It's the most successful consumer Linux Distribution out there and has apps for just about anything. The only drawback is that x86 versions are a bit lacking, but there's plenty of Arm devices on the cheap to be had.
We'll see what happens, but frankly, they needed to work on their other projects first. If the Q was a Google TV box, it would look a lot more attractive than what the Q currently is, and at $299, it's pretty much DOA, especially with $99 Google TV boxes out there that can do the same thing plus a lot more than the Q.
It's the same thing at the Chromebooks. I messed with a Samsung Chromebook 550 recently, and its an impressive OS with it's instant boot time and build quality, but in the end It's a $550 Web browser.
I doubt it's a blow to windows 8, since they seem to be still committed to the x86 tablet platform.
Frankly, I think most OEM's are scared of Windows RT simply because it looks so much like windows 8, that non tech savvy customers will buy it thinking it has all the capability of windows 8, but will freak out and complain once they realize that its pretty much Windows Phone 8 with a big screen and an incapability to run windows desktop apps.
Does Mozilla Prompt the user to make that choice on initial setup? Nope. They're expecting users to know that there is an option to not track.
Frankly, what MS should do (as well as any other browser for that matter) is ask when you first install IE10 if you want to turn DNT on with the default being off. It will give Ad firms the off as default setting they want from browsers as well as give Microsoft the result they want (DNT On for the majority of users) since I'd bet that anyone that reads it will click the checkmark.
IIRC, so were the IBM Units. The difference is the ownership.
IBM used to go to great lengths to test their frames and designs for longevity and durability. That's why they were more expensive, but tended to last longer than other brands at the time. Back then We used to get R51 units. I saw one run over by a truck and it still booted. (although obviously the screen and case was shattered.)
Lenovo bought them out after the R60's shipped. I expected quality to slip immediately but it stayed up through the R61, T61 line. The R400, T400 line is when it started showing. Motherboards were absolute crap in those systems. They first shipped with a faulty BIOS that would render the system unbootable if you let the battery drain to empty to the point you had to pull the CMOS battery to get them to boot, then it took them 6 months to fix it. By then, the USB ports started to constantly break. The First year Alone we replaced 40 motherboards out of a 400 lot for USB Ports alone. The next year we added 50 more to that.
Then they decided that there was no differentiation between the R and the T, so they Killed the R, and replaced them with the Edge (A Consumer laptop that we Professional customers could buy and actually service) and the L Series (Basically an Edge with a R like looking case). The Edge's handled well the first year outside of a few standby sensor errors. Second year Boards failed left and right due to case Flex.
The E520's are even worse. MB failures constantly either with the Buzz of Death or failure to charge the battery, Power Ports so cheap they constantly break like the USB ports of the R400, Fan Errors, Screen Lines, Hard drive failure. You name it, it breaks on them. The only thing that doesn't seem to break much on them is the Keyboard and CDROM.
All of the above issues I brought up should have been caught by Q/A and fixed regardless of where it's made. IBM spent ridiculous amounts of money on Q/A. Lenovo sees that as wasted money and would rather sell Consumer quality at Professional grade prices and pocket it than keep their reputation. It's a mistake that every major manufacture that fell has done, From Packard Bell, all the way to Gateway.
Having to deal with E520's (the E525's are the AMD Variants), It's the PC.
Now of course, the E525 is a bit different than the E520, but the Minute I read buzzing, MB immediately came to mind. We had no less than 20 of our E520 lot buzz over this past year. Most of them were the MB, but a few of them were the NIC/Power Board. In one case, the NIC/Power board actually melted and was smoking due to a Bad MB. Surprised one hasn't caught on fire yet.
The other thing that goes bad is the LCD panels, which shows horizontal lines on them. I believe this is due to the way the LCD Panel is connected to the board. In many cases just flexing the case was enough to cause this to occur.
The other big failure that they have is Fan Errors. apparently a small sticker on the case gets sucked in the fan which stops it. pretty much have to take the whole thing apart to get at it too.
All I can say is that Lenovo is not IBM when it comes to Laptop build quality and leave it at that.
I wanted to keep the original post simple, but you're right.
The biggest problem here is that content providers don't want services like Hulu and Netflix. They would rather you pay for cable or Satellite or DVD's ETC. Hell, they don't even like VCR's or DVR's for that matter.
A great example I could give is lets say I want to create a cable company called CableNet which would be a cable company that uses internet streaming boxes (ie Roku, Boxee, Google TV, ETC) and HTML5 web browsers to stream live cable TV channels to any PC, TV, or mobile device. Lets say I even charge Cable rates for the service. (ie 19.95 to 59.95 depending on channel packages.) I guarantee that It would be near impossible to get content providers on board even if I was willing to pay the same or even higher license fees that the big cable companies like TWC and Comcast were paying simply because I'm using the internet instead of Coax or a satellite to stream Live TV. If they did get on board they would force restrictions like you could only use one stream per account, or allow multiple streaming for one IP only. Or would have to DRM the hell out of the stream or even block certain content. I won't even get started with Internet providers regarding this service. TWC and Comcast would do whatever it takes to kill this model from Data caps to price hikes for cableless internet.
This is the problem that Netflix and Hulu have. RIAA and MPAA knows Netflix works. Its a shame that they keep trying to kick Netflix and Hulu to the curb.
To add to this, people seriously need to realize what Windows RT really is.
Windows RT =/= Windows 8 Windows RT == Windows 7 Mobile Tablet Edition
It's blatantly apparent once you really start to see what windows RT does and doesn't do and then compare it to both Windows 8 and Windows 7 Mobile. It matches Windows 7 mobile's OS to the letter, while Windows 8 has all the functionality expected of the desktop version and RT can't do half of the stuff Windows 8 can do.
The only reason this is even being discussed is because some idiot marketing drones at Microsoft thought it would be a great idea to introduce Windows 8 for ARM as a complete Windows 8 recompile complete with Windows 8 API's and even a full desktop version of Office 2010, then silently proceed to slowly neuter the OS as time progressed into Something that more resembles Windows 7 Mobile rather than Windows 8.
Whats really sad about this is that there was somewhat of a legitimate demand for a desktop edition of Windows 8 that runs on ARM hardware, even if x86 software didn't run on it, developers could at least recompile the desktop app to ARM or at the very least possibly emulate the x86 binary using something similar to Virtual PC's windows XP mode. Microsoft instead chose not to do either of these things with this OS, effectively breaking Bill Gates cardinal rule of legacy support, and instead focused it to be more like Their Mobile Phone OS that Microsoft can't even give away at this point in the hopes that tablet development will foster mobile apps for their phones. It's a stupid strategy that in the end is going to doom their tablet chances as well as their phone chances.
Frankly, MS should have kept that Click to run as an security option in IE. It pretty much did the same thing noscript did back in 2003. Of course IIRC it had one of those annoying drop down bars you had to click on in order to get it to run instead of clicking the control box in question and it was easily worked around (but that could be fixed)
Ok. If they don't work, then why is Russia/China so concerned about them to the point of increasing their Missile arsenal?
There has to be something there if those countries want to invest billions/trillions of their respective currencies in weapon systems that will most likely never see war and would just eat more money they could be investing in other systems, say a Competing missile defense system that has the potential of saving lives vs an missile offensive system which does nothing but kill lives.
Back when they first announced their foundry spin off, I posted The Following:
1) AMD Spins off Fabs. 2) Intel/VIA/TMSC/IBM buys AMD Fabs. 3) Intel/VIA/TMSC/IBM Fabs charges huge price to manufacture AMD CPU's. 4) AMD CPU Prices skyrocket. Unable to find a cheap reliable FAB, AMD loses price competitive edge. 5) AMD Stock tanks. 6)... 7) LOSS.
We are now currently at Step 2. Although I never would have known three years ago that Step 2 would turn out to be "Globalfoundries Buys AMD out of Fabs" but either way, here we are today.
The point here is that MS is strongarming hardware manufacturers to develop devices that only work with Windows. The reality here is that there almost certainly won't be tablets released with Android to go along side the ones that have Win 8 on them. I say that with confidence because I don't see it happening very often with laptops or even desktops. But, with laptops and desktops one has the ability to install any OS with driver support for the hardware.
Bull. The desktop/laptop market and the Tablet market are two different things (in fact, you can almost make a point that Tablets are eroding the Laptop market due to them displacing netbooks). The main reason manufactures don't bother with operating systems other than Windows in the desktop/laptop market is that they don't traditionally sell. Ask Dell, IBM/Lenovo or any other manufacture that sold Linux on the desktop if you don't believe me. And before you give me some zealot answer about how M$ strongarms their OS onto OEM's using piracy concerns as the excuse, keep in mind that 1) Companies would give MS the finger if they were truly making more money from Linux than their windows counterparts, and 2) both of the above companies sell Linux in the server market. Why? Because that's where Linux demand is, and that's where the money is when it comes to Linux.
In the Tablet market, It's the exact opposite. Android and iOS dominate there and Windows is nowhere to be found. You would have to be on drugs or be be paid by Microsoft per unit sold to make an ARM based tablet for windows 8 without having an equivalent Android Alternative Tablet option. Even HP is talking about selling a New WebOS tablet alongside their Windows 8 ARM Tablet.
What's more, if one is restricted to using Android only or Linux only devices if one wants to run something other than Windows, then one is going to have a substantially smaller number of devices from which to choose.
Also Bull. Right now there are dozens upon dozens of Android and iOS tablets out there vs a tiny subset of Windows 7 tablets. And I'm not even counting the Touchpads out there. That's not going to change especially considering Android's market Share on tablets vs Microsoft's and Android's cost vs Windows 8, and I'm not even bringing up Apple's Marketshare here. Now, Before you start typing about how M$ is using royalties to strongarm Android, keep in mind that Android even when you pay the Microsoft Royalty Tax is still going to be cheaper than Windows 8 and Ice Cream Sandwich is the first step of ending that tax for good.
As for your thing about percentages of consumers, it doesn't matter what the percentage is, it's one of the rights of ownership. The original owner might not care, but what happens when MS stops supporting the devices? Just because MS no longer provides patches doesn't mean that the device has failed.
The same goes with any boot locked Android phone. When the manufacture stops supporting it you either hack it or you stick with whats on it. That won't be any different on the Windows Tablets.
As for your bit about the locked bootloader, it's completely different. If you're going to be so dense, I don't know why I'm even bothering to write this. The difference is that Google isn't forcing all manufacturers of Android devices to lock them down the Android only in order to gain full certification. That's a big fucking deal if one doesn't have the Win 8 certification one is going to be at a competitive disadvantage. Or have you forgotten about the Win Vista certification debacle where some of those computers weren't able to run Vista. God help you if you didn't get one that was even that well supported.
I don't give two turds what Google says when it comes to bootloaders, It's irrelevant if the manufactures and phone carries are bootlocking their android devices anyway. As for certification, First off, Have you met anyone that strictly makes their laptop buying decisions based on that little windows sticker in the corner.
First off, show me the Tablet Monopoly that Microsoft Has. If Microsoft managed to increase their tablet market share 5 times more than it currently has, it still would be in the single digits.
Second, I don't see any reason why an OEM couldn't just release the same tablet with Android preinstalled instead of Windows 8. In fact, It would be severely stupid not to do it, especially since many of the Win8 tablet price rumors I've seen are at price points that are equal or more expensive than their better positioned and more established Tablet OS equivalents. The Touchpad Fire sale and the Amazon Kindle proved that people do not want to spend a ton of money on a tablet and people will just buy an iPad if your tablet comes close or is higher than Apple's price. If Windows 8 tablets violate both of these rules (which I can almost guarantee will happen). You won't need the feds to step in to stop a windows tablet monopoly from happening, Customer wallet's will do just fine.
Third, This is no different than Android having a locked bootloader. It will be cracked and people will install other OS'es on it.
Frankly, and this is coming from someone who is a Fan of Microsoft, Windows 8 is going to flop on tablets and it's going to piss off desktop users because it's so tablet focused it interferes with desktop useability. MS was much better off Focusing Windows 7 mobile in the tablet space, and use the courier as the platform to do it, but they decided to dick around some more while the competition sucked up market share like a vacuum, just like what happened to their smartphone market. It's too little, too late, and too expensive to compete in a marketplace with not one but two heavily established tablet OS'es.
Probably because all the other browsers are adopting Chrome's layout and practices. In some cases it's a detriment to usability.
For example, IE used to use a favorites sidebar to sort favorites as the default. This was nice because most bookmarks were easily accessible in one click (two with a folder) as long as the bar was in place, where chrome has a drop down menu for their bookmarks. IE9 adopted the chrome interface, so now you have to click favorites, then click on the link. (and yes you can get the sidebar to stay, but that's another click you didn't need to do previously). At least when Mozilla adopted the chrome look, you could delete the favorites menu button and replace it with a favorites button that uses the sidebar.
Still using Firefox as my main browser. Frankly the only reason I think people are switching is because the Firefox devs have Chrome on the brain, and if they're basically trying to turn Firefox into Chrome, people say "Hell, might as well use Chrome since that's what Firefox is turning into." IE isn't much better in this regard, but at least their sticking to their guns when it comes to version numbering.
1) In the windows world, virus protection is necessary. Not having malware protection impacts not only the user, but the internet as a whole. Having it built in reduces that chance of malware distribution so it's a good thing even considering it could lead to a reduction of options in the comsumer market. (Which I highly doubt. Many solutions are free out there, and use the free clients to build up their Enterprise solutions.) I'm just hoping they don't do something stupid, like have it disable if a pirate windows copy is detected.
2) AV companies still can compete (and usually make more money) in the corporate market. MSE is NOT a enterprise malware solution. It can't be monitored or managed remotely. For that you would need to move up to an enterprise solution like Forefront, or Sophos, GFI, Symantec, McAfee, ETC. In the case of Sophos, most of their revenue is enterprise solutions, since that's the sector they focused on. I'm actually surprised they didn't release a free windows client version (they did for Mac) just to build up their virus defs.
But right now, HP is still supporting the OS, and I would assume they'll support it until the warranty's start running out. Also keep in mind that the only way HP would recoup some of the massive loss the fire sale did is through sales on the marketplace, so I don't see that getting canned (although I doubt they can keep their devs for much longer unless they start showing them that HP still is supporting WebOS even though the hardware is dead)
Until then WebOS stays. It's just better for just about everything I need. It blows my Viewsonic G Tablet out of the water to the point that I wish there was WebOS for the G Tablet (although I haven't rooted the G tablet yet, I'm running the latest stock 5274 so far) and I'm not going to mess my touchpad experience up with a alpha build of an not as tablet friendly build of android.
Maybe when Hp quits supporting WebOS and Ice cream sandwich or Honeycomb gets sourced we'll talk but until then, it's WebOS on my Touchpad.
oh. were talking about enterprise environments now, well lets get started then.
The reason Google chrome can update as a user is simple; it installs itself, All 200+MB of Chrome I might add, in your user profile. Now, in many enterprise environments this isn't a problem, simply because there's one computer, one user, but then there's the other enterprise environments.
First problem, Roaming Profiles. Every time someone logs in, the PC will have to download their profile, which includes all 200MB's of chrome, from the server. Since most roaming profiles are cached onto the PC it would only come down once per machine, but If it's a multiple user system the more users that use it, the more downloading it does. also keep in mind that the PC uploads that also back to the server. This of course adds traffic to the network, load on the server and time waiting to login and logout.
Don't use roaming profiles? you still got an issue. first off, in a multiple user environment, you still have profiles to deal with since profiles don't auto delete by default. Each user is taking up at least 200mb for google chrome alone. if you have other programs installed, there's settings and customizations as well, so you can easily expect a 250-300mb profile per user. At 250mb, every 4 users takes 1gb, every 40 - 10GB, and every 400 - 100gb. In a student lab situation, one lab alone can have upwards of 10 classes at up to 50 students each with no defined seating arrangements, so at worse case scenario (which I would hope is planned for if your rolling out an enterprise image BTW) thats 500 login's per machine for a grand total of 125-150gb of hard drive space dedicated solely for profiles (which may only have been used once on that PC BTW). If you enjoy your lab machines grinding to a halt because of a trashing fragmented hard drive or 4+ hour hard drive virus scans, then I guess this scenario is right up your alley.
But you can set profiles to delete at logout right? Yeah, except now your copying a 200-300mb profile every time someone logs in, which is great for watching a student freak out when their on the 2-3 minute of logging in. and the best part? Since Chrome is built into the user profile, once you Sysprep the machine the chrome version is locked to that version until you re-image that machine with a new image, so everytime a user logs in, they download the latest google chrome which could be anywhere from 10-50MB depending on how old the chrome on the machine is. Do that times 50-500 and watch your internet bandwidth disappear, On a periodic predictable curve associated with the class bell I might add.
But you could install chrome in the Program files directory right? yeah, except users can't write in that area by default and auto update will fail, so you'll have to deploy patches using MSI files, so that advantage of chrome updating itself goes right out the window unless you want users to write to the chrome directory, which would be a really stupid idea considering that all users will be using it.
So yeah, If I had a choice of screwing around with MSI's and use Either IE or Firefox vs screwing around with Chrome in an enterprise environment, I'd choose MSI's anyday hands down.
Plugin wise, there's always been talk that Microsoft was going to add adobe patches to windows update, but it never seems to happen.
And you're right. Right now the browsers are not being targeted, the third party plugins are, and chrome has been focusing on keeping exploit of those plugins to a minimum, but when these rogue sites fail to expolit a plugin hole, they have to resort to exploiting the user, and it seems like the IE team is more focused on protecting the user from themselves rather than protect them from third party plugins. (that is unless you count using the activeX filtering as a plugin blocker a la noscript, which it isn't because its simply not as granular as noscript)
Adobe seems to be at least getting wise to updating their plugins (Acrobat can be set to auto update, and flash prompts you at startup although it's very clunky and has to be done twice) Oracle has no clue with Java. It pops up a tray icon that's easy to overlook and doesn't have an autoupdate option. This is where MS should seriously step in and update these programs if they are installed on the PC, especially since just about every hardware vendor includes at least one of these heavily exploited plugins.
Out of all the browsers I've tested so far virus wise. (ie9, Firefox, Chrome) IE9 is the most secure out of the box when it comes to drive by and rogueware trojans that are not exploiting secrity holes from third party plugins, and it's simply because IE9 uses a file's hash to determine if a downloaded file is commonly downloaded or not.
Since most rogueware sites pad their payload executable on demand to avoid AV signature detection, the downloaded file is never a common download and will fail the hash check.
Once you add security plugins in the mix, Chrome and Firefox get much more secure in that they tend to avoid the drop sites that eventually send you the malicious payload. IE9 using Tracking Protection Lists gives you some similar protection but it's not nearly as good as Adblock Plus or Noscipt at blocking malicious content. Even if you use similar Adblock Plus lists. Adblock plus alone will block 75-90% of drive by downloading simply by blocking ad's, which is the popular method used by scammers to redirect you to a dropper site. Noscript can boost that percentage close to 95-99%, but both of these plugins won't stop anything if a site was whitelisted and then got hacked. In these cases when the other protections fail is where IE9 Application reputation shines.
Now I've heard chrome is adding a similar hash reputation feature in a future chrome build. Hell it might be in it now since the last one I used was 13. When that happens I don't see why chrome couldn't block malicious drive by downloads just as if not more effective as IE9.
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Android. Seriously.
It's the most successful consumer Linux Distribution out there and has apps for just about anything. The only drawback is that x86 versions are a bit lacking, but there's plenty of Arm devices on the cheap to be had.
We'll see what happens, but frankly, they needed to work on their other projects first. If the Q was a Google TV box, it would look a lot more attractive than what the Q currently is, and at $299, it's pretty much DOA, especially with $99 Google TV boxes out there that can do the same thing plus a lot more than the Q.
It's the same thing at the Chromebooks. I messed with a Samsung Chromebook 550 recently, and its an impressive OS with it's instant boot time and build quality, but in the end It's a $550 Web browser.
I doubt it's a blow to windows 8, since they seem to be still committed to the x86 tablet platform.
Frankly, I think most OEM's are scared of Windows RT simply because it looks so much like windows 8, that non tech savvy customers will buy it thinking it has all the capability of windows 8, but will freak out and complain once they realize that its pretty much Windows Phone 8 with a big screen and an incapability to run windows desktop apps.
Does Mozilla Prompt the user to make that choice on initial setup? Nope. They're expecting users to know that there is an option to not track.
Frankly, what MS should do (as well as any other browser for that matter) is ask when you first install IE10 if you want to turn DNT on with the default being off. It will give Ad firms the off as default setting they want from browsers as well as give Microsoft the result they want (DNT On for the majority of users) since I'd bet that anyone that reads it will click the checkmark.
IIRC, so were the IBM Units. The difference is the ownership.
IBM used to go to great lengths to test their frames and designs for longevity and durability. That's why they were more expensive, but tended to last longer than other brands at the time. Back then We used to get R51 units. I saw one run over by a truck and it still booted. (although obviously the screen and case was shattered.)
Lenovo bought them out after the R60's shipped. I expected quality to slip immediately but it stayed up through the R61, T61 line. The R400, T400 line is when it started showing. Motherboards were absolute crap in those systems. They first shipped with a faulty BIOS that would render the system unbootable if you let the battery drain to empty to the point you had to pull the CMOS battery to get them to boot, then it took them 6 months to fix it. By then, the USB ports started to constantly break. The First year Alone we replaced 40 motherboards out of a 400 lot for USB Ports alone. The next year we added 50 more to that.
Then they decided that there was no differentiation between the R and the T, so they Killed the R, and replaced them with the Edge (A Consumer laptop that we Professional customers could buy and actually service) and the L Series (Basically an Edge with a R like looking case). The Edge's handled well the first year outside of a few standby sensor errors. Second year Boards failed left and right due to case Flex.
The E520's are even worse. MB failures constantly either with the Buzz of Death or failure to charge the battery, Power Ports so cheap they constantly break like the USB ports of the R400, Fan Errors, Screen Lines, Hard drive failure. You name it, it breaks on them. The only thing that doesn't seem to break much on them is the Keyboard and CDROM.
All of the above issues I brought up should have been caught by Q/A and fixed regardless of where it's made. IBM spent ridiculous amounts of money on Q/A. Lenovo sees that as wasted money and would rather sell Consumer quality at Professional grade prices and pocket it than keep their reputation. It's a mistake that every major manufacture that fell has done, From Packard Bell, all the way to Gateway.
Having to deal with E520's (the E525's are the AMD Variants), It's the PC.
Now of course, the E525 is a bit different than the E520, but the Minute I read buzzing, MB immediately came to mind. We had no less than 20 of our E520 lot buzz over this past year. Most of them were the MB, but a few of them were the NIC/Power Board. In one case, the NIC/Power board actually melted and was smoking due to a Bad MB. Surprised one hasn't caught on fire yet.
The other thing that goes bad is the LCD panels, which shows horizontal lines on them. I believe this is due to the way the LCD Panel is connected to the board. In many cases just flexing the case was enough to cause this to occur.
The other big failure that they have is Fan Errors. apparently a small sticker on the case gets sucked in the fan which stops it. pretty much have to take the whole thing apart to get at it too.
All I can say is that Lenovo is not IBM when it comes to Laptop build quality and leave it at that.
I wanted to keep the original post simple, but you're right.
The biggest problem here is that content providers don't want services like Hulu and Netflix. They would rather you pay for cable or Satellite or DVD's ETC. Hell, they don't even like VCR's or DVR's for that matter.
A great example I could give is lets say I want to create a cable company called CableNet which would be a cable company that uses internet streaming boxes (ie Roku, Boxee, Google TV, ETC) and HTML5 web browsers to stream live cable TV channels to any PC, TV, or mobile device. Lets say I even charge Cable rates for the service. (ie 19.95 to 59.95 depending on channel packages.) I guarantee that It would be near impossible to get content providers on board even if I was willing to pay the same or even higher license fees that the big cable companies like TWC and Comcast were paying simply because I'm using the internet instead of Coax or a satellite to stream Live TV. If they did get on board they would force restrictions like you could only use one stream per account, or allow multiple streaming for one IP only. Or would have to DRM the hell out of the stream or even block certain content. I won't even get started with Internet providers regarding this service. TWC and Comcast would do whatever it takes to kill this model from Data caps to price hikes for cableless internet.
This is the problem that Netflix and Hulu have. RIAA and MPAA knows Netflix works. Its a shame that they keep trying to kick Netflix and Hulu to the curb.
Netflix works.
To add to this, people seriously need to realize what Windows RT really is.
Windows RT =/= Windows 8
Windows RT == Windows 7 Mobile Tablet Edition
It's blatantly apparent once you really start to see what windows RT does and doesn't do and then compare it to both Windows 8 and Windows 7 Mobile. It matches Windows 7 mobile's OS to the letter, while Windows 8 has all the functionality expected of the desktop version and RT can't do half of the stuff Windows 8 can do.
The only reason this is even being discussed is because some idiot marketing drones at Microsoft thought it would be a great idea to introduce Windows 8 for ARM as a complete Windows 8 recompile complete with Windows 8 API's and even a full desktop version of Office 2010, then silently proceed to slowly neuter the OS as time progressed into Something that more resembles Windows 7 Mobile rather than Windows 8.
Whats really sad about this is that there was somewhat of a legitimate demand for a desktop edition of Windows 8 that runs on ARM hardware, even if x86 software didn't run on it, developers could at least recompile the desktop app to ARM or at the very least possibly emulate the x86 binary using something similar to Virtual PC's windows XP mode. Microsoft instead chose not to do either of these things with this OS, effectively breaking Bill Gates cardinal rule of legacy support, and instead focused it to be more like Their Mobile Phone OS that Microsoft can't even give away at this point in the hopes that tablet development will foster mobile apps for their phones. It's a stupid strategy that in the end is going to doom their tablet chances as well as their phone chances.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=468
Frankly, MS should have kept that Click to run as an security option in IE. It pretty much did the same thing noscript did back in 2003. Of course IIRC it had one of those annoying drop down bars you had to click on in order to get it to run instead of clicking the control box in question and it was easily worked around (but that could be fixed)
or Before BP Solar Went Under
Michael Bay is to 80's cartoons as Uwe Boll is to Videogames.
Ok. If they don't work, then why is Russia/China so concerned about them to the point of increasing their Missile arsenal?
There has to be something there if those countries want to invest billions/trillions of their respective currencies in weapon systems that will most likely never see war and would just eat more money they could be investing in other systems, say a Competing missile defense system that has the potential of saving lives vs an missile offensive system which does nothing but kill lives.
Back when they first announced their foundry spin off, I posted The Following:
1) AMD Spins off Fabs. ...
2) Intel/VIA/TMSC/IBM buys AMD Fabs.
3) Intel/VIA/TMSC/IBM Fabs charges huge price to manufacture AMD CPU's.
4) AMD CPU Prices skyrocket. Unable to find a cheap reliable FAB, AMD loses price competitive edge.
5) AMD Stock tanks.
6)
7) LOSS.
We are now currently at Step 2. Although I never would have known three years ago that Step 2 would turn out to be "Globalfoundries Buys AMD out of Fabs" but either way, here we are today.
Now, time to move on to Step 3...
The point here is that MS is strongarming hardware manufacturers to develop devices that only work with Windows. The reality here is that there almost certainly won't be tablets released with Android to go along side the ones that have Win 8 on them. I say that with confidence because I don't see it happening very often with laptops or even desktops. But, with laptops and desktops one has the ability to install any OS with driver support for the hardware.
Bull. The desktop/laptop market and the Tablet market are two different things (in fact, you can almost make a point that Tablets are eroding the Laptop market due to them displacing netbooks). The main reason manufactures don't bother with operating systems other than Windows in the desktop/laptop market is that they don't traditionally sell. Ask Dell, IBM/Lenovo or any other manufacture that sold Linux on the desktop if you don't believe me. And before you give me some zealot answer about how M$ strongarms their OS onto OEM's using piracy concerns as the excuse, keep in mind that 1) Companies would give MS the finger if they were truly making more money from Linux than their windows counterparts, and 2) both of the above companies sell Linux in the server market. Why? Because that's where Linux demand is, and that's where the money is when it comes to Linux.
In the Tablet market, It's the exact opposite. Android and iOS dominate there and Windows is nowhere to be found. You would have to be on drugs or be be paid by Microsoft per unit sold to make an ARM based tablet for windows 8 without having an equivalent Android Alternative Tablet option. Even HP is talking about selling a New WebOS tablet alongside their Windows 8 ARM Tablet.
What's more, if one is restricted to using Android only or Linux only devices if one wants to run something other than Windows, then one is going to have a substantially smaller number of devices from which to choose.
Also Bull. Right now there are dozens upon dozens of Android and iOS tablets out there vs a tiny subset of Windows 7 tablets. And I'm not even counting the Touchpads out there. That's not going to change especially considering Android's market Share on tablets vs Microsoft's and Android's cost vs Windows 8, and I'm not even bringing up Apple's Marketshare here. Now, Before you start typing about how M$ is using royalties to strongarm Android, keep in mind that Android even when you pay the Microsoft Royalty Tax is still going to be cheaper than Windows 8 and Ice Cream Sandwich is the first step of ending that tax for good.
As for your thing about percentages of consumers, it doesn't matter what the percentage is, it's one of the rights of ownership. The original owner might not care, but what happens when MS stops supporting the devices? Just because MS no longer provides patches doesn't mean that the device has failed.
The same goes with any boot locked Android phone. When the manufacture stops supporting it you either hack it or you stick with whats on it. That won't be any different on the Windows Tablets.
As for your bit about the locked bootloader, it's completely different. If you're going to be so dense, I don't know why I'm even bothering to write this. The difference is that Google isn't forcing all manufacturers of Android devices to lock them down the Android only in order to gain full certification. That's a big fucking deal if one doesn't have the Win 8 certification one is going to be at a competitive disadvantage. Or have you forgotten about the Win Vista certification debacle where some of those computers weren't able to run Vista. God help you if you didn't get one that was even that well supported.
I don't give two turds what Google says when it comes to bootloaders, It's irrelevant if the manufactures and phone carries are bootlocking their android devices anyway. As for certification, First off, Have you met anyone that strictly makes their laptop buying decisions based on that little windows sticker in the corner.
First off, show me the Tablet Monopoly that Microsoft Has. If Microsoft managed to increase their tablet market share 5 times more than it currently has, it still would be in the single digits.
Second, I don't see any reason why an OEM couldn't just release the same tablet with Android preinstalled instead of Windows 8. In fact, It would be severely stupid not to do it, especially since many of the Win8 tablet price rumors I've seen are at price points that are equal or more expensive than their better positioned and more established Tablet OS equivalents. The Touchpad Fire sale and the Amazon Kindle proved that people do not want to spend a ton of money on a tablet and people will just buy an iPad if your tablet comes close or is higher than Apple's price. If Windows 8 tablets violate both of these rules (which I can almost guarantee will happen). You won't need the feds to step in to stop a windows tablet monopoly from happening, Customer wallet's will do just fine.
Third, This is no different than Android having a locked bootloader. It will be cracked and people will install other OS'es on it.
Frankly, and this is coming from someone who is a Fan of Microsoft, Windows 8 is going to flop on tablets and it's going to piss off desktop users because it's so tablet focused it interferes with desktop useability. MS was much better off Focusing Windows 7 mobile in the tablet space, and use the courier as the platform to do it, but they decided to dick around some more while the competition sucked up market share like a vacuum, just like what happened to their smartphone market. It's too little, too late, and too expensive to compete in a marketplace with not one but two heavily established tablet OS'es.
Probably because all the other browsers are adopting Chrome's layout and practices. In some cases it's a detriment to usability.
For example, IE used to use a favorites sidebar to sort favorites as the default. This was nice because most bookmarks were easily accessible in one click (two with a folder) as long as the bar was in place, where chrome has a drop down menu for their bookmarks. IE9 adopted the chrome interface, so now you have to click favorites, then click on the link. (and yes you can get the sidebar to stay, but that's another click you didn't need to do previously). At least when Mozilla adopted the chrome look, you could delete the favorites menu button and replace it with a favorites button that uses the sidebar.
Still using Firefox as my main browser. Frankly the only reason I think people are switching is because the Firefox devs have Chrome on the brain, and if they're basically trying to turn Firefox into Chrome, people say "Hell, might as well use Chrome since that's what Firefox is turning into." IE isn't much better in this regard, but at least their sticking to their guns when it comes to version numbering.
They aired this on TV.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103759/not-a-big-deal
1) In the windows world, virus protection is necessary. Not having malware protection impacts not only the user, but the internet as a whole. Having it built in reduces that chance of malware distribution so it's a good thing even considering it could lead to a reduction of options in the comsumer market. (Which I highly doubt. Many solutions are free out there, and use the free clients to build up their Enterprise solutions.) I'm just hoping they don't do something stupid, like have it disable if a pirate windows copy is detected.
2) AV companies still can compete (and usually make more money) in the corporate market. MSE is NOT a enterprise malware solution. It can't be monitored or managed remotely. For that you would need to move up to an enterprise solution like Forefront, or Sophos, GFI, Symantec, McAfee, ETC. In the case of Sophos, most of their revenue is enterprise solutions, since that's the sector they focused on. I'm actually surprised they didn't release a free windows client version (they did for Mac) just to build up their virus defs.
Republicians Are on the Side of Big Record/Movie Labels
Democrats Are on the Side of RIAA/MPAA Artists.
Frankly, I'm more surprised it isn't the law of the land by now.
But right now, HP is still supporting the OS, and I would assume they'll support it until the warranty's start running out. Also keep in mind that the only way HP would recoup some of the massive loss the fire sale did is through sales on the marketplace, so I don't see that getting canned (although I doubt they can keep their devs for much longer unless they start showing them that HP still is supporting WebOS even though the hardware is dead)
Until then WebOS stays. It's just better for just about everything I need. It blows my Viewsonic G Tablet out of the water to the point that I wish there was WebOS for the G Tablet (although I haven't rooted the G tablet yet, I'm running the latest stock 5274 so far) and I'm not going to mess my touchpad experience up with a alpha build of an not as tablet friendly build of android.
Maybe when Hp quits supporting WebOS and Ice cream sandwich or Honeycomb gets sourced we'll talk but until then, it's WebOS on my Touchpad.
oh. were talking about enterprise environments now, well lets get started then.
The reason Google chrome can update as a user is simple; it installs itself, All 200+MB of Chrome I might add, in your user profile. Now, in many enterprise environments this isn't a problem, simply because there's one computer, one user, but then there's the other enterprise environments.
First problem, Roaming Profiles. Every time someone logs in, the PC will have to download their profile, which includes all 200MB's of chrome, from the server. Since most roaming profiles are cached onto the PC it would only come down once per machine, but If it's a multiple user system the more users that use it, the more downloading it does. also keep in mind that the PC uploads that also back to the server. This of course adds traffic to the network, load on the server and time waiting to login and logout.
Don't use roaming profiles? you still got an issue. first off, in a multiple user environment, you still have profiles to deal with since profiles don't auto delete by default. Each user is taking up at least 200mb for google chrome alone. if you have other programs installed, there's settings and customizations as well, so you can easily expect a 250-300mb profile per user. At 250mb, every 4 users takes 1gb, every 40 - 10GB, and every 400 - 100gb. In a student lab situation, one lab alone can have upwards of 10 classes at up to 50 students each with no defined seating arrangements, so at worse case scenario (which I would hope is planned for if your rolling out an enterprise image BTW) thats 500 login's per machine for a grand total of 125-150gb of hard drive space dedicated solely for profiles (which may only have been used once on that PC BTW). If you enjoy your lab machines grinding to a halt because of a trashing fragmented hard drive or 4+ hour hard drive virus scans, then I guess this scenario is right up your alley.
But you can set profiles to delete at logout right? Yeah, except now your copying a 200-300mb profile every time someone logs in, which is great for watching a student freak out when their on the 2-3 minute of logging in. and the best part? Since Chrome is built into the user profile, once you Sysprep the machine the chrome version is locked to that version until you re-image that machine with a new image, so everytime a user logs in, they download the latest google chrome which could be anywhere from 10-50MB depending on how old the chrome on the machine is. Do that times 50-500 and watch your internet bandwidth disappear, On a periodic predictable curve associated with the class bell I might add.
But you could install chrome in the Program files directory right? yeah, except users can't write in that area by default and auto update will fail, so you'll have to deploy patches using MSI files, so that advantage of chrome updating itself goes right out the window unless you want users to write to the chrome directory, which would be a really stupid idea considering that all users will be using it.
So yeah, If I had a choice of screwing around with MSI's and use Either IE or Firefox vs screwing around with Chrome in an enterprise environment, I'd choose MSI's anyday hands down.
Plugin wise, there's always been talk that Microsoft was going to add adobe patches to windows update, but it never seems to happen.
And you're right. Right now the browsers are not being targeted, the third party plugins are, and chrome has been focusing on keeping exploit of those plugins to a minimum, but when these rogue sites fail to expolit a plugin hole, they have to resort to exploiting the user, and it seems like the IE team is more focused on protecting the user from themselves rather than protect them from third party plugins. (that is unless you count using the activeX filtering as a plugin blocker a la noscript, which it isn't because its simply not as granular as noscript)
Adobe seems to be at least getting wise to updating their plugins (Acrobat can be set to auto update, and flash prompts you at startup although it's very clunky and has to be done twice) Oracle has no clue with Java. It pops up a tray icon that's easy to overlook and doesn't have an autoupdate option. This is where MS should seriously step in and update these programs if they are installed on the PC, especially since just about every hardware vendor includes at least one of these heavily exploited plugins.
Out of all the browsers I've tested so far virus wise. (ie9, Firefox, Chrome) IE9 is the most secure out of the box when it comes to drive by and rogueware trojans that are not exploiting secrity holes from third party plugins, and it's simply because IE9 uses a file's hash to determine if a downloaded file is commonly downloaded or not.
Since most rogueware sites pad their payload executable on demand to avoid AV signature detection, the downloaded file is never a common download and will fail the hash check.
Once you add security plugins in the mix, Chrome and Firefox get much more secure in that they tend to avoid the drop sites that eventually send you the malicious payload. IE9 using Tracking Protection Lists gives you some similar protection but it's not nearly as good as Adblock Plus or Noscipt at blocking malicious content. Even if you use similar Adblock Plus lists. Adblock plus alone will block 75-90% of drive by downloading simply by blocking ad's, which is the popular method used by scammers to redirect you to a dropper site. Noscript can boost that percentage close to 95-99%, but both of these plugins won't stop anything if a site was whitelisted and then got hacked. In these cases when the other protections fail is where IE9 Application reputation shines.
Now I've heard chrome is adding a similar hash reputation feature in a future chrome build. Hell it might be in it now since the last one I used was 13. When that happens I don't see why chrome couldn't block malicious drive by downloads just as if not more effective as IE9.