6w for a third gen I3 performance in a budget tablet? I'd say that is pretty good but like I said if it wasn't for Windows X86 programs everyone would just buy the Android as its cheaper, more features, and more apps.
That is why I think it'll be a hit if they can hit the right price point (sub $250 and the lower the better, not like MSFT needs to make money off the OS) because there is just so damned many Windows X86 programs that haven't been ported and would probably be insanely expensive to replace. But if MSFT can hit the right price point and it does handle like an I3? I can see SOHOs and SMBs gobbling these up simply because they won't have to replace all that specialized third party software from inventory to bookkeeping to God knows what else.
And I agree while its good that all that shitty "IE based" crap is dying out you'd be fricking amazed how much Windows only software is still out there that the corp that made it either has no interest in porting or hell, maybe they simply no longer support the software anymore and companies are still depending on it. I've had to massage the living hell out of VMs to get decade plus old software to run on modern Windows because the corp no longer supported it and a company required it to interface with their $200K printer/plotter rig, there is a shitload of companies that have serious money tied up in Windows software/hardware that simply has to Android/iOS equivalent. Nice thing about Windows is 9 times out of 10 there IS a way to get the old stuff to run on newer versions, I've tried a few windows emulators and the experience? Yeah wasn't very nice, not nice at all. Felt like running Win98 on a 286, just painful.
But ironically that is EXACTLY why MSFT cannot get shit for traction in phones and ARM, its the same "chicken or egg" issue Linux had trying to gain traction in the 00s. Nobody buys Windows because they having a raging hard on for MSFT, they buy it to run their programs and if those programs are X86 only and you hand them something like WinRT? Let me put it THIS way...I had folks trying to sell me WinRT tablets dirt cheap for a good year after the local Walmart started selling them and they were all like new but every time when I asked why they didn't want it the answer was the same "my programs won't work". I passed on them and the local shop down the street bought them for a song...and took a bath on them because you couldn't give 'em away, nobody wanted a windows tablet that couldn't run "Windows" programs.
But if it couldn't run Windows X86 programs...would you have bought it over the cheaper and often more feature rich Android tablets? probably not and that is the point the entire selling point of Windows is its huge backwards compatible library of X86 software.
I mean what would be the point of Windows On Arm? Buy Windows so you can use their crappy Appstore that doesn't have shit compared to Android? that is what killed WinPhone and Windows On Arm the first time and MSFT knows this which is why I seriously doubt MSFT was serious about going Arm.
BTW the Pentium Gold only uses a max 6w on the low end model so really not bad for a tablet that can run Windows programs, i se this being adopted by a lot of SOHO and SMBs simply because they can hand their workers low cost units that run all the software they have already been trained on. I know all the local docs are adopting Surface as all their insurance and diagnostic software already runs on Windows so its an easy switch, with low costs units I can see this becoming THE hot small business product for the next few years.
Actually TFA should be called "MSFT punks Intel, gets sweetheart deal on chips" because we have already seen NOBODY wants Windows on ARM (because if you can't run you X86 Windows programs why run Windows?) so I seriously doubt MSFT had any real intent on going down that road of fail again, they just wanted a better deal on the CPUs.
I've started testing Zorin OS (based on Ubuntu, quite nice) but games is the one thing keeping Win 8.1 Pro on my gaming machine, if Valve manages to make it so my entire Steam catalog "just works" without any bullshit? Nutella can keep Windows 10 Spyware Edition and I won't have to worry about MSFT pulling the plug on the non spyware versions of Windows.
BTW one of the nice things about Zorin is it already has Wine setup for most of the basic Windows productivity programs so with Steam taking care of the games? There really isn't a need for Windows except for the occasional funky bit of hardware, hell Zorin even managed to "just work" OOTB on my old AMD netbook and that Broadcom wireless chip is flaky as hell even in any version of Windows other than 7, but not only did it install the proprietary drivers without any muss or fuss but its a hell of a lot faster, even on that 6 year old Brazos dual core its quite snappy, most impressed.
But never underestimate a good visual representation. Sure those kind of things might work, but nothing beats having every person in the area simply look in their pocket and count the number of bills and know where they came from.
That is why it worked so well, the local stores were so crapflooded with $2 bills that if you bought $10 worth of stuff at a store with a $20 they would often give you five $2s simply because they ran out of other bills and just had mounds of $2s so everybody ended up with just piles of $2 bills and that meant every.single.person. in the area simply could look in their own pocket and see many $2 bills and they knew those meant an airman had spent money locally and passed hands to end up in your pocket. My local PC shop didn't even have any USAF customers and they were handing out $2 bills for weeks simply because so many people were paying their bills with them thanks to constantly getting them for change.
Remember Joe and Jane Average might not understand performance metrics (and frankly they are easy enough to "massage" hence why the old saying "lies, damn lies and statistics") but its damned hard to deny the impact of a company when you look in your pocket and see piles of bills you know without a shadow of a doubt came from them.
It would make an interesting experiment, simply have the corp that is claiming to be such a benefit to the community to pay their employees in $2 bills for a month and see at the end of the month how many $2 bills end up in the community.
That is what the local AFB did in the 80s when there was some NIMBYs that wanted to shut it down, the town was so flooded with $2 bills that everyone had piles of 'em and everyone was more than happy to tell the NIMBYs to have a heaping cup of STFU.
But it would be an easy way to tell one way or the other, if the town is crapflooded with $2 bills the money is circulating in the community, if almost nobody sees a $2 bill then the corp isn't doing squat for the local area.
See that is what absolutely killed me having Hughesnet, I LOOOVE my online combat sims and shooters and it just killed me not being able to take to the skies in my 109 or Spitfire and stalk some prey. I ended up giving up a rent free 3 bed 2 bath to move to the city just because i couldn't take the shitty Hughesnet anymore, it was just deep fried ass with some insanely low caps like 1gb per day or some shit, just God awful.
And IDK how their tethering prices are (I HATE camping) but the wife loves to camp with the grandkids and she lives on YouTube for all the "camping how tos" on her phone while she is out in the woods and with Cricket its only been running us like $75 a month for 2 phones with 5gb full speed and after than its still something like 600k-1mbps which is frankly fast enough to watch video comfortably or do basics. They use the AT&T network so IDK how good that is or isn't where you are at but it might be worth looking into. Their unlimited max is $60 a month per phone with 22Gb of full speed and once that is up it says you can still stream at up to 480p so for camping? that would probably be plenty.
Hey I've been there pal, had to shell out $3k to get cable run the whole BLOCK AND A HALF to my mother's house when she got down during her last year of life because my choices were...
1.- Dial up on lines AT&T hasn't given a shit about in 25+ years and are in horribly bad shape, 2.- Satnet that was so shit their rep actually said I should add dial up service to it for a SPEED BOOST , 3.- A WISP ran so incompetently they automatically assumed anybody who was using more bandwidth than a granny watching cat vids on her phone "must have teh virus", had NO kind of provisioning on their network (so anybody could just take all the bandwidth as they had ZERO control) and their "IT specialist" was so damned pants on head retarded when I brought in my laptop and told him flat footed "so show me this magical virus" he tried to Install Norton for Windows...on a Linux laptop...I shit you not, he just kept trying to run a Windows executable on a Linux laptop and never was smart enough to figure out that Mandrake wasn't some version of Windows...ugh. Needless to say I demanded and got my money back from those yahoos and couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I'm just glad I at least had the option of paying the $3k and getting the damned cable line run so now I get 75mbps down and 6mbps up, because i honestly don't think i could have lived with service THAT shitty, I would have had to put mom up in an apt somewhere and sell the house, but its pretty damned sad there is so few choices but as long as the corps can make so much more selling cellphones with itty bitty data plans I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Oh Jesus...I'm sorry man, I really am. I was on Hughesnet for 6 years and...man did that suck major ass. The only service I ever saw where they suggested dialup would give you a SPEED BOOST, that is just sad. I hated having to shell out 3K for a block and a half (at least they gave me 2 years of free service to make up for the $$$$ I shelled out) but at least I was close enough to have the option, if it had come down to selling the family home or going back to Satnet? Yeah the house would have been sold, I couldn't go back to that shit.
Hate to break the news to ya but most of those "signal amps" they offer? Its just using your home internet which if you are gonna do that why not just get a Magic Jack and save the extra dough?
My dad had to have one of those "signal amps" for home service and...yeah it was just running it through the DSL. The DSL go down? He was fucked. And IDK what kind of tricks they are using to go through the home net but if I didn't turn the damned thing off before I downloaded ANYTHING over the DSL it was literally faster for me to 1.- Go to my truck, 2.- Drive the 20 miles back to the shop, 3.- Download the drivers or files I needed over the cable (Thank God for WSUS Offline) 4.- Drag them to a USB stick, 5.- Drive the 20 miles back...than it was to just use the DSL with that "signal amp" running...yeah it royally sucked. Sadly it was the only way dad could get cellular service out there so he had no choice, if you have a provider that works? I'd do some serious research before even thinking about one of those signal amps.
Believe me I know how bad not having choice is, I had to spend nearly $3k just to get cable run the block and a half to my get my mother cablenet when I had to move back home to help in her last year of life and I loved being on Sprint in the city and have tried both Sprint and T-Mobile now that I'm living in the family homestead...and I have to drive nearly 5 miles with either provider to make a call. With VZ I could get texts but had to drive a mile to get a call, with AT&T (specifically Cricket which uses the AT&T network, thank goodness for Cricket as their local reps are a nice bunch, the AT&T store has so much smug doucheyness in the air you'd think it was an Apple Store) I can not only talk/text/surf but the Mrs can as well at the same time without having drop outs and calls sound like a skipping record, which the others did if I didn't drive all the way into the nearest town.
I hate to break the news to ya pal, but the entire reason the SCOTUS is broken is all due to a single party...and it ain't the elephants. Hint "The stitch in time that saved nine".
Ever since then power has been horribly tilted to the fed and away from the states, which is where the founding fathers intended most of the power to reside, and until that changes? It doesn't matter if its Ds or Rs that sit on SCOTUS because the outcome is the same...more power for the fed, less power for you.
Is your software supported by both state and federal government for purposes of accounting? is it supported by the private accountants and tax firms like Quickbooks is? Does it work without java which is a major attack vector and isn't used by Windows nor well supported as its not a priority on the desktop and hasn't been in years? Does it auto generate and send invoices? Handle keeping up with payment schedules from dozens to hundreds of accounts and automatically tell the bookkeeper when accounts are late?
Without even looking at the link I'm betting the answers are no, nope, uh uh, nada and not a chance...yeah and ya wonder why the network effect is so powerful? I have NO DOUBT that your "solution" is about as much an equal to quickbooks as Gimp is to Photoshop, it will do SOME of the jobs half ass and NONE of the jobs with the completeness and integration that QB has.
Its not a "MS Windows problem" as its NOT a problem if you stay with Windows...which is the point. Know how easy it is to install a printer in Win 7? "Clicky clicky next next next" and with win 8 and 10? you don't have to do anything, its all automatic by default.
And lets get to the real nasty rotting elephant in the room which is Linux sucks donkey nuts when it comes to backwards compatibility. i have customers with some programs that are 10+ years old, know how hard it is to get them running in the latest Windows? "choose compatibility mode, clicky clicky next next next" and that isn't even required for more than half of them, for those just install and run OOTB. You just try getting a program from 2001 or even 2010 running on Linux and you will quickly find you are royally fucked, because thanks to the lack of a stable ABI every damned thing is tied to some old kernel that hasn't been supported in years and is incompatible with anything modern...makes the.DLL hell of Win9X look sane by comparison.
Look its REALLY simple, offer a better product and users will take it, offer a worse one and they won't, its really THAT simple and honestly Linux is simply an inferior product in all the ways that users give a shit about, hardware/software compatibility, ease of use, backwards compatibility (which if anything has gotten WORSE not better) and quality of software...Linux just doesn't have it. Instead what they have is sadly a bunch of antisocial devs that think their shit doesn't stink and honestly believe that offering some shitty half ass substitute like GNUCash or Libreoffice or GIMP, zero backwards compatibility, and frankly piss poor compatibility with so many devices that end users come into contact with every day like Wifi adapters, scanner/fax/printer combos, and cameras is "good enough"...sorry but the user has a choice and the choice is waste time with an inferior product that doesn't do half of what their old system did or simply stick with Windows and have it "just work", now which do YOU think the average end user is gonna choose?
Uhhh care to explain how I got anything FREE or are you just fucking high? And I include a mention of getting a good deal in my review so if the price goes up? Those that come along later can decide for themselves if it is worth it at the new price...but fuck if you want to go by THAT metric then NO REVIEW IS USEFUL since prices change daily and just because YOU thought something was good at $X doesn't mean that I will find it worth it at $y.
Hell you want a perfect example look up decent AM3+ boards, you can score crazy good deals on FX8 chips right now but good damned luck getting a decent board for it, you'd think those boards were made with unobtainium or something. When those boards came out one of the big selling points was you could get really nice gamer board for much cheaper than anything Intel offered, today? Yeah GL with that and I guarantee ya every review on Amazon and Newegg is from when those boards were sub $130, not $350+.
Afraid not friend. Their printer/scanner/fax, their camera software, their favorite game, their bookkeeping software, hell i could go on all damned day and NONE OF IT will run on Linux.
Ya see this is the problem that the FOSSies just don't seem capable of grasping, every single person using Windows has some programs they consider "must have" or there is no point in having the PC...and none of it works on Linux. Sure you might come up with a wine layer for MS Office or Quickbooks (does Quickbooks even work in 2018? haven't looked in years) but that is 2 programs out of several million, and that isn't counting all the hardware out there that was written with ONLY a Windows driver, which believe me is VERY numerous indeed.
So I'm sorry, it would be nice if it really was "just people using email and FB" because that would mean the majority would be a simple switch...but that user is a myth, they don't exist. What you have is all these millions of users that MOSTLY use FB and web BUT they ALSO use a half a dozen windows only programs...which programs? Its different for every user and if those programs don't work? Then its "I don't want this, its broken" and they go back to Windows. Sorry friend but that is why the network effect is so powerful, those millions of programs are a better lock in than any walled garden and the users will happily take whatever MSFT offers as long as those programs work, PERIOD.
I have to disagree as I've given a few 5 star reviews but in each of those cases? i got a hell of a deal so needless to say i was a happy camper. Paid $80 for a $200 CPU because of rumors of the next chip coming out? Yeah I'm happy. Paid $60 for a $150 router because a new model just dropped? Yeah enjoy your 5 star while i enjoy my new toy, thx.
There are plenty of normal folks that if you give them a great deal? A product doesn't have to be perfect to get a glowing review because they know they got a damned good price.
Anything to do with office work because Linux is for PROGRAMMERS not office workers? I'm sorry dude by MS Office from 10 years ago kicks the dogshit out of the latest and greatest LibreOffice, not even close. try doing anything even slightly complex like working with tables and watch how quickly LO shits itself and falls down...its just sad.
A customer asked me to set up LO to auto generate a calendar for each month and I get paid $75 an hour so time IS money but hey I figured "hey surely its as simple as MS Office, it IS just a simple calendar after all"...nope, searched the LO database and the best one i could find was a glued together POS that required ME to write code to get it to interface with the OS to get the date to set up the correct layout, otherwise all it did was crank out a worthless generic 30 day calendar. I told him it was gonna cost him more than the cost of MS Office to make me set there and write that shit so he asked me how simple it was in MS Office...I popped open my netbook, typed "calendar" in MS Office which popped up the MSO Online DB, clicked on calendar, hit install...done. Then I just clicked "new calendar" and it would auto-generate a perfect calendar with the month and year in one of 4 styles,ez pz...needless to say he bought himself a copy of MSO on the spot.
This doesn't even begin to touch the bazillion other programs which Windows has that Linux isn't even close, from Exchange and Excel to Quicken/Quickbooks to the billing software that most companies use, I'm sorry but Linux? Great for programmers and maybe grandmas that only use PCs to surf (but I would argue that a locked down iPad or Android Tablet would be better for those) but for everybody else? Yeah sorry but its about as useful as taking away their PCs and replacing them with a Llama.
Sure you can and its easy, watch..../user tries to install VLC, gets pop up message/ "Hi, VLC here, did you know that (insert phone) that you are trying to install VLC on has a "feature" that will ruin your experience using VLC? If you wish to continue using VLC here is how to disable it, if you would prefer to keep this feature please press the cancel button to stop installing VLC"....TADA!
This will protect their rep and let the user know its NOT the fault of VLC, its the phone. It will even tell the user in simple language how to fix it if they would rather have VLC than this aggressive battery crapware. Give the user the information and let them choose which they would prefer...user choice...its a good thing.
Wow...you have NEVAR been laid, have you? If you honestly think watching a porn, or a Lets Play, is the same as the real thing? Yeah...go buy a hooker dude. I'll steal a line from the Man, Chris Walken as the Angel Of Death: "You been with a woman, Zophael? It's like dying... you moan, cry out. You get to a spot that has you begging for release. Once, I was an Angel of Death... now, I die every day... when I have the cash."
I've watched a million Lets Play and they are NOTHING like the thrill of actually WINNING, its like saying "Nobody will play football because they can watch a game on TV"...yeah no, watching some dude make the TD is absolutely nothing like being the guy that spiked that ball, not even close. Watching some dude fly a plane well is not even close to the feeling when I'm on top of the world in my BF109, watching as the Spitfire below me shudders as he stalls and then popping that rudder and falling down like a hawk and ripping him apart...yeah not anywhere even SLIGHTLY close to that thrill.
Then explain the holder for the phone, or when the wife spent a whole 2 minutes looking for a CASE for her glasses only to get for a solid month "WE WILL SELL U SOME NEW GLASSES LULZ"?
They are NOT going by watch you searched for, what they are doing is trying to make their ads fit anything because that is what they have to sell, whether you give a flying fuck or not. In a way it reminds me of the old porn bugs I used to have to clean off customer's PCs in the 90s, they would be looking at say "big titty blowbangs" and would get a porn bug constantly trying to sell them twinks in tutus...now do you HONESTLY think someone who is looking for big titty blowbangs gives a single shit about twinks in tutus? Nope but that is what ads the ad company has for sale so that is what you get whether you will give a fuck or not.
Its the same thing here, in the old days they would base the ad on what you were actually looking at, an article on new GPUs would get GPU and RAM sales because if you are looking at GPUs you might be in the market, today? Today they have certain products they want to push to EVERYBODY so they are gonna grab at any straw they possibly can to make that ad fit, not because you might buy it but because that is what they are shoveling sales be damned. I mean is there a single snowball's chance in hell I'm gonna buy a new phone when the HOLDER I just bought isn't gonna work on that phone? Of course not, don't be silly. But cell phone COMPANIES pay good money for their ads so the ad companies are gonna shove that shit at ANY excuse because that is where the money is at. Its a scam, the companies are making less money, the customers are tuning out and adblocking, the only one making cash is the ad companies selling their snake oil metrics.
Mine feels like someone VERY stupid going through last week's trash honestly. I'll look up a part, lets say a replacement battery for a customer's laptop, and then for a month I'll get "OMG u want laptops? We got laptops PLZ BUY LAPTOP!!"...no you retards, if I wanted a NEW laptop I wouldn't be looking for a BATTERY for what I have, would I?
The sad part? The old ads that just went by what you were looking at on the web? Actually worked, these? Haven't bought a single thing in years. With the old ads I would be looking at say an article on some new GPU and I would see "Hey you want a GPU? We have those on sale, also having a sale on RAM and HDDs, just FYI" and many times I would go "Hmm that IS a good price, I could use a prezzie for myself" and off I would go to buy something. These new ads are always a day late a a fist load of dollars short as thy completely IGNORE what I'm looking at for something I searched for ages ago.
This should be blatantly obvious, if I'm looking at GPUs or RAM or a new battery for my vape pipe, shouldn't you offer to sell me those? Wouldn't that make sense? Instead I look at something simple and obvious like a new holder for my phone and get "ZOMFG U WANT A SAMSUNG GALAXY? WE GOT SAMSUNG GALAXY"...No dipshits, I did NOT look for a PHONE, I looked for a HOLDER, why would I want a new phone if I just bought a holder for the one I already have? Fucking idiots.
Heartbleed ring ANY bells? That was exploited for God knows how long before anybody got hit with a clue bat (in fact last I checked there are STILL servers out there with the exploit unpatched) but again because everyone ASSUMES the code is being vetted that bug was able to stay in there for decades.
Then there is the infected Quake 3 Arena that stayed in the Ubuntu repo for over a year, the KDELook trojan that lasted nearly 2 years, hell i could go on all day listing times where nasty shit got completely overlooked because everyone assumed that SOMEBODY was checking this shit...but they weren't and as I pointed out just a teeny tiny bit of logic blows the entire premise to shit.
But lets here it Einstein, because I'm sure we'll all find the insane logic hoops you'll be jumping through REALLY funny...explain to us where these magical security IT teams are coming from to vet every single package on the repo of your choice because as I pointed out unless they have years of exp spotting obfuscated C code is DAMN hard, who is paying the many millions to have them do nothing but check all that code, and how they are able to check the hundreds if not thousands of packages that change in any given year on your average distro.
Because I'm willing to bet my last dollar that if you look at who is accessing the code for the boring bits and bobs that make up your average distro, all the dull parts from the calendar function to the googly eyes to the code that controls the wallpaper, that the only ones accessing that code are the guys doing the changes who you again ASSUME that they are never gonna turn out to be a bad actor...yeah GL with that. Before there really wasn't any point attacking Linux because there just wasn't enough users to make it a juicy target...now there is crypto bugs where you can make an assload using every CPU and GPU you can get your hands on to mine coins....yeah I have a feeling you are seeing the tip of the iceberg and it won't take long before the crypto bugs come in force...again GL with that.
Except there is a fatal flaw with your argument which TFA shows, which is the whole thing is based on an "is ought" fallacy. You ASSUME there OUGHT to be someone who 1.- Has the years in IT security to spot obfuscated malware code, 2.- Has the time to vet every single package every time it is altered, and 3.- Is able to do that for every single package available before any of those packages are updated but just because you again ASSUME there OUGHT to be someone or multiple someones doing that does NOT mean there IS someone doing that.
Hell if you think about it even for a minute you'll see how foolish the entire argument is, I mean how many packages are in your average distro? Now how many packages are in your average repo? And as we all know shit is changing in the Linux world constantly so how many of those packages are getting changed in any given month? If any of you has looked at the code for the obfuscated C contest you'll know its not hard to hide malware code in such a way its DAMN hard to spot...now are you REALLY gonna sit here and argue that someone is paying some huge team of top IT security researchers to sit there 8 hours a day doing NOTHING but vetting your favorite distro? Really? Remember this isn't something you can get some volunteer to do as well written malware code isn't gonna be at all easy to spot and it can even be broken up so that pieces of it is in multiple packages, it takes coders with years of security exp to spot the signs and those guys? Yeah they ain't cheap, not at all.
One word sweetcheeks...GameJournoPros. Might want to look up the logs. You can spin like a fucking ballerina and claim "my fee fees REEEE!" all you want but we got the fucking logs showing them biasing the living fuck out of game reviews to push their political narrative.
So sorry honeybunny, but your bullshit is about as believable as HRC slipped with that hammer on her cellphones half a dozen times or that she didn't know the difference between a delete button and a multipass data erasure, the logs don't lie. BTW isn't it funny how the how "my fee fees, misogyny REEE!" started right after the logs got dumped showing those "pros" to be as crooked as a Chicago politician? Wow, what a coincidence, but I'm sure they had absolutely nothing to do with each other....LOL.
Oh and while you are white knighting might want to look up the phrase "useful idiot", cuz it kinda applies when you are defending a bunch getting together on secret chat channels and rigging their reviews like pro wrestling to make sure they get over those that are part of their little in crowd. But hey don't feel bad, I'm sure you can find some fellow travelers in TLJ apology club, where they still try to claim everyone hates Rose Tico because she is Asian and not because everything she did in the entire damned movie was pants on head retarded, or that people hate Rey because she has a vagina and not because she is so fucking Mary Sue that the ACTUAL Mary Sue the trope was named for was more believable in universe than Rey.
Dude? Yeah the game I have sunk like $400 over the years into? Because I saw a streamer playing it and it looked fun. Same holds true for quite a lot of others. A good player that can build excitement and keep momentum going? Worth a thousand shitty fake CGI demos because you can see what the game is really like and not some pre rendered horseshit.
And personally I don't give a flying flipping fuck what you think about streamers, to cheer when someone dies of cancer leaving a widow and child? Yeah fuck you, you are a piece of shit, and the fact she did it because he wouldn't wave her little political flag just shows what a worthless waste of space she truly is.
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6w for a third gen I3 performance in a budget tablet? I'd say that is pretty good but like I said if it wasn't for Windows X86 programs everyone would just buy the Android as its cheaper, more features, and more apps.
That is why I think it'll be a hit if they can hit the right price point (sub $250 and the lower the better, not like MSFT needs to make money off the OS) because there is just so damned many Windows X86 programs that haven't been ported and would probably be insanely expensive to replace. But if MSFT can hit the right price point and it does handle like an I3? I can see SOHOs and SMBs gobbling these up simply because they won't have to replace all that specialized third party software from inventory to bookkeeping to God knows what else.
And I agree while its good that all that shitty "IE based" crap is dying out you'd be fricking amazed how much Windows only software is still out there that the corp that made it either has no interest in porting or hell, maybe they simply no longer support the software anymore and companies are still depending on it. I've had to massage the living hell out of VMs to get decade plus old software to run on modern Windows because the corp no longer supported it and a company required it to interface with their $200K printer/plotter rig, there is a shitload of companies that have serious money tied up in Windows software/hardware that simply has to Android/iOS equivalent. Nice thing about Windows is 9 times out of 10 there IS a way to get the old stuff to run on newer versions, I've tried a few windows emulators and the experience? Yeah wasn't very nice, not nice at all. Felt like running Win98 on a 286, just painful.
But ironically that is EXACTLY why MSFT cannot get shit for traction in phones and ARM, its the same "chicken or egg" issue Linux had trying to gain traction in the 00s. Nobody buys Windows because they having a raging hard on for MSFT, they buy it to run their programs and if those programs are X86 only and you hand them something like WinRT? Let me put it THIS way...I had folks trying to sell me WinRT tablets dirt cheap for a good year after the local Walmart started selling them and they were all like new but every time when I asked why they didn't want it the answer was the same "my programs won't work". I passed on them and the local shop down the street bought them for a song...and took a bath on them because you couldn't give 'em away, nobody wanted a windows tablet that couldn't run "Windows" programs.
But if it couldn't run Windows X86 programs...would you have bought it over the cheaper and often more feature rich Android tablets? probably not and that is the point the entire selling point of Windows is its huge backwards compatible library of X86 software.
I mean what would be the point of Windows On Arm? Buy Windows so you can use their crappy Appstore that doesn't have shit compared to Android? that is what killed WinPhone and Windows On Arm the first time and MSFT knows this which is why I seriously doubt MSFT was serious about going Arm.
BTW the Pentium Gold only uses a max 6w on the low end model so really not bad for a tablet that can run Windows programs, i se this being adopted by a lot of SOHO and SMBs simply because they can hand their workers low cost units that run all the software they have already been trained on. I know all the local docs are adopting Surface as all their insurance and diagnostic software already runs on Windows so its an easy switch, with low costs units I can see this becoming THE hot small business product for the next few years.
Actually TFA should be called "MSFT punks Intel, gets sweetheart deal on chips" because we have already seen NOBODY wants Windows on ARM (because if you can't run you X86 Windows programs why run Windows?) so I seriously doubt MSFT had any real intent on going down that road of fail again, they just wanted a better deal on the CPUs.
I've started testing Zorin OS (based on Ubuntu, quite nice) but games is the one thing keeping Win 8.1 Pro on my gaming machine, if Valve manages to make it so my entire Steam catalog "just works" without any bullshit? Nutella can keep Windows 10 Spyware Edition and I won't have to worry about MSFT pulling the plug on the non spyware versions of Windows.
BTW one of the nice things about Zorin is it already has Wine setup for most of the basic Windows productivity programs so with Steam taking care of the games? There really isn't a need for Windows except for the occasional funky bit of hardware, hell Zorin even managed to "just work" OOTB on my old AMD netbook and that Broadcom wireless chip is flaky as hell even in any version of Windows other than 7, but not only did it install the proprietary drivers without any muss or fuss but its a hell of a lot faster, even on that 6 year old Brazos dual core its quite snappy, most impressed.
But never underestimate a good visual representation. Sure those kind of things might work, but nothing beats having every person in the area simply look in their pocket and count the number of bills and know where they came from.
That is why it worked so well, the local stores were so crapflooded with $2 bills that if you bought $10 worth of stuff at a store with a $20 they would often give you five $2s simply because they ran out of other bills and just had mounds of $2s so everybody ended up with just piles of $2 bills and that meant every.single.person. in the area simply could look in their own pocket and see many $2 bills and they knew those meant an airman had spent money locally and passed hands to end up in your pocket. My local PC shop didn't even have any USAF customers and they were handing out $2 bills for weeks simply because so many people were paying their bills with them thanks to constantly getting them for change.
Remember Joe and Jane Average might not understand performance metrics (and frankly they are easy enough to "massage" hence why the old saying "lies, damn lies and statistics") but its damned hard to deny the impact of a company when you look in your pocket and see piles of bills you know without a shadow of a doubt came from them.
It would make an interesting experiment, simply have the corp that is claiming to be such a benefit to the community to pay their employees in $2 bills for a month and see at the end of the month how many $2 bills end up in the community.
That is what the local AFB did in the 80s when there was some NIMBYs that wanted to shut it down, the town was so flooded with $2 bills that everyone had piles of 'em and everyone was more than happy to tell the NIMBYs to have a heaping cup of STFU.
But it would be an easy way to tell one way or the other, if the town is crapflooded with $2 bills the money is circulating in the community, if almost nobody sees a $2 bill then the corp isn't doing squat for the local area.
See that is what absolutely killed me having Hughesnet, I LOOOVE my online combat sims and shooters and it just killed me not being able to take to the skies in my 109 or Spitfire and stalk some prey. I ended up giving up a rent free 3 bed 2 bath to move to the city just because i couldn't take the shitty Hughesnet anymore, it was just deep fried ass with some insanely low caps like 1gb per day or some shit, just God awful.
And IDK how their tethering prices are (I HATE camping) but the wife loves to camp with the grandkids and she lives on YouTube for all the "camping how tos" on her phone while she is out in the woods and with Cricket its only been running us like $75 a month for 2 phones with 5gb full speed and after than its still something like 600k-1mbps which is frankly fast enough to watch video comfortably or do basics. They use the AT&T network so IDK how good that is or isn't where you are at but it might be worth looking into. Their unlimited max is $60 a month per phone with 22Gb of full speed and once that is up it says you can still stream at up to 480p so for camping? that would probably be plenty.
Hey I've been there pal, had to shell out $3k to get cable run the whole BLOCK AND A HALF to my mother's house when she got down during her last year of life because my choices were...
1.- Dial up on lines AT&T hasn't given a shit about in 25+ years and are in horribly bad shape, 2.- Satnet that was so shit their rep actually said I should add dial up service to it for a SPEED BOOST , 3.- A WISP ran so incompetently they automatically assumed anybody who was using more bandwidth than a granny watching cat vids on her phone "must have teh virus", had NO kind of provisioning on their network (so anybody could just take all the bandwidth as they had ZERO control) and their "IT specialist" was so damned pants on head retarded when I brought in my laptop and told him flat footed "so show me this magical virus" he tried to Install Norton for Windows...on a Linux laptop...I shit you not, he just kept trying to run a Windows executable on a Linux laptop and never was smart enough to figure out that Mandrake wasn't some version of Windows...ugh. Needless to say I demanded and got my money back from those yahoos and couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I'm just glad I at least had the option of paying the $3k and getting the damned cable line run so now I get 75mbps down and 6mbps up, because i honestly don't think i could have lived with service THAT shitty, I would have had to put mom up in an apt somewhere and sell the house, but its pretty damned sad there is so few choices but as long as the corps can make so much more selling cellphones with itty bitty data plans I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Oh Jesus...I'm sorry man, I really am. I was on Hughesnet for 6 years and...man did that suck major ass. The only service I ever saw where they suggested dialup would give you a SPEED BOOST, that is just sad. I hated having to shell out 3K for a block and a half (at least they gave me 2 years of free service to make up for the $$$$ I shelled out) but at least I was close enough to have the option, if it had come down to selling the family home or going back to Satnet? Yeah the house would have been sold, I couldn't go back to that shit.
Hate to break the news to ya but most of those "signal amps" they offer? Its just using your home internet which if you are gonna do that why not just get a Magic Jack and save the extra dough?
My dad had to have one of those "signal amps" for home service and...yeah it was just running it through the DSL. The DSL go down? He was fucked. And IDK what kind of tricks they are using to go through the home net but if I didn't turn the damned thing off before I downloaded ANYTHING over the DSL it was literally faster for me to 1.- Go to my truck, 2.- Drive the 20 miles back to the shop, 3.- Download the drivers or files I needed over the cable (Thank God for WSUS Offline) 4.- Drag them to a USB stick, 5.- Drive the 20 miles back...than it was to just use the DSL with that "signal amp" running...yeah it royally sucked. Sadly it was the only way dad could get cellular service out there so he had no choice, if you have a provider that works? I'd do some serious research before even thinking about one of those signal amps.
Believe me I know how bad not having choice is, I had to spend nearly $3k just to get cable run the block and a half to my get my mother cablenet when I had to move back home to help in her last year of life and I loved being on Sprint in the city and have tried both Sprint and T-Mobile now that I'm living in the family homestead...and I have to drive nearly 5 miles with either provider to make a call. With VZ I could get texts but had to drive a mile to get a call, with AT&T (specifically Cricket which uses the AT&T network, thank goodness for Cricket as their local reps are a nice bunch, the AT&T store has so much smug doucheyness in the air you'd think it was an Apple Store) I can not only talk/text/surf but the Mrs can as well at the same time without having drop outs and calls sound like a skipping record, which the others did if I didn't drive all the way into the nearest town.
I hate to break the news to ya pal, but the entire reason the SCOTUS is broken is all due to a single party...and it ain't the elephants. Hint "The stitch in time that saved nine".
Ever since then power has been horribly tilted to the fed and away from the states, which is where the founding fathers intended most of the power to reside, and until that changes? It doesn't matter if its Ds or Rs that sit on SCOTUS because the outcome is the same...more power for the fed, less power for you.
Is your software supported by both state and federal government for purposes of accounting? is it supported by the private accountants and tax firms like Quickbooks is? Does it work without java which is a major attack vector and isn't used by Windows nor well supported as its not a priority on the desktop and hasn't been in years? Does it auto generate and send invoices? Handle keeping up with payment schedules from dozens to hundreds of accounts and automatically tell the bookkeeper when accounts are late?
Without even looking at the link I'm betting the answers are no, nope, uh uh, nada and not a chance...yeah and ya wonder why the network effect is so powerful? I have NO DOUBT that your "solution" is about as much an equal to quickbooks as Gimp is to Photoshop, it will do SOME of the jobs half ass and NONE of the jobs with the completeness and integration that QB has.
Its not a "MS Windows problem" as its NOT a problem if you stay with Windows...which is the point. Know how easy it is to install a printer in Win 7? "Clicky clicky next next next" and with win 8 and 10? you don't have to do anything, its all automatic by default.
And lets get to the real nasty rotting elephant in the room which is Linux sucks donkey nuts when it comes to backwards compatibility. i have customers with some programs that are 10+ years old, know how hard it is to get them running in the latest Windows? "choose compatibility mode, clicky clicky next next next" and that isn't even required for more than half of them, for those just install and run OOTB. You just try getting a program from 2001 or even 2010 running on Linux and you will quickly find you are royally fucked, because thanks to the lack of a stable ABI every damned thing is tied to some old kernel that hasn't been supported in years and is incompatible with anything modern...makes the .DLL hell of Win9X look sane by comparison.
Look its REALLY simple, offer a better product and users will take it, offer a worse one and they won't, its really THAT simple and honestly Linux is simply an inferior product in all the ways that users give a shit about, hardware/software compatibility, ease of use, backwards compatibility (which if anything has gotten WORSE not better) and quality of software...Linux just doesn't have it. Instead what they have is sadly a bunch of antisocial devs that think their shit doesn't stink and honestly believe that offering some shitty half ass substitute like GNUCash or Libreoffice or GIMP, zero backwards compatibility, and frankly piss poor compatibility with so many devices that end users come into contact with every day like Wifi adapters, scanner/fax/printer combos, and cameras is "good enough"...sorry but the user has a choice and the choice is waste time with an inferior product that doesn't do half of what their old system did or simply stick with Windows and have it "just work", now which do YOU think the average end user is gonna choose?
Uhhh care to explain how I got anything FREE or are you just fucking high? And I include a mention of getting a good deal in my review so if the price goes up? Those that come along later can decide for themselves if it is worth it at the new price...but fuck if you want to go by THAT metric then NO REVIEW IS USEFUL since prices change daily and just because YOU thought something was good at $X doesn't mean that I will find it worth it at $y.
Hell you want a perfect example look up decent AM3+ boards, you can score crazy good deals on FX8 chips right now but good damned luck getting a decent board for it, you'd think those boards were made with unobtainium or something. When those boards came out one of the big selling points was you could get really nice gamer board for much cheaper than anything Intel offered, today? Yeah GL with that and I guarantee ya every review on Amazon and Newegg is from when those boards were sub $130, not $350+.
Afraid not friend. Their printer/scanner/fax, their camera software, their favorite game, their bookkeeping software, hell i could go on all damned day and NONE OF IT will run on Linux.
Ya see this is the problem that the FOSSies just don't seem capable of grasping, every single person using Windows has some programs they consider "must have" or there is no point in having the PC...and none of it works on Linux. Sure you might come up with a wine layer for MS Office or Quickbooks (does Quickbooks even work in 2018? haven't looked in years) but that is 2 programs out of several million, and that isn't counting all the hardware out there that was written with ONLY a Windows driver, which believe me is VERY numerous indeed.
So I'm sorry, it would be nice if it really was "just people using email and FB" because that would mean the majority would be a simple switch...but that user is a myth, they don't exist. What you have is all these millions of users that MOSTLY use FB and web BUT they ALSO use a half a dozen windows only programs...which programs? Its different for every user and if those programs don't work? Then its "I don't want this, its broken" and they go back to Windows. Sorry friend but that is why the network effect is so powerful, those millions of programs are a better lock in than any walled garden and the users will happily take whatever MSFT offers as long as those programs work, PERIOD.
I have to disagree as I've given a few 5 star reviews but in each of those cases? i got a hell of a deal so needless to say i was a happy camper. Paid $80 for a $200 CPU because of rumors of the next chip coming out? Yeah I'm happy. Paid $60 for a $150 router because a new model just dropped? Yeah enjoy your 5 star while i enjoy my new toy, thx.
There are plenty of normal folks that if you give them a great deal? A product doesn't have to be perfect to get a glowing review because they know they got a damned good price.
Anything to do with office work because Linux is for PROGRAMMERS not office workers? I'm sorry dude by MS Office from 10 years ago kicks the dogshit out of the latest and greatest LibreOffice, not even close. try doing anything even slightly complex like working with tables and watch how quickly LO shits itself and falls down...its just sad.
A customer asked me to set up LO to auto generate a calendar for each month and I get paid $75 an hour so time IS money but hey I figured "hey surely its as simple as MS Office, it IS just a simple calendar after all"...nope, searched the LO database and the best one i could find was a glued together POS that required ME to write code to get it to interface with the OS to get the date to set up the correct layout, otherwise all it did was crank out a worthless generic 30 day calendar. I told him it was gonna cost him more than the cost of MS Office to make me set there and write that shit so he asked me how simple it was in MS Office...I popped open my netbook, typed "calendar" in MS Office which popped up the MSO Online DB, clicked on calendar, hit install...done. Then I just clicked "new calendar" and it would auto-generate a perfect calendar with the month and year in one of 4 styles,ez pz...needless to say he bought himself a copy of MSO on the spot.
This doesn't even begin to touch the bazillion other programs which Windows has that Linux isn't even close, from Exchange and Excel to Quicken/Quickbooks to the billing software that most companies use, I'm sorry but Linux? Great for programmers and maybe grandmas that only use PCs to surf (but I would argue that a locked down iPad or Android Tablet would be better for those) but for everybody else? Yeah sorry but its about as useful as taking away their PCs and replacing them with a Llama.
Sure you can and its easy, watch..../user tries to install VLC, gets pop up message/ "Hi, VLC here, did you know that (insert phone) that you are trying to install VLC on has a "feature" that will ruin your experience using VLC? If you wish to continue using VLC here is how to disable it, if you would prefer to keep this feature please press the cancel button to stop installing VLC"....TADA!
This will protect their rep and let the user know its NOT the fault of VLC, its the phone. It will even tell the user in simple language how to fix it if they would rather have VLC than this aggressive battery crapware. Give the user the information and let them choose which they would prefer...user choice...its a good thing.
Wow...you have NEVAR been laid, have you? If you honestly think watching a porn, or a Lets Play, is the same as the real thing? Yeah...go buy a hooker dude. I'll steal a line from the Man, Chris Walken as the Angel Of Death: "You been with a woman, Zophael? It's like dying... you moan, cry out. You get to a spot that has you begging for release. Once, I was an Angel of Death... now, I die every day... when I have the cash."
I've watched a million Lets Play and they are NOTHING like the thrill of actually WINNING, its like saying "Nobody will play football because they can watch a game on TV"...yeah no, watching some dude make the TD is absolutely nothing like being the guy that spiked that ball, not even close. Watching some dude fly a plane well is not even close to the feeling when I'm on top of the world in my BF109, watching as the Spitfire below me shudders as he stalls and then popping that rudder and falling down like a hawk and ripping him apart...yeah not anywhere even SLIGHTLY close to that thrill.
Then explain the holder for the phone, or when the wife spent a whole 2 minutes looking for a CASE for her glasses only to get for a solid month "WE WILL SELL U SOME NEW GLASSES LULZ"?
They are NOT going by watch you searched for, what they are doing is trying to make their ads fit anything because that is what they have to sell, whether you give a flying fuck or not. In a way it reminds me of the old porn bugs I used to have to clean off customer's PCs in the 90s, they would be looking at say "big titty blowbangs" and would get a porn bug constantly trying to sell them twinks in tutus...now do you HONESTLY think someone who is looking for big titty blowbangs gives a single shit about twinks in tutus? Nope but that is what ads the ad company has for sale so that is what you get whether you will give a fuck or not.
Its the same thing here, in the old days they would base the ad on what you were actually looking at, an article on new GPUs would get GPU and RAM sales because if you are looking at GPUs you might be in the market, today? Today they have certain products they want to push to EVERYBODY so they are gonna grab at any straw they possibly can to make that ad fit, not because you might buy it but because that is what they are shoveling sales be damned. I mean is there a single snowball's chance in hell I'm gonna buy a new phone when the HOLDER I just bought isn't gonna work on that phone? Of course not, don't be silly. But cell phone COMPANIES pay good money for their ads so the ad companies are gonna shove that shit at ANY excuse because that is where the money is at. Its a scam, the companies are making less money, the customers are tuning out and adblocking, the only one making cash is the ad companies selling their snake oil metrics.
Mine feels like someone VERY stupid going through last week's trash honestly. I'll look up a part, lets say a replacement battery for a customer's laptop, and then for a month I'll get "OMG u want laptops? We got laptops PLZ BUY LAPTOP!!"...no you retards, if I wanted a NEW laptop I wouldn't be looking for a BATTERY for what I have, would I?
The sad part? The old ads that just went by what you were looking at on the web? Actually worked, these? Haven't bought a single thing in years. With the old ads I would be looking at say an article on some new GPU and I would see "Hey you want a GPU? We have those on sale, also having a sale on RAM and HDDs, just FYI" and many times I would go "Hmm that IS a good price, I could use a prezzie for myself" and off I would go to buy something. These new ads are always a day late a a fist load of dollars short as thy completely IGNORE what I'm looking at for something I searched for ages ago.
This should be blatantly obvious, if I'm looking at GPUs or RAM or a new battery for my vape pipe, shouldn't you offer to sell me those? Wouldn't that make sense? Instead I look at something simple and obvious like a new holder for my phone and get "ZOMFG U WANT A SAMSUNG GALAXY? WE GOT SAMSUNG GALAXY"...No dipshits, I did NOT look for a PHONE, I looked for a HOLDER, why would I want a new phone if I just bought a holder for the one I already have? Fucking idiots.
Heartbleed ring ANY bells? That was exploited for God knows how long before anybody got hit with a clue bat (in fact last I checked there are STILL servers out there with the exploit unpatched) but again because everyone ASSUMES the code is being vetted that bug was able to stay in there for decades.
Then there is the infected Quake 3 Arena that stayed in the Ubuntu repo for over a year, the KDELook trojan that lasted nearly 2 years, hell i could go on all day listing times where nasty shit got completely overlooked because everyone assumed that SOMEBODY was checking this shit...but they weren't and as I pointed out just a teeny tiny bit of logic blows the entire premise to shit.
But lets here it Einstein, because I'm sure we'll all find the insane logic hoops you'll be jumping through REALLY funny...explain to us where these magical security IT teams are coming from to vet every single package on the repo of your choice because as I pointed out unless they have years of exp spotting obfuscated C code is DAMN hard, who is paying the many millions to have them do nothing but check all that code, and how they are able to check the hundreds if not thousands of packages that change in any given year on your average distro.
Because I'm willing to bet my last dollar that if you look at who is accessing the code for the boring bits and bobs that make up your average distro, all the dull parts from the calendar function to the googly eyes to the code that controls the wallpaper, that the only ones accessing that code are the guys doing the changes who you again ASSUME that they are never gonna turn out to be a bad actor...yeah GL with that. Before there really wasn't any point attacking Linux because there just wasn't enough users to make it a juicy target...now there is crypto bugs where you can make an assload using every CPU and GPU you can get your hands on to mine coins....yeah I have a feeling you are seeing the tip of the iceberg and it won't take long before the crypto bugs come in force...again GL with that.
Except there is a fatal flaw with your argument which TFA shows, which is the whole thing is based on an "is ought" fallacy. You ASSUME there OUGHT to be someone who 1.- Has the years in IT security to spot obfuscated malware code, 2.- Has the time to vet every single package every time it is altered, and 3.- Is able to do that for every single package available before any of those packages are updated but just because you again ASSUME there OUGHT to be someone or multiple someones doing that does NOT mean there IS someone doing that.
Hell if you think about it even for a minute you'll see how foolish the entire argument is, I mean how many packages are in your average distro? Now how many packages are in your average repo? And as we all know shit is changing in the Linux world constantly so how many of those packages are getting changed in any given month? If any of you has looked at the code for the obfuscated C contest you'll know its not hard to hide malware code in such a way its DAMN hard to spot...now are you REALLY gonna sit here and argue that someone is paying some huge team of top IT security researchers to sit there 8 hours a day doing NOTHING but vetting your favorite distro? Really? Remember this isn't something you can get some volunteer to do as well written malware code isn't gonna be at all easy to spot and it can even be broken up so that pieces of it is in multiple packages, it takes coders with years of security exp to spot the signs and those guys? Yeah they ain't cheap, not at all.
One word sweetcheeks...GameJournoPros. Might want to look up the logs. You can spin like a fucking ballerina and claim "my fee fees REEEE!" all you want but we got the fucking logs showing them biasing the living fuck out of game reviews to push their political narrative.
So sorry honeybunny, but your bullshit is about as believable as HRC slipped with that hammer on her cellphones half a dozen times or that she didn't know the difference between a delete button and a multipass data erasure, the logs don't lie. BTW isn't it funny how the how "my fee fees, misogyny REEE!" started right after the logs got dumped showing those "pros" to be as crooked as a Chicago politician? Wow, what a coincidence, but I'm sure they had absolutely nothing to do with each other....LOL.
Oh and while you are white knighting might want to look up the phrase "useful idiot", cuz it kinda applies when you are defending a bunch getting together on secret chat channels and rigging their reviews like pro wrestling to make sure they get over those that are part of their little in crowd. But hey don't feel bad, I'm sure you can find some fellow travelers in TLJ apology club, where they still try to claim everyone hates Rose Tico because she is Asian and not because everything she did in the entire damned movie was pants on head retarded, or that people hate Rey because she has a vagina and not because she is so fucking Mary Sue that the ACTUAL Mary Sue the trope was named for was more believable in universe than Rey.
Dude? Yeah the game I have sunk like $400 over the years into? Because I saw a streamer playing it and it looked fun. Same holds true for quite a lot of others. A good player that can build excitement and keep momentum going? Worth a thousand shitty fake CGI demos because you can see what the game is really like and not some pre rendered horseshit.
And personally I don't give a flying flipping fuck what you think about streamers, to cheer when someone dies of cancer leaving a widow and child? Yeah fuck you, you are a piece of shit, and the fact she did it because he wouldn't wave her little political flag just shows what a worthless waste of space she truly is.