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Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

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Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#91

Post by jballanc »

Someone wrote: post #83
jballanc wrote: post #16

A 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

Cause or effect? The question is not whether many people use Windows to drive an animated display, but why.

I'd argue cause...something like technology's version of the "trickle-down effect". Some displays will require advanced engineering skill, but I'd wager that the majority do not. When you're working at the leading edge of technology it's much easier to evaluate multiple competing technologies and compare them on the merits. When you're given a $5000 contract to produce an advertising display in 2 weeks, you're going to go for the most Google-able solution.

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#92

Post by Jagat »

zdw wrote: post #10

People 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 use what they know. Given a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Slightly related. One of my professors wrote a 200 line matlab code to extract a column from a csv file, when all she needed was a one line "cut". The only language she knows is matlab.

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#93

Post by terhechte »

TheCondor wrote: post #85
terhechte wrote: post #21

I've worked for quite some time in the digital display industry, at a company which has a very feature rich, Mac OS X based digital signage solution [1] with high profile customers such as Mercedes-Benz, or Disney. Since the company is small, it is easy to be part of all steps of the process, including marketing and sales. I learned a lot about B2B buying behaviour while I worked for this company. We oftentimes ran i…

Are these solutions sold as devices or are they sols as software products that you bring your own hardware to?

Depends on the solution that you buy. Some digital signage vendors sell complete black boxes where you get a hardware that you connect, and it runs just fine, others sell licenses that you have to install on your own hardware.

The Videro solution is a full packaged system that you connect to a display and to a network (if you're connecting to wireless, there's a special remote UI that pops up after first start and lets you enter wireless info, much like on Apple TV systems) just runs. It usually connects to a cloud system, and then you can distribute content to it. It is really hassle free, which is also important for large scale deployments. (If one machine breaks, you can just pop it out, and put a new machine in, one click and it will receive all the content from the previous system and continue the job).

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#94

Post by stephenr »

ollysb wrote: post #74
alexchamberlain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have macs for the same reason fancy shops always have macs, they're a status signal and just look better.

Or because, you know, they find that paying a little more up front gives them a better overall product - longer usable life, less maintenance, etc.

Just because you don’t see the point of an Apple product beyond “ooh shiny” doesn’t mean others don’t.

I work for a global company where > 50% of people work from home offices and > 90% of our staff use Macs. I can only actually think of 2 specific people (out of 200+) that use Windows, but Im sure there are a few others, and some Linux users.

Are you suggesting that all these people, many of whom are in countries with lower wage standards, pay “extra” just to have a shiny apple logo on their desk at home that no one but them sees?

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#95

Post by ams6110 »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #8

Because .NET makes it very easy for average developers to write GUI programs, and Visual Studio is what they use to write them. In theory, this developer could just use Mono to run his .NET app on Linux. But that requires them to learn how to do that. Personally, I've never found a clear tutorial on how to take a .NET GUI app that you've just written in Visual Studio and get it running on Mono. I haven't looked in se…

we can deploy our app on the latest Ubuntu

I thought we were arguing for something that was more stable than Windows?

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#96

Post by kalleboo »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #65
dhimes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw one boot last week on a Delta flight. I was very surprised to see Tux.

Me too! I tried to get a picture but was too slow unfortunately.

I've seen it a few times

Thai Air, the projector kept rebooting throughout the whole flight http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalleboo/3911989854/

Singapore Air, initial reboot as we were boarding http://www.flickr.com/photos/82365211@N00/2473197800/

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#97

Post by ams6110 »

Spearchucker wrote: post #87
krallin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert in embedded displays, but I assume you'd simply run a webserver on localhost.

Web server means additional complexity both to deploy and maintain. After 20+ years in the corporate world I can guarantee that an alone-standing native client it going to beat anything with a web server.

A lightweight local web server is not going to be any more complicated than a stand-alone program that does the same thing.

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#98

Post by kalleboo »

js2 wrote: post #84
smackfu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just surprised they don't hide the bootscreen given that the only troubleshooting the flight attendants can do is a power cycle.

I was on a United flight a couple weeks ago when the passenger next to me told the flight attendant that his headphone jack for his seatback IFE was not working. The flight attendant offered to reset the IFE. The passenger declined the offer. I'm still wondering whether the flight attendant was going to reset the IFE for everyone or somehow for just that passenger.

Whenever I've had it reset, it was just one chair that had to be restarted.

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#99

Post by jonknee »

krallin wrote: post #70
Spearchucker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to detract from your points (you make good ones); web is probably not a good medium for such displays. Not always, at least. You'd want them to be reasonably functional without comms. Last I checked (I may be wrong), HTML 5 constrains local storage to 5Mb, which is precious little, if the display uses images/media.

I'm not an expert in embedded displays, but I assume you'd simply run a webserver on localhost.

You don't even need to go that far, you can reference local files with "file://" instead of "http://". That said, most digital signs are digital because they change so a [web] server somewhere along the line will be used.

Re: Why Do Companies Still Use Microsoft Windows For Displays?

#100

Post by apaprocki »

Just wanted to point out that Microsoft does offer an embedded version of Windows that is supposed to be used for these types of applications so stuff like in the post does not happen. But, due to how extremely annoying it is to configure (properly) and create an image, most users probably skip it and opt for a standard Windows image and all the issues that come with it.
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