Windows 8 is a Flop, just as I predicted

On 08/01/2014 11:12 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-08-01 10:41 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-08-01 6:49 AM, Caver1 wrote:
On 07/31/2014 09:01 PM, Wolf K wrote:

[...]
BTW, [my wife's] company are in the process of replacing their
employees 17" 4:3
HP dual monitors with HP 24" dual monitors. Got 2 freebie 17" monitors
in case I ever need them. So, I guess her company isn't going to start
using tablets...lol

OTOH, tablets are becoming standard equipment in hospitals. IOW, a
business will use what it needs.


The tablets in hospitals are in addition to the desktops not replacing
them.

Right, and they are "in addition" because with them you an do things
that would be, er, um, let's clumsy, if not impossible, with a desktop.
Desktops are becoming specialised machines.

Have a good day,

Datapoint: At a medical trade show, I saw a number of laptops wi-fied to
very large monitors/TV screens.


Yup. There's alot of innovation coming.

--
Caver1

In the last episode of ,
Roderick Stewart said:

This is true, but my comment about Star Trek being fiction was part of
a thread about the usefulness of touch screen tablets. A previous post
said that with suitable accessories the same gadget could offer a
choice of three operating modes - desktop, laptop and tablet, and so
it can, but with some compromise to the performance in desktop and
laptop mode compared with traditional desktops and laptops with bigger
screens and better keyboards. My point was that there's no value in
making such a compromise unless you actually want to use the thing as
a tablet which not everybody does.

What you're missing is that the compromise is going away. It's not gone
yet, but it's going.

My tablet (Surface Pro 3 i5 256GB) is already more powerful than the
desktops my parents bought 3 years ago (and have no particular need or
desire to replace) -- For them, buying a modern tablet would mean
gaining portability without any (technical) compromise.

There would be a financial compromise, but as the tech gets better, that
goes away too. It wasn't that long ago that mini- and micro-ATX based
systems were a premium item, with larger motherboards going cheaper,
whereas now most of the inexpensive budget motherboards are some
small-formfactor design simply because there's a cost savings in
materials to shrink down.

--
Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.

In the last episode of , Wolf K
said:

Datapoint: At a medical trade show, I saw a number of laptops wi-fied to
very large monitors/TV screens.

Yup. And that trend will likely go away, moving more toward tablets
filling the role as they get lighter and more portable than laptops.

--
Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.

On 08/01/2014 01:32 PM, DevilsPGD wrote:
In the last episode of , Wolf K
said:

Datapoint: At a medical trade show, I saw a number of laptops wi-fied to
very large monitors/TV screens.

Yup. And that trend will likely go away, moving more toward tablets
filling the role as they get lighter and more portable than laptops.



Maybe, maybe not. Intel has developed technology that will make laptops
thinner than current tablets and weigh less. They are hoping to have
them on the market by first quarter next year at the latest.
Also ones that will charge over wifi so no need to plug in.
They already have the prototype that they are taking to shows.

--
Caver1

On 8/1/2014 12:32 PM, DevilsPGD wrote:
My tablet (Surface Pro 3 i5 256GB) is already more powerful than the
desktops my parents bought 3 years ago (and have no particular need or
desire to replace) --


And the prices are still going down as they find more and more efficiencies
in their manufacturing process.

The higher functionality tablet-form-factor devices like yours will squeeze
out a lot of the profit margin from the less functional devices as the prices go down.

IMO, MSFT was very smart in using touch screen technology in a device like the
Surface Pro, even before the "desktop" applications can take full advantage of it.

The use of touch in the desktop "windows manager" alone makes it useful, even today.

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:21:11 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2014-07-30 1:09 PM, Ron wrote:

[snip]

How in the hell is it a "full-fledged" desktop w/o one of the basic
components of a desktop?

There was a time when a floppy drive was a "basic element" of a desktop.
Hell, I recall a time when we expected two of the li'l beasties. And
thought a 20MB HDD was magnificently roomy storage....

You are young. I remember the first microcomputer hard drive I
got to work with. It had FIVE megabytes of storage. Wow! (And it
was wow.)

Apparently, the first hard drive ever held 32KB. Yup, 32,768
bytes or thereabouts.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Texas wrote:


The use of touch in the desktop "windows manager" alone makes it useful,
even today.

For some value of "dirty finger prints" and
"unnecessary arm movement". I can see me
swinging my arm around in front of my
new 27" diagonal LCD monitor, like a prize
fighter.

The smaller the screen, the more sense it makes.

It's a mobile technology, where even a more
comfortable arm geometry makes it useful (tablet
down on table). Keeping your arms raised like
a prize fighter, is tiring.

Touch has been around for a long time. We had
it on a Plato terminal, communicating with a
mainframe host at 9600 baud on a leased line. But
it didn't catch on at the time, and nobody really
attempted to duplicate it. The screen on the Plato,
was filthy after an interactive session, because
back then they didn't have the screen coating to
make it less obvious. There were so many finger
prints, you wanted to call the cops and have it
"dusted for prints".

(Plato, from 1972)
http://history-computer.com/ModernCo...4_terminal.jpg

You can see in the picture, the woman's arm is
raised, and she's not going to be very happy
doing that for eight hours a day. Our Plato
sessions were limited to one hour sessions,
so you couldn't really wear out a participant
in our test setup (hosted by the computer
center). The funny thing was, the terminal
didn't even terminate on our own mainframe, but
on a mainframe that was 800 miles away. That's
because it was a short term tech demo, to
gauge community interest. Our campus was
rather backward in terms of terminal types,
and when this thing showed up, it was a
"startrek moment". There were only two advanced
terminals on campus, and the rest would give
you computer phobia for life. Nobody expected
money to be available, to make that a permanent
installation.

Paul

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:25:39 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

At 70, I probably am not the oldest, but I just posted that I thought
Windows 8.1 good system. On the other have being 70 and seeing things
come and go, I realize the initial hype about a system is not
necessarily the way things work out. Remember the Segway

It's hard to forget the Segway when I see dozens of them nearly every day.
Many cities rent Segways to tourists for guided tours of the downtown area,
and some airports use Segways for the security folks to ride around.

FM radios was suppose to replace AM radios.

I'm aware that AM radio still exists, but I haven't listened to AM in
probably 40 years or more. I listen to FM radio almost every time I'm in a
car, so for me, FM has definitely replaced AM.

CD was suppose to replace the 78, AM radio is still going strong and there is still a market for
78RPM phonographs.

CDs and 78s aren't from the same era, so I don't agree that CDs were
supposed to replace 78s. There were multiple formats in between those two.
Also, it would be hard to argue that AM radio is still going strong. It's
mostly reduced to the 'talk' format, if what I've read is correct, so I'm
guessing that it's a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Far right
politics, far left politics, and sports are probably all that are left.

Think about this. Who made recordings that has the best sound
reproduction; Scott Joplin or Janice Joplin.

That's easy: Janice Joplin, and not only because I'm a fan. Technology
marches forward, taking almost everything along with it. Scott Joplin never
stood a chance.

Everyone just responded
"Why of course Janice Joplin, as she recorded on CD's"

Well, no, no one records on CD's. That's not how music is captured.

They forgot
that Scott Joplin recorded on a player piano which created the sound of
his music on a piano. So which is the better sound reproduction a piano
or a CD

That's a nonsensical comparison, but I think you're looking for "CD" as the
answer, which would be correct if I'm allowed to interpret your question.

On Fri, 01 Aug 2014 13:47:32 -0400, Caver1 wrote:

On 08/01/2014 01:32 PM, DevilsPGD wrote:
In the last episode of , Wolf K
said:

Datapoint: At a medical trade show, I saw a number of laptops wi-fied to
very large monitors/TV screens.

Yup. And that trend will likely go away, moving more toward tablets
filling the role as they get lighter and more portable than laptops.


Maybe, maybe not. Intel has developed technology that will make laptops
thinner than current tablets and weigh less. They are hoping to have
them on the market by first quarter next year at the latest.
Also ones that will charge over wifi so no need to plug in.
They already have the prototype that they are taking to shows.

They probably will charge via electromagnetic induction, like an
electric toothbrush's charging circuit, but with higher capacity. Such
chargers have existed for years.

You'd be lucky to get a few dozen microamps by soaking up WiFi
radiation, even close to the router.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 01 Aug 2014 16:17:57 -0400, Paul wrote:

Texas wrote:


The use of touch in the desktop "windows manager" alone makes it useful,
even today.

For some value of "dirty finger prints" and
"unnecessary arm movement". I can see me
swinging my arm around in front of my
new 27" diagonal LCD monitor, like a prize
fighter.

The smaller the screen, the more sense it makes.

It's a mobile technology, where even a more
comfortable arm geometry makes it useful (tablet
down on table). Keeping your arms raised like
a prize fighter, is tiring.

Touch has been around for a long time. We had
it on a Plato terminal, communicating with a
mainframe host at 9600 baud on a leased line. But
it didn't catch on at the time, and nobody really
attempted to duplicate it. The screen on the Plato,
was filthy after an interactive session, because
back then they didn't have the screen coating to
make it less obvious. There were so many finger
prints, you wanted to call the cops and have it
"dusted for prints".

(Plato, from 1972)
http://history-computer.com/ModernCo...4_terminal.jpg

You can see in the picture, the woman's arm is
raised, and she's not going to be very happy
doing that for eight hours a day. Our Plato
sessions were limited to one hour sessions,
so you couldn't really wear out a participant
in our test setup (hosted by the computer
center). The funny thing was, the terminal
didn't even terminate on our own mainframe, but
on a mainframe that was 800 miles away. That's
because it was a short term tech demo, to
gauge community interest. Our campus was
rather backward in terms of terminal types,
and when this thing showed up, it was a
"startrek moment". There were only two advanced
terminals on campus, and the rest would give
you computer phobia for life. Nobody expected
money to be available, to make that a permanent
installation.

Paul

It seems like the form factor has improved :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 01 Aug 2014 15:18:57 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:25:39 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

At 70, I probably am not the oldest, but I just posted that I thought
Windows 8.1 good system. On the other have being 70 and seeing things
come and go, I realize the initial hype about a system is not
necessarily the way things work out. Remember the Segway

It's hard to forget the Segway when I see dozens of them nearly every day.
Many cities rent Segways to tourists for guided tours of the downtown area,
and some airports use Segways for the security folks to ride around.

FM radios was suppose to replace AM radios.

I'm aware that AM radio still exists, but I haven't listened to AM in
probably 40 years or more. I listen to FM radio almost every time I'm in a
car, so for me, FM has definitely replaced AM.

CD was suppose to replace the 78, AM radio is still going strong and there is still a market for
78RPM phonographs.

CDs and 78s aren't from the same era, so I don't agree that CDs were
supposed to replace 78s. There were multiple formats in between those two.
Also, it would be hard to argue that AM radio is still going strong. It's
mostly reduced to the 'talk' format, if what I've read is correct, so I'm
guessing that it's a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Far right
politics, far left politics, and sports are probably all that are left.

Think about this. Who made recordings that has the best sound
reproduction; Scott Joplin or Janice Joplin.

That's easy: Janice Joplin, and not only because I'm a fan. Technology
marches forward, taking almost everything along with it. Scott Joplin never
stood a chance.

Everyone just responded
"Why of course Janice Joplin, as she recorded on CD's"

Well, no, no one records on CD's. That's not how music is captured.

They forgot
that Scott Joplin recorded on a player piano which created the sound of
his music on a piano. So which is the better sound reproduction a piano
or a CD

That's a nonsensical comparison, but I think you're looking for "CD" as the
answer, which would be correct if I'm allowed to interpret your question.

In addition, it has already been noted in this subthread that Janice
Joplin was no longer living when CDs hit the market...

Message-ID:

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 8/1/2014 4:18 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:25:39 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

At 70, I probably am not the oldest, but I just posted that I thought
Windows 8.1 good system. On the other have being 70 and seeing things
come and go, I realize the initial hype about a system is not
necessarily the way things work out. Remember the Segway

It's hard to forget the Segway when I see dozens of them nearly every day.
Many cities rent Segways to tourists for guided tours of the downtown area,
and some airports use Segways for the security folks to ride around.

FM radios was suppose to replace AM radios.

I'm aware that AM radio still exists, but I haven't listened to AM in
probably 40 years or more. I listen to FM radio almost every time I'm in a
car, so for me, FM has definitely replaced AM.

CD was suppose to replace the 78, AM radio is still going strong and there is still a market for
78RPM phonographs.

CDs and 78s aren't from the same era, so I don't agree that CDs were
supposed to replace 78s. There were multiple formats in between those two.
Also, it would be hard to argue that AM radio is still going strong. It's
mostly reduced to the 'talk' format, if what I've read is correct, so I'm
guessing that it's a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Far right
politics, far left politics, and sports are probably all that are left.

Think about this. Who made recordings that has the best sound
reproduction; Scott Joplin or Janice Joplin.

That's easy: Janice Joplin, and not only because I'm a fan. Technology
marches forward, taking almost everything along with it. Scott Joplin never
stood a chance.

Everyone just responded
"Why of course Janice Joplin, as she recorded on CD's"

Well, no, no one records on CD's. That's not how music is captured.

They forgot
that Scott Joplin recorded on a player piano which created the sound of
his music on a piano. So which is the better sound reproduction a piano
or a CD

That's a nonsensical comparison, but I think you're looking for "CD" as the
answer, which would be correct if I'm allowed to interpret your question.


Do you know what a player piano is?

You are saying that music produced on a piano is not as good as music
played on a piano.


A player piano roll recorded the keys and strength applied on the key.
When the roll was played back the music on the roll was reproduced on a
piano which was the same instrument as the roll was created.

In the last episode of , Paul
said:

Texas wrote:


The use of touch in the desktop "windows manager" alone makes it useful,
even today.

For some value of "dirty finger prints" and
"unnecessary arm movement". I can see me
swinging my arm around in front of my
new 27" diagonal LCD monitor, like a prize
fighter.

So don't touch it? The Surface comes with a stylus, or you can still use
a mouse, or the touchpad. You don't need to touch.

--
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

On Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:32:32 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote:

Datapoint: At a medical trade show, I saw a number of laptops wi-fied to
very large monitors/TV screens.

Yup. And that trend will likely go away, moving more toward tablets
filling the role as they get lighter and more portable than laptops.

Or perhaps even phones. Some of the speakers at the TED talks appear
to be using smartphones to control the screens, though whether the
audiovisual material is actually coming from storage on the phones
(which would be possible), or the phone is just acting as a remote
control for another device, is not clear.

For prepared presentations like this a small portable device has a
definite advantage, but that doesn't mean they will replace
conventional computers for doing the original work.

Rod.

On Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:32:32 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote:

This is true, but my comment about Star Trek being fiction was part of
a thread about the usefulness of touch screen tablets. A previous post
said that with suitable accessories the same gadget could offer a
choice of three operating modes - desktop, laptop and tablet, and so
it can, but with some compromise to the performance in desktop and
laptop mode compared with traditional desktops and laptops with bigger
screens and better keyboards. My point was that there's no value in
making such a compromise unless you actually want to use the thing as
a tablet which not everybody does.

What you're missing is that the compromise is going away. It's not gone
yet, but it's going.

My tablet (Surface Pro 3 i5 256GB) is already more powerful than the
desktops my parents bought 3 years ago (and have no particular need or
desire to replace) -- For them, buying a modern tablet would mean
gaining portability without any (technical) compromise.

Has it got a 24 inch screen untouched by human hand, and a tactile
keyboard that can be replaced in less than a minute if I spill
something on it? I don't doubt that touch screen tablets will become
cheaper and more powerful, and they will have their uses, but there's
more to computers than just processing power; human beings have to
operate them. Smearing one's grubby fingers across a sheet of glass is
not the most ergonomic way of using a computer for every type of work,
and I don't think it ever will be.

Rod.