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The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

chasingperfection.co.uk

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Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#31

Post by danpalmer »

username3 wrote: post #8

My 64GB iPad has 57.1GB free space. That's 89%. 57.1 - 32 - 16 = 9.1; 9.1 / 16 = 0.56875; 16GB iPad has 9.1GB free space? That's 56%. My 16GB iPhone 5 has 13.4GB free. That's 83%. 13.4 + 16 + 32 = 61.4; 61.4 / 64 = 0.959375; 64GB iPhone 5 has 61.4GB free space? That's 95%. Edit: These calculations are not accurate. Read replies.

This would seem to be correct but doesn't take into account different hardware specs.

For a start, the larger the disk, the more is used for formatting and is lost due to the difference in how manufacturers specify sizes, so you can't just add/subtract storage amounts, you need to scale.

Also, different combinations of processor, cellular modem, etc, will require different parts of the operating system, and Apple differentiates between these in the distributions it provides. It's not a massive difference, but it is something.

Finally, on Mac OS, the operating system reserves some space for a memory dump if the device loses power so that it can resume where it left off. This means if you have 8GB of RAM, you will always have 8GB of disk space reserved (search for sleepimage). I don't know for sure, but iOS may do something similar.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#32

Post by arethuza »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #16
arethuza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still more relevant than SAP or Oracle are today and both of those companies are doing pretty well...

True, although they do have the advantage of being somewhat more niche in that they aren't developing an entire platform from the ground up with all the costs that entails. For example if MS loses enough ground with Windows in the consumer / small business space and begin to cede the enterprise desktop too does it make sense for them to continue development of Windows as a pure server platform? Or will we start to se…

I think they will focus on higher level (and therefore value) enterprise applications - SharePoint, Dynamics ERPs (particularly AX) and Dynamics CRM.

It also wouldn't surprise me if they decided to take all product consulting in-house and become much more of a consulting company with products as a useful sideline - a bit like IBM.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#33

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #16
arethuza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still more relevant than SAP or Oracle are today and both of those companies are doing pretty well...

True, although they do have the advantage of being somewhat more niche in that they aren't developing an entire platform from the ground up with all the costs that entails. For example if MS loses enough ground with Windows in the consumer / small business space and begin to cede the enterprise desktop too does it make sense for them to continue development of Windows as a pure server platform? Or will we start to se…

>Or will we start to see ports of stuff like Exchange,Active Directory,VS,SQL Server to other platforms?

Maybe. Some of that stuff doesn't make sense to port. For example, the value proposition of Visual Studio to Microsoft is not that it makes them particularly a lot of money, it's that it encourages its users to produce software that only runs on Microsoft's platforms. Obviously nobody is going to run Visual Studio on Linux if it can't produce Linux binaries, but it doesn't make any sense from Microsoft's perspective to allow that, so likely Visual Studio will never run on any other platforms.

And really the rest of it kind of suffers the same issues. Is Active Directory still worth it when the client devices are non-Windows? Probably not, unless they make enough integration modifications to the client OS that it would amount to producing their own Linux distribution. (That'll be the day.)

I guess I could see the case for selling Exchange Server for RHEL if they produced a Gnome, KDE or Android version of Outlook to go along with it. Even that seems like an ecosystem thing though: People install Exchange because they already have Windows and Outlook and Active Directory and Exchange relies heavily on all of them. If the starting point is Android or iOS and gmail, does that still happen?

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#34

Post by mckoss »

whatprojectnext wrote: post #17

I actually thick the Surface Pro, or something like it, will be the future of home computing. It is exactly what everyone with an iPad, including myself, wishes the iPad would actually do. It is a tablet form factor with a the guts of a true computer and support for multiple peripherals. Dock it wherever and have a real computer system or take it on the go like any other tablet.

I think it's wrong that this level of product integration is what everyone wants; i.e. functioning as a tablet and as a laptop. One of Microsoft's most powerful profit generators was software integration (both in Office and Windows).

But integrated products (ones that do BOTH X and Y) are necessarily inferior at being the best X or the best Y. A designer must make trade offs in order to make the integration work. In the realm of software, the trade offs can be quite small, and so the integrated whole is quite good. But in a hardware device, integration imposes critical constraints that make integration across functions quite painful; limited screen size, battery life, memory and storage, etc. Perhaps the most insidious is overall UI complexity. Making a device for keyboard and mouse is quite different than making a device with a great touch experience. Having both (and even adding legacy Windows UI) is very challenging.

Microsoft should not have released a "turd" if they could not achieve a great experience within the design constraints. I think most people believe this first attempt has serious flaws and compromises.

Because Apple has shown the world what a great experience a tablet can provide, I think users are unwilling to compromise just so they can occasionally connect a keyboard and mouse to it, or run legacy applications. I'd rather carry two devices than use one (inferior) product.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#35

Post by brown9-2 »

whatprojectnext wrote: post #17

I actually thick the Surface Pro, or something like it, will be the future of home computing. It is exactly what everyone with an iPad, including myself, wishes the iPad would actually do. It is a tablet form factor with a the guts of a true computer and support for multiple peripherals. Dock it wherever and have a real computer system or take it on the go like any other tablet.

Everyone with an iPad wishes it could run Word and Excel?

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#37

Post by whatprojectnext »

brown9-2 wrote: post #35
whatprojectnext wrote: post #17

I actually thick the Surface Pro, or something like it, will be the future of home computing. It is exactly what everyone with an iPad, including myself, wishes the iPad would actually do. It is a tablet form factor with a the guts of a true computer and support for multiple peripherals. Dock it wherever and have a real computer system or take it on the go like any other tablet.

Everyone with an iPad wishes it could run Word and Excel?

No but they wish it could run every website on the internet without issue, be a decent word processor when needed, and actually be a true laptop replacement.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#38

Post by TheAnimus »

The strange thing is, in his self citing comment about it been a turd, it becomes apparent he hasn't touched one.

This is the issue MS have, not some cries of false advertising of free space. No one is buying them, no one is seeing them. A guy I work with commented that he's not seen one despite it been months after the RT launch. He quite liked it, just not the price tag.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#39

Post by pavlov »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #14
bitdiffusion wrote: post #2

More FUD about the disk space issue... yes - there is a large recovery partition and yes - you can delete it to free up space. Any yes - perhaps MS would have been better off if they included a USB drive for recovery purposes (although I imagine trying to walk the average user through "booting from USB" to restore their partition would be a support nightmare). This is just like the "omg - the desktop is gone and all…

>although I imagine trying to walk the average user through "booting from USB" How is that any worse than the current status quo of every Windows product ever sold? I'd say it would be harder to walk mom through deleting the restore files when she calls and says her tablet won't hold all her movies and music. Let's just face it, MS made a very stupid decision. I could see this happening during the Vista era, but SSDs…

...it would be harder to walk mom through deleting the restore files when she calls and says her tablet won't hold all her movies and music.

You can just tell her to buy an SD card and insert it in the computer. Unlike iOS, Windows actually supports disk expansion.

Re: The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy

#40

Post by TheAnimus »

username3 wrote: post #8

My 64GB iPad has 57.1GB free space. That's 89%. 57.1 - 32 - 16 = 9.1; 9.1 / 16 = 0.56875; 16GB iPad has 9.1GB free space? That's 56%. My 16GB iPhone 5 has 13.4GB free. That's 83%. 13.4 + 16 + 32 = 61.4; 61.4 / 64 = 0.959375; 64GB iPhone 5 has 61.4GB free space? That's 95%. Edit: These calculations are not accurate. Read replies.

My 8GB nexus couldn't update the other day. I had to move off the 3GB of videos I had on it.

I don't know how much is the shipped apps. But i'd hazard a guess it is really close to 50%.

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