One of my responsibilities was to serve as admin for our campuses digital signage system. It used windows based machines. The cost of the Windows OS was trivial compared to the cost of the hardware and the license for the digital signage software. it also helped that if need be these systems could be managed with our existing toolset such as SCCM and remote desktop. and if we needed to do something that the Digital Signage software could not do for special occasions if there was a windows app for it, it was that simple.
Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
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Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#12Because the hardware support is good.
Because the licensing costs are pretty small compared to the project costs.
Because there is plenty of tech support available.
Because Windows flash support is good.
Because there are plenty of developers who will customize it for you.
Because it is easy to add to the existing networking systems being used.
There are plenty of reasons to choose Windows for this kind of thing. why is the article even complaining that the OS is old? No need for cutting-edge here. (EDIT: Oops, that was in the comments section)
(LOL at the mouse jiggler software though!)
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#13I bet the whole ecosystem of updating, remotely maintaining, selling an advert and designing an advert on a display in a train station is deeply engrained in windows technologies, and swapping the front is not trivial. I bet everyone knows its shit long term but the cost of migration outweighs the short term fixes (mouse wiggler!). Probably its what the customers want anyway
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#14Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#15I'm not a fan of Windows, but when I saw this post it reminded me of a picture I took at 30th street station in Philadelphia. I guess this was an attempt to use Linux for an visitor information kiosk.
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#16A quick Google search of the phrase "build an animated display" with one of the following strings appended to the end reveals the answer, I should think:
"raspberry pi" -- 1,060,000 results
"linux" -- 4,890,000 results
"os x" -- 6,910,000 results
"windows" -- 32,800,000 results
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#17People use what they know. Given a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you work in IT for any length of time, you come across people who use Excel as a text combiner to parse tabular text in ways similar to how a regex could, or have similar convoluted workarounds for any number of tasks. In some ways, these are quite clever hacks. In other ways, it's kind of sad as it obviously shows how badly GUI-centric "It's…
> people who use Excel as a text combiner to parse tabular text in ways similar to how a regex could, or have similar convoluted workarounds for any number of tasks.
Yep. Large parts of the finance crowd are Excel experts so it makes sense to use that. Why bother with regex when you know the Excel shortcuts, functions & behaviour off by heart. That plus I don't need to explain to IT/manager why I'm messing with software they haven't seen before.
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#18A quick Google search of the phrase "build an animated display" with one of the following strings appended to the end reveals the answer, I should think: "raspberry pi" -- 1,060,000 results "linux" -- 4,890,000 results "os x" -- 6,910,000 results "windows" -- 32,800,000 results
There's an office near work that gives its receptionists Macs; it looks great, but an insane amount of money for the functionality they use I'm sure.
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#19People use what they know. Given a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you work in IT for any length of time, you come across people who use Excel as a text combiner to parse tabular text in ways similar to how a regex could, or have similar convoluted workarounds for any number of tasks. In some ways, these are quite clever hacks. In other ways, it's kind of sad as it obviously shows how badly GUI-centric "It's…
I would argue that Windows is a great platform for such displays. Not sure how many of these were written, but knocking up an attractive list template in XAML and binding it to a list is a walk in the park. Dev cost must be next to nothing. Call it what you will, but it's the front-end I'd prefer to develop such displays on. WinRT makes such a use case even more compelling. And Mono unfortunately doesn't support WPF.
Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?
#20A quick Google search of the phrase "build an animated display" with one of the following strings appended to the end reveals the answer, I should think: "raspberry pi" -- 1,060,000 results "linux" -- 4,890,000 results "os x" -- 6,910,000 results "windows" -- 32,800,000 results
There's an office near work that gives its receptionists Macs; it looks great, but an insane amount of money for the functionality they use I'm sure.
Alternatively, if it saves them a few days of work in lost productivity due to malware, viruses and unintuitive software, it's a great investment.