaq more times per day, in the week I've owned it, than I've had to reboot my Psion 5MX in the entire 5 years I've owned *that*. And the builtin iPaq apps suck by comparison, too. The handwriting recognition is pretty neat, though. Far superior to the Palm I also rejected in favour of the Psion.
Most modern Windows Mobile devices provide some (Up to 10MB) of the 32 MB of Flash RAM for user data, since the current OS Footprint is aproximately 22MB. Of course, ALL Windows Mobile devices either have an SD or CF Slot, and it's trivial to store data or app's on an SD or CF Card.
Yeah, I posted that story too. I reckoned that mine had been rejected because I made it too long. In fairness, while Intervideo never released LinDVD, it is incorporated into this new product so it's not complete vaporware.
Maybe this idea could be developed
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Nothing to see here...move along.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
If I could get my hands on the AvantGo client source code, I'd get a port for the Zaurus environment up as fast as possible, but alas, I'm not in product engineering. If enough people out there complain about it, Waterloo might add it though.
I counted 44 devices that were available "today", and most of those were embedded, such as the exercise bike.
I would expect that at least half of the devices that aren't yet available will never be available.
And is listing a reference design (see the Atlas ACE reference design, or the MicroPDA, or the i.MX Reference Design PDA) really valid?
To use a bluetooth mouse you must have a bluetooth stack that supports the HID profile.
Microsofts bluetooth stack was completed after Windows XP shipped, It was supposed to have been included in XP SP1 but was delayed due to a lack of hardware support. It will probably be included in XP SP2.
The only way to get hold of the stack at the moment is with a MS Bluetooth keyboard/mouse or direct from MS if you are a Bluetooth hardware device manufacturer.
Mac OSX 10.2 includes support for HID devices but it was shipped after Windows XP so they had time to let the standards finalise.
I don't think you can complain about needing a driver disc for a major new Wireless subsystem.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
Hey don't argue with me, argue with Microsoft, Bill stated those numbers in a public announcement. Those are just the numbers according to the report deal so that is only counting those who actually send the reports and crashes in which you still can send the reports.
That's 2-3 times for the OPERATING SYSTEM. That doesn't include application crashes.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93645&cid=8043 264
Talk to the hand.
I'd have trouble naming a home user other than a technician who DOESN'T have xp crash at LEAST once every 2 days.
Now, begone AC Troll.
Knowledgable Windows user get no BSODs?
What about all the poor saps who are still stuck with the 9X series? They qualify as Windows users, no? (okay, they're not modern day Windows machines, but they make up at least 50% of the Windows installs out there...) I know whenever I deal with those bloody machines, a BSOD is inevitable.
My parent's XP machine crashes on a regular basis, having no problems with 2000 or BSD. The machine I'm using right now works relatively well with 98 (still crashes occasionally), but is plain unusable with XP. (Bloody problems with everything, especially video & sound. Drivers for 2000, 98 work, but XP? Nooo.....).
Don't forget that they also changed it so the computer reboots automatically instead of showing them BSODs, so that MS can now claim they "fixed" it. (though I suppose you're stuck rebooting anyways... but it hides the problem. I know I didn't know at first why XP was restarting randomly. I can imagine that most people see the apparent lack of the Blue Screen and think that Windows doesn't have that problem anymore.)
I don't need it in my peripherals, too!
--
You've never seen a crash in kernel32.dll? An OS crash doesn't mean the entire system went down to the point where nothing responds or functions genius.
That is called a lockup (even that doesn't mean that no portion of the system is responding, merely that user input isn't responding and possibly the display isn't refreshing.).
A kernel32.dll crash would qualify in MY OWN definition of an OS crash. But by MICROSOFT's definition of OS, so does an explorer crash, iexplorer (same thing), messenger, media player, notepad and anything else they include.
Hmm, funny. About once a month when I'm looking at a directory with thumbnails turned on, I get a BSOD (and I only use that feature a few times a week, so I'd say it happens about 10% of the time).
I've also had a couple games crash and the system quickly destabalize afterward. I should mention that I have had games crash and they system stay stable, too.
And I hope that by "knowledgeable" you mean "know better than to install tons of 3rd party shareware and chat programs". Because if it means I need to know how to tweak my registry, etc., than that's too much to expect. MS Windows is marketed and distributed as if it's useable by the masses. If it's only useable by and stable for experts, then it's OK to bitch.
How amusingly quaint.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
for(int r=-1,c=0;r<39;c++)printf(c<0?" ":c>r?c=r++-38,"\n":~r&c?" `":" #");
If you can get it any smaller, that would be cool. I've run out of ideas for making it smaller, but that doesn't mean it's as small as it can get.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I am beginning to think that some of the trouble is not just windows, but also tied to poor hardware. All said, I am glad that my machine is more stable.
As a former program manager responsible for all software on the laptops of a large Texas computer manufacturer, I can tell you that Microsoft has its share of bugs, but by far the majority of the serious ones are indeed due to incredibly poor driver code - not Microsoft's responsibility at all. Even really big companies fall prey to this: for the past week, I've been trying to get Xerox to get me a driver for my multifunction printer that will actually load and run under XP - their own documentation makes it clear their driver only works sometimes, and they have no workaround, this for a driver released broken neraly two years ago. So much for service and support...
Driver certification probably is a racket for MS, but the testing process does at least ensure that someone who has a clue about writing drivers has checked to see that things are done correctly. Surprisingly, that is almost never the case if the drivers are "developed" by the hardware device vendor. (In reality, they are more likely just hacked together until they sorta work, at which point they cut their losses by deciding not to add any more destabilizing changes, so they just ship the crap and hope for the best.)
I've learned my lesson - for any hardware for a box running XP, I'm going to insist on signed and certified drivers from now on, to avoid having another several hundred dollar paperweight like the Xerox...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I don't think you can complain about needing a driver disc for a major new Wireless subsystem.
Yes, I can. There were 2 CDs with the mouse. One was XP SP1 "upgrade", one was drivers in several languages not including the one installed on the PC (Norwegian). After "upgrading" to SP1, the Bluetooth system was more or less operational in the machine. After all, it did say "Windows XP SP1 " as a minimum on the pack. It would connect to my BT phone, but as soon as the mouse came in range it wanted drivers. That we tried to install, but we had the incorrect language for the drivers. The BT mouse from Microsoft, on sale in Norway, did not work with the Norwegian XP SP1.(1)
Whereas the BT dongle and mouse worked 100% from the get-go in MacOSX.
Go figure.
(I didn't bother to. I said buh-bye to Windows and don't miss it. Ever.)
(1) Yes, we searched Microsoft sites high and low for a Norwegian driver but could not find one. There's probably some place you can turn off that moronic "don't use drivers from languages less than 100% identical with the system language" but as I used 2000 up to that point, I didn't know where it was.