Good luck with the new generation of consoles. I used to play on consoles more than PC as it was less hassle. Nowadays the situation is reversed. Drivers aren't a major problem, console games are also shoved out and patched later, many console games demand online play and updates before they will run, etc. Malware isn't a problem if you only use Windows for gaming - I don't do mail or general web browsing on my Windows gaming box, so malware isn't going to get installed on it. Literally, all it does is act as a boot-loader for steam.
The start button does actually help when doing RDP of VMs. Every single program isn't automatically pinned to the start screen any more. More of the settings are available in metro, and now you can configure graphics for the metro desktop background the change isn't so jarring between metro and desktop. But yes, there is plenty of brain damage still there.
Again, the big reason for running 8.1 is support of 2012r2 servers. We skipped Windows 2012 on the server side and skipped 8 on the clients. But if you start skipping too many versions of Windows migration starts to become a bitch.
Exactly. Just look at what happened to discrete math co-processors, discrete sound cards, discrete network cards, etc. It's only a matter of time. Using the CPU to do stuff in software is always going to be more flexible, as the above poster mentions, it's only a matter of time before the CPU is fast enough that most people aren't willing to pay extra for discrete GPUs. I'm betting on another 1-2 generations before this is the case. Haswell is pretty close for many people already - especially in portables, and portables are out-selling desktops these days.
Nah, if intel can ramp up fast enough in the next couple of years they will reach "good enough" status and software won't demand better for a few years. The average user doesn't have a 4k display (even on steam - which is skewed towards gamers - the most common res on steam is either 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 at the moment).
The Windows 2012 R2 RSAT requires the Windows 8.1 client OS. There are a number of improvements in 2012R2 in particular with regards to hyper-v, directaccess, etc. Also (and this is the point for me in particular), Windows 2012R2 and Windows 8.1 have vastly improved PowerShell support (vs. Windows 7) for doing stuff from the command line. Yes, I know the UI is a bitch, but 8.1 fixes some of the Windows 8 brain damage, and if you're in any way involved in IT you owe it to yourself to keep up with the times so you can actually slam/praise whatever OS based on actual experience rather than hearsay.
True, but while Commodore (and to a lesser degree, Atari) got the hardware design right, they failed when it came to software. Whilst AmigaOS was pre-emptively multi-tasking (which was great) they just didn't have the level of abstraction from the hardware for doing graphics, sound, etc. The programmer had to write directly to the hardware. On the Mac it was mostly done via libraries. Yes, slower, sure - but it freed apple to more quickly adapt to new hardware.
In terms of the memory model, sure. In terms of application software, it wasn't until Windows 95 that the average PC user had anything comparable or better than Mac OS. There was no standard way of doing graphics, no standard way of doing audio, no common consumer multitasking, etc.
I was there, as a PC user, and it was pretty awful. CPU power with the 486 was pretty great, but the rest of the environment was a shambles. That WINDOWS 95 was such as massive improvement over the status quo in PC land at the time should tell you something.
No, because it wasn't until Windows 95 that the average PC user had an operating system which actually took advantage of the 386 feature set, and even then only in a rudimentary and half-assed way. The 386 came out in the mid 80s, it was a very long time between the 386 being released and PCs actually having anything to show for it.
Most people just want to make video or voice calls over IP. Facetime does this, and is installed on well over 400 million mobile devices. "Only if facetime did everything skype does" is a misnomer, as most people don't use everything skype does.
It doesn't need to know its talking to Skype, it just speaks the Skype API (just like any SIP device speaks SIP) Microsoft are changing the Skype API (e.g., similar to changing protocol from SIP to Cisco's Skinny), and thus hardware that speaks the old version of it will break. As this API is not open, good luck!
To clarify what i mean by painting themselves into a corner.... the custom chips on the Amiga had to be driver by low level assembly language code - there was no API to drive them via an abstracted programming interface. They were also tightly coupled with the rest of the system - in the A500/A600/A2000/A1000 case, the chip ram was accessed every other clock cycle by the custom chips. Where apple won was the programming libraries they had - stuff like quickdraw - which enabled them to change hardware without changing the way programs had to be written to drive it. Yes, this had performance implications with early hardware (Amiga was faster), but it scaled much more easily. Heaps of software on the Amiga which was written for first generation machines broke with new kickstart versions, new CPU versions (incompatible with CPU cache on the 68020 and up), new Agnus versions, etc.
High end A3000 and A4000 weren't just rare in the US, they were rare everywhere. The Amiga was reasonably popular here in Australia (I had an A500 and A1200), and I have only ever seen one A3000 in person. I've been looking on Ebay for a local A4000 for some time now, but again... rarer than rockinghorse shit. It's easier to just run UAE. I am an ex amiga user from the late 80s/early 90s...
Yes, and the A500 and A600 accounted for the VAST majority of Amiga sales. You may have upgraded your A4000, but few did - and the A4000 was only a tiny fraction of the Amiga market. By the time the 68060 came out, it was destroyed by the Pentium in terms of performance, AGA was destroyed by Super VGA cards, the 8 bit 4 channel audio was destroyed by PC sound cards like the GUS and Awe32, etc. When 3d cards like the Voodoo came out it was pretty much game over.
I used to own an Amiga between 1989 and 1993 and I have a massive soft spot for the platform (same way I feel about my Macs today), but Commodore really painted themselves into a corner with such a heavy dependence on custom chips and lack of an API to drive them. They couldn't change much as far as architecture goes without breaking their entire software library.
Android is pretty much like microsoft actually - commodity OS for whatever hardware you want to run it on. Less focus on security being built into the system and relying on the end user to deal with it (sideloading, custom roms, etc.).
Apple doesn't do budget, low end. When the smartphone market is saturated (or rather, when they don't make 20-40% margin on equipment they build for that market), they'll just move onto something else.
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Good luck with the new generation of consoles. I used to play on consoles more than PC as it was less hassle. Nowadays the situation is reversed. Drivers aren't a major problem, console games are also shoved out and patched later, many console games demand online play and updates before they will run, etc. Malware isn't a problem if you only use Windows for gaming - I don't do mail or general web browsing on my Windows gaming box, so malware isn't going to get installed on it. Literally, all it does is act as a boot-loader for steam.
I'm guessing you just buy indie bundles and don't have any AAA titles other than Portal or Half-life 2.
The start button does actually help when doing RDP of VMs. Every single program isn't automatically pinned to the start screen any more. More of the settings are available in metro, and now you can configure graphics for the metro desktop background the change isn't so jarring between metro and desktop. But yes, there is plenty of brain damage still there.
Again, the big reason for running 8.1 is support of 2012r2 servers. We skipped Windows 2012 on the server side and skipped 8 on the clients. But if you start skipping too many versions of Windows migration starts to become a bitch.
Exactly. Just look at what happened to discrete math co-processors, discrete sound cards, discrete network cards, etc. It's only a matter of time. Using the CPU to do stuff in software is always going to be more flexible, as the above poster mentions, it's only a matter of time before the CPU is fast enough that most people aren't willing to pay extra for discrete GPUs. I'm betting on another 1-2 generations before this is the case. Haswell is pretty close for many people already - especially in portables, and portables are out-selling desktops these days.
Nah, if intel can ramp up fast enough in the next couple of years they will reach "good enough" status and software won't demand better for a few years. The average user doesn't have a 4k display (even on steam - which is skewed towards gamers - the most common res on steam is either 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 at the moment).
Eventually though, GPUs become "good enough" until software catches up. I suspect we're getting close to that point now.
Doesn't work with the Windows 2012 / Windows 2012R2 RSAT, sorry thanks for playing...
Yes. My steam library has 84 games in it. 4 of them are available for Linux.
Powershell improvements, and support for the Windows 2012R2 RSAT mostly.
The Windows 2012 R2 RSAT requires the Windows 8.1 client OS. There are a number of improvements in 2012R2 in particular with regards to hyper-v, directaccess, etc. Also (and this is the point for me in particular), Windows 2012R2 and Windows 8.1 have vastly improved PowerShell support (vs. Windows 7) for doing stuff from the command line. Yes, I know the UI is a bitch, but 8.1 fixes some of the Windows 8 brain damage, and if you're in any way involved in IT you owe it to yourself to keep up with the times so you can actually slam/praise whatever OS based on actual experience rather than hearsay.
(I had an amiga as well, before my PC in fact...)
True, but while Commodore (and to a lesser degree, Atari) got the hardware design right, they failed when it came to software. Whilst AmigaOS was pre-emptively multi-tasking (which was great) they just didn't have the level of abstraction from the hardware for doing graphics, sound, etc. The programmer had to write directly to the hardware. On the Mac it was mostly done via libraries. Yes, slower, sure - but it freed apple to more quickly adapt to new hardware.
In terms of the memory model, sure. In terms of application software, it wasn't until Windows 95 that the average PC user had anything comparable or better than Mac OS. There was no standard way of doing graphics, no standard way of doing audio, no common consumer multitasking, etc.
I was there, as a PC user, and it was pretty awful. CPU power with the 486 was pretty great, but the rest of the environment was a shambles. That WINDOWS 95 was such as massive improvement over the status quo in PC land at the time should tell you something.
No, because it wasn't until Windows 95 that the average PC user had an operating system which actually took advantage of the 386 feature set, and even then only in a rudimentary and half-assed way. The 386 came out in the mid 80s, it was a very long time between the 386 being released and PCs actually having anything to show for it.
Most people just want to make video or voice calls over IP. Facetime does this, and is installed on well over 400 million mobile devices. "Only if facetime did everything skype does" is a misnomer, as most people don't use everything skype does.
I don't have Skype on any of my systems and it is blocked on my network. It's malware, plain and simple.
I guarantee you that if apple were to release FaceTime for Windows, Skype would be dead in the water.
SIP is not really something end users should be dealing with directly. For what it is intended to do, it works just fine.
Jabber? Anything that talks SIP? Google talk, if you want something to just work (which is just a big public-access jabber server)
It doesn't need to know its talking to Skype, it just speaks the Skype API (just like any SIP device speaks SIP) Microsoft are changing the Skype API (e.g., similar to changing protocol from SIP to Cisco's Skinny), and thus hardware that speaks the old version of it will break. As this API is not open, good luck!
To clarify what i mean by painting themselves into a corner.... the custom chips on the Amiga had to be driver by low level assembly language code - there was no API to drive them via an abstracted programming interface. They were also tightly coupled with the rest of the system - in the A500/A600/A2000/A1000 case, the chip ram was accessed every other clock cycle by the custom chips. Where apple won was the programming libraries they had - stuff like quickdraw - which enabled them to change hardware without changing the way programs had to be written to drive it. Yes, this had performance implications with early hardware (Amiga was faster), but it scaled much more easily. Heaps of software on the Amiga which was written for first generation machines broke with new kickstart versions, new CPU versions (incompatible with CPU cache on the 68020 and up), new Agnus versions, etc.
High end A3000 and A4000 weren't just rare in the US, they were rare everywhere. The Amiga was reasonably popular here in Australia (I had an A500 and A1200), and I have only ever seen one A3000 in person. I've been looking on Ebay for a local A4000 for some time now, but again... rarer than rockinghorse shit. It's easier to just run UAE. I am an ex amiga user from the late 80s/early 90s...
Yes, and the A500 and A600 accounted for the VAST majority of Amiga sales. You may have upgraded your A4000, but few did - and the A4000 was only a tiny fraction of the Amiga market. By the time the 68060 came out, it was destroyed by the Pentium in terms of performance, AGA was destroyed by Super VGA cards, the 8 bit 4 channel audio was destroyed by PC sound cards like the GUS and Awe32, etc. When 3d cards like the Voodoo came out it was pretty much game over.
I used to own an Amiga between 1989 and 1993 and I have a massive soft spot for the platform (same way I feel about my Macs today), but Commodore really painted themselves into a corner with such a heavy dependence on custom chips and lack of an API to drive them. They couldn't change much as far as architecture goes without breaking their entire software library.
Android is pretty much like microsoft actually - commodity OS for whatever hardware you want to run it on. Less focus on security being built into the system and relying on the end user to deal with it (sideloading, custom roms, etc.).
Look how that worked out.
Apple doesn't do budget, low end. When the smartphone market is saturated (or rather, when they don't make 20-40% margin on equipment they build for that market), they'll just move onto something else.