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Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

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Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#211

Post by digler999 »

eropple wrote: post #200
digler999 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

back in the 90's, 99% of people didn't want linux either, and MS did just fine without "physically" locking you out of their competition.

I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?

I dont follow your point. I'm not asking MS to sell me a linux version of their tablet. I"m saying they shouldn't use UEFI or other proprietary bootloader tricks to keep me from wiping windows off and installing my own software on it. That would be cheaper for them to do than spending extra development time to keep me out.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#212

Post by Amezarak »

rajeshp1986 wrote: post #205
yummyfajitas wrote: post #144

I recently bought a Lenovo sporting Windows 10 and decided to give it a fair try. I've been using Windows exclusively on my personal laptop for about 2 months and so far it's a good experience. This is after 16 years of running linux (or briefly a mac) on the desktop. The window manager is tolerable (not as good as Xmonad, but equivalent to Unity). Windows subsystem for linux is letting me get my work done with no pr…

I have not used windows in a while, but the 2 things I found annoying with Microsoft and the reasons why I switched around 8 years back were: 1) Most of the windows laptops doesn't age very well. By the 3rd year the computer starts feeling like its become quite old. I needed hardware upgrades every year to keep my computer running. One of my friends suggested me to try Apple. I am running a Mac pro which is almost 5…

> I needed hardware upgrades every year to keep my computer running.

I'm finding this hard to understand. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 all seem to be about the same, spec-wise, and it doesn't sound like you were upgrading anyway. I don't understand in what sense you would need to upgrade your hardware, which, in any case, is the same hardware used in Macs - Intel processors and so forth.

> You cannot live without an anti-virus and even then chances are that you will end up corrupting your system and has to do re-install windows or format your hard disk.

For many, many years now, Microsoft has provided Microsoft Security Essentials, AKA Windows Defender, which is all that most people need.

I have a laptop from 2006 and a desktop from 2009, both of which are my (a developer) primary/sole work and recreation machines. I have never had to reinstall Windows or format my hard disk.[1] In my experience these were things you had to do in the Windows 95/98/2000 era, but not since, barring some catastrophe like a trashed filesystem caused by a failing harddrive.

[1] Though in the interests of full disclosure, I did elect to replace the laptop harddrive with a solid state drive, and at that time I did install a new version of Windows rather than bother with transferring data from the old drive. As to why I did this, well, in 2016, an Intel Core 2 Duo is pretty slow but the easiest thing to upgrade is the harddrive.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#213

Post by rch »

MichaelGG wrote: post #116
stcredzero wrote: post #71

So the pendulum has swung yet again! http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

MS has gone up 131% since that essay. I love the silly suggestions in it, too, about putting shielding around a hypothetical new MS to prevent Redmond ideas from getting in. And it'll be fun to see how their $25BN investment in a SV company, LinkedIn, actually pays off.

> There can only be one big man in town, and [Google is] clearly it.

This is still mostly true, and Amazon is in an even more interesting position than Microsoft will ever be in.

I buy cluster-compute time, movies, and sacks of organic flour from the same company.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#214

Post by acomjean »

suprgeek wrote: post #108

The young'uns here probably have not lived thru the Microsoft era in the 90s when "Embrace Extend Extinguish" was the operating motto and any Market where MS entered would send competitors quaking in fear. They were late to the internet party and then under the disastrous leadership of Ballamer (mindshare wise, not revenue) they completely lost the plot. Now they are indeed enjoying a resurgence, less evil, more rele…

I kind of thought that it was a new microsoft.

Then we switched to office 365 at work. New app icons keep appearing. I love checking them out. They still seem to release a lot of clone like software:

MS flow = ifttt [1] MS planner = trello [2] MS forms = google forms

"MS Power Apps" seems interesting but I haven't had a chance to explore.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/micros... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/06/microsoft-officially-launc...

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#215

Post by eropple »

digler999 wrote: post #211
eropple wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?

I dont follow your point. I'm not asking MS to sell me a linux version of their tablet. I"m saying they shouldn't use UEFI or other proprietary bootloader tricks to keep me from wiping windows off and installing my own software on it. That would be cheaper for them to do than spending extra development time to keep me out.

But...you can do that. Right now. The Surface Pro 4 has no "bootloader tricks"; it has Secure Boot, which you can disable from the UEFI menu. No x86 Surface ever has ever had any "physical" methods of "locking you out of their competition".

So either you want something that already exists or you want something new, and I'm very confused as to your initial post.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#216

Post by cutler »

yeukhon wrote: post #167
riazrizvi wrote: post #104

To me, there is no doubt that Windows laptops are seeing a resurgence around Silicon Valley compared to MacbookPro's. Personally I think it is due to their overall superior compatibility with new technologies/hardware (graphics cards for VR and CUDA developers, FPGAs, Arduino, Intel RealSense3D) and better workflows for virtualization/cloud-computing vs MacOS which has become harder to virtualize because of closer bi…

I am extremely disappointed in the market of Macbook. It's way too expensive now. Losing 15" is also a big deal.

Losing 15"? Care to explain?

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#217

Post by scholia »

DesiLurker wrote: post #187
scholia wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> constant force update/reboot from Win10 Really? How often? I have "active hours" set and I rarely get more than one reboot per month. Same with network connections, and what they're doing. Some recorded facts would be more interesting than your impressions...

I have the same experience, it seems everytime I open my win10 laptop the damn thing does updates for many minutes. my windows desktop is more well behaved though. it seems it needs to be actively used so it always stays updated. not an apple fan by a longshot but my office macbook is always ready to be used whenever I open it, even if I do it after weeks. MS really needs to get their shit together especially on the…

If you have an unusual usage pattern -- eg you only turn your laptop on twice a month or so -- I guess you're going to get a backlog of updates. If you check the update settings, you can set "active hours" when it won't update, or a custom update time when your machine will be on.

Our laptops are not having problems but they are in regular use...

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#218

Post by chrisper »

chmln wrote: post #163
yummyfajitas wrote: post #144

I recently bought a Lenovo sporting Windows 10 and decided to give it a fair try. I've been using Windows exclusively on my personal laptop for about 2 months and so far it's a good experience. This is after 16 years of running linux (or briefly a mac) on the desktop. The window manager is tolerable (not as good as Xmonad, but equivalent to Unity). Windows subsystem for linux is letting me get my work done with no pr…

My experience has been the complete opposite. I've got a Lenovo Y50 running Win10. With a HiDPI display, it is pretty much unusable. While OS elements scale rather well, most of the software doesn't, even using the "DPI fix." [1] There are also ads on lock screen. [2] The "terminal", PowerShell, is slow to launch, path completions are crawling. The subsystem for linux is great, and certainly a move in the right direc…

They fixed the DPI thing in the early build. At least for the native stuff, like device manager.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#219

Post by chrisper »

tonyplee wrote: post #168
yummyfajitas wrote: post #144

I recently bought a Lenovo sporting Windows 10 and decided to give it a fair try. I've been using Windows exclusively on my personal laptop for about 2 months and so far it's a good experience. This is after 16 years of running linux (or briefly a mac) on the desktop. The window manager is tolerable (not as good as Xmonad, but equivalent to Unity). Windows subsystem for linux is letting me get my work done with no pr…

I also got a new win10 HP laptop and new gaming win10 desktop recently, but has different experiences. I absolutely hate the constant force update/reboot from Win10 and the huge amount background / network activities/connections. After most of the win10 background networks connections are blocked and force update/reboot is disabled with Windows firewall, the system are usable now. I tried and found the new Linux subs…

You should try out VS2017 (RC). It is much better in terms of performance and setup. And they improved the update thing in the early build. They are giving you a better choice regarding reboot / installing updates.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#220

Post by cutler »

lisivka wrote: post #131
suprgeek wrote: post #108

The young'uns here probably have not lived thru the Microsoft era in the 90s when "Embrace Extend Extinguish" was the operating motto and any Market where MS entered would send competitors quaking in fear. They were late to the internet party and then under the disastrous leadership of Ballamer (mindshare wise, not revenue) they completely lost the plot. Now they are indeed enjoying a resurgence, less evil, more rele…

They are still trying to sue IBM for Linux via SCO: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/linux-kernel-laws... . So I see no change.

MS still operates a Linux patent extortion racket yet the tech press seem to be all over them since their recent charm offensive. MS is The Beast and always will be. See http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives-distract/ for more.
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