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Microsoft May Be Seeking Protection From Linux With Dell Loan
alphadogg writes "Microsoft's $2 billion loan to Dell is a sign that the software maker wants to influence hardware designs in a post-PC world while protecting itself from the growing influence of Linux-based operating systems in mobile devices and servers, according to analysts. As the world's third-largest PC maker, Dell is important to the success of Microsoft's server and PC software. Even though Microsoft's loan does not represent a big part of the total value of the transaction, the software maker does not throw around money lightly and its participation in the deal might be an attempt by the software maker to influence hardware designs in the post-PC world of touch laptops, tablets and smartphones, analysts said. It may also be an attempt to secure the partnership and to stop the PC maker from looking toward alternative operating systems like Linux, analysts said. Dell offers Linux servers and in late November introduced a thin and light XPS 13 laptop with a Linux-based Ubuntu OS, also code-named Project Sputnik. Major PC makers in recent months have also introduced laptops with Chrome OS."
HP has released a statement in response to the deal which talks about how Dell "faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers." Perhaps they're right; HP is certainly familiar with such a situation. However, it's likely Dell is simply hoping to avoid the same struggles HP has faced over the past several years.
Everybody knows that Linux wins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njos57IJf-0
"I'm on Linux, bitch. I thought you Gnu."
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
A lot of people I know see low-end dell laptops as a good choice to buy, and with all the talk of 'It's up to the OEMs to decide if to allow the bootloader to be unlocked' you can see where this might be going. The Dells already use custom bios setups so it wouldn't be a great push to see them becoming Microsoft-only machines.
Just because a short term linux bootloader signing exists right now I wouldn't suggest people count on it in the future once such machines have a foothold.
Now that Gnome and KDE have imploded everyone just needs to learn Haskell and xmonad and it'll be the year of Linux on the desktop for sure! Grandma will be so excited to learn about monad transformers before she can browse her Facebook!
I love this generic "serious source" mention. Et tu, Slashdot!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Like Dell (or even Microsoft) would throw away more than half of their server customers who use Linux.
Microsoft may be investing a small amount to "test the waters." From a business perspective, this could be a good deal for Microsoft than Dell. But then again I also see some uptick for Dell in entering the consumer space where they have failed.
1. Microsoft will have another OEM to deliver more of their designs in the future ala Nexus branding. They will get access to design, manufacturing, and logistics without having to swallow a much bigger company.
2. Microsoft will have more control over products much like Apple without alienating too much other partners like HP.
3. Dell can take advantage of Microsoft (such as with Microsoft rolling out stores and being able to showcase more of their consumer wares.) Dell may enter the market for tablets, mobile phones, and other gadgets which they have failed in the past.
4. Dell may get more technology from Microsoft Research that could benefit them in future breakthrough products (and fighting Google along the way.)
Thinking long term, this might actually be beneficial for both companies. The consumers are very fickle. Who knows who might be the next "big thing." Then again, a product maker is no longer a money maker these days for high tech goods as everyone is focusing on services (with longer revenue streams - think Google.)
HP is a total wreck of a company. Blowing billions on WTF acquisitions and going through CEOs like shit through a goose, not to mention a completely ineffective board of directors.
They used to be great. Their products were a dream of quality. I still have a personal collection of their to-die-for calculators. When the shuttle was first launched the astronauts were issued HP-41s in case they had computer problems or to aid in running experiments.
http://hpinspace.wordpress.com/category/hp-41/
Now they are nothing. They get most of their income from ink cartridges.
It started with Carly who gutted their R&D.
It is not going to stop in the foreseeable future.
RIP HP
Should Windows on the consumer or mobile side go integrated the way Apple is ? MS has the means to buy Nokia and either Dell or HP. Should they do so before Winphone and RT fail completely, investing with the sort of long-term commitment that made the xbox successful in the end ? All of MS's OEMs are looking for a way to get a bigger share of the profits, and to meet customer expectations. Free (as in beer) Android and Chrome OS seem to be good ways to achieve that, instead of handing out the bigger part of each sales' profit to MS as Windows licensing costs.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Microsoft's battle is not with Linux.
Rather, Microsoft's future battle is with the smartphones and the tablets and all other new wearable formfactors of computing.
Microsoft's OS is simply too large, too encumbering and too useless for devices that people will use in the future.
Their investment in Dell is that they hope Dell can come up with something that can sell
Microsoft tried their luck with Nokia, and Nokia is going nowhere fast
Microsoft tried to forge it by themselves by their "surface" thingy, but it tanked too
So now, it's Dell.
Ballmer is waging a shotgun approach of computing war --- trying anything and everything --- because the guy has no idea what to do now.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Why would they need protection from Linux when they're "Looking At Office For Linux In 2014"?
Hey man, I don't go looking for this this shit. It just keeps popping up in my feeds and I go with it because it's fun.
I want this account deleted.
End of the PC?
If I have to start programming on a smart phone, tablet, or laptop, I'm gonna quit programming and start a slushie business.
Cause hell will have frozen over. And the ice will be free as in not beer.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
It's Apple. Linux is just a side show as Apple is eating MS's lunch.
Basically, Dell has brand cache and [used to build] rock solid hardware. If MS can snatch Dell up without paying much (either a buyout, takeover or... loan), then they can compete against Apple and can create the pro-business desire of the elusive closed ecosystem. Nokia is a sinking ship for MS (just keeps everyone at bay). As for servers, pay up on service contracts (MS's ecosystem) or hire expensive sysadmins (Linux)--all ends up costing the same for the commercial user due to the integration problem.
A this point of Linux server adoption, MS likely thinks Linux can go for the guys not willing to pay up or want their own support.... In hopes that it accelerates the environment of Linux apps that are unlicensable (e.g. Mpeg4), slow (the latest DEs), incompatible (mobile, video, flash), or closed (e.g. Android in some respects).
Make Dell hostile to Linux. Good luck with that. Let us know how that goes for you.
You can't be in the server business and not support Linux. You can't be in mobile and not support Linux, unless you're Apple. Pee Cee's? I'm not sure they matter to the fate of Linux any longer.
But feel free to squander that bit of your Linux customer base, if you wish.
This is just some tech writer generating page views.
Microsoft's OS is simply too large, too encumbering and too useless for devices that people will use in the future.
Meh. Once upon a time I would have agreed with you, but now I actually run Windows 7 on a PC that is less powerful than my phone, and it doesn't seem too bad, so I think the idea of resource constraints stopping you from running a desktop OS on a mobile device is something that will soon be consigned to history.
Windows 7 on a PC that is less powerful than my phone
Explain this... I don't believe it.
Unless you have an atom netbook ARM is just not there yet. Sure the processor might be close but everything else is still has much lower specs.
No one wants a windows computer you can only install software from the microsoft store. Dell would be stupid to not seriously consider Linux offerings especially since they no longer have to pander to shareholders and things like Steam on Linux is gaining momentum.
balmer is a good example of why you don't let a marketing guy run a technology company.
Dell's problem is not Linux. Their problem is that they no longer desire to sell computers to anyone. I tried three times last year to buy a laptop and their absolutely useless sales people completely ignored the features I requested. It was comical. I'd been a Dell customer for many years but last year I switched to Asus.
and my win 7 pc is far far more powerful then any phone LOL
try hooking up that giant monitor to your damn phone you loon
Step 1: Sign up for the Azure free trial
Step 2: Create a Linux VM in Azure... from their VM image archive.
Step 3: Experience your mind being blown as you realize Microsoft, in fact, actively supports Linux.
Actually it is not wrong to let a marketing guy to run a tech company, that is, if that marketing guy has REAL BRAIN
What had transpired in Microsoft is this, Bill Gates chose Steve Ballmer not because Mr. Ballmer has brain.
Bill Gates chose Ballmer because Ballmer is one helluva "YES MAN".
Anything and everything Bill Gates wanted to get done, Ballmer delivered.
That's not the way to lead a tech company.
A tech company needs a leader with a vision --- someone like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs --- someone with a vision that can see into the future.
Not Ballmer.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Now try it with Windows 8. When the OS and bundled software on your tablet is so big that it wouldn't even fit on the largest iPhone 4, and would fill nearly 3/4ths of the capacity of the largest iPhone 5, you have a very serious problem.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Microsoft's gambit with Nokia was a 3 to 5 year game, it hasn't played out yet. Once Nokia has imploded, MS will swoop in and snatch up at least a good chunk of the patent portfolio. Maybe the manufacturing part too, depending on how badly they still want to implement a facsimile of Apple's end-to-end pipeline model.
They've now wormed their way into Dell, albeit with completely a different tactic. I'm not sure how much influence they bought for $2B (out of a $24B valuation), but it's certainly more than none. I wouldn't be surprised if Dell's Linux offerings disappear within 2 years.
MS never really intended to make Surface a hot item, the whole strategy of them making their own branded devices is puzzling, especially since it's never worked before (Zune, Kin). All three seem more like process tests rather than full bore, confident product releases.
I still think tablets are a fad that doesn't have enough momentum to last until the next version of Windows.
Redmond may be running scared, but they don't seem to be sure what to be scared of. Linux is a threat, yes.. one that they will have enabled with the combination of Surface (angering the OEMs) and the stubborn imposition of Win8 and its stupid Metro UI on everything. Plus, they haven't embraced ARM as fully as they could have, much less any other architecture.
I expect at least a few OEMs (not Dell, obviously) to begin discreetly seeking distro partners very soon, so they can release proper desktops/laptops with Linux factory installed in 2015: the long awaited year of the Lunix desktop.
I think you're right.
Windows started out life as an "Operating Environment". (DOS was the "Operating System").
When you change the form-factor, and set of use-cases, significantly, from the Desktop/Workstation model, that strains the Windows "Operating Environment".
Sure - in the "Server" case - having the Windows 3.1 GUI duct-taped on top of Windows NT 3.51 was acceptable. Barely. Windows never made any serious inroads into the server market until IIS matured, and Active Directory made Servers a little more bearable.
And then Apache came along and ate their lunch.
Surprisingly - Microsoft adapted this model VERY WELL to the game-console form factor and set of use cases. Nobody can argue that XBox was not a huge success. But then again - you can hide a crappy system behind the REAL content when the users are 99% into GAMES. But I dont' really want to go there - because Microsoft actually DID do a great job with XBox, and developers flocked to the platform in droves because of that.
But they absolutely failed at media players.
They have failed at netbooks.
They have failed at tablets.
And they have failed at smartphones.
So it's not surpising at all to me that they're running scared.
(and I'm one who believes that most of these other form-factors are really just fads, and that the classic "Desktop/Workstation" is NOT going to go away. The problem is: Desktop/Workstation BECAME a fad, and that fad faded away and was replaced largely by these other gadgets, because people were looking for solutions to the portability problem. We pros STILL need our Desktop/Workstations. We ALWAYS will.)
In any case: Linux can adapt. Because Linux is not an "Operating Environment". It's an Operating System. It's forked and adapted to phones and tablets (android) and little devices (busybox, etc), and it's the mainstay of servers, and it does everything we really NEED on the desktop. It doesn't NEED to have the same front-end on all of them. As long as the back-end is still POSIX. (Microsoft doesn't *get* this. And Windows is freaking POSIX-compliant!) I think Microsoft is still so steeped in MBA-culture, that they're terrified to lose mindshare, so they feel they must use a "seat" sold on a smartphone, to "advertise" for a Server OS, and a Media Player, and a Tablet, and a Desktop. Fucking spreadsheet-jockeys.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think the idea of resource constraints stopping you from running a desktop OS on a mobile device is something that will soon be consigned to history.
It already has been.
But that's still not good news for MS. They've been charing monopoly rents for their desktop OS for so long, they'll have a hard time adapting to selling it on devices that cost less than they're retailing their OS for.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"investing with the sort of long-term commitment that made the xbox successful in the end"
After a decade in the console market Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the last place console this gen.
That isn't 'success', it's exactly the opposite. Failure.
Nobody can argue that XBox was not a huge success.
Last I looked, the Xbox was still down a billion dollars or two over the course of its life. And that's 'a huge success'? No wonder Microsoft is in the crap.
Taking the money they blew on Xbox and spending it buying Apple shares at that time... now that would have been 'a huge success'.
Windows never made any serious inroads into the server market until IIS matured, and Active Directory made Servers a little more bearable
Wat. So you are telling me that Windows had no server success before Windows 2000? Your green is showing
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
First of all, many thanks are in order for the very thoughtful reply from you !!!
About the desktop/workstation.
As far as I can see, yes, I agree with you, we Pros need the power that only our desktop / workstation can provide us.
Until, of course, they can come up with something that has much more processing power than our desktops / workstations and yet, still in tiny wearable formfactors, like the things they use in startrek.
About XBox.
I agree.
MS has done one helluva great job for their Xboxen.
And as you said, Xboxes are for one purpose, and one purpose only, gaming.
This translate to, Microsoft can be very very good in making one-trade-ponies.
And do you realize that the xbox was introduced when Bill Gates was still in charge?
In other words, Steve Ballmer has absolutely nothing to show, for the years he has been on the top post of Microsoft.
And lastly, about the rent-seeking mentality of Microsoft ...
I'm afraid this rent-seeking mentality isn't confined only to Microsoft.
You and I are from the old time, you probably had spent time in the Silicon Valley (or the equivalent in other places), like I did.
And in those places, we can see established companies - not only Microsoft - that are still in the rent-seeking mode.
From Adobe to Symantec to Intel ... they are all, in fact, rent-seekers.
To ask them to move away from that rent-seeking mode of thought is like trying to get drug addicts to stop using drugs.
It's not impossible. It's just very very hard.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They were the best. I hate HP. I think their design engineers go through a lot of trouble to use as many different sizes and types of screws as possible into each computer they create. Not impossible to work on but positively the worst to the point that I all but refuse to work on them.
Everyone knows by now... everyone should know by now.... Any time a company takes money from Microsoft, they die very soon thereafter. Microsoft's money (not to be confused with Microsoft Money) is literally poison. Well that may be over simplifying things a bit. The money comes WITH poison would be more accurate to say.
We all know Microsoft is struggling to remain relevant. They are prepared to do anything except change what they are doing to stay alive and relevant. And when they pay, excuse me, 'invest' in some company to ensure they do their bidding, the comnpany languishes in failure shortly thereafter. SCO and Nokia come to mind, but they also managed to screw over quite a few smaller operations as well. To accept money from Microsoft, you have to give something up. And it is invariably what they give up which kills them. Nokia was toying with Linuxes on phones and was probably about to join their brand with Android when Microsoft stepped in. SCO was doing "okay" with their Linuxes but their name was famous enough in the board rooms that no one at a high enough level cared whether or not SCO was actually any good or not. They took Microsoft's money in exchange for their credibility. If anyone thinks SCO didn't know they didn't have the rights to Unix, they weren't paying attention. They knew. They were just hoping that *maybe* the judges and juries wouldn't understand.
Microsoft's and Dell's relationship goes way back. Some might say that it was evidence to the contrary of my assertions. It's not. The leverage Microsoft used over Dell was prices for a product that was all but 100% necessary to sell with a PC compatible. After all, no corporation can legally installed a volume licensed version of Windows onto a PC that didn't already have Windows or Mac OSX pre-installed. It's in the new license agreements now. Surely everyone knows about this by now -- that all desktop/client Windows volume licenses are "upgrades"?
Dell got discounts... pretty much like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, Dell has been a bit more hesitant than the rest to join in with the Android and Linux crowds. Sure, there was the Dell Streak which was immensely popular but somehow lost momentum from Dell. Too hard to support? Not main-line enough? Can't me when Samsung and ASUS are doing so damned well with their Android devices. Nope. Dell "gave up something" and it's already costing them. But that's the way marriage works right? The least fortunate spouse is the one who gave up the most?
Witness it happening.
I'm going to miss Dell. I have only ever really used Dell. They have been the best servers, desktops and laptops I have ever owned, and the best supported. I'm really going to miss Dell.
Yeah - I stopped reading at that point too
Unless Apple buys Dell in its entirety and starts concentrating on making Linux boxes.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I can't disagree with this. Novell was THE server OS for file/print and applications ran on Unix.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I'm struggling to see how anyone wins out of this. Microsoft gets to loan money to a company which is cratering fast without getting any control or real influence. Michael Dell gets to double down on a company in crisis, that in the last few years (by many accounts), he seems to have lost interest in. Even he didn't lose interest, its hard to see how he can fix it, when he's had a long time to fix it. Shareholders get a small premium on the already cratered share price. HP gets a small leg up on the "uncertainty", but really, they are dead man walking too. The PC industry is a real mess.
Novell version 3 had dominant position, but many customers never upgraded to Novell 4 and NDS. By the late 1990s, Windows NT 4.0 was kicking their butts.
there's a whole lot of netbooks out there using some kind of celeron thing. i have a toshiba that runs win7 very well. by "well", i mean the experience is good but the stability is not so and i get ~2 hourly BSODs. that's as well as you're likely to get out of a mac to be honest (i just bought one, and i've gotta say, linux is easier and faster to get to a point where it's useful).
there's a lot of assumption out there about OS's that's actually quite wrong.
- windows is unstable
- linux requires a comp-sci degree to use
- osx is stable and easy to use
since buying my mac, i've realized that OSX is less stable than winXP and more difficult to set up than ubuntu (by a lot!). maybe it's because it was a fresh install of snow leopard, which is quite old now... but then winXP is very VERY old now, so apple have no excuse to offer less support to 10.6 than MS does for something they EOL'd long ago.
Wrong.
You don't even have numbers to back that up.
Xbox is a failure in your own mind, MS has actually made billions
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/05/29/xbox-beyond-the-box.aspx
Bullshit, that is the same bullshit the press has been spewing and its as much bullshit as saying "Well now that the real estate bubble has burst houses are worthless now"
Look its actually REALLY simple, okay? the period between 1993-2005 was a BUBBLE, no different than the housing bubble or financial bubble or any other bubble, it was an UN-NATURAL CONDITION brought about by what we now call the "MHz War". you look at PC sales before the MHz war, how often did people replace PCs? Every 5-7 years. Now that the bubble is over how often will people be replacing PCs? Every 5-7 years. As a guy down here in the trenches I can tell you that not only is the PC NOT "going away" but frankly most folks? Up to their asses in PCs. Before the bubble most had only ONE PC, now most have a PC for every member of their family PLUS one or more laptops.
But the simple fact is once we moved away from simply raising the MHz of a single core into multiple cores PCs went right past "good enough" and straight into "insanely overpowered" for most users. I mean look at what I was selling on my LOW END builds FIVE years ago: A phenom X3 with 3GB-4GB of RAM and a 300GB-500GB HDD. Now how many of your average users are gonna max out that system? Damned few. On the laptop side i was selling Turion X2s with 2GB of RAM and 250Gb HDDs. Now how many people are gonna have needs when they are mobile that that system won't handle? Again damned few.
You want a perfect example of the "typical PC user" just look at my dad, he runs Skype, checks his webmail, does FB, runs his QuickBooks and burns DVDs, about as bog standard as you can get. When the Phenom X6s got cheap i thought "Well it has been a few years since i built that Phenom I X4 for dad, maybe I should see if its time to replace it" so I ran a 3 week monitoring of his system load and then checked the results, what did I find? 43%, that was the MAX he had gotten with the system and that turned out to be a hung browser tab, when I removed that anomaly he averaged less than 35% load. I checked his Core Duo desktop at the shop, similar results.
So the problem with MSFT is NOT Linux, and its NOT mobile anything, although from the way Ballmer is burning the damned company down trying to be Apple you'd think otherwise, but the real problem is they, like many on wall Street during the housing bubble, expected the bubble to last forever. Frankly MSFT could be making money hand over fist if they'd quit trying to ape Apple and ape IBM instead, sell services to that huge install base, but like most short sighted CEOs Ballmer only cares about being "hip and trendy" but no matter how many times he clicks his heels together and says "There's no place like Cupertino,There's no place like Cupertino," you simply can't turn MSFT into Apple and trying to force an iOS style OS onto the desktop is just running off new purchasers.
But at the end of the day the PC is going nowhere, the amount of crap you'd have to plug into a tablet to make it equal the power of even a 4 year old PC would make it a bloated mess so people will continue to buy PCs, they'll continue to buy laptops, they just won't be replacing them every 3 years like they had to do from 93-05 is all. But at the end of the day the amount of power X86 gives you at frankly an absurdly low cost still makes having a PC VERY attractive but that same absurd amount of power means you just don't need to replace as often, that's all. Hell I personally LOVE to play FPS games and used to have to build a new machines every year, now I'm playing on a 3 year old X6 and feel no need to upgrade, the chips are just too damned powerful for even the games to slam anymore. so unless some "killer app" comes along that can blow through anything less than an octo-core i just don't see people needing to replace that often, doesn't mean there isn't still plenty of money to be made in PCs though.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
...when Microsoft gave all that money to Apple a few years back. Apple was all but gone at the time, Microsoft essentially saved 'em.
Yes. MS invested 150 million $ in Apple in 1997.
After some years, another great CEO tossed a couple of billion dollars (and a chair?) and said, "here, don't get yourself a real operating system".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Which all seem to be running Linux.
Just look at Nokia, gutted its phone development division (which was outselling Android and iOS at the time). It sacked it's developers. It handed it's only major app, Nokia Maps/Navigation to Microsoft.
Elop made Nokia into such a basket case that it had one and only one chance, deliver a successful Windows phone.
So I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to stick its own guys in, and destroy Dell's non Microsoft related businesses.
Everyone knows by now... everyone should know by now.... Any time a company takes money from Microsoft, they die very soon thereafter
Like Apple?
I can't disagree with this. Novell was THE server OS for file/print and applications ran on Unix.
Was? Novell still IS the file/print server at work.
The difference between the housing bubble and the desktop bubble is that at the bursting of the housing bubble people didn't go and live in caravans instead. The desktop bubble burst and people are moving to doing a great many of the things they previously used a computer for on devices like smartphones and tablets, even Apple has outwardly stated the iPad has cannibalized Mac sales, and they have the most profitable PC business in the industry. The MHz war was a big factor in the decline of the PC market in recent years, no argument about that but that decline is being spurred on by the fact that people can do most of their basic personal computing on smartphones and tablets. It's a combination of both elements.
$2B is a lot of money, but not that significant, relative to their cash on hand. So, they aren't putting much at risk. As problematic as Dell can be, their organization works better than HP, and MS execs don't need clown suits for management meetings.
Microsoft gets some interesting things in return:
If Microsoft is going to start investing in partners, it signals a real sea-change in the PC market. Up til now, they've been critically dependent on OEMs to make compatible hardware. Instead, they've been hurt by lousy drivers for incompatible hardware. Dell has enough clout to steer the market. But that assumes this deal produces more than just promises.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
What we need is for companies like Canonical to start making serious investments in the desktop operating system, support, and hardware. It takes more than a good OS to see adoption hit double digit numbers. Canonical's missing major pieces:
1. A desktop tailored interface (unity was a big mistake- stop copying Apple & Microsoft's mistakes).
2. Own up to the fact they aren't in the same league as Dell, HP, and other major players. Companies like ThinkPenguin are leading the way because Canonical doesn't get whose on there side and moving adoption/ease of use/etc forward. The company needs proper hardware support and for there OS to be readily available. Dell isn't going to do that. They are Microsoft invested.
3. Do a better job at respecting users freedom- not everybody in the Linux world will like it. However if they have any brains they won't care about the non-free software addicts. It's the novice aging population that is best hit. This crowd has money and no critical needs. If you push your vendors to release free drivers you'll have the ideal platform for this crowd.
4. Keep the user interface the same. We need long term support cycles with back ports for critical pieces (HPLIP, kernels, firefox, libreoffice, etc). This will lead to books that can actually be learned from. People hate change too. It'll be in its users interest to stick to a good design that changes little.
especially since it's never worked before (Zune, Kin)
It worked with XBox, though
Call me old fashioned, but I don't want to wear my computer, I prefer a big comfy chair infront of a large PC screen.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There is institutional inertia in Microsoft that demands product executives still "act as if" Microsoft were still the 800lb gorilla of technology, master of all they survey: an emperor so dominant that they demand their visitors be trained as supplicants wary of offending the Beast before they dare even approach.
Once upon a time this is what they were. 2x above the nearest technology competitor and master of all that is invented and all that is prevented, deciding quarter by quarter which of their partners live and die based on which is most helpful to them. The bodies of their foes are immense and numerous: Sun, Novell, Borland are but a few. The bodies of their allies fallen from favor are even far more numerous. Technology companies, particularly startups, did kneel before the king. Microsoft leveraged their various properties to defeat every foe by being deliberately incompatible with the challengers and innovators of the day a few at a time.
Today though Microsoft do not stand above the biggest company in tech by 2x. The biggest tech company is Apple which stands above them by 2x now. The second biggest is Google - a company Microsoft's CEO swore to kill when it was but a gnat, but somehow he failed and Google now is well ahead of them. Yesterday they were not even third biggest tech company. The IBM they thought they killed in the early '90s has in its quiet conservative way been creeping up on them and finished ahead in market cap again yesterday - soon a position to be made durable. Samsung is working on it too and may someday claim a solid fourth, relegating Microsoft to the fifth position in tech until Cisco spoils even that. Even Microsoft's mighty partners - the ecosystem that drove out innovation they did not control by proxy - is weakened beyond repair. It is just not profitable to make Windows client PCs. It hasn't been for a long time and they know it but are dependent on the revenue flow to maintain their size, clinging to that as they lose profitability permanently. Innovators are coming now not a few at a time to be vanquished and fed to the beast one by one, but in a flood that may drown the beast. They come bigger also now, so big the beast cannot wrap its jaws around them. The loss of the power to drive innovation isn't the most important thing for Microsoft. The loss of the power to prevent innovation they don't control is. That is what is killing them: Chromebooks that last all day, Nexus 10 tablets with insane resolution, iPads and iPhones and Android phones more powerful than a recent laptop that delight and amaze. And this is nothing compared to the fact that they're going into battle wielding their sword holding the wrong end.
For Microsoft to survive the transition to mobile they have to reorient to being a scrappy startup striving for a place in a hostile world, not approach it as if they were entitled to appear and claim it as an entitlement of their dominion, swaying all with their massive billions. They don't have it in them to do that. They literally can't do it. The very concept is so alien that they cannot grasp the need for it. Anyone there who proposed such a thing would be walked to the door by security immediately. That is the problem they face: their inability to assess the situation and respond appropriately. From here the end is clear.
All empires fall in the end. Usually for this very reason: the inability to see their own mortality.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And the corporate cash to do it. And he owns enough shares to get away with it "in the interests of shareholders" also.
You would think that Microsoft could comprehend that repeating their same monopolistic practices might land them in the same hot water. But I guess not. So can we please get the FTC and the DoJ involved in this matter? In the last two years, Microsoft has stooped to some extreme measures in an effort to surpress Linux. At least this time, we can rest easy knowing that they only have Steve, not Bill, and have been headed toward oblivion for a long time.
i get ~2 hourly BSODs.
Then there is either something wrong with your computer, or your install of win7. I installed win7 on this computer just a couple of weeks after it came out, and it is still running perfectly on that same, years old install.
As long as it runs on Windows, MS supports it. They don't like it the other way around tho. When you buy a server MS would rather you have one of their OSes on it, and run your VMs under it, instead of running linux with linux VMs.
There are multiple 10 billion dollar plus companies putting money into open source hardware.
Restricted boot mobo's will go the way of the dodo.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
So Microsoft invest in a company that is strong in x86 desktops and laptops?
That is exactly the kind of product where Microsoft already has a strong position and has the least to fear. I guess their best bet would be smartphones and tablets that extend their corporate solutions, especially Office and Outlook, to the new form factors.
They get some of that right (there is an Office version for Windows8 RT), even if Office RT lacks a few features of the x86 version. But Outlook is still missing, which has to hurt.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Mark My Words (official introduction to doom laden prophesy)
In 18 months, every family will have a tablet per member, plus a surface that has crashed, and will go back to using the laptop/desktop for school/work/email and will only use the tablet for videos (porn).
Apple's model is to target fanbois and the follow-fashion monkeys. There is no shortage of them, so they are good for a few more years to come.
I also predict BB will survive if they go back to having keyboards. Round here, all the schoolgirls use them for texting. (Business men need a bigger screen for porn) However, BBs problem is that three year old BBs work fine, so, at the end of a two year contract, they get a Samsung as well. When that contract runs out, they will probably replace their now five year old BB if the new model has a keyboard else it will be a new <random Android manufacturer's product>.
Moral: Short MS, Hold BB and buy APPL
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
So has XPS 13 / Project Sputnik merely been a way for Mike to "convince" MS to part with significant amounts of money?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
A certain company was the MARVEL of just-in-time supply-chain operations. I quoted their stock price every hour during business days as an example of what a tight-run ship price performance should be doing on each day's market.
Only it was a BIG LIE. They cooked the books with a big payment gained at the end of each reporting period from their chip-supplier as tit-for-tat using only that supplier's chips ( illegal monopolistic behavor; collusion; racketeering ).
All companies that act this way smell alike. Caveat emptor. Criminals and monopolists flock together? Good riddance to a certain bad public company. No criminal charges were filed back then ONLY BECAUSE the effect it would have had on a large PUBLIC company.
I hope the rat gets caught in a trap next time.
After reading most of these comments I'll just make a post of my own as I can't pick any particular one, but suffice to say; fanboys of all genres should be shot.
IMO (as a 15 year tech that's engineered, administered and supported: Microsoft, Apple, Novel, Linux, HP, IBM, Dell, Cisco and a plethora of unmentionable smaller players):
Desktops are going nowhere, I'm laughing right now as I imagine a building full of accountants trying to setup some pivot tables in excel on a 10" screen.... with their finger. (Don't rant at me about tablet peripherals, that's not the point, PC is efficient at what we currently use technology for) I'm not sure more of a point needs to be made here. Consumers may not buy a new PC and get a tablet instead, but this wont dent corporate and it won't "kill" the pc.
Linux is great on the desktop, experienced *nix heads hate unity/gnome3, but every "mom and dad" user I've installed it for has loved it for the same reason as iPads and Androids: Accessibility, simplicity, one job at a time. Why does it have no market share? Because it's free. Am I saying that it's actually in any way "beating" MS in any sense on the desktop, hell no. I run a linux desktop, do I know half a dozen other people that are most productive with this setup? I do. Do I know 200 more that aren't? Yep. I am not a giant fan of Unity, so I uninstalled it and installed fluxbox. Because I can. I respect what canonical is trying to do and applaud them for it, whilst at the same time recognizing some reckless mistakes they made along the way.
Microsoft products have come a long way, particularly Win 7 / 2005 onwards, in fact, as someone that previously looked darkly on MS, I think they've made themselves relevant again. In a corporate environment with money, this is a no-brainer. You get support and your shit works with ever other MS shop. There are a lot of MS shops out there. As mentioned before, the integration between the various microsoft products is at a level no other software company even comes close to at the moment. Also, barring Google, I don't consider any other groupware products out there at the same level as Exchange. I've spent many years as an Exchange admin and I hate the bitch, but I still respect her and corporations still need her.
My experience with HP's business workstations has been excellent, as has been their higher-end blade systems. Fantastic support all round. Couldn't say enough good things about IBM, they are top dog IMO and worth every penny. I see Dell as positioning as the "entry level" version of IBM and HP, do you buy Dell if you can afford IBM? I don't. This is perfectly acceptable, they fill a space in the market. They're even making some awesome, high bandwidth, CHEAP switching gear. A very qualified Cisco engineer friend of mine just joined Dell and if he is impressed at the product feature set vs price? - well I trust his opinion and will happily repeat it as my own.
As for the fact that 3/4 of the comments really had SFA to do with the article, I'll keep my commentary on that short, in summary
I see microsoft trying to buddy up to a major hardware player that they haven't yet tried to really fuck over, they're spreading some risk out and waiting until they see where this whole Tablet fad pans out (yes, FAD, I say this because it's still early days, not because I think I'm some uber-fucking-brain that can predict the fickle nature of consumerism) - at which point they can try putting some pressure on Dell to assist them in breaking hard into that market. The surface failed, they're just being more cautious about it this time.
PS: Sick of people hating iPhone owners, I personally, would rather shove one up my ass than use it, but are the 30 friends of mine that own one douches? No. Again, Apple filled a need, it worked, they made a bunch of money. For fucks sake people, get a hobby and stop bitching about every little thing.
(1) Microsoft loans money to PC/Server manufacturer Dell
/.
(2) Linux competes with Windows Server, a Microsoft product
-----
(3) Therefore, Dell is going to stop promoting Linux.
Good job
Already done. Ubuntu has been run on several mobile phones, including the Nexus, several HTC handsets, and some Galaxy models. Xda Developers has whole forums dedicated to Linux on phones and Boot2Gecko.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The desktop doesn't matter any more. It's not "dead", it's not going away entirely, and they aren't going to come around to your house to pry it from your cold, dead fingers; but it just doesn't matter. It's not where interesting developments are happening. It's not where the puck *is*, let alone where it's going to be.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
The fact the OS requires 20GB of HD space might put a hole in your theory.
I'm sure you remember the time when people came to you because they wanted a computer to "get on the internet" I do. That also helped to drive the PC bubble in the consumer space. Now-a-days you don't need a PC to "get on the internet", "get my email", and "browse the World Wide Web" anymore. People now buy laptops because its needed for three main reasons 1) school or 2) work. 3) creativity/productivity. If they don't need it for those reasons then they stick with their smartphone or maybe get a tablet. In the age of cheap tablets the PC will no longer be the primary Internet access device further driving down sales of the PC/Laptop for the sole purpose of basic internet access.
2013... the year of linux desktop.
Microsoft is surely trying to influence Dell, as it has in the past. This time it will have invested in Dell so this makes perfect sense. However, I don't see it as being very effective for the price tag at stake, considering Dell's dwindling market share. And, Dell customers will still do what they do now, if they choose to rip out Windows and install GNU/Linux on the hardware, they'll do it regardless. I do give some credit to Dell for attempting to provide solid GNU/Linux support in the past, and unfortunately has succumbed to Microsoft's lobbying efforts.
That whole comment of power is subjective in that the best ARM processors are still chasing Core 2 Duos. Really the problem right now is Windows 7/8 isn't a mobile OS and google & apple aren't interested in a MS partnership for office/productivity software.
This loan sounds more like extortion mixed with honest R&D. If Dell can develop a line of tablets or phones that could be sold to businesses MS would be in a prime location to retake market share.
The mobile OSes shine at doing light weight activities in a light weight environment. When asked to do PC work though they fall short. So I don't see a post-PC world so much as a displaced-PC world.
I'm running Win 7 on a P4 machine; that's quite a bit weaker than my phone (QualCom QC8960 I think), although they do both have 2GB of RAM. Granted the P4 is nearly 12 years old... but Win 7 works fairly well on it.
- chrish
balmer is a good example of why you don't let a marketing guy run a technology company
And Jobs is a good example of why you do.
It was actually the NT family's interoperability with Novell Netware and the ability to offer Netware-compatible services, bypassing Netware licensing costs that helped Microsoft gain inroads into the server market - and it was a very inexpensive (if resource-intensive) server solution until they got that pesky Netware competition out of the way.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Unless you have the first P4 process (Willamette (180 nm)) and the low end version.
Your single core performance is most likely double that of your phone. Those memory and pipeline speeds look slow but they still will be very competitive with your phone.
Actually I've found that even those with iPads and other high end laptops simply don't use them for basic web surfing, they just don't like the visual keyboards. Instead what the iPad/iPhone/Android units are getting used for is 1.-A portable IMDB lookup on the couch so they can find out "What has that guy been in that I've seen before?" and 2.- A fancy portable video player.
That's it, that is ALL they are being used for. I've had to LMAO walking through a store when i watched some hipster girl in her early 30s struggling with her purse and shopping cart because she was using an iPad as a grocery list and when I said "Trying to justify all that money you spent huh?" she gave me a look, well let's say if looks could kill I wouldn't be typing this right now.
Believe me, this ain't my first dance, I've seen these fads come and go. I was there when the press proclaimed "The PC is dead, thin clients and the web will rule!" and this was when Win9X was the dominant OS and would crash if you looked at it funny, still didn't come to pass though. Then there was "Nobody will read books, it'll all be eReaders!" this was in 99, those fizzled pretty quickly, kinda like how we are seeing dedicated eReaders fizzle again now. There was tablets in 02/03, phones in 05, tablets again thanks to dirt cheap ARM cores making tablets so cheap you practically can find one as the toy surprise in Cracker Jacks, its all the same old dance.
At the end of the day nothing lasts 30+ years unless it has some serious positives, and with the PC you have a full touch type capable keyboard, you can have as small or as big a screen as you want, you get just insane amounts of computing power, they last quite a long time, and they are very cheap. Yeah....I'm not worried just because the MHz bubble burst, people will still kill laptops and PCs, they'll still want them replaced, just as the laptop didn't wipe out the desktop so too will the tablet not wipe out the PC, tablets like netbooks fill a little niche and in that little niche they do well, but as Surface has shown a "jack of all trades" is just not something the people want.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wrong.
You don't even have numbers to back that up.
Xbox is a failure in your own mind, MS has actually made billions
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/05/29/xbox-beyond-the-box.aspx
All I found in the link you provided was retail sales. We'll ignore that it is the "Official Microsoft Blog" posted by the "chief marketing officer" and assume it's true anyway, but I don't see where they say they have recouped all their development cost and the XBox is actually in the red for its entire lifetime. They certainly have sold a lot and have a large market share, but have they actually turned a profit against all their spending, R&D, and operating costs? most places say "no". The best I found with a few minutes of searching was here. They state that it looks like XBox is still $4.1 billion in the hole overall from creation to current. Of course, they admit that MS had swapped the way things are reported by MS at least twice and it was a best estimation they could do. Now, we're looking at a new console which will have similarly large development costs and probably be sold at a loss again till component costs come down, so current profits may not last long enough to cancel out that $4.1 billion plus new costs.
If you have better links, I'd be grateful if you posted them.
Buying into Dell has nothing to do with building future gaming consoles on the cheap?
This is the free enterprise system and if Dell refuses to build new products such as the Chromebook or other non-Windows devices, what the heck is going to happen ? The market will see Dell as a Fault and route around it. There are lots of competitors happy to snap up the business ignored by Dell because they are in an incestuous relationship with MS.
Foxconn will happily manufacture Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung and 25 other brands of products. These will run Android, some BSD and Windows or that RTOS of BlackBerry. If Foxconn can be compromised by M$ (which I doubt), there are at least 25 other operations around which can do similar things.
Does Dell still build anything physical ? I would guess 90% of their stuff is made by Foxconn and the like.
So, only American managers can think of "stemming the tide" by piling sand sacks on 10 kilometers of coastline. A coastline which is 500 kms long. Or, should I use a Maginot Line Analogy ? Yeah, I guess the true family heritage of Ballmer is a family of French Generals.
I also predict BB will survive if they go back to having keyboards
if the new model has a keyboard
WTF? How are you possibly in the dark on this? They already announced that the keyboard version (the Q10) was coming, approximately 6-10 weeks behind the full-screen version (Z10). It was part of the exact same product-announcement party! So are you being willfully stupid here? or just talking out of your ass?
Moral: Short MS, Hold BB and buy APPL
Oh, I see, stock advice on a technology thread, so ... talking straight out of your ass it is....
-AC
Had Dell employed a pile of engineers to get Linux fully supported on an XPS 14, I would have sent them $1200. Instead, Samsung's lack of support for Linux on their ultrabook was just as compelling... so I sent them $1200.
You neglected to acknowledge a few key factors from your linked article:
The losses are for the Division(s) at Microsoft that included, amongst other things, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. Furthermore, it covers a time-period which extends back to Q4 2001 (thus including a number of terrible early attempts to manufacture a viable Phone/Mobile solution as well as the original Xbox development+marketing, which debuted late, and never achieved commercial success against the incumbent PS/2). Furthermore, the chart ends at Q1 2012, and thus omits the past year's performance (12 months of Microsoft being the top-selling console in the North American Market -- and thus a highly profitable year).
These are all highly salient points with regard to your assertion that the (combined) impact of the Xbox projects has been a net-loss for Microsoft. In fact, using only the statistics provided in that article, all you can reasonably assert is that, despite the xBox 360 being HUGELY SUCCESSFUL (two straight years as the #1 selling console in the North American market, and approximately US$56bn in overall sales), it hasn't yet made enough to cover the losses accrued by both it's predecessor and all other devices, projects and offerings within its division.
It's still misleading as, the name notwithstanding, the xBox 360 and the Original Xbox are two separate projects within the division, and as such, costs/profits that are accrued to one should not be conflated with the other (any more than they should be with Windows Mobile, or Windows Phone for example).
-AC
See also: This Reply for some references.
No, certainly not. For two reasons...
1) Cellular access EVERYWHERE makes the possibility of "thin client" computing a realistic scenario going forward.
2) Components are shrinking, and power requirements are falling, to the point that a portable system could very well be just as capable as top-of-the-line Desktop/Workstation PCs soon enough.
Hard drives used-to commonly be over 5 inches. For the past few decades 3.5" has been the most common, but servers started switching to 2.5" enterprise hard drives many years ago, and with SSD drives getting popular and all being 2.5" or smaller, that looks to become the standard form factor in short order, so your desktop hard drive can just as easily go into your laptop.
CPUs are going the same way. After Intel screwed up with the Pentium 4, CPU TDPs have been falling steadily. I'm putting together a new desktop system for myself with a quad core CPU with a TDP of just 45W... Not ideal for a laptop, but low-powered enough that it could be easily accommodated in one.
And let's talk about expansion... New motherboards don't come with serial, ps2, and parallel ports that take up a lot of space... They just come with a bunch of USB ports. VGA is pretty well gone, and DVI can and is being replaced with the much smaller HDMI connector everywhere. Even high-end video chips are integrated on motherboards now, thanks to NVidia being in the chipset space, and AMD buying ATI and pushing radeons everywhere.
So if we can have a laptop that's as high-end as any desktop, why can't we cram that into a laptop form-factor, too? Of course we can, and the "professionals" among us will just be the ones carrying around bluetooth keyboards.
So what will the future bring... Tablets becoming the glass ttys of the old days? Or high-end workstations shrinking down to the point that we all carry them around with us?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The national guard operates drones sometimes but there's no oversight, its all federal...in other words someone said they had federal oversight so they would be left alone. Thats pretty slick.
And I don't know why the iFanboys get so mad at that fact. Hell look at how much Nike makes off of Air Jordans, would you call that anything OTHER than fashion?
Apple has spent years cultivating the "toy of the rich" culture and it has made them the largest company on the planet, why should anybody get pissed that its about fashion? some of the biggest names on the planet are all about fashion and they are doing great, Prada, Porsche, Ferrari, heck I've seen 7 year old Ferraris getting sold for less than $15k, why? Because owning a used Ferrari destroys the entire point of owning a Ferrari, which is the "I am wealthy" vibe that comes with the car.
Let me put it THIS way: Do you think a $1000 app that just put a red jewel on the front and called "I am rich" would have sold even a single copy on Android or Windows?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now try it with Windows 8. When the OS and bundled software on your tablet is so big that it wouldn't even fit on the largest iPhone 4, and would fill nearly 3/4ths of the capacity of the largest iPhone 5, you have a very serious problem.
===
The hardware (SSDs) will be large enough and cheap enough so that operating size will not be a real constraint. -- Except if you have to download and rebuild the system
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
At that frequency it's probably bad power or RAM. Check both before you lose all your data.
Look up the Nokia N97 which was released long before Microsoft stepped in. Nokia was on the rocks.
I had a N97 (and several Nokia smart phones before that - so yes I was a believer) and it was total shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU - quite possibly the best video to describe Nokia before their ship ran aground.
Nokia killed Nokia.
Physical keyboards just mean several dozen more moving parts to wear out and break while sacrificing screen real estate or adding weight and complexity via slider or flip. I'll never buy a phone with a built in non-removable physical keyboard again.
I don't need to write anything into my phone without looking at it.
Dell is heading to an early grave.
Bullshit. Tablets are a toy, a solution in search of a problem. Microsoft will never get more than 5% of the smartphone market. They have lost. Microsoft's bread and butter is and always will be selling to business. MS has Apple and Google envy, but neither of those companies are competitors with Microsoft, although MS seems to not understand that. MS continually follows these companies but I don't think MS knows why. The future of business computing are not toy tablets, but rather the so-called cloud, which is nothing more than a distributed mainframe. Yes, everything old is new again. This is where MS should be, not in the consumer toy market. It is only a stupid business that would trust a "cloud" setup operated and controlled by a third party. There really isn't any good off the shelf solution for a company that wants to use these distributed mainframes and MS would be in a perfect position to solidify their future by offering a solid solution. But no, they continue to chase the consumer toy electronic market and continue to get their asses beat. Followers never succeed. MS has a chance to go into a pretty bare, but potentially lucrative market, but they are too slow, and too stupid to grab it. Apple could introduce the iCar and inside two year MS will enter the auto business, you could bet your house safely on it. Fucking retards have earned their trip into irrelevancy hell.
Xbox is a money loser. You would have to be a fucking retard not to be able to read their reports and come to the same conclusion. MS has spent more money on the xbox project than it was brought in from day one to today.
Tablets are a toy, a solution in search of a problem.
Microsoft will never get more than 5% of the smartphone market. They have lost this pointless war.
MS shouldn't have even tried, but envy gets in their way.
Microsoft's bread and butter is and always will be selling to business. They have forgotten that, and are in big trouble because of it. I guess the best thing to do with a losing hand is double down because that is exactly what is happening.
MS has Apple and Google envy, but neither of those companies are competitors with Microsoft, although MS seems to not understand that. MS continually follows these companies but I don't think MS knows why.
The future of business computing are not toy tablets, but rather the so-called cloud, which is nothing more than a distributed mainframe. Yes, everything old is new again.
This is where MS should be, not in the consumer electronics toy market.
It is only a stupid business that would trust a "cloud" setup operated and controlled by a third party. There really isn't any good off the shelf solution for a company that wants to setup and manage their own distributed mainframe and MS would be in a perfect position to solidify their future by offering a solid solution.
But no, they continue to chase the consumer toy electronic market and continue to get their asses beat. Followers never succeed.
MS has a chance to go into a pretty bare, but potentially lucrative market, but they are too slow, and too stupid to grab it.
Apple could introduce the iCar and inside two year MS will enter the auto business, you could bet your house safely on it.
Unlike Ballmer, Jobs had some technical skill and was able to tell if something sucked or not. Ballmer is a complete retard that has no clue what he is doing and why.
If losing money is your idea of "working" then Ballmer has an executive position for you!
No one will ever get any real work done on a touchscreen. Ever. We are not built for that.
If you think programmers, graphics artists, editors, etc will ever be able to do their job on a handheld, you are delusional.
As for laptops, name a laptop that is equal in hardware to a high end desktop and I will show you a laptop that:
1. Overheats constantly, and thus unstable
2. Is extremely expensive
3. Doesn't really exist.
Laptops have been in a usable state for over 15 years and they have never come close to high-end desktops.
You are not only an idiot but have drunk the kool aid being passed out by clueless, trendy "technical" writers.
It wasn't until 96-97 that computers in the home were not uncommon. Before that, very few people owned anything that could be called a computer. Other than that I agree. I built my current computer in 2007(which was mid-high end at the time), and besides a video card dying, I have had no need to upgrade it.
Are you kidding me? Find a Dell or whatever with comparable hardware of a Mac. You will find it is more expensive and filled with inferior software than a Mac.
Yes tablets are a fad but you are obviously just mad because Surface and Surface Pro failed, yes the SP is a failure before it gets out the door,.
Yeah, I can walk into Walmart wearing quality clothes(and not necessarily expensive) and people shopping their will call me a "hipster" which is pretty funny.
Don't be mad because you use low quality products, just better yourself.
I know that is hard to do when you spend your days licking Ballmers asshole.
Nokia was headed towards death and as I last-ditch effort they actually tied themselves to the failure known as Windows Phone.
MS's incompetence drove the final nail into Nokia, but it is still Nokia's fault for climbing into bed with MS.
It's always fascinating when a calm, rational, well-reasoned arguement elicits an angry, vitriolic rant that doesn't even argue with the points raised. But looking at your other comments, I see this is just SOP for you...
In fact digital artists have used graphics tablets for decades now. Those are functionally quite similar to touch-screens, and the later could in-fact be superior, thanks to the direct feed-back.
I could ("destop replacements" have been around for well over a decade), but I really don't have to... Your statement includes things like "ever" and "always", and forever is a pretty long time. Even if it takes a decade for such a device to come out, you'll still be wrong.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
yeah. i think the later crops of Toshibas are pretty cheaply made, sadly. i have fond memories of a pentium 100 tecra that i couldn't kill no matter how much abuse it received.
i've no unique data on this machine, funnily enough.
Explain this... I don't believe it.
It's quite simple, really: my usual PC died last week and I had to resurrect an old one. The old one is inferior in almost every respect to my phone. Its single-core performance is somewhat faster (despite only having 50% higher clock rate, it benchmarks at well over twice the speed), but as it's a quad-core versus my desktop's single core in terms of total CPU power it's much better. They both have 1GB of RAM, but my desktop's onboard graphics uses up a rather large chunk of that for video RAM. My desktop's integrated intel graphics has a theoretical shader throughput of about 1300 Mpix/s while my phone's Mali400 can handle about 1600. My desktop has a 40GB hard disk, which is larger than the integrated 16GB in my phone, but I have an extra 32GB SD card in there, too.
Despite the lower power of my PC, it handles Windows 7 just fine. No Aero, but I don't really care that much.
Unless you have the first P4 process (Willamette (180 nm)) and the low end version.
Your single core performance is most likely double that of your phone. Those memory and pipeline speeds look slow but they still will be very competitive with your phone.
Sure, but with quad-core phones on the market these days, why does the single-core performance matter?
Because in almost all complex user-level applications are still bound by single core performance.
Sure you can multitask and get some application a little faster but actually using all those 4 cores at once is pretty rear on a desktop/cellphone. Quad cores on phones is a marketing gimmick or a niche area.
Your CPU is massively more powerful than your phones, that's my main point. The average speedup of a quad core is well under 200%, they are only really useful for batch jobs. I would think you memory bandwidth is higher as well.
The latest Samsung processors are better than atoms i remember now.
Graphics are for games and desktop effects that you can turn off.
I'm not going to argue about single/multi-core, except to say that any application that requires the kind of performance we're talking about is likely to be of the easily-parallelizable kind (image manipulation, etc), so is likely to get above average speed-up. But this, I will:
I would think you memory bandwidth is higher as well [on the desktop machine].
Nope. The desktop has a 667MT DDR3 x 64-bit interface = 5.3GB^-s. The phone's is 800MT and the same width, so 6.4GB^-s.
the kind of performance we're talking about is likely to be of the easily-parallelizable kind
I'm not. The OS you chose is independent from raw computational performance. This is about you saying that phone has enough power to run win 7 and do something useful at the same time. ARM has only just reached Atom level performance, which is capable of running windows 7 but struggles to justify it over an OS with generic applications, such as basic chromeOS/Linux installs.