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Android On the Desktop
puddingebola writes "John Morris at CNET offers a brief review of PC Android devices, many of them hybrids running Windows 8 and Android. From the article, 'Microsoft has spent a lot of time and effort trying to get Windows onto smartphones and tablets — so far without a whole lot to show for it. Now several PC companies are trying the opposite approach, taking the Android operating system and porting it to PCs.' The article reviews the recent releases from HP, Acer, Asus, and Samsung. Does Android creeping onto desktop or 'traditional' PC devices have any kind of possible long term consequences? Could this be a way for Android and Google to develop a larger presence in corporate IT, or could Android ever really supplant the Windows foothold?"
I'd like to see Android on the PC become commercially available. We have a touchscreen laptop running Win8. Currently I'm planning to find a friend of my daughter's that needs a laptop and gift it. (Downgrading to Win7 is pointless because it has a touchscreen and Win7 touchscreen support is pretty much useless.) But I might reconsider if there were a native Android that would run on it. Assuming reasonable hardware support, and that there was a reasonable selection of Android apps that run on Intel architecture.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is the final barrier to switching to it as a desktop, or laptop on the sofa. Major games. Which requires mainline hardware adoption.
When fps and mmos with big iron 3D run on this (sorry Pocket Legends, you're cool but it's the pockets bit that doesn't cut it long term!) then it's time to buy the moving van from Windows, as I did from Mac long ago. The trifecta will be on Android -- surfing, office apps, and big games. Then only price remains...and the Big Mo of cachet.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Gnome is aweful, they took away one of the biggest and most useful things for Desktop computing - minimizing. Until people stop kidding themselves that people don't need minimize Gnome 3's Shell will never gain true adoption.
When I first started to switch to mac I thought the dual boot would be a great introduction. Within a week I cleared out my windows partition and moved it to a VM. Months later I found I was only going to windows for to see that all was still working in IE and to run the occasional windows only application.
So having an Android/Windows combo may very well have the same results for many. They will think that they can have the best of both worlds and find that Android serves many of their needs quite nicely and instead of "rejecting" windows discover they just aren't using it. So instead of it being a religious conversion it will be more of a migration.
This has got to be a nightmare scenario for MS in that they know that for most people almost any OS will do. Does it have a browser, check (that will be the limit of most people's lists) does it have an easy way to watch Youtube, does it have any good games, does it boot really fast, does it have a good battery life.
You will notice I didn't put office applications in that list as most people only use those at work.
Plus the needs of us techie types are way way off most people's lists.
The history of computing is that winners emerge from the bottom up. DOS was a toy that came to destroy the mighty mainframe. Sun despised consumer level hardware, and now it has vanished, consumed by cheaper Linux and Windows boxes. Android isn't exactly ready as a desktop OS, but its mad ascent in cheap mobile devices means it should be feared.
Most people just need a thin client to access Facebook/Gmail/Amazon.com/Pintrest, Youtube and the 2-3 specialty sites, pay bills and let junior type up his book report.
That sounds more like what most people have in common rather than the only things most people need.
The current gnome and kde offerings are so awful I find myself preferring to use my Android phone, despite the tiny screen, awful keyboard, and limited functionality. It's just plain easier to use. And more intuitive. Or I use my win 7 laptop... but once IT switches that to Win 8 I'm going to be very very unhappy.
Still trying to find a Linux environment I like. I got by for some years on Fedora 10 and Windows XP, but those have pretty much reached the end of their life. The Mint stuff seems promising; but MATE and XFCE had some bugs, and lacked configurability. I think with maturity these may improve. It's sad when Windows is more configurable and less buggy than Linux. But right now it is true. I lost track of how many Linux distros I've installed in the last year.
I'm a professional Linux developer, not a hater, and I've been using it for 20 years. I can write code, but I don't want to have to. I don't want to have to be a beardy sysadmin just to get a system running and keep it up. I hacked it for years and you know what? I've decided I have better things to do with my sparse free time. I want something that just works, out of the box, without a silly learning curve, without having to use google as a user manual just to do basic stuff that takes one or two clicks on Windows. If I hack I want to do it for fun, not necessity.
The point is that both Android and Gnome 3 are better desktop OSs than Windows 8.
Most importantly, Android is outselling Windows by a large margin, and will pass its installed base very soon. MS can't rely on using their OS dominance to leverage format lockin any more. People will want to interchange their documents, spreadsheets etc with phones, tablets, and yes, Android powered desktops. If Microsoft still refuses to play nice and maintain compatibility, they will be seen as the weak option and will risk losing both of their Windows and Office cash-cows simultaneously.
Finally, after decades of stagnation under an abusive monopoly, computer manufacturers and developers can start innovationg again.
I think it's awesome that you're using a highly customized $47 Android device to base your opinion about Android on, comparing it's performance and use to $600 iOS devices. Guess what - they aren't equals. This says a lot less about Android than it says about your reasoning capabilities.
I would sure love to have some of the drugs your smoking! Seriously, people always make the mistake of assuming that it is Windows that is keeping the Microsoft money pit going. Sadly, for the alternatives, it's Office itself that is the key to Microsoft dominance. Not a single alternative out there for MS Office has 100% compatibility with Office, all the moving parts of Office, not just the document formats (which nobody gets right to date). Since Office only runs on Windows, MS gets to sell a lot of copies of Windows. Workers, for now, have to keep a copy installed on their home computers so they can get work done outside office hours, if you have the luxury of having real office hours, which means that a lot more copies of Office get sold along with all those copies of Windows.
;-). What I don't appreciate is throwing shekels Microsoft's way when they are the source of the problem, not the source of a (hell any!) solution. /rant My sincerest apologies.
Yes, there are ways to get around the no Office on anything but Windows (or Mac for a niggling few percentage points) but for the typical, must be appliance-like (or automobile-like) in terms of usage, Linux hasn't been there yet. [Yes, I know Crossover Office and Wine but they ain't appliance-like.] However, there's a huge camel's nose under the Microsoft tent in the shape of tablets and other light-weight devices. The form-factors aren't great but they are easier to cart around when you have office-crap fall into your lap out of the office. Microsoft knows this, or they seem to occasionally act (ir)rationally around this. The solutions are "the cloud" to get you that MS Office-like experience (Office 365) and/or VDI.
Unfortunately for MS, they don't seem to have a clue on either the marketing or the pricing. Those two solutions pretty much only work for larger firms, not your smaller businesses let alone a mom-and-pop. [Have you ever seriously priced Cloud Backup? Including infrastructure costs? Heart Attack!] Equally unfortunate is that there are no cheaper alternatives in sight that actually cross the Office-clone on Android, iOS, whatever divide. VDI licensing costs are just simply absurd, let alone the licensing restrictions per device on top of all the other costs.
I'm not the only one thinking damn hard about this mess. What the fuck do we recommend to SOHO's, SMB's, hell even SME's around BYOD and making all the pieces work together without breaking the bank either in capital or hell, just recurring operating costs? Microsoft has essentially written off an everyone except the few firms that buy in huge bulk (via Software Assurance). Everyone else gets to talk to we VAR's and get to deliver the financial bad new. Thanks for nothing Microsoft.
I'm going to see about getting one of these combination devices. I can already do Android on any of my Windows boxen so that ain't new. And Windows 8 is the first desktop that I haven't immediately done a rip-&-replace desktop crap to something more reasonable, but I've been doing that for decades (Amigan here
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Yes, thats what many "end of the desktop" proponents dont seem to understand. Even if these mobile operating systems satisfied 95% of the things people often do with a computer, most people would still have their own 5% niche need that the mobile OS is completely inappropriate for and the device hardware itself completely under-powered for.
You have to wonder how tech-literate these "end-of-the-desktop" proponents really are, since clearly they are just consumers of data at most. of course they will challenge you to give them some reason for desktops and you will of course give them a specific answer, and they will of course say that only 5% of people do that.. an argument that ignores the fact that my 5% is different from your 5% is different from someone elses 5%.... but most people have a 5%.
"His name was James Damore."
I call bullshit on your whole line of thinking. No-one who professes lack of computer knowledge would ever say they can't run "GNU/Linux" - the only people who actually say "GNU/Linux" are RMS-worshippers.
Anyway if you want to go down the path of calling distributions with GNU userland tools "GNU/Linux" Android doesn't qualify, because it doesn't give the user GNU userland anyway. It uses the Linux kernel, but that's irrelevant to a non-technical user. They could swap the kernel out for anything without users even noticing as long as the Android userland is moved across.
I am the 5%
I've tried living without a PC for a year. I own an android tablet and an iphone.
Mostly, I'm just constantly annoyed and pissed off all the time. I can do things on the go, which is great. But I can't do much of anything beyond email, facebook, watch a movie or play a game or a hundred other non-productive things. Typing is frustrating, the interface is a kiosk so I really can't move windows and transfer any data between them. If someone hasn't written software for the task you need you're just out of luck.
The only truly useful and productive thing I can do is browse the web to research something.
The same people that call for the end of the desktop have a vastly different perspective from you. You are not a worker or a designer. From a tech journalist's perspective you are nothing more than a consumer. You are consuming their ideas and getting them ad impressions. This device they are talking about is perfect for doing that! Their use of an object is more hopeful than yours, because it's their job to sell you the product. Most people simply don't have time to square peg and round hole the tablet into their needs, of which there are many.
Hmm, something for Google to really jump into, the Enterprise area. So don't need Play Store, but 'Enterprise Store' stuff, let the admin control who has what and when. Odd Google don't have something like this, seems the sort of thing people would pay for.
Waiting for an amusing sig.