not a lot of fun to program in. It's wordy, it's procedural...generally kind of boring. But...it's imbedded in so many mission critical systems. The ERP system that I work on is chock full of COBOL stuff, mainly in the Payroll processing modules. It works, it's really fast, and nobody wants to mess with it. Sure, you could rewrite it in Java or some other language but it represents risk that many companies are not willing to take.
COBOL programmers are in big demand now and it's only going to grow. I'm not sure how many schools still teach COBOL but I suspect it's not many. So if you can put up with having a little less glamorous coding to do it's a great job opportunity.
First off, HR laws prevent IBM (or any other former employer) from telling other employers much other than your dates of employment, salary and job duties. Secondly, if an employer treated me the way IBM appears to treat it's employees there is no way in hell I would want to return. I'm with the Parent on this one. I'm not going to be training an offshore replacement. Fuck that.
The reason that most companies buy an ERP system is to be in compliance with laws that govern their business. SOX (Sarbaines Oxley) is probably the best known. Publicly traded companies must abide by those rules and ERP systems give you a way of meeting those requirements. It's a big part of the sales pitch. The problem with ERP systems is the cost of maintenance. Typical rates run around 18% of the purchase price annually. Then there are the updates and security patches etc. It can eat up a lot of time. Keeping an ERP system running properly requires a team of dedicated staff. When companies elect not to keep the software up to date you end up with these types of issues where the system can be at risk.
You made the right move. Most of the recruiters I have worked with are assholes. They will lie to you to get you to take the job so that they get their commission. They are salespeople essentially. I do the same thing you do. Tell me the salary/hourly rate. If it sounds reasonable then you have my interest and we can discuss it further. Otherwise, have a nice day.
I've been in this business a long time so, for what it's worth, here are some observations:
1) If you want to make the big bucks then stay away from 'generalist' types of programming activities. Find an area of specialization that is in demand. You'll have fewer people to compete against while still being able to command a high compensation. 2) 200K might be a really good salary depending on where you live. If you're in SF or NYC it's really not that much money. But...living in SF or NYC has it's own benefits apart from money. It also has a lot of drawbacks. 3) Related to 2...live where you want to live. Money is only really important when you don't have any at all. Once you reach a comfortable salary it's more about quality of life. For some that quality is in a big city. For others it's in a rural area. To each their own. 4) Find an area you like and work hard to get really, really good at it. Once you get good you don't have to worry about looking for money. It will find you. 5) Don't work for someone else - work for yourself. Sure, some people get rich at Pre-IPO companies but those are few and far between. In the interim you have to put up with sweatshop conditions and a low salary. In my experience, contracting is the way to go. You'll make more money, you'll get more interesting work to do, you'll avoid office politics for the most part. If you don't like the people you work with don't worry. In 6 months you'll be on a new gig. 6) Don't ever throw away a business card. Building up your network of contacts is critical, particularly if you decide to go the contracting route. 7) Never stop learning. You've got to stay on top of the new technologies. If you get complacent you'll find yourself getting passed over for promotions and getting stuck with the grunt work that nobody else wants to do. If you stop learning and you're contracting then your phone stops ringing. Not good.
is a societal one. Namely, that many people feel that it's THEIR road not a shared road. They feel little compulsion to act for the greater good. MY text message is more important than YOUR safety. If my selfish behavior endangers the lives of others...tough...I've got to close that big sale, or update my Facebook page...or whatever the fuck I felt was so important in the first place.
"Because the responses were framed in the context of to fight terrorism." - Exactly. This is the same sort of logic that brought us the TSA and airport pat downs. It hasn't actually "prevented" any terrorist action because it is impossible to prove one way or the other. All it has done is inconvenience millions of travelers.
Does anyone really think that collecting phone and internet information is going to prevent terrorist attacks? Those people are using burner phones and encryption and hiding behind TOR servers.
there is a lot more money in the Enterprise market than the consumer market. Enterprise customers are much less likely to change platforms than consumers are. If an individual wants to change from an iPhone to an Android phone it's no big deal. If a company with thousands of employees wants to switch from Windows to, say, OSX, it's a much bigger deal and much less likely to happen.
Apple has done very well in the consumer market and enjoys healthy margins on their products but that is starting to get squeezed a bit. Microsofts lack of success in the consumer market is well documented but they are still very profitable overall. Would MS like to have better success with consumers? Sure but it's not the end of the world for them.
Things tend to change slowly in the Enterprise market so for the foreseeable future Microsoft is going to be just fine.
I can't see how you can fault them for this unfortunate incident. What's a 14 year old girl doing at a party, drunk, with a bunch of boys? Do the parents not have any responsibility here?
Bugs don't just appear out of thin air. If you are only discovering them at the end it means you are not doing sufficient testing along the way. Either that or the scope of the requirements is changing. Pick a few key milestones and run through your test scripts (you do have test scripts, right?). If a bug is found at the next milestone that didn't exist at the previous one then you know where to look for the issue. Maybe think about contracting a dedicated tester? There is no such thing as bug free code...it's all about mitigating risk.
Despite all their floundering, Yahoo still has tons of page views every day. A lot of people still use Yahoo as their primary email. The trick is how to turn it into revenue. Are they going to follow everyone else with the "give it for free, make it up on advertising" model or come up with something more innovative? Personally I think a lot of people are very wary of this model, me included. You end up giving away all your personal details (hello Google and Facebook) in exchange for a so called "free" application. Maybe the time has come to buy back your anonymity. I would be willing to pay for such a service, provided that I had an iron clad legally enforceable agreement with the vendor that my personal information would never be sold to a third party.
first off, this is nothing more than an Apple witch hunt. When it comes to playing shell games with revenue in order to minimize taxes, Apple is no worse than Google or Microsoft or Facebook or GE for that matter. All the big companies are doing this. Why? Because it's legal (grey area but legal) and because it creates higher profits, translating to higher share prices.
The real problem is the impossibly complex tax code. Not only for corporations but for individuals too. The difference, of course, is that corporations have many more write-offs available to them than the average person does. Thus the increasingly larger burden on individuals to fund the federal government. Despite that, every meaningful attempt to simply the tax code has been shot down by Congress.
Typical politicians - they think that passing more laws will fix the problem. Apple lobbied for a tax holiday to bring back the profits onshore, even though they did nothing illegal. It was denied. So Congress chooses to engage in political theater by marching Tim Cook out in front of these idiots. Nothing gets solved, as usual.
that's all those perks are. Sure, it's nice to have someone feeding you free sodas and the like but at the end of the day take home pay is all that really matters. That and getting treated in a dignified way. Most places are offering more or less the same benefit packages. I tend to focus more on the bottom line take home pay. Bonuses rarely pan out in full. Same for stock options.
If they want to give me free drinks and snacks that's fine but it won't make me work any harder. I arrive motivated and I want to get paid for every hour I work - including overtime. Flat salary positions are for the birds, particularly in IT where there always seems to be some looming deadline that management has over promised on.
it's dominated by pure technical types (hello, Linus Torvalds) that seem to have very little patience for non-technical types. In order to have a commercially viable version of Linux (or UNIX) you've got to involve people that can design an attractive, usable UI. For evidence, just look at what Apple has done with OSX and Google has done with Android. Both are beautifully designed and easy to use yet still have the power of Linux/Unix under the covers. You've got to have talented designers and good documentation. Otherwise it will be relegated to a hobbyist platform. Nothing wrong with that, by the way, but it is what it is.
It will be interesting to see how much support (if any) this gets in Congress. Study and study has shown that ANY level of impairment negatively effects your ability to operate a motor vehicle. Impairment from not only alcohol but also cellphone distraction (calling and especially texting or facebooking). We already have laws on the books regarding alcohol impairment but very little with respect to cellphones. Why? The telecoms will fight tooth and nail any attempt to reduce the amount of time that people spend on cellphones because it theoretically takes money out of their pockets. Public safety be damned.
how many of the posters here have actually tried Windows 8 on a laptop or desktop? Yes, I think most of us can agree that the 'Metro' interface sucks on anything but a tablet or phone. All that aside, you're one click from the old familiar desktop. Just click on the Desktop tile and you're good to go. So I really think this stuff about the tiles is a bit of a red herring. You don't have to work with them. In fact, I downloaded a free tool that completely bypasses the tiles and goes right to the desktop. Puts back the Start button too. It starts up and shuts down faster than Windows 7. It has better memory management than Windows 7. They finally got UAC right. In short, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7 in many ways. It's light years ahead of XP and Vista.
What this all illustrates, for me, is that MS is possibly the worst marketing company on the face of the earth. You watch the commercials and all you see are fancy colored snap-in keyboards and people dancing around in an office. Why not just show you how the thing works? How about illustrating some of the new tile based features, for those that want them, but also showing that you can still use your computer in much the same way you have in the past? Is this the same crew that pushed out those disastrous Seinfeld ads? I swear, these clowns couldn't sell life jackets on the Titanic.
Bingo. The 7 inch tablets are the sweet spot. At $200 (for an Android one anyhow, iPad is more) it's not quite an impulse buy but it's pretty darn close. It's the perfect size for a book reader too. The 9 and 10 inch models are a bit heavy to hold up if you're reading. Those work better propped up on a stand. And, as you mentioned, at $400 and up it's a more serious investment to make.
The 7 inch is great for email, skype, kindle-ing, games. The Nexus 7, in my view, is the best of the lot.
Keep in mind...this assessment is coming from a company that released a tablet...without the ability to use email on it. You couldn't use what is arguably the best feature on the Blackberry...rock solid email integration. I used to think that tablets were going to be a fad too. But I'm seeing more and more of them and at the end of the day, most people are consumers of content not producers. Sure, tablets suck for coding but how many people are coding vs. the general public? A very small percentage I would venture. Are tablets going to replace laptops and desktops? I doubt it. But I see tablets evolving, not dying out.
To me the most compelling feature of the tablet is all day battery life. With a desktop, you're tethered to the desk. With a laptop you've got mobility but only for a few hours. Then you're looking for an electrical outlet to charge up. Only the tablet and smartphone currently offers 8-10 hours of battery life and that's huge. When laptop batteries can last that long I see a big upswing in laptop sales. Until then, I see more and more tablets getting sold.
The other thing tablets have going for them is that they are so damn easy to use. Compare iOS or Android to Windows. Windows is far more complicated and, for a lot of people, they just want the simplicity of the tablet OS.
Yes, I too remember back when Dell had a great reputation for quality. And service. Then they abandoned that in pursuit of a race to the bottom, trying to compete with the low priced Chinese outfits. Of course, the only way they could do that was to offshore everything and...well, the results were predictable. Flimsy hardware assembled by low skilled labor. Support calls get transferred to Mumbai answered by some dude mumbling in half-english half-hindi following some outdated support script. News flash Dell - if I've got a problem with my PC the last thing I want is more frustration from someone that cannot communicate with me effectively.
Once Dell vacated the premium space it was Apple's for the taking. Say what you want about Apple but they build solid laptops and desktops and don't skimp on parts. Their support is top notch too. Yes, their stock is getting hammered now but in the long run they will be fine. They build a premium product and lots of people, including me, are willing to pay more for quality. What happens to Dell is anyone's guess at this point.
1) The Metro UI sucks on a laptop/desktop. Those giant tiles and full screen apps are just comical on a big screen. On a phone or tablet it's pretty nice though. 2) The built in apps are pretty poor. Aside from the full screen gripe, the functionality is not up to par. For example, the Mail app is not very good in my estimation. I ended up ditching it and using the Windows Live Mail client. 3) The Microsoft App store shelves are pretty bare. Yes, I know that it's pretty new and all but there just isn't much to choose from. Hopefully that will improve. 4) To Microsoft's credit - there are some nice things with Windows 8 behind the scenes. Startup and shutdown is quicker than Windows 7 - at least on the computer I'm using. It seems to be very stable. The drivers work well for the equipment I'm using. Windows Defender (just a rebadged Microsoft Security Essentials) is delivered with the correct settings and is very unobtrusive. Overall it's quite polished and stable. 5) As others have mentioned on here, there are free tools you can download that will restore the Start button and boot directly to the desktop.
Overall, I like Windows 8. Not a fan of Metro but you can get around it. Unfortunately, the average user will probably be stuck with it unless someone shows them how to make it look like Windows 7.
I'd like to see Microsoft make it part of the installation process where you choose the Metro desktop or the "traditional desktop" and have an easy way to switch back and forth as you see fit. But I just don't see it coming any time soon. It seems they are all in on Metro. It's a shame because there are some good things with 8 but it's hard to get past those Gawd-awful Metro tiles.
Enterprise Software is a different animal, so to speak. The software itself does what it's supposed to do but your success with it boils down to a few key areas:
1) Choosing the right ERP solution that fits your needs. I can't tell you how many square-peg-round-hole solutions there are out there. 2) Choosing a good implementer. ERP products are nearly infinitely configurable and every configuration requires analysis and decision making. Some of the decisions you make can be difficult or nearly impossible to undo once the product is live. Evaluating your implementation parter is critical to the success of the project. In my experience, stay away from "Big Four" companies. They will stack the team full of college kids with little more than a few training courses and no real world experience. You'll get a few experienced one that get most of the client face time but the majority of them will be training on your nickel.
These are the things that determine the success of your implementation, not the software itself. So having a bunch of people saying "SAP sucks" isn't very helpful. The software works...if it sucks it's most likely because something went wrong with #1 or #2 above.
As much as Dell has tried to branch out into other lines of business besides commodity PC's, Wall Street still sees them as PC makers. Sure, they do a lot of work in the Enterprise space but, try as they might, they can't shake that "PC maker" label. Dell bought Perot Systems a few years back, trying to get into the Enterprise Software business. I could probably count on one hand how many deals they have won since then. Maybe Michael Dell can turn it around but he's got a tough road ahead of him. As far as I can tell, the only PC maker that has successfully made it into the services business is IBM. My bet is that Ichan will sell the company off for parts.
There is some evidence of this. The younger crowd that was initially attracted to FB are starting to move on to other things like Tumblr. This is not just me talking...I've read a few articles that have pointed out this trend. Why are they moving on? Same thing that kills every other trend...their parents start getting into it so it's no longer cool. But...the corporations are still heavily invested in FB.
It seems to me that FB is becoming more of an advertising medium than a social network. The corporations and celebrities are using FB to try and sell you stuff. So who knows...maybe that's the direction it takes as regular folks move on to other 'social' time wasters.
Just know this...the moment that the corporations move on from FB...poof...it's dead.
Slashdot Mirror
not a lot of fun to program in. It's wordy, it's procedural...generally kind of boring. But...it's imbedded in so many mission critical systems. The ERP system that I work on is chock full of COBOL stuff, mainly in the Payroll processing modules. It works, it's really fast, and nobody wants to mess with it. Sure, you could rewrite it in Java or some other language but it represents risk that many companies are not willing to take.
COBOL programmers are in big demand now and it's only going to grow. I'm not sure how many schools still teach COBOL but I suspect it's not many. So if you can put up with having a little less glamorous coding to do it's a great job opportunity.
First off, HR laws prevent IBM (or any other former employer) from telling other employers much other than your dates of employment, salary and job duties. Secondly, if an employer treated me the way IBM appears to treat it's employees there is no way in hell I would want to return. I'm with the Parent on this one. I'm not going to be training an offshore replacement. Fuck that.
not enough Indians...wait a minute..strike that. Too many Indians too :-D
The reason that most companies buy an ERP system is to be in compliance with laws that govern their business. SOX (Sarbaines Oxley) is probably the best known. Publicly traded companies must abide by those rules and ERP systems give you a way of meeting those requirements. It's a big part of the sales pitch. The problem with ERP systems is the cost of maintenance. Typical rates run around 18% of the purchase price annually. Then there are the updates and security patches etc. It can eat up a lot of time. Keeping an ERP system running properly requires a team of dedicated staff. When companies elect not to keep the software up to date you end up with these types of issues where the system can be at risk.
You made the right move. Most of the recruiters I have worked with are assholes. They will lie to you to get you to take the job so that they get their commission. They are salespeople essentially. I do the same thing you do. Tell me the salary/hourly rate. If it sounds reasonable then you have my interest and we can discuss it further. Otherwise, have a nice day.
I've been in this business a long time so, for what it's worth, here are some observations:
1) If you want to make the big bucks then stay away from 'generalist' types of programming activities. Find an area of specialization that is in demand. You'll have fewer people to compete against while still being able to command a high compensation.
2) 200K might be a really good salary depending on where you live. If you're in SF or NYC it's really not that much money. But...living in SF or NYC has it's own benefits apart from money. It also has a lot of drawbacks.
3) Related to 2...live where you want to live. Money is only really important when you don't have any at all. Once you reach a comfortable salary it's more about quality of life. For some that quality is in a big city. For others it's in a rural area. To each their own.
4) Find an area you like and work hard to get really, really good at it. Once you get good you don't have to worry about looking for money. It will find you.
5) Don't work for someone else - work for yourself. Sure, some people get rich at Pre-IPO companies but those are few and far between. In the interim you have to put up with sweatshop conditions and a low salary. In my experience, contracting is the way to go. You'll make more money, you'll get more interesting work to do, you'll avoid office politics for the most part. If you don't like the people you work with don't worry. In 6 months you'll be on a new gig.
6) Don't ever throw away a business card. Building up your network of contacts is critical, particularly if you decide to go the contracting route.
7) Never stop learning. You've got to stay on top of the new technologies. If you get complacent you'll find yourself getting passed over for promotions and getting stuck with the grunt work that nobody else wants to do. If you stop learning and you're contracting then your phone stops ringing. Not good.
is a societal one. Namely, that many people feel that it's THEIR road not a shared road. They feel little compulsion to act for the greater good. MY text message is more important than YOUR safety. If my selfish behavior endangers the lives of others...tough...I've got to close that big sale, or update my Facebook page...or whatever the fuck I felt was so important in the first place.
"Because the responses were framed in the context of to fight terrorism." - Exactly. This is the same sort of logic that brought us the TSA and airport pat downs. It hasn't actually "prevented" any terrorist action because it is impossible to prove one way or the other. All it has done is inconvenience millions of travelers.
Does anyone really think that collecting phone and internet information is going to prevent terrorist attacks? Those people are using burner phones and encryption and hiding behind TOR servers.
there is a lot more money in the Enterprise market than the consumer market. Enterprise customers are much less likely to change platforms than consumers are. If an individual wants to change from an iPhone to an Android phone it's no big deal. If a company with thousands of employees wants to switch from Windows to, say, OSX, it's a much bigger deal and much less likely to happen.
Apple has done very well in the consumer market and enjoys healthy margins on their products but that is starting to get squeezed a bit. Microsofts lack of success in the consumer market is well documented but they are still very profitable overall. Would MS like to have better success with consumers? Sure but it's not the end of the world for them.
Things tend to change slowly in the Enterprise market so for the foreseeable future Microsoft is going to be just fine.
I can't see how you can fault them for this unfortunate incident. What's a 14 year old girl doing at a party, drunk, with a bunch of boys? Do the parents not have any responsibility here?
I've mostly seen referral bonuses in the range of $1000 - $5000, rarely above that.
Bugs don't just appear out of thin air. If you are only discovering them at the end it means you are not doing sufficient testing along the way. Either that or the scope of the requirements is changing. Pick a few key milestones and run through your test scripts (you do have test scripts, right?). If a bug is found at the next milestone that didn't exist at the previous one then you know where to look for the issue. Maybe think about contracting a dedicated tester? There is no such thing as bug free code...it's all about mitigating risk.
Despite all their floundering, Yahoo still has tons of page views every day. A lot of people still use Yahoo as their primary email. The trick is how to turn it into revenue. Are they going to follow everyone else with the "give it for free, make it up on advertising" model or come up with something more innovative? Personally I think a lot of people are very wary of this model, me included. You end up giving away all your personal details (hello Google and Facebook) in exchange for a so called "free" application. Maybe the time has come to buy back your anonymity. I would be willing to pay for such a service, provided that I had an iron clad legally enforceable agreement with the vendor that my personal information would never be sold to a third party.
first off, this is nothing more than an Apple witch hunt. When it comes to playing shell games with revenue in order to minimize taxes, Apple is no worse than Google or Microsoft or Facebook or GE for that matter. All the big companies are doing this. Why? Because it's legal (grey area but legal) and because it creates higher profits, translating to higher share prices.
The real problem is the impossibly complex tax code. Not only for corporations but for individuals too. The difference, of course, is that corporations have many more write-offs available to them than the average person does. Thus the increasingly larger burden on individuals to fund the federal government. Despite that, every meaningful attempt to simply the tax code has been shot down by Congress.
Typical politicians - they think that passing more laws will fix the problem. Apple lobbied for a tax holiday to bring back the profits onshore, even though they did nothing illegal. It was denied. So Congress chooses to engage in political theater by marching Tim Cook out in front of these idiots. Nothing gets solved, as usual.
that's all those perks are. Sure, it's nice to have someone feeding you free sodas and the like but at the end of the day take home pay is all that really matters. That and getting treated in a dignified way. Most places are offering more or less the same benefit packages. I tend to focus more on the bottom line take home pay. Bonuses rarely pan out in full. Same for stock options.
If they want to give me free drinks and snacks that's fine but it won't make me work any harder. I arrive motivated and I want to get paid for every hour I work - including overtime. Flat salary positions are for the birds, particularly in IT where there always seems to be some looming deadline that management has over promised on.
it's dominated by pure technical types (hello, Linus Torvalds) that seem to have very little patience for non-technical types. In order to have a commercially viable version of Linux (or UNIX) you've got to involve people that can design an attractive, usable UI. For evidence, just look at what Apple has done with OSX and Google has done with Android. Both are beautifully designed and easy to use yet still have the power of Linux/Unix under the covers. You've got to have talented designers and good documentation. Otherwise it will be relegated to a hobbyist platform. Nothing wrong with that, by the way, but it is what it is.
It will be interesting to see how much support (if any) this gets in Congress. Study and study has shown that ANY level of impairment negatively effects your ability to operate a motor vehicle. Impairment from not only alcohol but also cellphone distraction (calling and especially texting or facebooking). We already have laws on the books regarding alcohol impairment but very little with respect to cellphones. Why? The telecoms will fight tooth and nail any attempt to reduce the amount of time that people spend on cellphones because it theoretically takes money out of their pockets. Public safety be damned.
how many of the posters here have actually tried Windows 8 on a laptop or desktop? Yes, I think most of us can agree that the 'Metro' interface sucks on anything but a tablet or phone. All that aside, you're one click from the old familiar desktop. Just click on the Desktop tile and you're good to go. So I really think this stuff about the tiles is a bit of a red herring. You don't have to work with them. In fact, I downloaded a free tool that completely bypasses the tiles and goes right to the desktop. Puts back the Start button too. It starts up and shuts down faster than Windows 7. It has better memory management than Windows 7. They finally got UAC right. In short, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7 in many ways. It's light years ahead of XP and Vista.
What this all illustrates, for me, is that MS is possibly the worst marketing company on the face of the earth. You watch the commercials and all you see are fancy colored snap-in keyboards and people dancing around in an office. Why not just show you how the thing works? How about illustrating some of the new tile based features, for those that want them, but also showing that you can still use your computer in much the same way you have in the past? Is this the same crew that pushed out those disastrous Seinfeld ads? I swear, these clowns couldn't sell life jackets on the Titanic.
Bingo. The 7 inch tablets are the sweet spot. At $200 (for an Android one anyhow, iPad is more) it's not quite an impulse buy but it's pretty darn close. It's the perfect size for a book reader too. The 9 and 10 inch models are a bit heavy to hold up if you're reading. Those work better propped up on a stand. And, as you mentioned, at $400 and up it's a more serious investment to make.
The 7 inch is great for email, skype, kindle-ing, games. The Nexus 7, in my view, is the best of the lot.
Keep in mind...this assessment is coming from a company that released a tablet...without the ability to use email on it. You couldn't use what is arguably the best feature on the Blackberry...rock solid email integration. I used to think that tablets were going to be a fad too. But I'm seeing more and more of them and at the end of the day, most people are consumers of content not producers. Sure, tablets suck for coding but how many people are coding vs. the general public? A very small percentage I would venture. Are tablets going to replace laptops and desktops? I doubt it. But I see tablets evolving, not dying out.
To me the most compelling feature of the tablet is all day battery life. With a desktop, you're tethered to the desk. With a laptop you've got mobility but only for a few hours. Then you're looking for an electrical outlet to charge up. Only the tablet and smartphone currently offers 8-10 hours of battery life and that's huge. When laptop batteries can last that long I see a big upswing in laptop sales. Until then, I see more and more tablets getting sold.
The other thing tablets have going for them is that they are so damn easy to use. Compare iOS or Android to Windows. Windows is far more complicated and, for a lot of people, they just want the simplicity of the tablet OS.
Yes, I too remember back when Dell had a great reputation for quality. And service. Then they abandoned that in pursuit of a race to the bottom, trying to compete with the low priced Chinese outfits. Of course, the only way they could do that was to offshore everything and...well, the results were predictable. Flimsy hardware assembled by low skilled labor. Support calls get transferred to Mumbai answered by some dude mumbling in half-english half-hindi following some outdated support script. News flash Dell - if I've got a problem with my PC the last thing I want is more frustration from someone that cannot communicate with me effectively.
Once Dell vacated the premium space it was Apple's for the taking. Say what you want about Apple but they build solid laptops and desktops and don't skimp on parts. Their support is top notch too. Yes, their stock is getting hammered now but in the long run they will be fine. They build a premium product and lots of people, including me, are willing to pay more for quality. What happens to Dell is anyone's guess at this point.
I've been using it too. Some observations:
1) The Metro UI sucks on a laptop/desktop. Those giant tiles and full screen apps are just comical on a big screen. On a phone or tablet it's pretty nice though.
2) The built in apps are pretty poor. Aside from the full screen gripe, the functionality is not up to par. For example, the Mail app is not very good in my estimation. I ended up ditching it and using the Windows Live Mail client.
3) The Microsoft App store shelves are pretty bare. Yes, I know that it's pretty new and all but there just isn't much to choose from. Hopefully that will improve.
4) To Microsoft's credit - there are some nice things with Windows 8 behind the scenes. Startup and shutdown is quicker than Windows 7 - at least on the computer I'm using. It seems to be very stable. The drivers work well for the equipment I'm using. Windows Defender (just a rebadged Microsoft Security Essentials) is delivered with the correct settings and is very unobtrusive. Overall it's quite polished and stable.
5) As others have mentioned on here, there are free tools you can download that will restore the Start button and boot directly to the desktop.
Overall, I like Windows 8. Not a fan of Metro but you can get around it. Unfortunately, the average user will probably be stuck with it unless someone shows them how to make it look like Windows 7.
I'd like to see Microsoft make it part of the installation process where you choose the Metro desktop or the "traditional desktop" and have an easy way to switch back and forth as you see fit. But I just don't see it coming any time soon. It seems they are all in on Metro. It's a shame because there are some good things with 8 but it's hard to get past those Gawd-awful Metro tiles.
Enterprise Software is a different animal, so to speak. The software itself does what it's supposed to do but your success with it boils down to a few key areas:
1) Choosing the right ERP solution that fits your needs. I can't tell you how many square-peg-round-hole solutions there are out there.
2) Choosing a good implementer. ERP products are nearly infinitely configurable and every configuration requires analysis and decision making. Some of the decisions you make can be difficult or nearly impossible to undo once the product is live. Evaluating your implementation parter is critical to the success of the project. In my experience, stay away from "Big Four" companies. They will stack the team full of college kids with little more than a few training courses and no real world experience. You'll get a few experienced one that get most of the client face time but the majority of them will be training on your nickel.
These are the things that determine the success of your implementation, not the software itself. So having a bunch of people saying "SAP sucks" isn't very helpful. The software works...if it sucks it's most likely because something went wrong with #1 or #2 above.
As much as Dell has tried to branch out into other lines of business besides commodity PC's, Wall Street still sees them as PC makers. Sure, they do a lot of work in the Enterprise space but, try as they might, they can't shake that "PC maker" label. Dell bought Perot Systems a few years back, trying to get into the Enterprise Software business. I could probably count on one hand how many deals they have won since then. Maybe Michael Dell can turn it around but he's got a tough road ahead of him. As far as I can tell, the only PC maker that has successfully made it into the services business is IBM. My bet is that Ichan will sell the company off for parts.
There is some evidence of this. The younger crowd that was initially attracted to FB are starting to move on to other things like Tumblr. This is not just me talking...I've read a few articles that have pointed out this trend. Why are they moving on? Same thing that kills every other trend...their parents start getting into it so it's no longer cool. But...the corporations are still heavily invested in FB.
It seems to me that FB is becoming more of an advertising medium than a social network. The corporations and celebrities are using FB to try and sell you stuff. So who knows...maybe that's the direction it takes as regular folks move on to other 'social' time wasters.
Just know this...the moment that the corporations move on from FB...poof...it's dead.