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Windows 8....urgh

Domino

By Domino
in Windows 8

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gshaw

gshaw

Posted
Posted
Nail on head, also why I still think MS were crazy charging such (comparatively) high prices for the Surface devices... real opportunity missed there imo
Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
I think the perennial problem for MS is that most of the PC's that are sold are "throwaway plastic crap" and it gives users a really poor view of Microsofts products.

Definitely! Microsoft's biggest problem are the OEMs. Lenovo's new IdeaPad Yoga running Windows 8 is a great example of the sort of crap customers still have to put up with when buying a Windows computer. This has a 128GB SSD, yet only ~43GB is actually usable due to the 7 partitions Lenovo created.

 

http://i.imgur.com/ctnR7.png

 

 

I still think its idiotic Intel are pushing ultrabooks that cost a thousand quid.

Not all Ultrabooks cost £1,000+. Samsung have some for £400-£500.

 

And as for touchscreens on laptops, I mean come on??? pointless and a massive battery drain.

If touchscreens were pointless, why is Google rumoured to be adding one to its next Chromebook? Also, why would adding a touchscreen cause massive battery drain? The battery in an iPad lasts upto 10 hours (both for the iPad 4 and iPad mini). :confused:

 

Touchscreens are like 3D on TVs. It will be a standard feature eventually once cost, size and weight are reduced.

 

Nail on head, also why I still think MS were crazy charging such (comparatively) high prices for the Surface devices... real opportunity missed there imo

Except that when you look at the total cost including apps and accessories, the price for the Surface RT isn't that high. It's quite easy to spend £500-£600+ on an iPad, especially once you add AppleCare, a Smart Cover, Bluetooth keyboard and an adapter or two.

 

my cousin runs her entire fashion business from her 3G ipad. Blog updates, photos, email, facebook, appointments, .... everything done on a tablet that fits in her bag. I'm not saying she's typical, but that seems to be the way the wind is blowing.

I can see many people replacing PCs with tablets, but what a lot of people aren't aware of before they buy iPad's are the limitations. e.g.

 

Let's assume I receive an email with a PDF attachment which I'd like to use in some other apps and maybe post to a social network later.

 

On iOS, the user is forced to think around Apple's constraints. There is no easy way to just detach the file from the email and subsequently use it in what ever way I want. Instead, all iOS apps that want to expose some sort of sharing feature, do have to completely take care for it themselves. The result is a fairly inconsistent, unsatisfying user experience.

 

On iOS, you might use the somewhat odd "Open in..." feature – in case the developer was so kind to implement it – to first move the file over to Dropbox, which gives you a virtual cloud-based file system. If you're lucky, the other app, from which you want to use the file next, offers Dropbox integration, too, so you can re-download it and start from there. All because Apple denies the necessity of basic cross-app local storage. (Source)

 

Some people won't mind this, while others will get incredibly frustrated. :)

sted

sted

Posted
Posted
If touchscreens were pointless, why is Google rumoured to be adding one to its next Chromebook? Also, why would adding a touchscreen cause massive battery drain? The battery in an iPad lasts upto 10 hours (both for the iPad 4 and iPad mini).

 

Touchscreens are like 3D on TVs. It will be a standard feature eventually once cost, size and weight are reduced.

 

 

because people have been told they want them (less so with touch it has its uses) but 3dtv/films how does it make anything better the only reason its been done is so you cant take a camcorder into the cinema and they can charge more to see films. Granted as a glasses wearer 3d is a right royal pita but the only time ive seen owt in the cinema (toy story 3) it gave me the worst headache ive ever had for 8 hours and i wouldnt call it 3d either it was more like parallax layers moving.

 

As to google adding touch to chromebooks they have to or they will be seen as backwards.

 

I cant be the only person who thinks touch isnt the way forwards im seriously debating a non smartphone next time with actual buttons as its just easier and as 3g is ropey at best im not sure id miss it

zag

zag

Posted
Posted

Touch screens reduce the battery life of laptops by around 2hrs from the results on Engadget that I have seen. Its quite an easy test to do as a lot of manufactures are simply refreshing their current laptops with touchscreens for the CES show going on right now.

 

I really dont get the reason for it, who wants sticky finger marks on their screens and worse battery life. What does a touchscreen bring to laptop? Why not just get a tablet?

zag

zag

Posted
Posted

I just bought a load of new Acer TimelineX's for £323 each, add a 60gb SSD and we have a nice cheap "ultrabook" for our staff :)

 

Windows 7 all the way :)

sted

sted

Posted
Posted
I just bought a load of new Acer TimelineX's for £323 each, add a 60gb SSD and we have a nice cheap "ultrabook" for our staff :)

 

Windows 7 all the way :)

 

are they any better than acers of old as we stopped selling them to schools as the screens flexed and they generally had the build quality of a sandwich

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted (edited)
Touch screens reduce the battery life of laptops by around 2hrs from the results on Engadget that I have seen.

It depends on the laptop and the specs. Two hours is at the extreme end. Lenovo's X1 Carbon Touch only loses around 7 minutes of battery life compared to the non-touchscreen version. Asus' UX31A loses a bit more (50 minutes) because of the faster processor and larger SSD in the touchscreen model. Which laptops were you looking at?

 

who wants sticky finger marks on their screens and worse battery life.

In a school you get finger marks on screens regardless of whether they are touchscreen or not.

 

What does a touchscreen bring to laptop?

It's just an additional input method - you already have mice, keyboards, multi-touch trackpads and trackpoints. What's wrong with one more? Some people like touching the screen. :)

 

Some Asus laptops will soon come bundled with the Leap Motion adapter and OS X 10.9 will probably have Siri integrated as well.

Edited by Arthur
gshaw

gshaw

Posted
Posted

Personally I think the hardware side of Windows 8 thus far has been really poor. Nothing of good enough quality \ price point to become a "must have" over an iPad or Android tablet. Microsoft had a chance to do something big with the Surface but seem to have squandered the opportunity. Granted some may say this is to keep the OEMs on-side but they've not exactly busted a gut to make that allowance worthwhile (imo)

 

I still think preventing businesses using Windows RT is a big fail, spoke to more people today and they think exactly the same I do... what they want is an affordable, secure device to edit Office files on the go that links up seamlessly with their internal network and the cloud. They want that device to cost no more than the equivalent iPad, to be thin \ light with decent battery life. Surface RT ticks the boxes if it could be properly managed... instead it's looking like a white elephant that doesn't suit home or business users.

 

Looking for a laptop for work use at the moment, considered the touchscreen convertibles but the (OTT) price increase over similarly specced standard laptops doesn't make them a viable option and renders the touchscreen an expensive gimmick rather than core feature.

CyberNerd

CyberNerd

Posted
Posted

I still think preventing businesses using Windows RT is a big fail, spoke to more people today and they think exactly the same I do... what they want is an affordable, secure device to edit Office files on the go that links up seamlessly with their internal network and the cloud. They want that device to cost no more than the equivalent iPad, to be thin \ light with decent battery life.

 

Android/ChromeBooks with Google Apps already has filled that niche.

LeMarchand

LeMarchand

Posted
Posted
Looking for a laptop for work use at the moment, considered the touchscreen convertibles but the (OTT) price increase over similarly specced standard laptops doesn't make them a viable option and renders the touchscreen an expensive gimmick rather than core feature.

 

I'm in the same situation: been told I can get a new laptop, and would love a convertible of some sort (or even one of the "full on" W8 tablets - I've got a Bluetooth keyboard) but there's no way the school would stretch to that sort of price.

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
Personally I think the hardware side of Windows 8 thus far has been really poor.

Most OEMs have been waiting until CES to announce/release products which is unfortunately timed to be after Christmas.

 

I still think preventing businesses using Windows RT is a big fail

Microsoft aren't preventing businesses using them, although RT devices are primarily aimed at consumers. Why would they sell an optional commercial use license for Office Home & Student 2013 RT? They can also be managed to a certain extent via Windows InTune.

 

http://i.imgur.com/gH6Pe.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/NxDjW.png

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/megrN.png

gshaw

gshaw

Posted
Posted (edited)
Android/ChromeBooks with Google Apps already has filled that niche.

 

Not if you want the full powered MS Office experience rather than cut-down Google Apps - not everyone wants 100% cloud and Google in charge of their data. Microsoft has a better blend of internal \ cloud that you can choose how far you want to go, rather than Google's "you're in or you're out" stance.

 

Most OEMs have been waiting until CES to announce/release products which is unfortunately timed to be after Christmas.

 

Microsoft aren't preventing businesses using them, although RT devices are primarily aimed at consumers. Why would they sell an optional commercial use license for Office Home & Student 2013 RT? They can also be managed to a certain extent via Windows InTune.

 

 

Why would I want to be forced to use a cut down web-based management product if I've invested in the all-encompassing SCCM infrastructure for everything else? Why would I want to be restricted to what policies I can apply when I have powerful GPO control for the rest of my network? As it stands the device is a 2nd class citizen in terms of the rest of the Microsoft product range and it really doesn't need to be.

 

Interestingly in the graphic posted above I thought SCCM 2012 could manage Android devices and didn't need InTune or has that changed?

Edited by gshaw
CyberNerd

CyberNerd

Posted
Posted

Microsoft has a better blend of internal \ cloud that you can choose how far you want to go, rather than Google's "you're in or you're out" method.

 

You have to have a full sharepoint setup and Office licenses everywhere for that to be effective. That's extraordinarily expensive for schools to do.

gshaw

gshaw

Posted
Posted (edited)
You have to have a full sharepoint setup and Office licenses everywhere for that to be effective. That's extraordinarily expensive for schools to do.

 

EES = Office installed locally everywhere

EES = Office 365 everywhere, free with EES for the standard package

 

Wouldn't bother running an internal SharePoint now for most reasonably sized organisations as the 365 version would do the trick for student \ staff collaboration. File storage however can go wherever you prefer it to be and doesn't have to be all-or-nothing i.e. put your file shares where you want and use as much \ little of the cloud service to suit your needs.

 

Cost = same as what you pay for Office anyway (unless you've junked it completely for Google Apps, not many people gone down that road yet as far as I know)

Edited by gshaw
CyberNerd

CyberNerd

Posted
Posted (edited)
EES = Office installed locally everywhere

EES = Office 365 everywhere, free with EES for the standard package

 

Wouldn't bother running an internal SharePoint now for most reasonably sized organisations as the 365 version would do the trick for student \ staff collaboration. File storage however can go wherever you prefer it to be and doesn't have to be all-or-nothing i.e. put your file shares where you want and use as much \ little of the cloud service to suit your needs.

Cost = same as what you pay for Office anyway (unless you've junked it completely for Google Apps, not many people gone down that road yet as far as I know)

The problem with not using sharepoint and using Office 365 is that you get all of the disadvantages of office 365 - yet none of the advantages of sharepoint. All of your documents are in MS cloud and you end up needing to pay for the A3 plan to get the full advantage of being able to use any of the advanced features which MS inconveniently left out of the Office 365 web application. We costed that at £40,000 per year . Compare to Google Docs you get automatic sync of MSOffice files, Google drive to sync mapped homedrives plus the collaborative tools - so you can still have EES AND Google docs and have both benefits, plus you get Android and chromebook devices at a fraction of the cost.

Edited by CyberNerd
gshaw

gshaw

Posted
Posted
and you end up needing to pay for the A3 plan to get the full advantage of being able to use any of the advanced features which MS inconveniently left out of the Office 365 web application

 

Which ones did you find to be the deal breakers that aren't in there? On the hardware side again you prove the point at the top of the page that the MS devices are just too pricey for what they are.

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted

Microsoft: 60 million Windows 8 licenses sold to date « ZDNet

 

Microsoft officials said the company has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date.

 

Tami Reller, Chief Financial and Chief Marketing Officer for Windows shared the data at the JP Morgan Tech Forum at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 8.

 

That 60 million figure includes "sell in to OEMs for new PCs" and upgrades, said Reller. She didn't explicitly cite whether the figure also includes any Enterprise Agreement/volume license sales.

 

"Windows 8 is a big, ambitious change," Reller acknowledged. She reiterated that Windows 8 sales are roughly in line with Windows 7 sales.

 

Microsoft said the company had sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 as of the end of November.

 

Reller said the sales are "roughly in line with where we would have been with Windows 7."

 

NPD has cited that retail demand for Windows 8 was off through the end of 2012.

 

In part, Windows 8's less-than-stellar retail sales can be attributed to the lack of touch-enabled laptops and tablets running the operating system. At CES this week, a number of Microsoft's PC-maker partners have announced new touch-screen Windows 8 and Windows RT hardware, but a number of these still won't be available for months.

zag

zag

Posted
Posted (edited)

They have sold 60 million copies because you cannot buy windows 7 machines any more in stores.

 

Its nice having a monopoly sometimes :)

Edited by zag
sted

sted

Posted
Posted
They have sold 60 million copies because you cannot buy windows 7 machines any more in stores.

 

Its nice having a monopoly sometimes :)

 

only if you can play as the boot

tmcd35

tmcd35

Posted
Posted
They have sold 60 million copies because you cannot buy windows 7 machines any more in stores.

 

Its nice having a monopoly sometimes :)

 

How many of the 60 million are corporate licences? We'll be buying into to EES next month, does that count even though we're using the licenses to downgrade to Win7?

sparkeh

sparkeh

Posted
Posted
How many of the 60 million are corporate licences? We'll be buying into to EES next month, does that count even though we're using the licenses to downgrade to Win7?

Yep that counts. As does OEM licences for devices that haven't even been built yet.

Licences sold is not a good measure of success. It vastly over inflates the success when compared to actual installs.

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