First IBM, now Google.
Microsoft really is the world's greatest number two.
With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
141–150 of 155 posts
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If only Microsoft can make Windows affordable, they can kill all competitors instantly. Yeah maybe for the consumers market, but that's already the case with Piracy anyway. But price is not the only issue, Windows is just horrible in so many ways that there's a number of people who will not come back to it even if it's 100% free. I keep Windows (7) as dual-boot on my desktop PC, where I run OpenSuse most of the tim…
Are you trolling? What's the hardware configuration? (Just to make things clear before what follows, I'm not a Windows fanboy and I use like 70% of the time Windows and the rest Ubuntu or Fedora. And I'd choose Linux over windows anytime. But the current state of Gnome and KDE is deplorable! ...both from a UX/I perspective and from a performance perspective. Actually the only DE that doesn't make me wanna push my fis…
In windows it is generally needed to disable some services to get some performance back.
About the copy-cats, I think Ubuntu tablet is a better way to the hybrid tablet/desktop, for the simple reason of not having market/store restrictions about it. It is still not released to production, or even finished as the Win8 is. But I think in the long term it will be much better.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If only Microsoft can make Windows affordable, they can kill all competitors instantly. Yeah maybe for the consumers market, but that's already the case with Piracy anyway. But price is not the only issue, Windows is just horrible in so many ways that there's a number of people who will not come back to it even if it's 100% free. I keep Windows (7) as dual-boot on my desktop PC, where I run OpenSuse most of the tim…
> Windows is just horrible in so many ways Care to enumerate a couple?
My favorite one is being unable to delete an open file - this has consequences on upgrading software that has to stop running and release its files before the upgrade starts. There are also the various ways Windows Explorer fails with very long paths. Or the subtly different ways the CMD.EXE fails on the same use case.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing for South America, 99% of Windows copies are pirated.
That begs the question - what does Microsoft really gain with this? Poor countries never bought Windows anyway, and rich countries will now be getting it for free, instead of paying money for it.
they steer consumers towards MS services like Bing and Onedrive and Skype
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> End-user Windows licenses haven't been a significant source of income for Microsoft for a very long time. If ~$20b in revenue last year isn't a big business... http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn... 65% of that $20b comes from OEMs, which is 100% consumer. edit: the exact quote from the earnings statement I linked: "Excluding the impact of the Windows Upgrade Offer, OEM revenue decreased 15…
> 65% of that $20b comes from OEMs, which is 100% consumer. No, OEM is not 100% consumer. It's not even half. A large number of OEM machines are sold with Pro preloaded. These go to businesses. (Some consumers buy Pro, but some small businesses buy Home. Assume it more or less averages out.) Last quarter, Windows OEM revenues overall decreased by just 3%, despite the fact that non-Pro OEM revenues decreased by 20%. W…
Ok, that's fair. $5b is still not a small chunk of change, even for Microsoft and even with Silicon Valley valuation arithmetic at work.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can script the OS and application install with WDS, SCCM, and AD. Just because you can't or won't do it doesn't mean it can't be done.
That's almost funny. I was too lazy to do things properly (kickstart script, etc.) so I have a bash script with about 10 "apt-get install" lines that set up everything I want on Ubuntu or debian, and a few more "echo" lines that configure 90% of my other preferences. 50 line scripts that contain very little other than the names of the programs I want or the configuration I want. Let's say I just got a new computer wi…
Sure.
Step 1: Run my base configure script from http://pastebin.com/GsuZmya3 in cmd.exe.
Step 2: Be done.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it is technical. IE, Chrome, and Firefox are different codebases and what's true of one isn't necessarily true of the others. Chrome and Firefox are largely self-contained. Being multi-platform, they have to be. It makes sense that they can be modified without touching their underlying operating systems. You keep calling IE "Browser" but it's more than that - it is (or at least used to be) a core component of Win…
And that tight coupling was done for political reasons back in the antitrust suit days, to make it impossible to have Windows without IE.
Here in 2014, who cares? It, by being on every system, provides considerable benefits for developers and users--as far back as .NET 1.1 I was able to drop a WebBrowser control into a form and get exactly what I wanted.
The idea that a browser shouldn't be integrated into an OS makes no sense to me, and apparently to everybody else shipping an OS anyone cares about. OS X has an integrated webview, too, and you can't pitch Safari out the window.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Your interest is an open ecosystem. Microsoft's interest is to have a closed garden. (They haven't been successful with that one, but they're trying). I might get some heat for this but I must say Windows is still the OS with the least closed garden or heck even a garden. To get even the legitimate and popular x86 applications you still have to manually browse to websites and download it. You can install whatever yo…
> I might get some heat for this but I must say Windows is still the OS with the least closed garden or heck even a garden. The Windows App Store is as closed as Apple's, just not as successful - and I was comparing interests, not achievements. > To get even the legitimate and popular x86 applications you still have to manually browse to websites and download it. You can install whatever you want whether it has a dig…
> Then read skrebbel's post I was replying to. He is under the mistaken assumption that because he was paying for Windows, he had any control over the direction it went in the last 10 years.
You sure like putting words into people's mouths.
Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just use the same old .exe that I generate from ninite.com. It takes just one click and I have all my favorite apps running. I just need to install VS2013 and are good to go. It can't be more simple than this.
Just looked at ninite again (after having not done so in years) and was pleasantly surprised - although it's still very pale compared to Debian's 20k strong packages. But it's definitely a good start. (It can be simpler than this - it is, on modern Linux)
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Re: With Free Version of Windows, Microsoft Gives In to the Google Way
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? This usually works just fine. The only area where it doesn't is Gnome, who like making breaking changes. Quite a lot of the core tools (shellutils) are 20+ years old with only minor updates.
Yes, anything that only uses posix functions is less fragile, obviously. It's the user space libraries: UI, sound, notifications (for those last two, it's not just the API's that change, it's complete subsystems being pulled from under you), ... Look, I'm not saying there is no Linux software that doesn't keep working, it's the overall time you spend over the lifetime of your software to keep up with updates in its d…
> I don't see how anyone can reasonably argue that Windows isn't a whole lot better than Linux at that.
My colleague is wondering how can he install latest copies of Office and Visual Studio Express on Windows XP SP2 for quite some time, without success.