Hmmm - Windows 8 is awesome IMO or am I missing something.

 

Regards

Jim Allen

Hmmm - Windows 8 is awesome IMO or am I missing something.

 

Regards

Jim Allen

You're definitely missing something. Actually, you're missing a lot of things. Try putting a DVD movie in your disc drive.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8

You're definitely missing something. Actually, you're missing a lot of things. Try putting a DVD movie in your disc drive.

I just tried this on my mom's computer. It doesn't work. Well, it's a good thing it wasn't my computer, but my mom's saying that's the last time she listens to my dad. Why she didn't listen to me in the first place, I have no idea.

Gee, and here I've always thought that it was business' use that made up the vast majority of PC sales...

 

Silly of me I guess... :Whistle:

Even business' will spend more money on smart phones then on desktop these days. My GF gets a free Iphone from her company which costs more then the desktop they plop on her desk.

 

A smart phone costs about $500 to $1000 each and then costs up to $200 every month to use. A desktop comes no where close to those costs.

 

Most corporations provide a smart phone unless you are further down on the food chain in the company.

It always kills me when the so called experts say stuff like: "The smartphone market is increasing and PC sales are stagnant, therefore smartphones are replacing the PC"

 

Who the hell ever decided that they are mutually exclusive? Just because smart phones and tablets have become more popular and affordable doesn't mean the PC is dying.

 

Everyone I know owns both and I've never heard anyone say that their giving up their PC because their smartphone is so great. Ever try to type a report or a spreadsheet on a tablet? How about design a car or make plans for a building? A smartphone or tablet with a tiny screen and 3 hour battery will never replace a desktop in a production oriented business environment.

 

I remember when notebooks and portables were first hitting the market they predicted the death of the desktop....never happened.

 

The boom of smartphones is because you no longer have to be tied to a landline. Humans love communication.

 

Microsoft has run out of ideas for their OS so now they will turn their cash cow into a tablet OS and force feed it to everyone because they know what's best for us. They have no fresh thinking and they have become so large that they have forgotten what made them who they were. MS would rather not have to develop a desktop OS anymore and instead charge you for all these crummy useless apps and bad games( look at Flight and Windows 8) on a UI that looks worse than DOS. If they had their way they would charge you a monthly fee to use the internet on their OS.....oh wait they already do , it's called XBOX. Their ultimate goal is to marry smartphone, XBOX and PC all into one craptastic dumbed down platform so they can milk every last penny from you.

 

This is what happens when there is very little competition. Innovation dies. Same goes for Intel - Used to be performance doubled every 2 years, now you are lucky to see 5 % - 10 % (unless you fall for all the marketing hype) . Now these companies do the minimal and charge top price...you'll take and like it because there is no competition....PC sales have stagnated because there is no new killer app, no real reason to get Windows 8....your smartphone can already do the same thing, and the new PC's aren't much faster than they were 2 years ago ( graphics cards aside)

ytzpilot, on 11 May 2013 - 7:14 PM, said:

Even business' will spend more money on smart phones then on desktop these days. My GF gets a free Iphone from her company which costs more then the desktop they plop on her desk.

 

A smart phone costs about $500 to $1000 each and then costs up to $200 every month to use. A desktop comes no where close to those costs.

 

Most corporations provide a smart phone unless you are further down on the food chain in the company.

This is not true.

 

 

What businesses are doing is trying to figure out how to get over the 32bit to 64bit hurdle. Many businesses (especially government) are still on Windows XP. Businesses in general have legacy apps that aren't getting converted over to 64bit fast enough if at all. Steve Ballmer in all his idiosity hasn't updated many development tools to 64bit so the process is even slower. W7 is the OS companies are trying to go to if they haven't already. The cost of that is enough let alone jumping again to W8. The only way a business is embracing smart phones these days is if they have a virtualized back end where they run thin client desktops mostly. I just came from a company that was trying to do just that with their Allscripts medical application on tablets with Citrix server back ends. All desktops physical or thin client were XP by the way. There is no way in hell phones are taking over the business market it's just not practical. Those companies with VMWare or Citirx back ends aren't going to do this as well as the infrastructure is designed for desktops. There's allot going on it seems that people just don't seem to know about but by going with what's on the surface they believe the hype. Heck, Microsoft did and that's why W8 isn't doing that well. Before any real move to anything is done we have to totally convert from 32bit to 64bit from there we can talk about other options. Phone and tablets are not on the importance factor people think they are in the business/government world. All staff has them but the main business is being done on PC's and servers. What's funny is in order to get legacy business applications to work (because they can't find viable replacements) companies are foolishly buying W7 32bit. PC's aren't going anywhere for sure...

I will speak on my GF's work as she is a financial controller, Her desktop is used primarily for MS Excel and her financial software that they use. She sits at her desk about 5 to 6 hours a day and uses that desktop on and off in that time.

 

Her smart phone is on her and with her 24/7 and is what is used for all communication with her job. Therefore it has become her primary tool for work and not a desktop.

 

Since she works for a British Corporation and is the Financial Controller for New Zealand, that smart phone is going off 24/7 as their is always an office in operation somewhere in the world with the different time zones. People are always trying to get a hold of her.

I will speak on my GF's work as she is a financial controller, Her desktop is used primarily for MS Excel and her financial software that they use. She sits at her desk about 5 to 6 hours a day and uses that desktop on and off in that time.

 

Her smart phone is on her and with her 24/7 and is what is used for all communication with her job. Therefore it has become her primary tool for work and not a desktop.

 

Since she works for a British Corporation and is the Financial Controller for New Zealand, that smart phone is going off 24/7 as their is always an office in operation somewhere in the world with the different time zones. People are always trying to get a hold of her.

 

Sounds like a crappy job. 24/7 expectations and only getting a set salary is the employer getting over like a fat rat with the employee is not getting fully compensated for their time. I just quit a job like that.

 

Anyway the smart phone goes hand in hand with a PC on many jobs especially IT as you can check your email from anywhere. There is no way I would want to manage my server from my smart phone even though I can. The smart phone has it's advantages as it can be your anchor to your job anywhere and at any time (a.k.a 'Modern Day Slavery'). Many employers are taking full advantage of this where if you add up the time for a US employee their making less than minimum wage for the time their expected to put in. This is important as more people can do what they usually do on their PC at work/home on their phone. This does not replace the PC as some people (most in this community) like the PC option. Older titles like Flight Simulator don't work on a phone and if could would you (heck, I wouldn't even play Flight on a phone and XPlane sucks being used that way)? You have phone apps and you have PC, WII, PS3, and XBOX360 titles for a reason. What the phone/tablet does is give us more options for basic operations and navigation. At work a total PC'less environment is totally out the question for most businesses because like the FS example it's not practical with older applications. The boom in smart phones is people replacing their regular hand held for the modern option (they can access Facebook on the go). The cell phone has been very common for over 20 years and now all of them are getting replaced. This does not mean everyone wants to put their personal info on a phone backed up in the cloud and do away with the customization and local file security they get from a PC.

But many people don't see the need for a PC. That's why sales of smart phones and tablets are soaring while PC sales are declining - especially desktops.

They're diverging now, so they are becoming less competitive w/ each other in some ways.   I think the desktop trajectory needs to be geared towards science & business (including financial, music/video editing etc) & high end simulation & gaming, and mobiles towards everything else:  basic mobile tasks including email and web browsing, viewing more than publishing, etc.  I'd like to see desktops start to more exclusively address the very high performance sector and so as I say for science, business, music production and gaming and software devs can port applications to the correct sector.  I think Windows 8 maybe tries to be both and in doing so is not excellent for either domains.

Thanks for that list of removed W8 features, above.

 

Windows Media Center/Player was always a horrible mockery of functionality to begin with, I'm glad MS gave up on pretending they could compete with Apple there.

 

I'll buy my own DVD player if I need it, or more likely will find it for free with my motherboard or sound card software. Or, heck, there's QuickTime.

 

 

Sounds like a crappy job. 24/7 expectations and only getting a set salary is the employer getting over like a fat rat with the employee is not getting fully compensated for their time. I just quit a job like that.

 

She is adequately paid. Financial Controller answers to the CFO so she is high up in the food chain. I call her my sugar mama.....LOL

She is adequately paid. Financial Controller answers to the CFO so she is high up in the food chain. I call her my sugar mama.....LOL

 

If she likes it I love it. I'm just not a fan of 24/7 work no matter what the pay, life is too short especially when you have kids.

Slayer, on 12 May 2013 - 01:28 AM, said:

Who the hell ever decided that they are mutually exclusive? Just because smart phones and tablets have become more popular and affordable doesn't mean the PC is dying.

 

Everyone I know owns both and I've never heard anyone say that their giving up their PC because their smartphone is so great. Ever try to type a report or a spreadsheet on a tablet? How about design a car or make plans for a building? A smartphone or tablet with a tiny screen and 3 hour battery will never replace a desktop in a production oriented business environment.

First no one's said the PC is dying. Only that it's sales are in decline.

 

Second, what proportion of users have a need to design cars or buildings, or even to use spread sheets? Sales are in decline because those who would have bought a PC to connect to the internet, send and receive e-mails, watch videos, socialise, show off photographs realise they don't need a PC for that.

 

Obviously there will still be a commercial need but my firm used high-end work stations for design work and basic terminals for financial work. The terminals were all networked and so didn't need built in disk drives card readers, USB ports etc. .

Obviously there will still be a commercial need but my firm used high-end work stations for design work and basic terminals for financial work. The terminals were all networked and so didn't need built in disk drives card readers, USB ports etc. .

From the corporate point of view, the major advantage of "basic termimals" is that of absolute control over precisely what each such terminal has access to...

 

...and what the employees who are putatively working do with them. :Whistle:

...and what the employees who are putatively working do with them

We had an employee who put a pirate copy of AutoCAD on his PC. When he had a problem he phoned the AutoCAD helpdesk, gave them the pirated serial number and the company's name.

 

The immediate result was that all of our AutoCAD licences worldwide were suspended for several days until we could establish we had no other pirated copies. Thay was when we really locked out PCs down!