New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#581

Post by rayiner » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

nogridbag wrote: post #481

pcunite wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this ... outside of ThinkPad, many Windows hardware options have been pretty embarrassing.

I'm relatively unfamiliar with ThinkPads and happened to be looking at them yesterday. Here's my problem with ThinkPads (as well as most other Windows laptop vendors): http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/?menu-id=laptops Which ThinkPad are you talking about? ThinkPad X, ThinkPad T, ThinkPad W, ThinkPad Yoga, ThinkPad E, ThinkPad L, or ThinkPad Helix, or ThinkPad 11E? Let's say we're talking about ThinkPad T.. Which…

We use thinkpads at work. They're okay, but they're not Surface/MacBook level of quality. My T450s has bad backlight bleed at the bottom, the trackpad is a major regression from my T430, and it was chock-full of crapware before I nuked it and reinstalled windows. Apple isn't perfect, but the sort of annual model lottery that is notable when it happens in the Apple world is par-for-course in the PC world.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#582

Post by dpark » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

ckozlowski wrote: post #467

Karunamon wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine when you're starting out, but infinitely frustrating after you have an idea of what you're doing. A recent example, looking for errors in windows logs: Get-Childitem "C:\Windows\" -recurse -Include *.log ` | Select-String "Error" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue ` | Group-Object filename | Sort-Object count -descending Closest *NIX analogue I can think of would be grep -r Error /var/log/ | sort English is…

I'd agree it's a bit more to type out, but it does seem to make more sense from a readability perspective. And for those of us who didn't grow up with the UNIX shell to understand the reasons why things were kept so short, it's a bit easier to digest. (I do appreciate why bash is so short and succulent. =) But really, taking the above into consideration, the might in powershell comes not from the terms used, in my op…

> but it does seem to make more sense from a readability perspective

Not really, as everything is given an unreadable alias anyway, and many are given multiple aliases: Copy-Item -> copy,cp,cpi. So there are just more names to learn.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#583

Post by scholia » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #316

scholia wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft isn't bending anything. Windows 10 has two distinct APIs for different types of program. The old Win32 API handles traditional desktop software and the separate Windows Runtime is used for sandboxed apps that can be installed and updated from the Windows Store. If you're writing for Windows Runtime, you are as fully touch-enabled as you are with an iPad, and the apps run in a similar way. The complaints abo…

On an added note, the "Tablet Mode" in Windows 10 is actually pretty decent with traditional desktop apps. I run Chrome on my Vivotab in Tablet Mode so that I can still access 1Password, and it is surprisingly usable (haha, weak praise, but still praise).

Fair point. It's a bonus!

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#584

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:01 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #520

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the keyboard is in the stand, part of the battery is probably in the stand, all of the ports are in the stand, the dedicated GPU is in the stand, plus the stand actually lays flat while the screen is mostly upright so in any normal position the stand could only be a fraction of the screen and still not cause it to topple right? I guess the combination of all of that and perhaps a little extra counterweight if ne…

Hmm, the fact that all the ports are in the stand sucks. I like to pull the keyboard off my surface 3 and lean it up against the wall and watch movies on it while still having mouse control from a distance. What we really need is for every device to have an embedded Logitech controller so I no long need the usb nub dongle

Why do you need a dongle if it has bluetooth?

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#585

Post by jsalit » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #529

drewg123 wrote: post #26

How about the Band 2? Unaware of this event, yesterday morning I ordered the first MS Band for a little more than 1/2 the list price of the Band 2. I'd been shopping for fitness trackers for a long time, and settled on the Band as the only tracker meeting my needs that can also act as an Android trusted bluetooth device & keep my phone unlocked. From what I can tell, the Band 2 adds: - softer, more flexible strap (so…

The new one specs says max altitude is 1200m/3937 feet. That's unusable in pretty much the entire state of Colorado. The previous version was 12000m or 7.45 miles. It must be something to do with the new barometer, but this is a miss.

The specs say the Maximum Operating Altitude is "-300m to +4877m".

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#586

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #38

vcarl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe how few laptops get the trackpad right. It's the first and primary interaction anyone has with the laptop, how are all of them so terrible! I'd love to get a non-macbook, but the list of laptops with powerful hardware that plays nice with a Unix based OS and has a trackpad that isn't unbearable is shockingly short.

Anyone except trackpoint users! But yeah, it's mindboggling. The internal hardware is largely the same anyway, why are companies throwing away a chance to get ahead of the competition and use the same shoddy keyboards/touchpads everyone hates?

Trackpoints are painful for me to use though. My fingers just aren't willing to go through that trauma anymore.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#587

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #473

pcunite wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this ... outside of ThinkPad, many Windows hardware options have been pretty embarrassing.

ThinkPad is pretty embarrassing; you're supporting a company that decided to MITM all its users traffic to inject advertising using factory-installed malware by trusting the same certificate, whose private key can be extracted from any Lenovo product and trivially used to MITM all the others. Lenovo needs to fail hard and fast. I recognize we'll probably never get those responsible into prison, but at least we can ma…

[deleted]

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#588

Post by dang » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #232

melling wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I guess by referring to Apple I confused the point. You went off on some pointless irrelevant rant. How about I mention Google instead? http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2478157,00.asp http://www.androidcentral.com/google-says-look-out-more-usb-... USB-C is an open standard that is not controlled by Apple.

Oh no, "melling" thinks my response was pointless and irrelevant - what to do? Does anyone else find it hilarious that this is coming from a guy who cares about USB-C which is largely pointless and irrelevant in this thread? You got all the responses and downvotes that you deserve.

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Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#589

Post by mblevin » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:05 PM UTC

lsniddy wrote: post #492

ypcx wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird keyboard layouts. Shifting the keyboard off-center to include numeric keypad which no one uses anymore. (Gamers? Please stop.) This alone makes one question what exactly they are "smoking". There wasn't a single big Windows laptop on the market that wouldn't fall into this hole of a flaw.

I think the num pad is a huge addition. I use it both in Excel and Photoshop. that being said i love this device more than anything ive seen since the XPS 13

This is 100% a decision in line with much of the core premium Windows audience - corporate employees who use Excel and other programs with numerical data entry on a daily basis.

There has been massive encroachment of MBP and MBAs into the corporate world as BYOD policies have been adopted.

Very smart move.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#590

Post by mmozeiko » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #340

miahi wrote: post #298

Not different than most current offers on laptops, the keyboard still looks horrible for programming[1]. Fn keys shared with Home/End/PgUp/PgDwn, Up/Down arrows sharing a key. I guess they call it "slick", I call it won't buy. [1] ok, depending on what you are programming, I'm sure there will be people saying they only need the "0" and "1" keys working.

I don't like where they're placed on my keyboard either, so I use AutoHotkey to bind those functions to alt+arrows. Alt+up for page up, alt+down for page down, alt+left for home and alt+right for end. After a couple hours it became muscle memory again.

How do you press Shift+Alt+Up/Down/Left/Right? Text editors I use do vertical block selection for Shift+Alt+arrows. Doing this kind of remapping will give you Shift+PageUp/PageDown/Home/End which is not cool...