My company is currently undergoing an XP-to-7 migration, with our projected end date somewhere just slightly shy of April 2014. It has been a 2-year effort for the engineering staff, and now is an effort for the support apparatus to do the migrations and handle new issues and tickets. Included in this effort was the following:
Creating and validating the Windows 7 core image we're using Validating and certifying all our management agents on Windows 7 Identifying and creating a software management infrastructure for Windows 7 Updating and repackaging practically every application for Windows 7 Building an automated process to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, preserving user data; accounting for over 2600 physical locations and 50k+ users
When it comes time to do this again, we're planning on having all of the applications virtualized (that can be) via App-V / ThinApp / XenApp so we can knock a couple things off the list.
What people around here call "inefficient, outdated systems" other people might call "reliable, proven systems."
Change for change's sake isn't the best way to do business. Thus, the endless ROI calculations, and justifying the expenditure of "loot" on implementing projects.
The thing is, it isn't just the shells. There are major differences between what was paraded around, like the length of stage assemblies, and where fuel valves are.
They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.
Don't forget that when you give money to someone for a sale, the sale is taxed, and that money (now revenue) is also taxed as income if the seller is doing good business, or possibly taxed as payroll if the seller employs people.
You said that Apple doesn't support CUDA, which is technically right, as if you called Apple about CUDA problems, they'd tell you to talk to Nvidia.
You then said that CUDA doesn't support Apple (whatever that means, since CUDA is a product, and not a support entity), which is wholly incorrect as there is a supported installation for it in my link.
Now you say nebulous subjective things like "runs unstable and inconsistent" which means absolutely nothing. Also, "almost zero macs ship with Nvidia cards" is a blatant lie, as the MacBookPro9,1 and MacBookPro10,1 (current 15" models, non-retina and retina display, Apple's top selling Mac products) both ship with Nvidia GeForce 650M. If we're talking about Mac Pro desktops, you go buy any GeForce 670 or 680 and plug it in, and it works without one single byte of software being installed to the OS that isn't already there. If Quadro is more your speed, Nvidia publishes drivers for Mac OS on their web site.
Just because you aren't able to make it work, doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. It could be that you are incompetent.
When you put several hundred radios in the same general area (cube farm) you'll realize why a wired connection is still useful. You can't beat physics.
Not the cheapest (by far) but if you would be buying a thin performance laptop and a tablet, this would be cheaper than buying those two devices, and it is both of those devices. With a Core i7. Sure, it isn't going to be the best performer for games, but it will smoke any of the Atom tablets out there, and Lenovo will have Win7 drivers for it if you just can't abide by Windows 8 (which I can't).
I'm told that if you use it with the keyboard attached, you'll get 10 hours of battery life. Waiting to get my hands on one to put that to the test.
Because a fully capable PC and a tablet have two completely different modes of input? And before you start harping on about touchscreen monitors for your desktop, please realize that they totally suck ergonomically, and are anathema to any visual design work, as it's incredibly hard to get color accuracy through extra layers of capacitive digitizer and fingerprint smudge.
We don't buy everything Lenovo makes. We certify 4 laptop models and 2 desktop models, all models from their business lines (includes out-of-band management hardware) which makes support and maintenance of the God awful Windows driver model even possible on a large scale. We get a contract from Lenovo that says the exact same model will continue to be available until the next major product refresh comes along, so we don't get surprised by a switched out NIC or some other pain in the ass. We then match up the equipment to the user's job.
Sure, we can (and have done in the past) the same thing with Dell or HP, but when we last did our service auction, Lenovo came in with the best price / performance scores in our analysis. However, because we lock in with a contract that also includes favorable pricing, that means we absolutely will not be changing up tomorrow.
The big OEMs will survive on corporations that have their own enterprise agreements with Microsoft that allow down-licensing. Lenovo is perfectly happy to keep putting Windows 8 stickers on all the devices we buy, and we're perfectly happy to wipe the drive and put our Win7 image on it, because we have n-2 licensing.
The little and mid-size guys will get shit on though.
I do work in a corporate IT environment. A God damn big one, at that.
We support Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.8. And you know how we get around something not working on Mac OS X, that absolutely must be run on a Mac? With a concept called virtualization, from a little company called Citrix. And Citrix Receiver is definitely not being used by anyone in the Fortune 100. No, wait... practically all of them are, including the company I work at.
Macs have their place in prepress production and video edit - my company does it's own advertising layout for newspaper advertisements in over 35 of the top 100 MSAs in the US internally. Using Mac. In a completely managed environment. And our team can do it cheaper and better internally than we could by outsourcing it; proven year after year by comparing internal costs to the sales pitches from other agencies.
Oh, we also have our own television studio for producing internal associate communications and training videos. Using Mac. And we also do that cheaper than we could by outsourcing it.
Do we throw Macs everywhere, into every job role? Absolutely not - that's what low cost Windows PCs and laptops (and, by the way, Linux thin clients, which we have over 30,000 of, spread across 2500 sites) are for. Does Mac make sense for certain workflows? It sure as hell does, which is why Apple still sells them by the truckload.
Businesses don't want to be locked into one particular hardware vendor.
My Fortune-20 company buying 100% of it's laptops and desktops exclusively from Lenovo disagrees with you.
Why? Less model diversity = less configurations to support for drivers, firmware, imaging, etc. Business wants the least amount of configurations possible, because supporting all that shit for the life of the machine costs way more money than the initial hardware purchase does.
By not having a standard scheme, we end up with "Oh, I'm sorry, but you can't watch $CONTENT on $BROWSER because it doesn't support $PROPRIETARY_SHIT_DRM_SCHEME or $GARBAGE_ANCIENT_PLUGIN_FRAMEWORK. Please install an operating environment you'd rather not use (or even overtly hate) and try again."
Because that's clearly worse than having an optional form of DRM in the HTML5 standard, and there has never been any outcry by the Linux community about not having a version of software for their platform that allows them to participate in services equally.
Intel has publicly stated many many times that they are going to a "tick - tock" development cycle, where they don't expect people to buy new every release. This is a "tick" which introduces new features and performance improvements, followed next year by the "tock" which will include a die shrink and even more power savings, with a slight bump in performance and mostly the same features.
This is why most Sandy Bridge main boards just needed a firmware update to support Ivy Bridge - the were mostly the same processor.
More than that, the actual headline should have been:
Drivers with complete support for hardware features outperform drivers with partial support.
Even the summary says that the Nvidia reverse-engineered driver doesn't support adjusting the GPU's clock, and since Nvidia's firmware has the thing clocked to "barely running" when it starts up, it's hardly a shock that you get piss poor performance.
Obligatory car analogy: reverse engineering the ECU firmware on an engine, except in your version the rev limit is set to 1500 RPM, when the engine redlines at 8000; and then you wonder why you're short on horsepower and torque.
The entire Mercury program, which had several orbital flights (Friendship 7, Aurora 7, etc.) was estimated to be 1.6B in 2010 dollars. So, yes, it was orbital with a couple sub-orbital flights thrown in because we had these silly Redstone missiles laying around that we had to use up before Atlas was ready.
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My company is currently undergoing an XP-to-7 migration, with our projected end date somewhere just slightly shy of April 2014. It has been a 2-year effort for the engineering staff, and now is an effort for the support apparatus to do the migrations and handle new issues and tickets. Included in this effort was the following:
Creating and validating the Windows 7 core image we're using
Validating and certifying all our management agents on Windows 7
Identifying and creating a software management infrastructure for Windows 7
Updating and repackaging practically every application for Windows 7
Building an automated process to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, preserving user data; accounting for over 2600 physical locations and 50k+ users
When it comes time to do this again, we're planning on having all of the applications virtualized (that can be) via App-V / ThinApp / XenApp so we can knock a couple things off the list.
What people around here call "inefficient, outdated systems" other people might call "reliable, proven systems."
Change for change's sake isn't the best way to do business. Thus, the endless ROI calculations, and justifying the expenditure of "loot" on implementing projects.
The thing is, it isn't just the shells. There are major differences between what was paraded around, like the length of stage assemblies, and where fuel valves are.
They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.
Don't forget that when you give money to someone for a sale, the sale is taxed, and that money (now revenue) is also taxed as income if the seller is doing good business, or possibly taxed as payroll if the seller employs people.
You said that Apple doesn't support CUDA, which is technically right, as if you called Apple about CUDA problems, they'd tell you to talk to Nvidia.
You then said that CUDA doesn't support Apple (whatever that means, since CUDA is a product, and not a support entity), which is wholly incorrect as there is a supported installation for it in my link.
Now you say nebulous subjective things like "runs unstable and inconsistent" which means absolutely nothing. Also, "almost zero macs ship with Nvidia cards" is a blatant lie, as the MacBookPro9,1 and MacBookPro10,1 (current 15" models, non-retina and retina display, Apple's top selling Mac products) both ship with Nvidia GeForce 650M. If we're talking about Mac Pro desktops, you go buy any GeForce 670 or 680 and plug it in, and it works without one single byte of software being installed to the OS that isn't already there. If Quadro is more your speed, Nvidia publishes drivers for Mac OS on their web site.
Just because you aren't able to make it work, doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. It could be that you are incompetent.
When you put several hundred radios in the same general area (cube farm) you'll realize why a wired connection is still useful. You can't beat physics.
The ThinkPad Helix may be the hardware answer.
Not the cheapest (by far) but if you would be buying a thin performance laptop and a tablet, this would be cheaper than buying those two devices, and it is both of those devices. With a Core i7. Sure, it isn't going to be the best performer for games, but it will smoke any of the Atom tablets out there, and Lenovo will have Win7 drivers for it if you just can't abide by Windows 8 (which I can't).
I'm told that if you use it with the keyboard attached, you'll get 10 hours of battery life. Waiting to get my hands on one to put that to the test.
Because a fully capable PC and a tablet have two completely different modes of input? And before you start harping on about touchscreen monitors for your desktop, please realize that they totally suck ergonomically, and are anathema to any visual design work, as it's incredibly hard to get color accuracy through extra layers of capacitive digitizer and fingerprint smudge.
We don't buy everything Lenovo makes. We certify 4 laptop models and 2 desktop models, all models from their business lines (includes out-of-band management hardware) which makes support and maintenance of the God awful Windows driver model even possible on a large scale. We get a contract from Lenovo that says the exact same model will continue to be available until the next major product refresh comes along, so we don't get surprised by a switched out NIC or some other pain in the ass. We then match up the equipment to the user's job.
Sure, we can (and have done in the past) the same thing with Dell or HP, but when we last did our service auction, Lenovo came in with the best price / performance scores in our analysis. However, because we lock in with a contract that also includes favorable pricing, that means we absolutely will not be changing up tomorrow.
Try again.
It also fits my company's negotiated n-2 license terms we have with Microsoft. They can have two losers in a row before we're in trouble.
The big OEMs will survive on corporations that have their own enterprise agreements with Microsoft that allow down-licensing. Lenovo is perfectly happy to keep putting Windows 8 stickers on all the devices we buy, and we're perfectly happy to wipe the drive and put our Win7 image on it, because we have n-2 licensing.
The little and mid-size guys will get shit on though.
CUDA for Mac: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
You are an idiot, and should stop posting.
I do work in a corporate IT environment. A God damn big one, at that.
We support Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.8. And you know how we get around something not working on Mac OS X, that absolutely must be run on a Mac? With a concept called virtualization, from a little company called Citrix. And Citrix Receiver is definitely not being used by anyone in the Fortune 100. No, wait... practically all of them are, including the company I work at.
Macs have their place in prepress production and video edit - my company does it's own advertising layout for newspaper advertisements in over 35 of the top 100 MSAs in the US internally. Using Mac. In a completely managed environment. And our team can do it cheaper and better internally than we could by outsourcing it; proven year after year by comparing internal costs to the sales pitches from other agencies.
Oh, we also have our own television studio for producing internal associate communications and training videos. Using Mac. And we also do that cheaper than we could by outsourcing it.
Do we throw Macs everywhere, into every job role? Absolutely not - that's what low cost Windows PCs and laptops (and, by the way, Linux thin clients, which we have over 30,000 of, spread across 2500 sites) are for. Does Mac make sense for certain workflows? It sure as hell does, which is why Apple still sells them by the truckload.
Pull your head out of your ass.
Businesses don't want to be locked into one particular hardware vendor.
My Fortune-20 company buying 100% of it's laptops and desktops exclusively from Lenovo disagrees with you.
Why? Less model diversity = less configurations to support for drivers, firmware, imaging, etc. Business wants the least amount of configurations possible, because supporting all that shit for the life of the machine costs way more money than the initial hardware purchase does.
Car analogy:
BMW has a 1.8% share of the US auto market (source). BMW reported their second highest Q1 results ever last week.
Clearly, a low marketshare doesn't dictate if a company is successful or not.
What is the ~40% of the public that wears glasses already supposed to do? Take off their corrective lenses in favor of this thing?
Because you couldn't use standard PKI with certificate revocation?
That's an open standard, used every day with HTML, and could be used as a DRM scheme with very little work.
By not having a standard scheme, we end up with "Oh, I'm sorry, but you can't watch $CONTENT on $BROWSER because it doesn't support $PROPRIETARY_SHIT_DRM_SCHEME or $GARBAGE_ANCIENT_PLUGIN_FRAMEWORK. Please install an operating environment you'd rather not use (or even overtly hate) and try again."
Because that's clearly worse than having an optional form of DRM in the HTML5 standard, and there has never been any outcry by the Linux community about not having a version of software for their platform that allows them to participate in services equally.
Including a form of DRM in the standard does not make it's use compulsory. People can still use HTML 5 to publish without rights restrictions.
You mean, like assuring our WMD supply is always in tip-top shape for deterring mass murder?
Because that's what nukes have been doing for the last 60 years.
Intel has publicly stated many many times that they are going to a "tick - tock" development cycle, where they don't expect people to buy new every release. This is a "tick" which introduces new features and performance improvements, followed next year by the "tock" which will include a die shrink and even more power savings, with a slight bump in performance and mostly the same features.
This is why most Sandy Bridge main boards just needed a firmware update to support Ivy Bridge - the were mostly the same processor.
More than that, the actual headline should have been:
Drivers with complete support for hardware features outperform drivers with partial support.
Even the summary says that the Nvidia reverse-engineered driver doesn't support adjusting the GPU's clock, and since Nvidia's firmware has the thing clocked to "barely running" when it starts up, it's hardly a shock that you get piss poor performance.
Obligatory car analogy: reverse engineering the ECU firmware on an engine, except in your version the rev limit is set to 1500 RPM, when the engine redlines at 8000; and then you wonder why you're short on horsepower and torque.
It's also been a transition in Apple's Keynote software since 1.0, way back when.
Your point?
So it's awful when Apple does it, but when Samsung does the exact same thing, it's a completely justified defensive measure.
Nope, you're not wearing any blinders at all.
The entire Mercury program, which had several orbital flights (Friendship 7, Aurora 7, etc.) was estimated to be 1.6B in 2010 dollars. So, yes, it was orbital with a couple sub-orbital flights thrown in because we had these silly Redstone missiles laying around that we had to use up before Atlas was ready.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mercury#Program_cost