Probably actual consumers of Microsoft products. There is a reason why Apple mice only have one button. Give the user a choice and they will invariably find a way to break it.
Linux nerds try to hack it and install Linux, and it doesn't work.
The lady in accounting finds some way to freeze up the USB bus while trying to print to an Apple II printer using 12 different adapters to get it to connect. (Same person who prints on a letter size page, then does a copy to enlarge to legal paper. Then scans it again to get it onto her computer as a PDF to email to a whoever needs it.)
Some executive connects it to some Windows 7 era third-party non-MSFT tech which he isn't willing to cut a check to replace with Windows 10 era stuffs, and gets frustrated because the experience isn't seemless or snazzy on a $2,000 device. Also doesn't equate being an early adopter with an expectation of a subpar experience rather than a premium one.
The Surface line of products is an evolving line of experimental products from Microsoft. They are getting better, and they are already very good products, and they will hopefully continue to improve.
Also, the Surface line is about introducing an experience, a "new" paradigm of computing. The accessories are key to that. You don't need all the accessories, but its hard to tell which ones you will need until you've tried them out and experienced them (the Surface dock was an essential accessory in my business environment, while I haven't even used it with my personal device.) Without the accessories the Surface experience is incomplete, and you'll probably get better mileage with another product.
Well, perhaps not on the regular. However I've seen many a spotless truck put to work from time to time.
My great Aunt bought a truck, one of those "spotless" trucks you are referring to. The express intent and purpose was to haul stuff for gardening. Several times she's had soil dumped into the bed of the truck for making raised beds. A quick rinse and it looks spotless yet again.
The IT staff isn't supposed to be actively intertwined in the daily operations. The IT infrastructure is usually intertwined wih the daily operations, and the security of that IT infrastructure must be as seemelessly as possible intertwined into the daily operations of any IT resources.
I agree that there is nothing inherent in IT that makes them advisors. However, I would propose that one who is not capable of advising should not be head of IT. I maintain that the ability to assess risk and advise strategies for mitigating risk and implementing measures to ensure the solvency and security of an organization is a key requirement of being the head of an IT department.
Which means the blame is going to fall on what is visible. Which means rather than blaming ads or poorly designed websites, the computer gets the blame, and thus the IT department supporting that computer.
Not to mention tabbed browsing. Take whatever impact there is, and multiply it by 30. Then ramp it up even more to account for poorly optimized code. Then you will know what the user experience will be.
Designating the IT to focus on security is designating an opponent to the organization, somebody who's agenda opposes the corporations. The head of IT should be an advisor on IT Security, due to how intertwined it is in the daily operations of a business. The advisor should be respected and heard.
CPU cycles equals wear and tear, slower performance, and likely more bandwidth consumption.
While you may not be affected, plenty of people are and will be.
Those on metered connections, or who have to pay overages for data.
Those running on mobile devices who need as much battery life as they can squeeze out of their devices.
Those who are at the lower end of the financial spectrum, who have to watch their wattage and struggle to replace their aging machines, and struggle to provide air conditioning and such to their homes.
Its kind of like the penny. For so many people it isn't even worth picking up, but for so many other people a penny is a big deal. My biggest concern would be battery life.
I don't see stability as the determining factor for a "watershed" moment. Windows 98SE was sufficiently stable for the games I played, and little work I did. I also knew to save frequently so as to not lose progress during the BSOD of the day.
Usability probably more so. There was very little difference in the UI between 2000 and 98. Though I don't recall the control panels.
Windows 2000 and XP introduced a superior multiuser environment than the old 9x OSes had, which made it safer to share the family computer.
Funny. Windows 2000 was a good OS, but during the Windows XP era I switched to Linux.
I had tried Mandrake 7.2 previously, with WINE, and even an actual Windows 9x install for WINE to lean against. The OS was alright, but I couldn't quite make it my primary OS. Stayed with 98SE, though I probably spent as much time on a used Macintosh.
Fast forward to the XP era and I switched to Xandros Linux 3, a KDE flavored Debian derivative, tweaked to closely match the Windows 2000 UI standards. That became my primary OS.
The article does go on a tangent about "butterfy switches" and how they are rendered inoperable by a piece of dust. Essentially saying that "butterfly switches" are impossible to maintain, and that a repair is $700 to replace the entire top half of the laptop. If the piece of dust does not dislodge while troubleshooting.
Sounds like it can reasonably be assumed that the cause was determined to actually be a piece of dust each time.
I don't know. Windows 98 SE was tha bomb diggity! Especially if you had a Pentium Pro or better!
My Windows 2000 Pro, dual Pentium III 600mhz, with 512mb of RAM and an AGP Geforce MX440 was a nice rig about the time XP came out. Almost never blue screened. Not sure if I'd call those watershed moments. Windows XP was pretty big, much to my shagrin. Hated that OS more than any other.
Sounds like you bought a $500 computer about nine years ago. One that would have been hard pressed to run Vista, and lucky to have a dual core.
My rig was $300 about 9 years ago, but I did get some components gifted to me to upgrade it shortly after purchase. (Dell Inspiron i530, single core Celeron, 2GB RAM, Vista Basic). Gifted part was a Core 2 Duo E7500 2.9ghz, which is more than adequate for anything but video games. Later I upgraded to 4GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD, and a $50 Geforce GT 240. Think it now qualifies as a high end rig from the 2009 era.
"Then came the Win95 era", and the Pentiums, and id Software, and 3DFX, and Sound Blaster.
And then it was all about what could run Windows the fastest.
To be honest, when Windows 95 first came out, it ran like Vista did when it first came out. It would barely boot on the specs we had at the time, much less run anything of any use.
It ain't that simple, for a well optimized machine anyway.
Also, it ain't like you can run an Intel chip on an AMD based motherboard.
While I will admit it has gotten much simpler to throw something together that will boot Windows, I know very few people with the skills to do even that. Most of them work in IT, though I'm not sure everybody I know that works in IT can build their own PC.
Sounded from his post that it would be a bad idea to design USB-C thunderbolt devices, because USB 3.1 would most likely be support by USB-C computers and laptops, etc. While Thunderbolt not being available in all USB-C ports means it ain't worth developing devices for.
Cords are trip hazards, and asthetically bad. Hiding them at ground level reduces the impact of both. Placing them higher up results in having to fight gravity, and do various cable management things to install a lamp or such.
Fortunately for the entertainment center, wall mounting is a trend, which alleviates a signifant number of issues. As long as moving a television is not a requirement.
I disagree with the "not really much of an issue", and blaming the IT department.
Perhaps that works well for large organizations, but not necessarily for small to medium organizations. (With medium organizations being in a transitionary phase).
Imagine you're the IT guy for a company of five to twelve employees. Each employee has radically different job duties, resulting in radically different needs regarding their computers. There is no defined policy, because each "future C-Level" is defining the policy in a live environment. Each "future C-level" is going to get a virus which results in a critical failure of at least 10% of the organization if not more. This cowboy approach continues for years until some imaginary threshold is breached and the IT staff is empowered to reign in the chaos.
Lets not blame those caught in "frontier" tech support, or otherwise "pre-Enterprise" tech support.
Graphics card drivers maybe? KDE is a hardware accelerated UI, don't think it performs well without proper drivers.
Not sure what performance issues you were noticing. Linux does a lot of caching, which offsets the performance of the hard drive. The more memory the more caching, so you may not stop noticing performance increases until your RAM capacity exceeds your disk capacity.
Noticing speed improvements with more RAM does not indicate slow performance on lower quantities of RAM.
What speed hard drives did the systems with different RAM capacities have?
Sharepoint is an alternative file system, largely inspired by the web. Hyperlinks and embedded documents as opposed to "folders" and "files".
The biggest advantage of SharePoint in this regard is the ability to add additional "signage" or markups to assist the user in understanding the nature of the data in a particular file.
GNU/Linux is constantly being upgraded. Constantly changing and evolving.
Various different distributions have different release cycles to a achieve a balance suitable for their audience.
Ubuntu, one of the more popular distributions has a release cycle of every 6 months. (April and October of every year).
Debian, the parent distribution to Ubuntu, has a less rigid cycle, but is generally about every two years, with one additional year of support for the previous release resulting in 3 years per release.
The differences in each of these releases are not typically as significant as those between different versions of Windows. In addition, I don't believe a six-month update has resulted in breaking a system in a number of years.
Though, I did just uninstall Ubuntu WUBI from my desktop. The upgrade from 2012 LTS to 2014 LTS killed the OS, resulting in a kernel panic. Didn't think it worth fixing this time, plan on reinstalling on an SSD by itself. Might be why they dropped support for WUBI in 2014.
Fortunately, I have not been hit by the same from Microsoft and Windows 10, despite hearing reports that it is now the same story, different brand.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably actual consumers of Microsoft products. There is a reason why Apple mice only have one button. Give the user a choice and they will invariably find a way to break it.
Linux nerds try to hack it and install Linux, and it doesn't work.
The lady in accounting finds some way to freeze up the USB bus while trying to print to an Apple II printer using 12 different adapters to get it to connect. (Same person who prints on a letter size page, then does a copy to enlarge to legal paper. Then scans it again to get it onto her computer as a PDF to email to a whoever needs it.)
Some executive connects it to some Windows 7 era third-party non-MSFT tech which he isn't willing to cut a check to replace with Windows 10 era stuffs, and gets frustrated because the experience isn't seemless or snazzy on a $2,000 device. Also doesn't equate being an early adopter with an expectation of a subpar experience rather than a premium one.
The Surface line of products is an evolving line of experimental products from Microsoft. They are getting better, and they are already very good products, and they will hopefully continue to improve.
Also, the Surface line is about introducing an experience, a "new" paradigm of computing. The accessories are key to that. You don't need all the accessories, but its hard to tell which ones you will need until you've tried them out and experienced them (the Surface dock was an essential accessory in my business environment, while I haven't even used it with my personal device.) Without the accessories the Surface experience is incomplete, and you'll probably get better mileage with another product.
Well, perhaps not on the regular. However I've seen many a spotless truck put to work from time to time.
My great Aunt bought a truck, one of those "spotless" trucks you are referring to. The express intent and purpose was to haul stuff for gardening. Several times she's had soil dumped into the bed of the truck for making raised beds. A quick rinse and it looks spotless yet again.
Don't you know yet, $50 ain't worth bending over to pick up off the pavement. Should call it 50 cents.
The IT staff isn't supposed to be actively intertwined in the daily operations. The IT infrastructure is usually intertwined wih the daily operations, and the security of that IT infrastructure must be as seemelessly as possible intertwined into the daily operations of any IT resources.
I agree that there is nothing inherent in IT that makes them advisors. However, I would propose that one who is not capable of advising should not be head of IT. I maintain that the ability to assess risk and advise strategies for mitigating risk and implementing measures to ensure the solvency and security of an organization is a key requirement of being the head of an IT department.
It all depends on who owns the land when the s*** hits the fan.
If enough land is held by the working class, they can survive. If there isn't enough land usable by the working class, that could be a real problem.
Which means the blame is going to fall on what is visible. Which means rather than blaming ads or poorly designed websites, the computer gets the blame, and thus the IT department supporting that computer.
Not to mention tabbed browsing. Take whatever impact there is, and multiply it by 30. Then ramp it up even more to account for poorly optimized code. Then you will know what the user experience will be.
Designating the IT to focus on security is designating an opponent to the organization, somebody who's agenda opposes the corporations. The head of IT should be an advisor on IT Security, due to how intertwined it is in the daily operations of a business. The advisor should be respected and heard.
CPU cycles equals wear and tear, slower performance, and likely more bandwidth consumption.
While you may not be affected, plenty of people are and will be.
Those on metered connections, or who have to pay overages for data.
Those running on mobile devices who need as much battery life as they can squeeze out of their devices.
Those who are at the lower end of the financial spectrum, who have to watch their wattage and struggle to replace their aging machines, and struggle to provide air conditioning and such to their homes.
Its kind of like the penny. For so many people it isn't even worth picking up, but for so many other people a penny is a big deal. My biggest concern would be battery life.
I don't see stability as the determining factor for a "watershed" moment. Windows 98SE was sufficiently stable for the games I played, and little work I did. I also knew to save frequently so as to not lose progress during the BSOD of the day.
Usability probably more so. There was very little difference in the UI between 2000 and 98. Though I don't recall the control panels.
Windows 2000 and XP introduced a superior multiuser environment than the old 9x OSes had, which made it safer to share the family computer.
Funny. Windows 2000 was a good OS, but during the Windows XP era I switched to Linux.
I had tried Mandrake 7.2 previously, with WINE, and even an actual Windows 9x install for WINE to lean against. The OS was alright, but I couldn't quite make it my primary OS. Stayed with 98SE, though I probably spent as much time on a used Macintosh.
Fast forward to the XP era and I switched to Xandros Linux 3, a KDE flavored Debian derivative, tweaked to closely match the Windows 2000 UI standards. That became my primary OS.
The article itself doesn't clear it up per se.
The article does go on a tangent about "butterfy switches" and how they are rendered inoperable by a piece of dust. Essentially saying that "butterfly switches" are impossible to maintain, and that a repair is $700 to replace the entire top half of the laptop. If the piece of dust does not dislodge while troubleshooting.
Sounds like it can reasonably be assumed that the cause was determined to actually be a piece of dust each time.
I don't know. Windows 98 SE was tha bomb diggity! Especially if you had a Pentium Pro or better!
My Windows 2000 Pro, dual Pentium III 600mhz, with 512mb of RAM and an AGP Geforce MX440 was a nice rig about the time XP came out. Almost never blue screened. Not sure if I'd call those watershed moments. Windows XP was pretty big, much to my shagrin. Hated that OS more than any other.
Maybe that is why you were downvoted?
Sounds like you bought a $500 computer about nine years ago. One that would have been hard pressed to run Vista, and lucky to have a dual core.
My rig was $300 about 9 years ago, but I did get some components gifted to me to upgrade it shortly after purchase. (Dell Inspiron i530, single core Celeron, 2GB RAM, Vista Basic). Gifted part was a Core 2 Duo E7500 2.9ghz, which is more than adequate for anything but video games. Later I upgraded to 4GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD, and a $50 Geforce GT 240. Think it now qualifies as a high end rig from the 2009 era.
"Then came the Win95 era", and the Pentiums, and id Software, and 3DFX, and Sound Blaster.
And then it was all about what could run Windows the fastest.
To be honest, when Windows 95 first came out, it ran like Vista did when it first came out. It would barely boot on the specs we had at the time, much less run anything of any use.
It ain't that simple, for a well optimized machine anyway.
Also, it ain't like you can run an Intel chip on an AMD based motherboard.
While I will admit it has gotten much simpler to throw something together that will boot Windows, I know very few people with the skills to do even that. Most of them work in IT, though I'm not sure everybody I know that works in IT can build their own PC.
I was thinking he meant a Sonata, or one of the P100 series cases, such as the P183. Or the P380.
Those VSK-3000 and VSK-4000 cases look nice also.
Does USB-C and USB 3.1 support a way to emulate devices? Make a software implementation of HDMI or Thunderbolt to correct this issue via software?
Sounded from his post that it would be a bad idea to design USB-C thunderbolt devices, because USB 3.1 would most likely be support by USB-C computers and laptops, etc. While Thunderbolt not being available in all USB-C ports means it ain't worth developing devices for.
Lack of wire management in the code perhaps?
Cords are trip hazards, and asthetically bad. Hiding them at ground level reduces the impact of both. Placing them higher up results in having to fight gravity, and do various cable management things to install a lamp or such.
Fortunately for the entertainment center, wall mounting is a trend, which alleviates a signifant number of issues. As long as moving a television is not a requirement.
I disagree with the "not really much of an issue", and blaming the IT department.
Perhaps that works well for large organizations, but not necessarily for small to medium organizations. (With medium organizations being in a transitionary phase).
Imagine you're the IT guy for a company of five to twelve employees. Each employee has radically different job duties, resulting in radically different needs regarding their computers. There is no defined policy, because each "future C-Level" is defining the policy in a live environment. Each "future C-level" is going to get a virus which results in a critical failure of at least 10% of the organization if not more. This cowboy approach continues for years until some imaginary threshold is breached and the IT staff is empowered to reign in the chaos.
Lets not blame those caught in "frontier" tech support, or otherwise "pre-Enterprise" tech support.
Graphics card drivers maybe? KDE is a hardware accelerated UI, don't think it performs well without proper drivers.
Not sure what performance issues you were noticing. Linux does a lot of caching, which offsets the performance of the hard drive. The more memory the more caching, so you may not stop noticing performance increases until your RAM capacity exceeds your disk capacity.
Noticing speed improvements with more RAM does not indicate slow performance on lower quantities of RAM.
What speed hard drives did the systems with different RAM capacities have?
Sharepoint is an alternative file system, largely inspired by the web. Hyperlinks and embedded documents as opposed to "folders" and "files".
The biggest advantage of SharePoint in this regard is the ability to add additional "signage" or markups to assist the user in understanding the nature of the data in a particular file.
Never had a problem with KDE on 4GB of RAM. The entire Desktop Environment shouldn't even amount to 32GB, I doubt it would even be 16GB.
GNU/Linux is constantly being upgraded. Constantly changing and evolving.
Various different distributions have different release cycles to a achieve a balance suitable for their audience.
Ubuntu, one of the more popular distributions has a release cycle of every 6 months. (April and October of every year).
Debian, the parent distribution to Ubuntu, has a less rigid cycle, but is generally about every two years, with one additional year of support for the previous release resulting in 3 years per release.
The differences in each of these releases are not typically as significant as those between different versions of Windows. In addition, I don't believe a six-month update has resulted in breaking a system in a number of years.
Though, I did just uninstall Ubuntu WUBI from my desktop. The upgrade from 2012 LTS to 2014 LTS killed the OS, resulting in a kernel panic. Didn't think it worth fixing this time, plan on reinstalling on an SSD by itself. Might be why they dropped support for WUBI in 2014.
Fortunately, I have not been hit by the same from Microsoft and Windows 10, despite hearing reports that it is now the same story, different brand.