New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#961

Post by cmurf » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

Arnavion wrote: post #836

cmurf wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Windows 10 hardware certification permits the OEM to make Secure Boot not disablable. But the way the major distros work, they get a pre-bootloader signed with the Microsoft key through Microsoft's signing service, and that pre-bootloader contains a key permitting the chaining of the real bootloader, the kernel, signed with the distro key. So it's not a big problem.

Up till W8.1, the spec ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/jj... ) explicitly requires the ability to disable Secure Boot: On non-ARM systems, the platform MUST implement the ability for a physically present user to select between two Secure Boot modes in firmware setup: "Custom" and "Standard". Custom Mode allows for more flexibility as specified in the following: ... B.If the user ends up de…

I'm not finding an actual Windows 10 hardware certification requirement document. Yet Windows 10 is out and shipping pre-installed on hardware, so how can there not be a document somewhere?

"The precise final specs are not available yet, so all this is somewhat subject to change, but right now, Microsoft says that the switch to allow Secure Boot to be turned off is now optional. Hardware can be Designed for Windows 10 and can offer no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down." http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/window...

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#962

Post by superuser2 » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

caskance wrote: post #957

arm wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, really? So the things mentioned in the comment thread on this¹ post mean less to you than getting a trackpoint? In any case, Lenovo isn’t the only manufacturer that includes a pointing stick in their laptops. HP’s EliteBook series, for example, has one. There’s a full list of manufacturers here². ―――――― ¹ — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039306 ² — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#Naming_and…

Yes, far worse. A laptop without a nub-style pointer is effectively keyboard-only. Worse than keyboard-only if there is no way to disable the touchpad. I know that elitebooks, latitudes, etc used to have these too. None of them do anymore.

Have you tried a Macbook Pro in the last few years? I agree most (if not all) Windows laptops' trackpads are unusable, but I've always liked Apple's.

Many Windows OEMs maintain their cheaper-than-Apple status by optimizing the things people compare (gigahertz, RAM capacity, HDD capacity) and putting in the cheapest shit possible on the rest (pixel density, keyboards, cases, hinges, and especially trackpads).

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#963

Post by codeulike » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #169

Question is: Whats the battery life of the detatched screen?

Answer: About 3 hours apparently.

See: http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2015/10/6/microsoft-unveils...

Battery life of the Surface Pro 4 is 9 hours. The Surface Book will offer 12 when configured as a laptop. But when the Book's display is detached, it will only achieve 3 hours.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#964

Post by dang » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

WaterSponge wrote: post #855

dang wrote: post #347

We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10340117 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10340022 hither, since there shouldn't be three stories about this on the front page. Since the live event looks done now, we've picked (what I think is?) the most significant product URL to change to from http://www.microsoft.com/october2015event/en-us/live-event . If anyone suggests a better URL we can change it again.

The merger of these threads really takes away the scope of the announcements made and the different discussions being had. The editorializing and changing of URL really alters the environment for conversation in a way that's not healthy and hurts the scope of these things. Then the second highest comment on the thread becomes about the design layout on the page. So be it if Microsoft/Apple/Google/Android/Amazon/Uber…

I'm not going to claim we execute it correctly every time but the general approach seems fair to me: have a distinct thread on each distinct major story.

It's true that merging threads sometimes eliminates some context (hopefully not too much) but duplicate or near-duplicate threads on the front page are arguably worse. If there were a way of pleasing everybody we would jump at it. Unfortunately, people disagree about this.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#965

Post by nogridbag » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #963

codeulike wrote: post #169

Question is: Whats the battery life of the detatched screen?

Answer: About 3 hours apparently. See: http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2015/10/6/microsoft-unveils... Battery life of the Surface Pro 4 is 9 hours. The Surface Book will offer 12 when configured as a laptop. But when the Book's display is detached, it will only achieve 3 hours.

An interview with Panos mentioned the split is 4 hours in the display, 8 hours in the keyboard. But I guess we'll see once someone does an in depth review.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#966

Post by lberger » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #302

The headphone jack position is a deal-breaker. Rookie mistake.

bluetooth. who doesn't use bluetooth headphones?

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#967

Post by georgechen » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 10:21 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #930

gozo wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fun fact": Steve Jobs is said to have admired Sony [0] and things like the MacBook Air is presumably inspired by the Sony VAIO X505 [1]. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+admiration+for+so... [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/6/5385716/sony-vaio-iconic-pc...

Sony actually manufactured the early Powerbooks under contract.

That's correct. The Powerbook 100.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#968

Post by yellowbeard » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #644

yellowbeard wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all its users traffic It was only a subset of their customers, and none of the ThinkPad models. https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish

Is that supposed to be better? The same people profit from ThinkPad purchases as the other notebooks. In fact withholding it from ThinkPad indicates a deliberate campaign not to put it where a tech-savvy user might see it.

I think it's terrible - I just wanted to point out bad information in the parent comment.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#969

Post by Poyeyo » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #658

Poyeyo wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compiling what? May be some of us can help you. If it's C++, I did learn cmake, and now I use the same script for Ubuntu and for Win7/VS2008 and Win8.1/VS2012, and so far I just don't care about compilation issues anymore. Sadly the VS site only has VS2015 now. But yes, the first time you have to check the VS version and add all the proper env vars for the cmake scripts to find the libraries. But anyway, it is much b…

How about code written in C11? Or Fortran 95? Throw in a couple of numerical libraries you want to link to, maybe CUDA or some MPI or an optimized BLAS/LAPACK, and it's an all night party. I lurk on a few sci.comp mailing lists, and the number and nature of problems that the Windows people have with compiling is crazy compared to Linux where the OS actually has a package manager and stuff Just Works. As for cmake, I…

I think I agree with you on all fronts, simply because the online cmake documentation is not as good as it should be.

For BLAS, it has a

    find_package ( BLAS )

script, which you can use. The same for CUDA. They define cmake variables you can use later for the include and link search paths.

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/module/FindBLAS.html

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/module/FindCUDA.html

I haven't used C11 or Fortran95, only C++11, and I had to add a cmake script for it, you can find it as CheckCXXCompilerFlag somewhere in the web.

I have to use Visual Studio instead of mingw because I'm using some winSDK libs, and VS has no (gnu)make, and what VS offers for the command line is not cross-platform, making it a poor investment of my time to learn about it.

After climbing just a section of the the steep cmake learning curve, I have deleted the solution and project files from my repository, and now I use cmake to compile and run the project in the command line with both VS2008 in Win7 (the PC) and VS2012 in Win8.1 (the laptop), without any path dependency. Previously the solution files depended on both my username and the path, and just moving the folder was cumbersome and required a lot of fiddling with those files.

Another thing I really like is the concept of an out of source build, and that's very easy to set up and use with cmake.

I now can write

    git clone somewhere:my_project.git
    cd my_project
    mkdir build && cd build
    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=../install ..
    cmake --build . --target install && cmake --build . --target run

in both Ubuntu and Windows and see my program running, which means I will not go back to make, or nmake or gmake anytime soon.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#970

Post by caskance » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 6:51 AM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #962

caskance wrote: post #957

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, far worse. A laptop without a nub-style pointer is effectively keyboard-only. Worse than keyboard-only if there is no way to disable the touchpad. I know that elitebooks, latitudes, etc used to have these too. None of them do anymore.

Have you tried a Macbook Pro in the last few years? I agree most (if not all) Windows laptops' trackpads are unusable, but I've always liked Apple's. Many Windows OEMs maintain their cheaper-than-Apple status by optimizing the things people compare (gigahertz, RAM capacity, HDD capacity) and putting in the cheapest shit possible on the rest (pixel density, keyboards, cases, hinges, and especially trackpads).

Macbooks don't have them, never have, and probably never will. The quality of the touchpad is not the issue. You are trying to sell a blind man a book by saying "no seriously, this one has REALLY BIG print" because you don't believe he's truly blind.