ZX 81 like touch typing lives again!
Well, kind of. Almost. Microsoft's new TouchCover for the just announced Microsoft Surface, features a tablet cover that doubles as a keyboard that uses touch for typing. Some of us should be right at home with it then. ;)
Post edited by Arjun on
Comments
Or under powered touch screen laptop with shyte keyboard. Another example of M$ comming to the party way to late.
Having been using the Lumia 800 with Windows Phone 7.5 (what a mouthful!), I have to say I quite like the Metro interface. You have to use it to realise all the little touches and flourishes that make it all work. Static photos don't do it justice really.
If there's a drawback, it's simply the lack of quality apps in the marketplace (a good thing I have an iPad then ;) ). I believe that this is because of the requirement of using C# to make WP apps. Something that's going to change with Windows 8 as MS has listened to developers.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
I like this new tablet, but the name doesn't sound catchy.
So, are Microsoft tablets going to be the first tablets to suffer from viruses, blue screens, etc?
Also, if you get the - most definitely not underpowered - i5 version it'll run full Windows 8, so the lack of apps shouldn't be an issue.
I thought they were still maintaining a separate OS for phones for now. Windows 8 Desktop will be a massive flop with business, but it will do fine with consumers. MS has probably figured they can afford for businesses to stick with Windows 7 on the desktop because they should get a decent amount of revenue from Windows Server 8 (or whatever they're calling it now).
Nobody's going to want one with a Microsoft or Windows logo on it, because nothing will say "they gave me this at work so I can be in constant touch. I wear a grey suit and am very boring" quite like carrying around one of these.
Yes, some companies will give them to some employees. That is part of the reason why they're doomed. Just like that Microsoft Zune thingy (you know, the iPod -killing MP3 player that everyone uses :lol:).
Trust me on this. I'm bloody great, me. :)
it is do-able more than probable.. you can control your music making software via your iphone (cubase was the first). not sure if they have done it for android yet.. you might think why ? well you can trigger it to record , say your in a vocal booth remotely :) . they do make 3rd party apps to control your music software via ya phone.
the pi has a video you might like :)
I have never been a fan of how apple "lock in" users, I used to fix/upgrade macs for a living 12 years ago for a 3rd party reseller and they royally ****ed over people who wanted to buy "logic" on the pc , by buying the company out. Thankfully I didn't buy it or I'd have been furious. Or changing chipsets and well their phones all I see is "drip ware" 1 function they could put in an older phone but like a tap.. drip drip drip
if/when I buy a new phone it'll be android based.
I've seen an Ipad2 and 3 clamshell. Where by the old ipad was used as a kb and the new one used as the screen. Connectivity was via blue tooth IIRC.
You can have the task bar, just not the start menu it seems.
That's just silly, the task bar is the start menu to me. No need to partition the OS into an extra screen. Mark me this will be their undoing.
sadly I have to use the main OS's for music making :)
For that Windows XP will do just fine.
and the issues of a lot of companies specifying xp sp3 to install
I'd be surprised if a "classic" mode which normally is included , is put in as per usual.
Classic is out, and XP mode is out.
I fear you are badly wrong. You will get the full office 360 which is a long way from office.
I am working on what, AFAIK, is the first major UK corporate office 360 deployment at the moment and it hurts. Even with very direct support from MS (they want it as a case study) making Outlook work in a corporate manner is painful. The documentation is to say the least patchy.
If your going to use office in anger, which I admit hardly anybody does, then 360 just isn't up to it. If you want to do presentations it's not really the best. I don't care what sort of "keyboard" the tablet has, it's still not going to beat a real keyboard if your typing 100+ page reports and if your trying to integrate excel charts and access (or MSSQL) data I wish you luck.
I agree that when this flops Office for IPad is a must but it will be 360, if Apple will allow it. Also despite the hype I am hearing a lot of doubts about cloud based computing from industry.
I for one don't like the idea of cloud computing. The only part required is synced storage, even possibly synced storage of apps, but this data needs to remain on the clients too as without a working network connection your screwed.
sounds like os 9 / os-x re-run of the nightmare 12 years on :)
we had machines, and no drivers for the cards (they stopped extension) .. it was a nightmare and sales staff were selling soundcards etc they were told not to, until we had decent updates from the sound card companies.
It's five away from Office 365 as wel ;)l, but no, there will be native office on Windows 8 whether you go for ARM or Intel. Even Symbian has some native Office apps.
That's because your main site and offsite backup site haven't both been flooded out at the same time yet. There are plenty of other scenarios where cloud computing makes sense. A blanket rejection of the technology seems a little extreme.
It's generally thought the transition from OS 9 to OS X and then from PPC to Intel all went fairly smoothly so long as your kit was from a reasonably reputable supplier (Epson, HP, Dell), as opposed to cowboy outfits like Umax.
My mistake, it's an in joke at the moment, something about us spending so much time going round in circles. :)
Or, more likely, somebody puts a backhoe through your fibre or your on a clients site with chronically locked down wireless or something happens to take your particular cloud down when you need it. All of which have happened more than once. That's not to mention things like where your data is stored which could have very different data protection laws than your native country or the intrinsic security which hasn't really been tested yet. Then you have the problem of satellite offices which have net connections with speeds similar to dial up.
As far as I am concerned its not proven technology yet and as far as business is concerned a risk not worth taking.
That assumes a system with no redundancy, which would of course be stupid. Which is not to say that people don't build stupid systems.
It has. There are solutions to deal with data protection and security issues. Cloud computing is just a new fancy name for distributed computing which is a long-proven technology.
Whether that's a problem or not very much depends on what you've got on your cloud. If you're running a cloud app with a heavy bandwidth requirement then yes, it's going to be an issue. So why wouldn't you use native apps in a branch office?
It's an ancient technology, but proper risk assessment is prudent before any large scale deployment. For many businesses, the lower costs of leasing only the required capacity instead of maintaining and replacing hardware on a three year cycle makes cloud computing a no-brainer.
I see a fundamental difference in that if my (insert what you want) breaks then I have control over it rather than relying on a third party. If you take "distributed computing" in this discussion to mean basically WAN networks rather than in the multiple CPU type distributed computing then many of the weaknesses as well as the strengths are the same so what do you gain?.
A large part of the sales bull surrounding this is that you should move everything into the cloud. Not just your apps but also your data so what your proposing is the worst of both worlds, partial use of the cloud but keep other stuff locally (including local servers) which no doubt would throw up a whole new rats nest of issues regarding synching data.
I have no idea where you get a 3 year cycle from especially in the public sector. Normal tax write down is 4 years for hardware and most places push that to 5. 7 years is normal for public sector. Assuming, which isn't true, you don't replace your hardware and use your existing kit as thin client then you get an extra couple of years out of it. Anywhere that is going to convert to a cloud environment will already have all the required software (for the sake of argument, windows and office) licensed so your putting your lease costs against your new spend costs. Although no doubt different deals are available a price of ?14 a month for cloud office is something not unreasonable. (including full commercial level support contracts) That's ?168 a year per person or ?504 over your 3 year cycle. The purchase cost for an end user in a large government department I was working in recently was ?450 for a Dell desktop including Windows and Office. This price included the assumed support costs over the machines lifetime. It didn't however include the backoffice costs, i.e. servers and infrastructure which would of course raise the ?450 somewhat but you still have some of these overheads in a full cloud environment. This also relies on being able to run all your non standard apps through (say) citrix which almost invariably will mean you still have to run your own servers.
I honestly can't see a realistic financial saving for very big business, who get special licensing deals, but I can see where it would work for small places who have much simpler requirements and can't get advantageous hardware / software deals and are happy for a third party rather than in house support setup.
In big business I see no reason to switch to any third party cloud environment when most of them already run Citrix which is effectively the same but kept entirely within your own control.