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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#531

Post by rphlx »

cm2187 wrote: post #470
dragonwriter wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.

With the developed world being increasingly dependent on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, the next big fuck up is going to be interesting. We have seen multiple datacentres from the same cloud provider going offline simultaneously in the past. And it is safe to assume that hostile foreign state actors took notice of this critical dependency. Whether it is because of malice or mistakes, I can’t help thinking that this mas…

Indeed. If/When another major conflict comes to the developed world, you better believe major cloud DCs will be pretty high up on the cyber and (if it comes to it) kinetic target lists. Never have so few facilities been relied upon for so much by so many.

Re: The End of Windows

#532

Post by s2g »

cptskippy wrote: post #166
asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

> One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain po…

Has security been getting worse on windows?

That’s a bold claim presented without evidence.

Re: The End of Windows

#533

Post by Fnoord »

deno wrote: post #459
shados wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2560x1440 on a 27 inch at a reasonable distance is pretty darn close to optimal IMO, so 4k, to me, is for 34" monitors (but 27 inch I feel is optimal on 60-75 inch desks, which is what I usually work with, so 4k rarely matters). I'm with you on accurately calibrated monitors though! God most of them suck out of the box.

If you don’t see any (spectacular!) difference between 4K & 1440p you need to have your eyesight checked. I’m not being sarcastic. The last time there was a thread like that on HN a bunch of people figured out they need glasses. I have a 4K @ 24in monitor (180ppi) and a 267 ppi netbook and when I switch between them the 4K starts looking like a blurry mess!

> The last time there was a thread like that on HN a bunch of people figured out they need glasses.

Its fair advice, but some eyesight issues cannot be solved with glasses.. if they can be solved at all.

Also worth noting that with TVs the distance matters a lot. With monitors, laptops, and gadgets it is relatively stable.

Re: The End of Windows

#534

Post by RandomOpinion »

dralley wrote: post #290
pishpash wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satya is having enormous financial success in chasing much needed markets, but the jury's still out on ditching MS's strengths in large software development in favor of a no-support permanent beta culture at a moment when the latter is showing its ugly side.

I kind of expect that the "let consumers be the beta testers and fire all our QA" approach is going to majorly bite them in the ass at some point and lose a lot of goodwill.

> I kind of expect that the "let consumers be the beta testers and fire all our QA" approach is going to majorly bite them in the ass at some point and lose a lot of goodwill.

I wish I could agree with you. However, the QA layoffs at Microsoft were in 2014; if something like was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Re: The End of Windows

#535

Post by innocentoldguy »

maxxxxx wrote: post #69
innocentoldguy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a small business and I run my accounting with FreshBooks, which I can easily use via my phone, iPad, or MacBook. I haven't used windows for 18 years. I'm probably an outlier, but it can be done.

It can be done but usually going Windows is the path of least resistance for most non tech users.

How does "going Windows" make doing small business accounting easier?

Re: The End of Windows

#536

Post by sanderjd »

flarg wrote: post #486
thanatropism wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The desktop matters less and less. The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.

Not at all; if you want to consume a lot and create a little then your thesis is right, but the desktop is king for creators. There are a slew of very mature Windows only software out there serving many fields of endeavour for which there are no competitors in either FOSS or other OSs.

> There are a slew of very mature Windows only software out there serving many fields of endeavour for which there are no competitors in either FOSS or other OSs.

Can you list some? That sort of software is my favorite genre and I'm always interested to hear about different ones.

Re: The End of Windows

#537

Post by innocentoldguy »

maxxxxx wrote: post #204
Twisell wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can agree that windows can be the path of least resistance because of legacy business softwares. But please don't even start to argue that windows is more easy to use than an iPad.

For a lot of professional things windows (Or Mac or Linux) is better. For data entry a tablet is a real pain. I wouldn't want to do accounting on an iPad for example.

How is doing small business accounting on an iPad, with a keyboard, any different that doing small business accounting on a Surface? You tap on the screen where you want to put data and type. Also, when using FreshBooks, which is what my comment was about, once you set up your customers, line items, and rates, creating an invoice involves about five taps and maybe typing in the number of hours/quantity, if it differs from the default of 1. That's it. I'm not sure how Windows could possibly make that any easier.

Re: The End of Windows

#538

Post by morganvachon »

bhauer wrote: post #243
cpeterso wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

> I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768.

The laptop I'm typing this on is exactly that: A Lenovo Ideapad from 2010 with 4GB and 1366x768 resolution, running Bunsenlabs Linux and the latest Waterfox (Firefox fork with telemetry removed). It's blazing fast even without a SSD; the browser starts in the blink of an eye and it takes nearly 70 tabs open to start slowing down.

Yes, the resolution can be limiting for some websites, but most are designed well enough to work fine on it. In fact, on text-heavy sites like HN I find myself browsing at 120% magnification for less eye strain. I couldn't imagine what 1080p or higher on a 15" screen would feel like, but it would likely be painful. It's actually more comfortable to read on than my iPad mini for that reason as well, and of course typing is a dream compared to any other laptop I've used, to say nothing of klunky touchscreen keyboards.

Granted, it would be slower with a more bloated Linux distro and certainly was with Windows 7, but when it comes to the OS I prefer minimalist and stable to kitchen sink and bleeding edge.

Re: The End of Windows

#539

Post by innocentoldguy »

sigzero wrote: post #74
innocentoldguy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a small business and I run my accounting with FreshBooks, which I can easily use via my phone, iPad, or MacBook. I haven't used windows for 18 years. I'm probably an outlier, but it can be done.

I am looking at small business accounting. What are your thoughts on FreshBooks?

Personally, I love it. It is easy to set up your logo, custom web portal, customers, line items, and rates. Once you've got that done, creating an invoice only takes about five clicks. FreshBooks also emails invoices and reminders for you, allows you to easily accept payments electronically, let's you send satisfaction surveys to your customers, and gives you a weekly report on how much you've earned, how much you've collected, and how much customers still owe you.

I evaluated a bunch of other products, like QuickBooks, Curdbee, etc. but always ended up coming back to FreshBooks and have been with them consistently since about 2010.

Their customer support team is also great. I've only had one or two issues with the system, but in each case, they were quick to respond and help me resolve the issue.

The hardest part of running a small business for me is collecting money from customers, and FreshBooks makes that easy. FreshBooks allows me to connect with my customers in ways I wasn't able to before and it has reduced the process of billing to just a few clicks I have to do once a week; allowing me to focus on the services I provide instead of data entry and invoice tracking.

I hope that helps.

Re: The End of Windows

#540

Post by blackoil »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #464
pjmlp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently Android seems to have lost the tablet war on consumer electronic shops. People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10. Android devs are to blame, given the little effort to adapt phone apps to tablets.

>Currently Android seems to have lost the tablet war on consumer electronic shops. And yet they still account for the majority of tablet sales. >People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10. The W10 tablet market share is so low they barley even register. In fact, Microsoft Surface tablets aren't even visible on the following graph: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...

Most statistics, don't classify Surface Pro and other full desktop 2-in-1 as tablets. Small blip for MS was there ARM tablet
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