Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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. The needs of people who post here are vastly different from 95% of the population.
An Android device the size of a thumb drive that plugs in to the back of their living room TV and works with their bluetooth keyboard/mouse is more powerful than many people will ever need.
moox. for a new generation.
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.
Why? No one is forcing you into using GNOME 3 on Linux. I sure as hell won't touch it and I've been a Linux user since 2006 (maybe a year or two more if you consider dual-boot configurations and my learning period...).
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.
That's another point entirely; first GNOME 3 kept you off Linux, now you're saying no desktop on it is good enough. Which one really is it? Either way, I'm pretty sure Windows has its own share of bugs and lacks things the others don't have, so really, it all evens out in the end.
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.
I'm not a hacker; hell, I don't even know how to code--and I can run Linux just fine. And maintenance? What maintenance? I have had to do very, very little maintenance on my machines since switching to Linux. No defragging, no regular clean-up to keep the system running fast, no anti-virus/spyware/adware/trojan/worm/you-name-it software to suck up resources and have to keep updated. System update? Just download and burn the latest ISO, nuke the old / partition and install there. When the system is installed, that's about it; it's ready to go with all user settings intact. Maintaining Linux has been a dream compared to Windows.
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