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New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

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Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#561

Post by dpark »

lsniddy wrote: post #492
ypcx wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird keyboard layouts. Shifting the keyboard off-center to include numeric keypad which no one uses anymore. (Gamers? Please stop.) This alone makes one question what exactly they are "smoking". There wasn't a single big Windows laptop on the market that wouldn't fall into this hole of a flaw.

I think the num pad is a huge addition. I use it both in Excel and Photoshop. that being said i love this device more than anything ive seen since the XPS 13

I think the number pad on a laptop is a massive waste and an anti-feature for 99% of users. Most people don't use it enough to justify the space it takes, and especially the ergonomic awkwardness of having the keyboard perpetually off-center.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#562

Post by Gravityloss »

tomaskafka wrote: post #507
MatthiasP wrote: post #276

That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years, they always managed to introduce some fatal flaw in their premium laptops, from weird keyboard layouts to bad fan management software. Let's hope the Surface Book will be succesful and Apple finally gets serious competition in the premium laptop market.

Yep - for example, Windows 10, although being rather nice update, changed start menu to XAML (in a separate process), and a result is that when I press the Win button on my i5 with new SSD, either nothing happens (missed keystroke? really??) or I wait up to 5 seconds. Needless to say, all keystrokes before it opens are missed, so Win + type program name + enter turns into Win ... wait ... type program name ... wait s…

Wonder how many billion dollars were lost by PC makers for the lack of a normal touchpad?

Apple's touchpad is not especially great, it's just normal, like a touchpad should be.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#563

Post by Arnavion »

Touche wrote: post #381
Someone1234 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cumbersome or you just aren't familiar with it yet? The whole design of PS is meant to make it so you can "guess" the names of cmdlets you've never used before. Everything is Verb-Noun, Get-Service, New-Service, Restart-Service, Stop-Service, etc. Discoverability is valued over succinctness.

> Cumbersome or you just aren't familiar with it yet? Cumbersome. To create my own cmdlet that does the cool stuff Powershell can do (as far as piping) my choices are a terrible language like ps1 or .NET. On Unix I can use pretty much whatever I want because the shell isn't tied to a specific runtime.

On Unix you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as "whatever I want" can be represented by a string of text. In PS you get to work with objects. PS is more like a Python shell than bash.

If you want, your PS commandlets can return strings as well, so it's not like every part of your pipeline has to be in PS either.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#564

Post by scholia »

spdustin wrote: post #303
drglitch wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh how quickly the past is forgotten :) In early 2000s, microsoft, through its partners, tried releasing remote displays powered by windows CE - they were essentially a precursor to the tablet. Several devices were exactly as you describe. http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/50755EA6-A75... Im surprised it took over a decade to get a device that doesn't suck in that form factor, but im glad it happened. W…

I still have my beta Viewsonic Mira unit, along with a non-branded one. And an unopened first-gen Zune, hah! Mira worked fairly well, and we used it to control what was at that time a Homeseer-based home automation setup, but battery life was awful (battery tech has come a LONG way since then).

> And an unopened first-gen Zune, hah!

A family heirloom!

It was actually a pretty good standalone MP3 player, for its day. (Just forget about the fairly useless sharing functions, and the marketing.)

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#565

Post by antaviana »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #409
Karunamon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding overly snarky: Top-notch does not mean putting the Goddamned Metro UI, a thing for users on touch screens , on a Goddamned SERVER OS like they did with 2012. It's insanity. Every time I have to RDP into a 2012 machine, I cringe a bit. Whoever was responsible for that decision should be shot, and the corpse fired. For all Microsoft has been doing to improve their standing lately, they still mak…

We just upgraded to Office 2013 and the colors in Outlook are killing me. Microsoft basically gives you three themes which are basically some form of a light white/grey background. I don't understand how this color scheme made it out of QA testing without someone complaining about it.

I had the same issue and ultimately fount the solution. I forced myself to use Office 2013 and avoided being exposed to earlier versions with much better contrast, in particular Office 2003.

In a few weeks of immersive experience, you will see that your body will start accepting Office 2013 and you will not notice the lack of contrast anymore.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#567

Post by freehunter »

gcb0 wrote: post #476
huac wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and while Thinkpad is excellent, it's not really a 'cool' option. The Surface Book's design (and price point) places it solidly as a competitor to Macs.

i'd take the rubber coated ones over the cold and sharp metal ones you call 'cool' any time. but i guess everyone in SF just use macbooks on their desks at all times.

As a traveling consultant, the durability of the Thinkpad design is nice, but holy hell does it suck to carry through an airport, or to shove under the seat in front of you. I've had to switch to a backpack for my laptop, since a normal bag puts too much weight on one side of my body. A backpack is so much less professional than a laptop bag.

And then I drop it from a table onto a cement floor and the body cracks and the lid won't close anymore. So why do I put up with a laptop that's 50% heavier than a Macbook yet still breaks when I drop it from a table?

Or maybe Thinkpads are supposed to be used on desks at all times.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#568

Post by mtw »

dom96 wrote: post #433
DuskStar wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, on a 13" 1080p chromebook, I get this: http://i.imgur.com/pGhjAwQ.png Turning uBlock off didn't seem to help at all. Edit: after letting it load for 3+ minutes, the page does load successfully, giving this: http://i.imgur.com/qnNlvYj.png So maybe it does work! Eventually.

Pretty sure it's just one of their CDN's failing.

How can we trust Microsoft Azure then?! Not even able to serve their own product

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#569

Post by Aldo_MX »

elif wrote: post #201
arel wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer my first question would be: Can I dual boot linux on it? If so it would be an extremely attractive developer machine and switch to Windows when you need it. The hardware is the show stealer here.

yes. I run ubuntu on my surface pro. Everything works well, with reasonably good battery life (not as good as win10, obviously). it is a painful install process, but that should change completely with ubuntu 15.10

I have a Surface Pro 1, and installed Ubuntu and Linux Mint pretty easy... but I wouldn't use any Linux in a Surface honestly, the Desktop Environments are far from having decent HDPI support, and the touch experience is still far from feeling usable.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#570

Post by exelius »

chucky_z wrote: post #371
exelius wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's server software is actually top-notch and has been for years. Server 2003 was rough, but after that MS really started improving the management tools and allowing a lot more command line via powershell, etc. And in corporate America, Microsoft's Server products are near-ubiquitous. Consider that most of the in-house workflow tools at any company are built in Sharepoint -- and Sharepoint is actually a great…

I think I'd argue against Sharepoint simply because of the investment and vendor lock-in required. You do have an extremely solid point about Google Apps at the bottom end because of this exact reason though. I only wish the O365 platform was more stable. I had endless issues when I tried to setup a paltry 50 accounts from a different managed Exchange platform. We ended up with using the Office products using the O36…

Well, with any Intranet software you're going to have some element of vendor lock-in. Sharepoint has at least been around for a long time and gone through a number of major functionality upgrades. I have a new appreciation for Sharepoint after seeing too many of my clients using collaboration software that is either homegrown (and the developer left 5 years ago, which is when new feature development stopped) or no longer supported by the vendor.

And I agree with your points about SQL Server as well. It's not very popular in the hacker community to talk about licensed database products, but SQL server is rock solid and far less annoying to configure/test/deploy than Oracle.

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