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How HP Could Turn a Novelty Into a Revolution
RobotsDinner writes "HP's TouchSmart desktop is cool, but a blogger suggests it could be the beginning of a revolution if HP were to finally make the move of ditching Windows and building a Linux distro around the TouchSmart UI. 'Hello, HP. The UI of your latest TouchSmart computer says something about you. You may not have recognized your own weaving-in of meaning, but it comes across quite clearly if one reads just right: You want out. You want to escape the world of Windows to which Microsoft has sequestered you for the better part of two decades. Ah, but you can. No longer does Bill Gates stand guard outside your cell ... It's time to ditch Windows and build a Linux distro around the TouchSmart UI ... Your captivity of innovation under Microsoft is over. You're free. Free to invent, as you might put it.'"
A pure Linux fanboy wrote that blog post that made its way to Slashdot's homepage. He just wants HP to put Linux on the hot new product, when really this is a Windows Tablet with a few new cool apps writen for it.
Not sure how this qualifies as Slashdot frontpage worthy. Sure its a neat UI that hides much of the visable portions of windows, but its still windows, with all the good (app. compatibility) and bad (M$) that it brings with it. "Just" switch it to Linux is a hell of a lot harder than this rambling blogger makes it sound.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
It's hard enough to kick a nasty crack habit, especially when you have to worry about your dealer coming after you for a beat down.
HP (or any OEM) may not be able to piss off Microsoft, since a significant number of HP's customers demand MS. MS is known to get threatening with the licensing for companies the stray too far from the Microsoft ideal of exclusivity in the consumer market.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Not completely sure about this, but i think the biggest problem with the windows is actually the own windows users.
They re not exactly OS experts, but they kinda command microsoft with their money, and so far they didnt quite guided it well.
I imagine what will happen when this userbase starts to commmand linux too.
Is it my imagination, or has everyone gone crazy with flash, and now ever web page has to have some element of it that causes your speakers to make embarassing sounds at work? Why can't websites like HP's, which you figure people will look at AT WORK, friggin' WARN people that it's going to start playing music, or give your opportunity to MUTE *before* the msuic starts playing?
If this keeps up, I'm either going to stop surfing the web entirely, or, pull my speakers out. Unfortunately, these days some machines come with internal speakers (like the iMac), so if you disconnect the external speakers you activate the internal. Guess the volume controls are there onthe computer for a reason but still, when I'm on the web I'm there to read.
If I want to watch "TV", I'll turn on the goddamned TV, thank you.
Even Slashdot's front page has started having ads appear that make noise. Can't you just wait until something that's loaded with ads, like say 'Weather.com' starts having multiple ads playing sound simultaneously? Yeah, that'll be pleasant.
Never mind Web 2.0 -- I'm starting to look fondly on Web 0.2 -- text on a grey background.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You may not have recognized your own weaving-in of meaning, but it comes across quite clearly if one reads just right: You want out. You want to escape the world of Windows to which Microsoft has sequestered you for the better part of two decades. Ah, but you can. No longer does Bill Gates stand guard outside your cell...
What in the world makes you think that HP so desperately wants to break from MS? This is an enormous assumption. This is the assumption that just about every "year of Linux" article on Slashdot depends on and the blaring truth is that most people don't want to see MS fail. Most people don't see Gates as the evil borg. Most people don't give a damn about the bullshit OS wars. There are an extremely small number of people who have this anti-Microsoft hard on and even fewer who would be willing to buy a product just because Linux is stamped on it. HP knows this. There's a good reason they're making billions as we sit, blog and bicker about technology.
And I have a hard time taking someone seriously who acts like Bill Gates is the reason that companies offered up Windows or stayed loyal to MS. What kind of oddball reasoning could make someone make that jump in logic?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Yeah, thought that the moment I saw it. I think nearly everyone has figured out that holding your arms up to touch the screen for more than a couple of minutes is a no go.
It's going to be a multi-touch screen that replaces your traditional keyboard that makes multi-touch on a PC work.
We're already working with the cognitive disassociation of mouse/tablet operation, so on a laptop, just replace the whole keyboard and trackpad with a touchscreen that changes depending on requirements. Standard display would look just like a keyboard and trackpad, with dead areas where your wrists would normally rest, and would give you standard functionality.
Touch a button located between the trackpad and the keyboard, and all of a sudden the whole area is one big multi-touch track pad.
Problems with this are cost, if the whole are has to be glass, also weight, heat possibly from the lightsource beneath the display, and additional bulk.
And of course this will be doomed to fail, like so many other Apple products, because the slashdot crowd are genetically opposed to any keyboard functionality that doesn't have the same feel and *click* of an IBM Model 101 keyboard. :-p
The previous comments are only true, if no-one says they're wrong.
Now that I've established my street cred for you young whippersnappers, let me tell you how it is:
I'm sure you've noticed how there's nothing new coming out of Hollywood? Just the same old stories, over and over again. They've even resorted to crappy old TV shows, trying to find a new angle. There are only so many ideas out there to build on, and in about 100 years, they've gone through them all at least once.
Same thing with video games: I used to repair arcade games, so I saw every game imaginable for 15 years. They too started repeating after a while, didn't they?
The same goes for Operating Systems. There's only so many ways you can engineer a user interface, because Humans are as finite as everything else in this godforsaken Universe we live in -- and what's worse, we're just slightly smarter animals than the rest of the meat on this planet. That's one of the main reasons that Windows has been so succesful (aside from marketing skills): It caters to some of the lowest common denominators of humanity, and it does it well.
I will assign MacOS as being the second place OS, and all flavors of *NIX as third place. But there is a common thread between all of them, now isn't there? It's just like Hollywood, or video games, or novels for that matter: There are only so many ways you can do a specific thing, and after a while the themes just repeat. At their most basic, all GUIs are basically the same, aren't they? There are specific details that are different, and I'm not taking technical issues like stability into account (because the average end-user doesn't give a damn about that until something goes wrong). In the final analysis, you have icons, you have a desktop, and you have a pointing device and you click on things with it. The rest is all window-dressing (excuse the poor, unintentional pun).
So: Don't be bringin' your "revolutionary OS" talk around here, laddy-buck. Now be a good boy, and get off my lawn, K?
If only it were possible to replace the dull windows like desktop:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_shell_replacement
And just imagine if GTK and QT worked on Windows! Or if somebody wrote and maintained a POSIX compatibility layer.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
1. What the hell does linux have to do with this? For eff sake, we need editors who filter out garbage like this. Jumping to "make it run linux" every time new hardware emerges is getting reeeeally old. No offense, but I don't think linux has "the right stuff" for a system like this.
2. Everybody knows arms get tired after pushing against a touchscreen held in the typical stand-up monitor position for more than a couple minutes. Touchscreen is awesome (assuming extremely light touch sensitivity, not pound-against-the-screen-and-hope-it-registers), but it only works well and feels natural if you're looking down on it and/or holding it in your hand. Think of it like a clipboard - you'd never stand a clipboard on its "legs" and write on it - you hold it or lay it flat on the desk.
agreed. I currently am in charge of about 60 printers. Mostly HP. Ranging from LaserJet 1xxx up to 4350. We still have several 2100's running strong at almost 200,000 pages.
But about the worst printer ever was a few HP multifunctions. I also hate HP computers, drivers, software, and their website. If it were not for quality printers I wouldn't ever buy an HP anything. I also feel their quality has gone down, but for the price I can't find a better product.
I just now realized that my second para pretty much makes me sure I don't want HP trying to take the lead for linux adoption.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
I'm not trolling at all when I say this anonymous blogger has absolutely no idea what's involved with software development. Anyone familiar with the underlying technologies (.NET, WPF, and the Tablet API) knows that the TouchSmart UI code makes up 1% of the GIGANTIC software stack required to make it possible. Running away from windows? I'd say they're doing exactly the opposite.
This brings me to my second point: this person also has no sense of history--Windows OEMs have been doing shell replacement since DOS. Remember Geoworks? I'll bet the Compaq half of HP remembers Tabworks. They used it as their Windows shell from 3.1 all the way through their first year of Windows 95 (I supported in 1995 as a Compaq employee). TouchSmart is way more capable than any previous shell replacement, but what this blogger doesn't understand is that he has endless Windows APIs to thank for that.
This fanboy wants HP to attempt to write *more* software?
He obviously hasn't ever used an HP interface for scanners, printers, fax machines, or just any other 250 MB download just to send something to a printer.
Besides, most of the magic on this device is Vista running in Tablet mode, with a few little skins that HP threw together in their typical half-ass fashion. If I got one of these devices, I'd likely format it and just let Vista Ultimate do its thing, running in Media Center mode with a few nifty add-in gadgets.
-David
I am certainly not a Windows fan, but the failure of Linux as a desktop OS is pretty much evident. After 15 years, the adoption as far as desktop OS goes is in the neighbor of 2%. So no, I don't see Linux in a desktop happening anymore, although I had hoped back then.
Your sarcasm just demonstrates your ignorance: none of the hacks you mention even come close, either in functionality or design, to the modularity of Linux.
(Mentioning the "POSIX compatibility layer" in Windows is particularly ironic, given that it works like shit.)
Imagine if someone invented a device where you could interact with the screen without having to touch it and get messy fingerprints and smudges all over.. oh yeah, it's called a mouse, and it's far superior to this mess.
Yeah, that was true with the kind of bulky, heavy tech they had then, mounted with the screen straight up and down. I hear no such complaints from users of Wacoms, including the Cintiqs that are also screens. The key issues are that the pen needs to be very light and the screen should be mounted at the angle a drafting table would be, about thirty degrees from horizontal.
Also, frankly, most a y'all were never taught how to hold a pen properly. Those of us who took drafting classes back in the pen and ink days were taught to hold a pen in the ways that make it practical to work hour after hour, decade after decade, just as draftsmen, illustrators, and engineers had for generations.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.