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New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

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Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can OneNote data be exported to some open, editable format? I like the idea of OneNote's functionality, but I worry about having my data trapped in that application.

.docx, .xps, .pdf

I'm hoping to find something editable. If the document is complex, with multimedia, are the .docx exports reasonably functional? Some conversions to .docx and some multimedia content in that format can be unstable.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#632

THAT is what I've been waiting for, on all fronts. On top of everything else, run Ubuntu VM's on the phone (if and when possible), Surface 4 and Surface Book and you now have the best of both worlds. We run various Windows-native engineering tools (CAD, CAM, EDA, FEA, etc.) yet do a lot of software development under Linux (by running VM's on all of our Windows desktops and laptops). I can imagine popping an SD card i…

And by Microsoft TV, you mean XBox One?

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#633
I wonder what the exact CPU models will be? Microsoft seems to be taking clues from Apple's guidebook and doesn't bother with stating the exact CPU model even in 'Tech specs'. Likely the Y-series of the latest 6-gen (Skylake) mobile i5's [1] and i7's [2]. They are not released nor announced yet, but the Surface Book is not exactly shipping, either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i5_micropro...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_micropro...

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#634
post #38

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Anyone except trackpoint users! But yeah, it's mindboggling. The internal hardware is largely the same anyway, why are companies throwing away a chance to get ahead of the competition and use the same shoddy keyboards/touchpads everyone hates?

Trackpoints are painful for me to use though. My fingers just aren't willing to go through that trauma anymore.

For me it largely depends on the cap. The soft rim cap is really easy on the fingers, while the old IBM and default Lenovo caps only seem to exist to generate callus.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat off topic, what're Vaio users migrating to? I look every year or so to see what the current laptop offerings are, and nothing has convinced me to leave my 5+ year old Vaio.

The new Vaios? Vaio recently announced their newest offerings and they look, to me, like they're still in that high-end business offerings bracket.

As far as I know (and searching around seems to confirm this) Sony is out of the laptop business and just produces tablets. I should've phrased myself a little better, "what laptops are Vaio owners switching to".

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#637
post #576

Microsoft has been chasing Apple for a while now, but chasers never win, because they depend on whom they are chasing for instructions. They even hired the Apple store firm to do their stores. Now they are making notebooks at Apple's price points. What's ironic is Microsoft has often tried things first. They tried tablets and hybrid laptops and smartphones before Apple. They even tried flat design before Apple. They…

> by doing as Apple does, only later and weaker

Seems to me that touch, pens, detachable screens and a full desktop operating system is Microsoft doing things ahead of Apple, and stronger.

Putting the same base OS on laptops, tablets, convertibles, smartphones and games consoles is, arguably, ahead of Apple.

Putting smartphone apps on Windows, Android and iOS is ahead of Apple.

Running a world-class global cloud service is ahead of Apple.

> I'd love to hear a competing philosophy and not just a product.

You should have watched the demo. You can catch the video repeat...

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#638

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.

Exactly this ... outside of ThinkPad, many Windows hardware options have been pretty embarrassing.

One of the challenges of being the 'commodity version' is that a lot of value gets squeezed out of the pipeline.

One way to look at it is that a laptop is made up of a bunch of parts, sometimes those parts come in subassemblies, and every time someone touches a part, a small bit of margin is taken out to pay for that touch. This is the reason that vertically integrated (from chips to finished product) has a higher profit margin, it collects all of those bits into one chunk.

For a long time the windows Laptop market has been all sub-assemblies coming together at the last stage. Not much margin left for the laptop "maker" after they pay for the folks who built the motherboard, the folks who build the disk drive, Intel for making the CPU, Hynix or Samsung for making the memory modules, Sharp or Toshiba for making the display, and then pony up still more cash to Microsoft for an OS.

Apple's advantage is that they tightly control the supply line, using their own OS, and by not licensing their software elsewhere can charge a premium price for additional margin.

By going into competition with their partners, Microsoft took the the only path possible to compete with Apple, be vertical. Interesting to see what that means long term.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seamless part is new, very new once a GPU is initiated it's locked, the fact that they can turn it on and off without a full reboot is quite amazing. If you run a hypervisor setup with multiple GPU's you need to make sure that the UEFI and the hypervisor/main OS do not initialize them until they are passed through to the guest VM and after that you can't recycle them easily and usually need to reboot the host if…

Is that any different from how Windows has restarted the GPU and reloaded the driver whenever a the video driver crashes since Windows 7? I think the new part might just be userland software being able to take advantage.

Even that's not new. I had a circa-2010 HP Envy laptop would switch from discrete to integrated graphics when you unplugged, and had a tray icon to manually switch between them without rebooting.

http://i.imgur.com/47z9U46.png

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very disingenuous of them to not include the full weight spec with the keyboard. my big worry with the MS hardware is its flimsy plasticky nature.

None of the Surface Pro range has ever been either flimsy or plasticky. At the launch, Sinofsky put wheels on a Surface Pro and used it as a skateboard....

You ever use their keyboard?
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