I hate the fact that you were modded as a troll, because you're completely right. I use MobaXTerm on my Windows 8.1 box and it is great for managing all my Linux boxes.
I spent years trying to get a really functional Linux desktop, but now I'm on Windows and quite happy. Yes, I still use Linux for servers but generally for desktops I see little point in "rocking the boat" so to speak. There's just too much hassle to get Linux happy on some modern hardware; I still have to custom compile a kernel in order to support the WiFi card in my laptop purchased in late January 2015... the appropriate drivers are only available in the bleeding edge kernels in bleeding edge distributions... and to be honest I'd rather just have a laptop that works than one I have to futz with periodically because something broke.
Yeah, I'm getting conservative in my old age... or maybe I just want to get work done.
To expand on this, it also depends a lot on the job. While you're absolutely correct for software developer positions, there are other completely different positions that offer work from home that actually works.
One prime example is my job. I'm a consultant who works for a (very) large technology company. In my role I have very clearly defined deliverables that require me to get off my butt and do stuff; namely customer visits, presentation, system designs and so forth. And my pay is structured such that I can live on my base without lifting a finger, but I will live a lot better with the commissions I am paid in addition to my base. Yes, my role is partly sales but I have found I am quite good at it (which was a surprise for someone who spent the last 15 years or so locked up in a datacenter). This means I am measured but also driven... and I get to see an almost immediate return on my investment of time and work.
My job is one that works particularly well for work from home. If I don't work, I get paid less... and eventually those "measurables" show that I'm not doing anything. It might take a couple of quarters but eventually I'll get replaced and that'd be my own fault. But if I work hard and do the job I'm asked to do then I see improvements in my paycheck that encourage me to work even harder, and the statistics show that I'm doing my job. Everyone wins, right? Yeah, there are catches but generally it's good for everyone involved. It doesn't hurt that I enjoy the hell out of my job.
Obviously this doesn't work well for all jobs. My job requires customer face-time so it can't be sent to India. Though theoretically about 80% of my job probably could be done by someone in an office in Bangalore, it's that 20% "soft-skill" stuff that can't. 99% of my customers are quite conservative and would NEVER accept someone trying to do my job via Skype or some other technology. It just doesn't work. By the time the generation of kids coming into the workplace who are weaned on Facetime are in the CIO/CEO/CFO positions that I typically talk to I'll either be dead or retired. Software developers are particularly vulnerable to this problem because they are doing work that can be easily offshored. This is why WFH doesn't work for every job.
I guess my point of this ramble is that Work From Home is possible, and can be extremely enjoyable (I consider it a great perk of my job) but first you need to have the right kind of job. And if you don't want to be constantly concerned about losing your job to someone in India or China then you need a job that's customer-facing and profit-making for the company. Software developer is a no... customer-facing consultant is a yes. Finally, a good incentive program to work hard is not required but certainly makes it a lot easier. Just be wary of the risks of such an endeavour; if your boss doesn't also work from home then you might find yourself excluded by the fact that he doesn't see you every day. Mine works from home in another state so I rarely see him... but he covers an entire region so he rarely sees any of his people in person. But again there's that mindset; he works from home too so he knows how to work with employees who also WFH.
I had an SP1 and now own a Dell Venue 11 Pro (competitor to the Surface/Pro 3). What exactly is the problem with it? I realize it depends a lot on the applications you run, but that is true of any device. For example, if you're using it to run Putty... then no, the SP or its competitors are going to suck. However, if you're using it as a content consumption device, which let's be honest is exactly what a tablet is made for and good at... it's awesome. Now, that comes with the caveat that you're either using apps or the touch browser... desktop side is different.
But on that desktop side, you can run Putty... you can run PowerShell... and you can run any one of a number of desktop browsers and applications, but of course then you have the OPTIONAL keyboard that you can use to operate said applications.
The beauty of the SP3 and its ilk is that it is exactly what you need when you need it. No, none of them are going to be incredible gaming rigs but they're awesome at being productivity tools as well as content consumption devices. If you need solely or primiarly a productivity tool then no the SP and its ilk are probably a bad match. However, if you want a tool that can do both jobs equally well then you really have no choice but to go with one of these Windows 8 devices. But that's not a bad thing, either.
For $500 you can get a laptop that's built like a Soviet tank, or has atrocious battery life, or has a really slow SSD, or has 2GB of RAM... you get the idea. For someone who wants performance, portability, storage and being useful there aren't a lot of "magical $500 laptops" that really fit the bill. I know; I went shopping recently for new computers (yes, plural).
I ended up with a Venue 11 Pro and an Alienware 15. Yeah, both Dell but they fit my needs perfectly. The AW is my gaming rig and is awesome (runs AC:Unity in Ultra and looks gorgeous) while the VP11 is my computer of choice when I'm on the road (I am extremely mobile at work, traveling sometimes hundreds of miles in a day). Both of them are attached to the same Microsoft account, have Evernote, OneDrive and DropBox installed. As a result, the same files are always available and my workflow benefits greatly from it. As files fall into disuse I migrate them off to the "archive" which is my Linux-based server at home... which is still accessible via an OpenVPN that I have installed on all of my computers if I happen to be on the road.
But you know what? Neither of them will do "all the things" perfectly. They both run the same OS and the same applications, but serve completely different purposes. I would never sit in front of a customer with my AW in part because the battery life is horrendous (it's a gaming laptop, what do you expect?) and is just not really all that portable. Similarly I would never consider playing AC:Unity on my VP11 because... well, it would suck quite frankly. Could I? Yes... but just because we can do a thing does not follow that we should.
So why did I buy two laptops instead of a desktop gaming rig? Well, that was so that when I am traveling for several days (have a trip to Chicago coming up in a few weeks for example) I can still bring my gaming rig with me so I can play in a hotel room. Sure, it rarely leaves my desk but when it does I want to have that powerhouse on-hand.
Well, I don't have a Surface 3 as I upgraded my Surface Pro 1 to a Dell Venue 11 Pro (7140; late '14 model). The same Geekbench test turns up a number of 4364. That's running the Core M 5Y71. I'd expect the Surface 3 to be similar in performance. The x7 is slightly faster than this Core M but doesn't support dynamic frequency scaling. Not sure what ultimate difference this would make to battery life.
Having said all this, I have no complaints about my Venue. It works exactly as advertised, is reasonably fast, and has an absolutely crazy-good battery life.
So you were a OS X dev for years until recently yet you think that "Driver lever changes" can bring OS X's power management to Windows? You don't even know what Grand Central Dispatch is but you were an OS X Dev? Serious credibility problems there. You're a troll. Ta, ta
Wow, you're hilarious.
I know exactly what GCD is, and have worked with it. I just am under this strange belief that there's no magic in software and that computers still succumb to the laws of physics. Better power management comes primarily from hardware... and while GCD is a very good framework for controlling that hardware it's not a magical route to better battery life. Software can help with coordination but you still need the hardware.
While I won't argue the concept and implementation of this framework are good, most of the magical gains you'll hear about because of GCD are marketing numbers and not real-world.
Yet other laptops running Windows get just fine battery life with the same or smaller battery. Simply put; Apple develops their own EFI to manage fans and power states and when the driver doesn't exist or is non-optimal, the hardware runs "hot". Grand Central Dispatch is a nice technology but does NOT magically increase your battery life despite what Apple wants to claim. It merely provides a common framework for addressing the EFI and power management customizations in a way that is pretty nice, but not a magic bullet. As Scotty was fond of saying, "You cannae change the laws of physics, Captain".
The level of ignorance and bias you display are unfortunately all too common. I get it; you're an Apple fan. Just because you read an article on a nice API doesn't mean you know diddly about hardware and power management. I don't claim to be an expert, but after doing embedded systems development for a while in my youth I think I might have some more knowledge of which I speak.
The warrant goes on to state that the FBI inspected the SEBs around the seat he occupied on his 4/15 Denver to Chicago leg, and found signs of damage and tampering.
So... during a 2 hour flight (30 minutes of which is spent climbing and descending) there wasn't one person or flight attendant who noticed the guy pushing the person next to him out of their seat to squeeze down in the pitiful space between coach seats to fiddle with the SEB? I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Doesn't matter how familiar you are with the hardware... in order to tamper with it to the extent that you can then plug your laptop into it you can't do that by touch, or quickly. Given all the paranoia about security I imagine he wouldn't have been able to do any of this without someone screaming "Terrorist!!" on the flight... then we'd be reading a very different story.
2) Under OS X, open any kind of file in any kind of editor. Go back to the Finder window, rename the file, move it to a different folder no problem. Can't be done under Windows. Half the time, even after you close the file (not the editor app), the app fails to 'release' the lock and you STILL can't rename the file.
So what you're saying is that Windows implements logical and useful locking mechanisms whereas OSX implements something bound to break eventually? Wow... what a crime. I've used Mac OS, Windows, Linux, BSD and more flavours of UNIX than you can shake a stick at... I think Windows' file locking semantics are just fine the way they are. Anything else can lead to confusion, corruption and lost files.
Having said that, I do wish Windows would implement a "Can't do this because file is open in (blah).exe" error message instead of "Access denied", which is really dumb.
3) None of Microsoft's pseudo-shell implementations come close to bash/csh/ksh in useability.
Actually, PowerShell is really good. I wasn't a believer the first time I used it but once you got the semantics and ideas down in your head it becomes an incredibly powerful tool for systems administration. At my last job I had a folder full of.ps scripts that I used daily to simplify my job, run reporting and generally make myself stand out among my GUI-focused peers on the Windows networks. That standing out helped me get a job where I no longer need them, but that's cool because I like my new job even better. And I still have them if I need them again.
And on Windows you can install Cygwin. I have MobaXTerm installed on all my Windows machines and it's really good; fully functional Cygwin and X-Server environment with a single click of the mouse... compatibility with a lot of my Linux scripts. Awesome.
I am running QEMU-KVM. My Windows XP virtual machine and other machines run really smooth and quick with the same type of settings (actually less much RAM and CPU allocated), adjusting for 32bit XP and 64bit Windows 10.
So what you're saying is that a 14 year old operating system performs better in a suboptimal virtual environment where the programmers have specifically targeted the performance profiles of said OS for about 10 of those years? Stop the freaking presses, mate.
Seriously? Windows 10 isn't final, and QEMU-KVM optimization for Win10 will probably lag at least 6 months to a year after release. Let me know then how it performs given your adjustments. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy but even I can tell you that your test is even more horrendously flawed than the article poster's.
First tool I install on my Windows boxes is MobaXTerm which contains a fully configured and set up cygwin including X Server. Works like a champ for me managing my Linux boxes, and all I had to do was install it. SSH works, remoted X works, and I can run bash scripts even referencing/proc entries from my Linux box and most of them work with no modifications.
It's been years since I've needed or even noticed needing better graphics performance yet battery performance of OS X pure versus Windows? Oh yeah, THAT I notice. On the occasions I forget a charger I have to minimise running Windows or I'll be running out of battery at least twice as fast as when using OS X. I can get work 7 Hours using just the battery on my rMBP with occasional excursions to Windows to check mail but or use corporate windows only tools but running windows will only give me 3 hours. Windows isn't even doing much, it just does it all the time & never lets the CPU sleep for any significant time - see here for reasons why.
What you're seeing here really is driver issues. Apple doesn't put the resources into developing the Boot Camp drivers properly for Windows... they're good enough so they're shipped. Apple doesn't want you to run Windows, or Linux or anything else. They want their beautiful machines running their beautiful OS, to hell with what the end user actually needs. A good set of power management drivers would go a long way to fix Windows on Mac hardware but they're not going to put the time and energy into it.
This philosophy of Apple's is part of the reason I've abandoned them as a platform for my own use.
I will preface this by saying that I was a Mac user and developer for over a decade until very recently...
To your Classical MacOS I reply Windows Me.
Sorry, will have to call this one out. At the time that classical MacOS was around, most users were either running Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Few people ran ME... I worked in the industry and I think at the time for every 10 Win2K boxes I saw, I saw maybe one ME and 15 Windows 98. Noone saw a compelling need for ME so they didn't upgrade. And early versions of OSX up to Jaguar (10.2) were horrendous messes under the hood. The interface was gorgeous but some of the APIs were kludged together wrecks.
Now, I'm not saying that Windows was much better, at least on the 98/ME track... but the Windows 2000 API cleanup actually produced some really nice results. This was at the same time (roughly) as Mac OS9 which was one of the most awful kludges of an OS I think I've ever had the displeasure to work on. It was obvious that OS9 was created in a place where OSX was getting all the attention, but even OSX wasn't really properly clean until 10.2... and even then it was slow. Have you ever used 10.0 or 10.1 on hardware of the time? It was horrifyingly slow to do anything and the only thing it really had going for it was the interface.
Speaking of the interface... seriously... Finder is significantly worse than Explorer in terms of threading, resource utilization and stability. You want to see a kludged mess, check out Finder circa... well... any version of OSX actually. Of course, I've recently abandoned the Mac platform for Windows 8 for various reasons so I can't speak to Yosemite... but every time I work on a machine running Yosemite I just feel like the entire OS is going in a direction I don't appreciate.
Need I compare OS X & Vista? Windows 8?
Vista and Windows 8 both had huge improvements under the hood. Windows 8 in particular has gotten a bad rep simply because it has a UI that people find really polarizing... but it's seriously a fast and efficient OS that really takes advantage of the underlying hardware. It actually is a better operating system than the much-vaunted Windows 7 (which was itself an improvement over Vista) but most people never get to see it because they get hung up on the UI.
I have played with Windows 10, and I like it. I run 8.1 on my computers today but will switch to 10 when it comes out. That's not to say it's a fundamentally "better" operating system than OSX... but for my needs the priorities are all screwed up in OSX. They're both modern, stable and secure operating systems... and if that's all you need then great. However, running the same applications on both platforms does show the weaknesses of OSX; memory management is of questionable value in OSX and the storage management is kludgy at best.
Windows has been faster than OSX on the same hardware since Windows 7. I know; I've always had a Windows Boot Camp installation on my Macs. My last Mac is still a good one (2012 15" MBP) but has now been surpassed significantly. It used to be that Macs had a 5 year lifespan whereas Windows had a 3... that's one reason I liked Macs. Nowadays, not so much... and it's not changing workloads that are killing it but rather the overly heavy APIs and core problems with OSX that just don't scale quite so well... so new versions get heavier and slower on the same hardware.
You don't need personal knowledge, it's about business platforms. One is about selling hardware for a profit, one is about monetizing users. And the way most companies monetize users is data mining. Spying is their business model.
I hate to say this, but if you honestly believe that Apple isn't above double-dipping here then you're sorely mistaken. A very quick Google search turns up plenty of reports of data being reported back to "the mothership" on iOS just as much or maybe more than Windows or Android. Yes, Apple makes money on the hardware but they're also a publicly traded company with a mandate to basically print money for their shareholders. Said shareholders (and the board) would have a fit if Apple were leaving that much obvious money on the table.
I can say I use a Roccat Kone XTD and it's my favourite mouse I've ever used. I don't really care about the bling... it's actually not all that bad. What I care about is good tracking, weight and button response and this thing has all of them in spades:)
The Linux support is also really good, as you said. Their engineers really are geeks like us:)
See, the only thing I don't like here is that it's wireless.
I have used wired and wireless mice for a long time and have quite a collection, but I've pretty much abandoned wireless mice for all but simple usage when on the road because of interference or battery life issues. Bluetooth in particular is usually horrendous, dongle-mice tend to be better but still have issues on occasion.
I have three active computers I use a lot so have different mice. My work system I use a wired Dell mouse; a K251D (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-6-Button-Perfectly-Connectors-Compatible/dp/B005O239FW) which for a cheap mouse is bloody fantastic. Good tracking, decent if bland shape and adjustable sensitivity. Not a good gaming mouse, but for a great all-purpose one it's awesome.
On my gaming rig (the one I'm typing on) I have a Roccat Kone XTD (http://www.roccat.org/en/Products/Gaming-Mice/Kone-XTD-Series/Kone-XTD/) which is one of my favourite mice to-date. It's shaped perfectly for my right-handed self, has great adjustable weight (I packed it with all the weights that came with it) and a brilliantly sheathed cable that's incredibly long.
My wireless mouse of choice on the road is a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/arc-touch-mouse). It's wireless with a dongle, but collapses flat so it can be packed neatly in my laptop bag. Perfect on the go, works on just about every surface I've thrown it at and gets great battery life. I use it with my work laptop when on the road and my Surface Pro.
Now having said all that I do like a lot of Logitech's gaming gear. My keyboard is a G710+ and I have a G13 that when used with the Roccat is brilliant. I just haven't found a Logitech mouse I really liked to be honest; the Roccat fell perfectly into my hand when I tried it and I pretty much got it on the spot it was that good. Still, this one looks pretty good except for the wireless part... as I said I just don't do wireless for gaming:)
For the record, I own two smartwatches; the original Pebble and a Moto 360. The Pebble has mostly been relegated to a drawer because I just don't use it any more... probably go on eBay pretty soon. My Moto 360 gets used daily because it's really handy for my work. I work in the tech field; I'm a consultant for a large company who travels all over two states talking to customers about their technology needs.
For my part, my Moto 360 nearly always gets questions at the table. "Do you like it?" "Is it useful?" etc. and I'll tell you exactly what I've told them; it depends a lot on your use cases.
I use my 360 all the time. It's right there on my wrist, so even while driving if I receive a notification that I've received a text message I can flip my wrist over and check the summary on my wrist to see if I need to respond to it, or if it can wait until I get to my destination. I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket or retrieve it from my jacket that may be hanging in the back of my car (depending on where I put it). I get reminders of appointments and again I don't have to rely on my phone to do the same. In fact, because the alarm on my 360 is vibrate only I can actually turn the notifications completely off on my phone most of the time and I still know what's going on. Similarly, in a meeting when my phone rings I can immediately see who's calling at a glance and throw it off to voicemail. I also like the ability to use the microphone in my 360 to set timers, set an alarm, bring up the weather etc. For my use case, it works extremely well.
There are some things I wish my 360 did though that would be cool. I wish airlines in particular would get with the program and allow me to bring up my boarding pass QR on the screen of my watch rather than digging for my phone. American Airlines already has an app for the Android Wear OS, but it doesn't do that... annoying. But as a general rule these are niggles that will be ironed out as/if people buy more of these devices as you said.
I'll also note that because I'm not turning my phone on every time there's a notification or I want to know the time, my battery life on my phone actually increased when I moved to a smartwatch.
As far as charging every night, that's less of a problem than you might think. I don't wear my watch to bed, so I have my Moto 360 charging base sitting on my nightstand right next to the cable for my phone. Instead of setting my watch on the nightstand itself, I set it on the charging base and voila... no problems. It's no more a chore than setting it down, really. Yes, it can be frustrating if you are traveling and forget the base, but that's also true of forgetting charging cables for any of your other devices. So far it hasn't been a problem. Battery life also isn't half bad on the 360; I can get about 30 hours of tested time out of mine... given that I charge it nightly that's pretty bloody impressive and I have no complaints about it.
I do agree though that this is still a nascent industry... people haven't really found that killer app for a smartwatch yet, but for people like me who are natural early adopters, techies and people who just like stuff like this I think there's still a market.
Seconded on this. I type a lot for work and I love my G710+. There's also a newer version, oddly called the G710 that replaces the Cherry MX Brown switches with the Blue, but I have not used it so I can't really judge.
I find the inverted decoration good; remember it's a gaming keyboard so the decoration is to highlight gaming keys (like W,A,S,D etc.). While you might not need it, it is nice. I also like the fact that it's lit; not because I ever really look at it, but seeing the keyboard lights at the bottom of my peripheral vision certainly does help when positioning my hands to type.
Having said all this good stuff though, it is a bit bulky. It has an extra row of gaming keys down the left hand side and a set of media keys on top. Plus, Logitech elected to make it tapered to a larger base. This makes it quite a large keyboard, but in my opinion it's totally worth it. For a mechanical it's also pretty quiet, though definitely not silent:)
The only reason I even knew it existed was because of This Week In Tech podcast that I've listened to for years. They often had Om Malik (the founder) on the show and he was entertaining enough to listen to. However, I didn't go to the site more than two or three times because they offered me nothing new. I get all my tech news from Slashdot (though less and less these days), ArsTechnica and Reddit. I don't need another news site... in fact I often think I need to trim down that list. Oh, you can probably add Gizmodo to that, though I am not sure I've been there in a while.
I think their problem was lack of advertising, and lack of a really compelling reason to go there. No-one knew about them and those who did had little reason to return because they offered nothing new.
But WiFi is a shared infrastructure, whereas Ethernet is dedicated. That does make a big difference when you have a lot of users in a small area. And no, adding access points doesn't help much because you end up causing interference unless you place the AP's properly and actually decrease the bandwidth.
And yes, I've seen an entire building taken out by interference from a nearby failure of a radio tower. The poor IT guys in that building were being screamed at and completely unable to do anything about it until the radio station repair guys arrived onsite and shut the tower down which took several hours.
Besides, there are still understandable and well-founded concerns about the security of wireless. In most businesses I work in the wireless is used for non-critical and low-speed applications like cellphones and tablets. Laptops get connected to WiFi only if they're in a conference room and even then it's rare. I don't know where you work, but I imagine it's somewhere startup-heavy like Silicon Valley where they go WiFi because they're too cheap to cable the building. It's not sustainable.
Trust me, these are the "warts" on the wireless market that vendors usually don't tell you about because they want to sell their wireless solutions that'll be obsolete in two years and then they can sell them to you again. I work in the industry... I actually sell enterprise wireless every day as part of my job (got two deals closing this week). Unlike you, I'm actually honest with my customers about the downside because by doing so I gain trust and become their trusted advisor which is why I'm damned good at my job.
I've had a NUC for a couple of years now as a media PC in my entertainment center. It's actually really bloody good and there is zero fan noise. Well, the fan noise is inaudible over the ceiling fan I also have in my living room. Even under incredibly heavy load I've never heard the fan rise above a very quiet whine, and honestly media decoding is NOT heavy load.
My particular one is an i3-3217U based machine with a 128GB MSATA SSD. Yeah, I'm a geek traitor in that I run Windows 8 on it, but mostly so I can play all my XBox Video movies and TV shows that I own as well as Netflix et al. Turn it on, boots in about 5 seconds and runs great. Not that I have to boot it often, mostly when I update it. Yeah, the SSD is small, but I have a ~12TB Linux server that shares out some of the drive space... that's where the movies go:)
Slashdot Mirror
I hate the fact that you were modded as a troll, because you're completely right. I use MobaXTerm on my Windows 8.1 box and it is great for managing all my Linux boxes.
I spent years trying to get a really functional Linux desktop, but now I'm on Windows and quite happy. Yes, I still use Linux for servers but generally for desktops I see little point in "rocking the boat" so to speak. There's just too much hassle to get Linux happy on some modern hardware; I still have to custom compile a kernel in order to support the WiFi card in my laptop purchased in late January 2015... the appropriate drivers are only available in the bleeding edge kernels in bleeding edge distributions... and to be honest I'd rather just have a laptop that works than one I have to futz with periodically because something broke.
Yeah, I'm getting conservative in my old age... or maybe I just want to get work done.
To expand on this, it also depends a lot on the job. While you're absolutely correct for software developer positions, there are other completely different positions that offer work from home that actually works.
One prime example is my job. I'm a consultant who works for a (very) large technology company. In my role I have very clearly defined deliverables that require me to get off my butt and do stuff; namely customer visits, presentation, system designs and so forth. And my pay is structured such that I can live on my base without lifting a finger, but I will live a lot better with the commissions I am paid in addition to my base. Yes, my role is partly sales but I have found I am quite good at it (which was a surprise for someone who spent the last 15 years or so locked up in a datacenter). This means I am measured but also driven... and I get to see an almost immediate return on my investment of time and work.
My job is one that works particularly well for work from home. If I don't work, I get paid less... and eventually those "measurables" show that I'm not doing anything. It might take a couple of quarters but eventually I'll get replaced and that'd be my own fault. But if I work hard and do the job I'm asked to do then I see improvements in my paycheck that encourage me to work even harder, and the statistics show that I'm doing my job. Everyone wins, right? Yeah, there are catches but generally it's good for everyone involved. It doesn't hurt that I enjoy the hell out of my job.
Obviously this doesn't work well for all jobs. My job requires customer face-time so it can't be sent to India. Though theoretically about 80% of my job probably could be done by someone in an office in Bangalore, it's that 20% "soft-skill" stuff that can't. 99% of my customers are quite conservative and would NEVER accept someone trying to do my job via Skype or some other technology. It just doesn't work. By the time the generation of kids coming into the workplace who are weaned on Facetime are in the CIO/CEO/CFO positions that I typically talk to I'll either be dead or retired. Software developers are particularly vulnerable to this problem because they are doing work that can be easily offshored. This is why WFH doesn't work for every job.
I guess my point of this ramble is that Work From Home is possible, and can be extremely enjoyable (I consider it a great perk of my job) but first you need to have the right kind of job. And if you don't want to be constantly concerned about losing your job to someone in India or China then you need a job that's customer-facing and profit-making for the company. Software developer is a no... customer-facing consultant is a yes. Finally, a good incentive program to work hard is not required but certainly makes it a lot easier. Just be wary of the risks of such an endeavour; if your boss doesn't also work from home then you might find yourself excluded by the fact that he doesn't see you every day. Mine works from home in another state so I rarely see him... but he covers an entire region so he rarely sees any of his people in person. But again there's that mindset; he works from home too so he knows how to work with employees who also WFH.
If the system is architected well, shouldn't all of those steps be automated... including monitoring and failover success/failure?
In a perfect world, with perfect systems documentation you'd be right. Unfortunately few of us have the pleasure of working in such an environment :)
I had an SP1 and now own a Dell Venue 11 Pro (competitor to the Surface/Pro 3). What exactly is the problem with it? I realize it depends a lot on the applications you run, but that is true of any device. For example, if you're using it to run Putty... then no, the SP or its competitors are going to suck. However, if you're using it as a content consumption device, which let's be honest is exactly what a tablet is made for and good at... it's awesome. Now, that comes with the caveat that you're either using apps or the touch browser... desktop side is different.
But on that desktop side, you can run Putty... you can run PowerShell... and you can run any one of a number of desktop browsers and applications, but of course then you have the OPTIONAL keyboard that you can use to operate said applications.
The beauty of the SP3 and its ilk is that it is exactly what you need when you need it. No, none of them are going to be incredible gaming rigs but they're awesome at being productivity tools as well as content consumption devices. If you need solely or primiarly a productivity tool then no the SP and its ilk are probably a bad match. However, if you want a tool that can do both jobs equally well then you really have no choice but to go with one of these Windows 8 devices. But that's not a bad thing, either.
For $500 you can get a laptop that's built like a Soviet tank, or has atrocious battery life, or has a really slow SSD, or has 2GB of RAM... you get the idea. For someone who wants performance, portability, storage and being useful there aren't a lot of "magical $500 laptops" that really fit the bill. I know; I went shopping recently for new computers (yes, plural).
I ended up with a Venue 11 Pro and an Alienware 15. Yeah, both Dell but they fit my needs perfectly. The AW is my gaming rig and is awesome (runs AC:Unity in Ultra and looks gorgeous) while the VP11 is my computer of choice when I'm on the road (I am extremely mobile at work, traveling sometimes hundreds of miles in a day). Both of them are attached to the same Microsoft account, have Evernote, OneDrive and DropBox installed. As a result, the same files are always available and my workflow benefits greatly from it. As files fall into disuse I migrate them off to the "archive" which is my Linux-based server at home... which is still accessible via an OpenVPN that I have installed on all of my computers if I happen to be on the road.
But you know what? Neither of them will do "all the things" perfectly. They both run the same OS and the same applications, but serve completely different purposes. I would never sit in front of a customer with my AW in part because the battery life is horrendous (it's a gaming laptop, what do you expect?) and is just not really all that portable. Similarly I would never consider playing AC:Unity on my VP11 because... well, it would suck quite frankly. Could I? Yes... but just because we can do a thing does not follow that we should.
So why did I buy two laptops instead of a desktop gaming rig? Well, that was so that when I am traveling for several days (have a trip to Chicago coming up in a few weeks for example) I can still bring my gaming rig with me so I can play in a hotel room. Sure, it rarely leaves my desk but when it does I want to have that powerhouse on-hand.
Well, I don't have a Surface 3 as I upgraded my Surface Pro 1 to a Dell Venue 11 Pro (7140; late '14 model). The same Geekbench test turns up a number of 4364. That's running the Core M 5Y71. I'd expect the Surface 3 to be similar in performance. The x7 is slightly faster than this Core M but doesn't support dynamic frequency scaling. Not sure what ultimate difference this would make to battery life.
Having said all this, I have no complaints about my Venue. It works exactly as advertised, is reasonably fast, and has an absolutely crazy-good battery life.
So you were a OS X dev for years until recently yet you think that "Driver lever changes" can bring OS X's power management to Windows? You don't even know what Grand Central Dispatch is but you were an OS X Dev? Serious credibility problems there. You're a troll. Ta, ta
Wow, you're hilarious.
I know exactly what GCD is, and have worked with it. I just am under this strange belief that there's no magic in software and that computers still succumb to the laws of physics. Better power management comes primarily from hardware... and while GCD is a very good framework for controlling that hardware it's not a magical route to better battery life. Software can help with coordination but you still need the hardware.
While I won't argue the concept and implementation of this framework are good, most of the magical gains you'll hear about because of GCD are marketing numbers and not real-world.
Yet other laptops running Windows get just fine battery life with the same or smaller battery. Simply put; Apple develops their own EFI to manage fans and power states and when the driver doesn't exist or is non-optimal, the hardware runs "hot". Grand Central Dispatch is a nice technology but does NOT magically increase your battery life despite what Apple wants to claim. It merely provides a common framework for addressing the EFI and power management customizations in a way that is pretty nice, but not a magic bullet. As Scotty was fond of saying, "You cannae change the laws of physics, Captain".
The level of ignorance and bias you display are unfortunately all too common. I get it; you're an Apple fan. Just because you read an article on a nice API doesn't mean you know diddly about hardware and power management. I don't claim to be an expert, but after doing embedded systems development for a while in my youth I think I might have some more knowledge of which I speak.
The warrant goes on to state that the FBI inspected the SEBs around the seat he occupied on his 4/15 Denver to Chicago leg, and found signs of damage and tampering.
So... during a 2 hour flight (30 minutes of which is spent climbing and descending) there wasn't one person or flight attendant who noticed the guy pushing the person next to him out of their seat to squeeze down in the pitiful space between coach seats to fiddle with the SEB? I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Doesn't matter how familiar you are with the hardware... in order to tamper with it to the extent that you can then plug your laptop into it you can't do that by touch, or quickly. Given all the paranoia about security I imagine he wouldn't have been able to do any of this without someone screaming "Terrorist!!" on the flight... then we'd be reading a very different story.
2) Under OS X, open any kind of file in any kind of editor. Go back to the Finder window, rename the file, move it to a different folder no problem. Can't be done under Windows. Half the time, even after you close the file (not the editor app), the app fails to 'release' the lock and you STILL can't rename the file.
So what you're saying is that Windows implements logical and useful locking mechanisms whereas OSX implements something bound to break eventually? Wow... what a crime. I've used Mac OS, Windows, Linux, BSD and more flavours of UNIX than you can shake a stick at... I think Windows' file locking semantics are just fine the way they are. Anything else can lead to confusion, corruption and lost files.
Having said that, I do wish Windows would implement a "Can't do this because file is open in (blah).exe" error message instead of "Access denied", which is really dumb.
3) None of Microsoft's pseudo-shell implementations come close to bash/csh/ksh in useability.
Actually, PowerShell is really good. I wasn't a believer the first time I used it but once you got the semantics and ideas down in your head it becomes an incredibly powerful tool for systems administration. At my last job I had a folder full of .ps scripts that I used daily to simplify my job, run reporting and generally make myself stand out among my GUI-focused peers on the Windows networks. That standing out helped me get a job where I no longer need them, but that's cool because I like my new job even better. And I still have them if I need them again.
And on Windows you can install Cygwin. I have MobaXTerm installed on all my Windows machines and it's really good; fully functional Cygwin and X-Server environment with a single click of the mouse... compatibility with a lot of my Linux scripts. Awesome.
I am running QEMU-KVM. My Windows XP virtual machine and other machines run really smooth and quick with the same type of settings (actually less much RAM and CPU allocated), adjusting for 32bit XP and 64bit Windows 10.
So what you're saying is that a 14 year old operating system performs better in a suboptimal virtual environment where the programmers have specifically targeted the performance profiles of said OS for about 10 of those years? Stop the freaking presses, mate.
Seriously? Windows 10 isn't final, and QEMU-KVM optimization for Win10 will probably lag at least 6 months to a year after release. Let me know then how it performs given your adjustments. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy but even I can tell you that your test is even more horrendously flawed than the article poster's.
Why? Seriously?
First tool I install on my Windows boxes is MobaXTerm which contains a fully configured and set up cygwin including X Server. Works like a champ for me managing my Linux boxes, and all I had to do was install it. SSH works, remoted X works, and I can run bash scripts even referencing /proc entries from my Linux box and most of them work with no modifications.
It's been years since I've needed or even noticed needing better graphics performance yet battery performance of OS X pure versus Windows? Oh yeah, THAT I notice. On the occasions I forget a charger I have to minimise running Windows or I'll be running out of battery at least twice as fast as when using OS X. I can get work 7 Hours using just the battery on my rMBP with occasional excursions to Windows to check mail but or use corporate windows only tools but running windows will only give me 3 hours. Windows isn't even doing much, it just does it all the time & never lets the CPU sleep for any significant time - see here for reasons why.
What you're seeing here really is driver issues. Apple doesn't put the resources into developing the Boot Camp drivers properly for Windows... they're good enough so they're shipped. Apple doesn't want you to run Windows, or Linux or anything else. They want their beautiful machines running their beautiful OS, to hell with what the end user actually needs. A good set of power management drivers would go a long way to fix Windows on Mac hardware but they're not going to put the time and energy into it.
This philosophy of Apple's is part of the reason I've abandoned them as a platform for my own use.
I will preface this by saying that I was a Mac user and developer for over a decade until very recently...
To your Classical MacOS I reply Windows Me.
Sorry, will have to call this one out. At the time that classical MacOS was around, most users were either running Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Few people ran ME... I worked in the industry and I think at the time for every 10 Win2K boxes I saw, I saw maybe one ME and 15 Windows 98. Noone saw a compelling need for ME so they didn't upgrade. And early versions of OSX up to Jaguar (10.2) were horrendous messes under the hood. The interface was gorgeous but some of the APIs were kludged together wrecks.
Now, I'm not saying that Windows was much better, at least on the 98/ME track... but the Windows 2000 API cleanup actually produced some really nice results. This was at the same time (roughly) as Mac OS9 which was one of the most awful kludges of an OS I think I've ever had the displeasure to work on. It was obvious that OS9 was created in a place where OSX was getting all the attention, but even OSX wasn't really properly clean until 10.2... and even then it was slow. Have you ever used 10.0 or 10.1 on hardware of the time? It was horrifyingly slow to do anything and the only thing it really had going for it was the interface.
Speaking of the interface... seriously... Finder is significantly worse than Explorer in terms of threading, resource utilization and stability. You want to see a kludged mess, check out Finder circa... well... any version of OSX actually. Of course, I've recently abandoned the Mac platform for Windows 8 for various reasons so I can't speak to Yosemite... but every time I work on a machine running Yosemite I just feel like the entire OS is going in a direction I don't appreciate.
Need I compare OS X & Vista? Windows 8?
Vista and Windows 8 both had huge improvements under the hood. Windows 8 in particular has gotten a bad rep simply because it has a UI that people find really polarizing... but it's seriously a fast and efficient OS that really takes advantage of the underlying hardware. It actually is a better operating system than the much-vaunted Windows 7 (which was itself an improvement over Vista) but most people never get to see it because they get hung up on the UI.
I have played with Windows 10, and I like it. I run 8.1 on my computers today but will switch to 10 when it comes out. That's not to say it's a fundamentally "better" operating system than OSX... but for my needs the priorities are all screwed up in OSX. They're both modern, stable and secure operating systems... and if that's all you need then great. However, running the same applications on both platforms does show the weaknesses of OSX; memory management is of questionable value in OSX and the storage management is kludgy at best.
Windows has been faster than OSX on the same hardware since Windows 7. I know; I've always had a Windows Boot Camp installation on my Macs. My last Mac is still a good one (2012 15" MBP) but has now been surpassed significantly. It used to be that Macs had a 5 year lifespan whereas Windows had a 3... that's one reason I liked Macs. Nowadays, not so much... and it's not changing workloads that are killing it but rather the overly heavy APIs and core problems with OSX that just don't scale quite so well... so new versions get heavier and slower on the same hardware.
You don't need personal knowledge, it's about business platforms. One is about selling hardware for a profit, one is about monetizing users. And the way most companies monetize users is data mining. Spying is their business model.
I hate to say this, but if you honestly believe that Apple isn't above double-dipping here then you're sorely mistaken. A very quick Google search turns up plenty of reports of data being reported back to "the mothership" on iOS just as much or maybe more than Windows or Android. Yes, Apple makes money on the hardware but they're also a publicly traded company with a mandate to basically print money for their shareholders. Said shareholders (and the board) would have a fit if Apple were leaving that much obvious money on the table.
Wyse is also Dell FYI. But yeah, the statement "4 or 5 PC manufacturers" is blatantly false.
In a laptop?
I can say I use a Roccat Kone XTD and it's my favourite mouse I've ever used. I don't really care about the bling... it's actually not all that bad. What I care about is good tracking, weight and button response and this thing has all of them in spades :)
The Linux support is also really good, as you said. Their engineers really are geeks like us :)
See, the only thing I don't like here is that it's wireless.
I have used wired and wireless mice for a long time and have quite a collection, but I've pretty much abandoned wireless mice for all but simple usage when on the road because of interference or battery life issues. Bluetooth in particular is usually horrendous, dongle-mice tend to be better but still have issues on occasion.
I have three active computers I use a lot so have different mice. My work system I use a wired Dell mouse; a K251D (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-6-Button-Perfectly-Connectors-Compatible/dp/B005O239FW) which for a cheap mouse is bloody fantastic. Good tracking, decent if bland shape and adjustable sensitivity. Not a good gaming mouse, but for a great all-purpose one it's awesome.
On my gaming rig (the one I'm typing on) I have a Roccat Kone XTD (http://www.roccat.org/en/Products/Gaming-Mice/Kone-XTD-Series/Kone-XTD/) which is one of my favourite mice to-date. It's shaped perfectly for my right-handed self, has great adjustable weight (I packed it with all the weights that came with it) and a brilliantly sheathed cable that's incredibly long.
My wireless mouse of choice on the road is a Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/arc-touch-mouse). It's wireless with a dongle, but collapses flat so it can be packed neatly in my laptop bag. Perfect on the go, works on just about every surface I've thrown it at and gets great battery life. I use it with my work laptop when on the road and my Surface Pro.
Now having said all that I do like a lot of Logitech's gaming gear. My keyboard is a G710+ and I have a G13 that when used with the Roccat is brilliant. I just haven't found a Logitech mouse I really liked to be honest; the Roccat fell perfectly into my hand when I tried it and I pretty much got it on the spot it was that good. Still, this one looks pretty good except for the wireless part... as I said I just don't do wireless for gaming :)
Honestly, I think it depends on a lot of factors.
For the record, I own two smartwatches; the original Pebble and a Moto 360. The Pebble has mostly been relegated to a drawer because I just don't use it any more... probably go on eBay pretty soon. My Moto 360 gets used daily because it's really handy for my work. I work in the tech field; I'm a consultant for a large company who travels all over two states talking to customers about their technology needs.
For my part, my Moto 360 nearly always gets questions at the table. "Do you like it?" "Is it useful?" etc. and I'll tell you exactly what I've told them; it depends a lot on your use cases.
I use my 360 all the time. It's right there on my wrist, so even while driving if I receive a notification that I've received a text message I can flip my wrist over and check the summary on my wrist to see if I need to respond to it, or if it can wait until I get to my destination. I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket or retrieve it from my jacket that may be hanging in the back of my car (depending on where I put it). I get reminders of appointments and again I don't have to rely on my phone to do the same. In fact, because the alarm on my 360 is vibrate only I can actually turn the notifications completely off on my phone most of the time and I still know what's going on. Similarly, in a meeting when my phone rings I can immediately see who's calling at a glance and throw it off to voicemail. I also like the ability to use the microphone in my 360 to set timers, set an alarm, bring up the weather etc. For my use case, it works extremely well.
There are some things I wish my 360 did though that would be cool. I wish airlines in particular would get with the program and allow me to bring up my boarding pass QR on the screen of my watch rather than digging for my phone. American Airlines already has an app for the Android Wear OS, but it doesn't do that... annoying. But as a general rule these are niggles that will be ironed out as/if people buy more of these devices as you said.
I'll also note that because I'm not turning my phone on every time there's a notification or I want to know the time, my battery life on my phone actually increased when I moved to a smartwatch.
As far as charging every night, that's less of a problem than you might think. I don't wear my watch to bed, so I have my Moto 360 charging base sitting on my nightstand right next to the cable for my phone. Instead of setting my watch on the nightstand itself, I set it on the charging base and voila... no problems. It's no more a chore than setting it down, really. Yes, it can be frustrating if you are traveling and forget the base, but that's also true of forgetting charging cables for any of your other devices. So far it hasn't been a problem. Battery life also isn't half bad on the 360; I can get about 30 hours of tested time out of mine... given that I charge it nightly that's pretty bloody impressive and I have no complaints about it.
I do agree though that this is still a nascent industry... people haven't really found that killer app for a smartwatch yet, but for people like me who are natural early adopters, techies and people who just like stuff like this I think there's still a market.
Seconded on this. I type a lot for work and I love my G710+. There's also a newer version, oddly called the G710 that replaces the Cherry MX Brown switches with the Blue, but I have not used it so I can't really judge.
I find the inverted decoration good; remember it's a gaming keyboard so the decoration is to highlight gaming keys (like W,A,S,D etc.). While you might not need it, it is nice. I also like the fact that it's lit; not because I ever really look at it, but seeing the keyboard lights at the bottom of my peripheral vision certainly does help when positioning my hands to type.
Having said all this good stuff though, it is a bit bulky. It has an extra row of gaming keys down the left hand side and a set of media keys on top. Plus, Logitech elected to make it tapered to a larger base. This makes it quite a large keyboard, but in my opinion it's totally worth it. For a mechanical it's also pretty quiet, though definitely not silent :)
The only reason I even knew it existed was because of This Week In Tech podcast that I've listened to for years. They often had Om Malik (the founder) on the show and he was entertaining enough to listen to. However, I didn't go to the site more than two or three times because they offered me nothing new. I get all my tech news from Slashdot (though less and less these days), ArsTechnica and Reddit. I don't need another news site... in fact I often think I need to trim down that list. Oh, you can probably add Gizmodo to that, though I am not sure I've been there in a while.
I think their problem was lack of advertising, and lack of a really compelling reason to go there. No-one knew about them and those who did had little reason to return because they offered nothing new.
I also love it when a small area of wifi is taken completely offline by an old and slightly broken microwave oven... it's awesome :)
But WiFi is a shared infrastructure, whereas Ethernet is dedicated. That does make a big difference when you have a lot of users in a small area. And no, adding access points doesn't help much because you end up causing interference unless you place the AP's properly and actually decrease the bandwidth.
And yes, I've seen an entire building taken out by interference from a nearby failure of a radio tower. The poor IT guys in that building were being screamed at and completely unable to do anything about it until the radio station repair guys arrived onsite and shut the tower down which took several hours.
Besides, there are still understandable and well-founded concerns about the security of wireless. In most businesses I work in the wireless is used for non-critical and low-speed applications like cellphones and tablets. Laptops get connected to WiFi only if they're in a conference room and even then it's rare. I don't know where you work, but I imagine it's somewhere startup-heavy like Silicon Valley where they go WiFi because they're too cheap to cable the building. It's not sustainable.
Trust me, these are the "warts" on the wireless market that vendors usually don't tell you about because they want to sell their wireless solutions that'll be obsolete in two years and then they can sell them to you again. I work in the industry... I actually sell enterprise wireless every day as part of my job (got two deals closing this week). Unlike you, I'm actually honest with my customers about the downside because by doing so I gain trust and become their trusted advisor which is why I'm damned good at my job.
I've had a NUC for a couple of years now as a media PC in my entertainment center. It's actually really bloody good and there is zero fan noise. Well, the fan noise is inaudible over the ceiling fan I also have in my living room. Even under incredibly heavy load I've never heard the fan rise above a very quiet whine, and honestly media decoding is NOT heavy load.
My particular one is an i3-3217U based machine with a 128GB MSATA SSD. Yeah, I'm a geek traitor in that I run Windows 8 on it, but mostly so I can play all my XBox Video movies and TV shows that I own as well as Netflix et al. Turn it on, boots in about 5 seconds and runs great. Not that I have to boot it often, mostly when I update it. Yeah, the SSD is small, but I have a ~12TB Linux server that shares out some of the drive space... that's where the movies go :)