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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#521

Post by shados »

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!

No, my eyesight both far and close was quite a bit better than average as of last week (as I was just there getting checked). We have a lot of 4k and 5k displays at work and most people who say they can tell a (significant) difference when we compare (the topic comes up a lot) seem to usually either be on > 27inch, have scaling higher than what's expected, or just fail to see it when we really test it out. Your millage may vary :)

Don't get me wrong, I can see a difference, but not nearly as night and day, especially when it comes at the cost of other features (eg refresh rate... which isn't the end of the world for coding so if it's the only thing you do on the monitor it could be worse... otherwise ouch my eyes.)

Re: The End of Windows

#522

Post by tekknik »

gruez wrote: post #354
pmontra wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different needs. They are the vast majority of buyers. A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start t…

>I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?

I run 64GB in a mac pro, with about 1/2 of it used as a cache for a zfs volume. With it taking half of my ram along with my other daily apps (safari, sublime text, etc) I’m only left with ~10GB free.

Re: The End of Windows

#523

Post by Silhouette »

noinsight wrote: post #494
Silhouette wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I don't fully understand about Nadella's strategy is what Windows is supposed to be any more. Clearly if all these whizzy subscription-based online services are going to be useful, people need a device to access them. For simple communications and information consumption, the modern generation of devices like smartphones and tablets works just fine, but for anything more involved or with a significant creat…

> So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? I've been thinking about this too but I don't see who would stand to gain from it. If Wine got some serious commercial backing it could be leveraged to run all "legacy" Windows apps on another platform (Linux). Desktop Linux is relatively far a…

It's difficult to predict who might see what potential advantages in shifting the market back in that direction.

The claimed benefits of the Cloud have always been as much hype as substance, and a lot of the "sales pitch" in the early days has now been debunked. We're not going to run short of stories about major Cloud services having significant downtime, poor support, data leaks and so on any time soon.

Likewise SaaS is a great pitch if you're a software developer, and converting capex to opex makes it attractive in some contexts as a customer as well. However, I get the feeling that patience is starting to wear a bit thin in some quarters now, with customers looking at the overall costs they're paying, how many improvements they're really seeing in return, and also how many unwanted changes are being pushed out.

Depending on where you stand on those issues, combined with the general dumbing down associated with many online apps compared to traditional desktop software, I can imagine a variety of situations where businesses might be looking at keeping more IT in-house as we go round the cycle again. For personal use, I suspect there's less of an incentive because many of these users are quite happy with just using their tech for basic communications and information retrieval, but for those who do want to do more creative things or who enjoy more demanding applications like games, again there's surely a big enough market for a serious desktop OS with an emphasis on good management of local native applications and not just being an expensive thin client for online services.

So who potentially benefits from an industry shift? I guess the simple answer is anyone who is interested in developing software for the markets I just described.

Re: The End of Windows

#524

Post by Stratoscope »

kuzimoto wrote: post #516
Stratoscope wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. 2560x1440 on a 27" panel is only 109 pixels per inch. I use a ThinkPad with that same resolution on a 14" display, with a 24" 4K UHD next to it in portrait mode. Both displays are around 200 pixels per inch, plus or minus. It's great not having to see the pixels, so much more pleasant and easy on the eyes. Also the combination of a portrait display with the landscape display is really nice. I can read an en…

I agree that having higher PPI is great, but are you using scaling to make text larger? I was barely able to use a 28" 4k a 100%, can't imagine doing that at 24"

Yes, I should have mentioned that I'm using Windows 10 with 225% scaling on both the 4K UHD 24" display (187 DPI) and the WQHD 14" (210 DPI). Some people like a bit less scaling, some more, but in general you want a scaling factor that roughly matches your display's pixels per inch.

The original Windows "standard display" was assumed to be around 96 DPI. That's the monitor that 100% scaling (i.e. no scaling) is intended for. Round the 96 up to 100 and we can say that in rough terms, the percentage scaling should be in the neighborhood of the monitor's DPI.

So monitors in the 200 DPI range are best at around 200% scaling.

A 28" 4K UHD has 157 DPI, so I wouldn't want to try it at 100% scaling - ouch. It ought to be running in the 150-175% scaling range.

The idea with a high-DPI monitor isn't to make everything smaller on the screen, it's to make everything sharper and more detailed. When you double the DPI and scale appropriately, you get four times the number of pixels for everything you put on the screen.

Re: The End of Windows

#525

Post by dboreham »

dumbfounder wrote: post #263
dboreham wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are non-technical reasons to prefer locally hosted accounting software. Privacy is one if them.

Do you mean privacy, or security? It would be a massive breach of trust if SaaS accounting products were harvesting your business data a la Facebook...

What about harvesting your data to the IRS?

Re: The End of Windows

#526

Post by CamperBob2 »

noinsight wrote: post #494
Silhouette wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I don't fully understand about Nadella's strategy is what Windows is supposed to be any more. Clearly if all these whizzy subscription-based online services are going to be useful, people need a device to access them. For simple communications and information consumption, the modern generation of devices like smartphones and tablets works just fine, but for anything more involved or with a significant creat…

> So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? I've been thinking about this too but I don't see who would stand to gain from it. If Wine got some serious commercial backing it could be leveraged to run all "legacy" Windows apps on another platform (Linux). Desktop Linux is relatively far a…

The only question is: cui bono? Who would have a reason to go that route?

Someone like Valve, who has a massive investment in Windows software in areas that Microsoft has specifically targeted for "embracing."

What Microsoft doesn't seem to understand is that when they screw with Windows and deprioritize the needs of its users, they're also screwing with the rest of us who live, work, and play in their ecosystem. Gabe Newell, being an old-school 'softie himself, understands that very well... and he's one of the few interested parties with the funding to do something about it.

Re: The End of Windows

#527

Post by Ezhik »

RX14 wrote: post #293
dannyw wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).

My brand new thinkpad with 16gb ram and a 1080p ips display cost only £670. These specs aren't expensive any more. That being said, my parents are perfectly happy using Google chrome on 2gb ram with a core 2 duo. And that's not with only a few tabs.

£670 is not "only".

Re: The End of Windows

#528

Post by rphlx »

bluGill wrote: post #237
ynniv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that getting Office to run on Android and iOS is a bright future, but that doesn't mean you put Windows in the corner with "some other stuff". Maybe there are too many people on it and they've gotten too comfortable? Spin it out into a company with half the staff and let it soak up its own sun.

The problem with Windows is operating systems are a commodity. You shouldn't care about it. You are about opening your documents on your desktop and phone - you don't even care what program opens the documents. Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs. Which is to say Windows as a separate company pr…

> Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.

That is surely overstating it, at least for definitions of "long" meaning <= 20 years. If you assume that Windows is more or less "done" their engineering expenses could be low, and revenue significant, merely serving the corporate and various niche (gaming, etc) markets which are still heavily bound to Windows. Their market share is declining in some niches (such as CAD) and maybe even overall (to OS X), but negative revenue and market share growth does not necessarily mean quick extinction. Some dinosaurs take decades to bleed out.

Re: The End of Windows

#530

Post by wolfspider »

gruez wrote: post #354
pmontra wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different needs. They are the vast majority of buyers. A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start t…

>I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?

I run an IMac with 32gb because I’m a SharePoint developer. A 2012 VM running AD, DNS, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and a SharePoint farm all running takes up 16gb easily. The other 16gb goes to VS Code, XCode, Slack, multiple browsers, Outlook, Docker at times...etc.. Then I gotta shut it down and boot up the SharePoint 2010 VM sometimes which gets 12gb a little less I suppose.
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