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New What scoeyne said.
They theoretically should run Linux great - but you can't unlock the bootloader to do it, and there is possibility that some of the hardware has no Linux drivers, anyway. Googling for a few minutes hasn't found anyone who has successfully done it. The general consensus seems to be Don't Bother.

Wade.
Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
New So then, this FAIL shall forever be Ballmer's Legacy? (Good)
(I saw his typ-uncool-zany Intro and ... Wished-it!)
'Poor' bastard: all those extracted-$$ and likely nobody wants to hang out with him,
while he tries to figure out how to spend it all..

Egads!! does this mean I am now Omnyipotent ?!?
New Not really
Making huge piles of money for a decade will be Ballmer's legacy. Office 365 happened on his watch, and it's a ludicrously effective money-maker. So did Azure, ditto.

The Surface RT is a waste of time.

The Surface Pro is an object of desire.
New Guess I'm not up to the cognitive dissonance
of the 'piles of money' metric. After all, heroin also makes piles of money and ... and ...

If our metric is FUBAR, then Everything is OK. Or Nothing. I so confused.
New No dissonance
MS is a business, not a charity (Billg has that covered).

Ballmer presided over two (three?) of MS's biggest ever successes - Azure, Office 365, Windows 7.

These are good products which made and continue to make lots of money.

Not really sure what you're driving at here. Ballmer missed the boat on mobile, and he's paid for that with his job, but his tenure was far from a failure.

You've got a fuckin' Apple computer, for crying out loud. The machine of choice of the ubercapitalist.
New re. 'Not really sure what you're driving at here.' Really?
'Apple Logo' may be their choice, too. But *I* intended to 'buy' something I could Use/not-forever-'fix' (to do my 'work', on) as opposed to
... a string of offerings by that 'money manufacturer': each iteration of which, demanded that I spend an inordinate amount of time keeping their product running,
plus momentarily.. protected from--maybe the Universe's largest collection of un-noticed buffer overflows, dueling DLLs, useless Error messages,
deliberately-crippled Registry design et cetera ad nauseum. [Hey: RING ZERO--remember those dissertations wayback?]

Thus far, my choice is vindicated. But time seems to be running out as
Affluenza infection of this (now also: mere money-manufacturer/in spades) probably assures that this overpriced but Useable offering,
when it dies (or is corporately-killed into uselessness via premeditated neglect of its OS and related)
will force a regression to whatever *nix du jour is least demanding of daily hand-holding, whilst bulletproof for my simple, pedestrian demands.

(But there is no place in my mentation for -Ever- returning to the kiddie-patois and anti-logical groupings of menus/procedures
and other signs of committee-spawned Redmond illogic)
Unless/until they Die-as-we-know-them and something new and brilliant supersedes the whole operation.

Redmond 'logic' confounds otherwise-healthy Minds. *You* can/will deal with this melange because:
You were Paid all-along, to grok the absurd miasma in-which that despicable-OS marinates/infects all Ap-dev extant.
I need my remaining little grey-cells for My purposes and not for unravelling the Gordian Knot of an inferior, unFixable design, demanding DAILY bug-fix installs
--which has always been a FAIL.

tl;dr? Doze Sucks so mightily that, only *masochists/innocents 'prefer it'. And the world (obviously) creates lots of Those.
* ..and techno-advanced photogs/(saving $$ over the Expensive-spread), and with the Sense never to put the sucker on the Intarweb.

(I wonder: if.. you actually put anything beyond Just Your Name? within your new photo-purposed Win-x: and open that to the Intarweb??)
And I wonder too, if you--when asked for suggestions by innocents--recommend? that they take home a factory-installed
[Not professionally sanitized] W-notebook and begin using it, Web-connected?


Carrion.
[It's what you get from Redmond--even if you are PAID $,£,€ ... to suck-up their mediocre spawn.]


[OPT: Kill-M$-Corp-screed/for provable-Cause]

M$' existence has retarded worldwide progress in a litany of topics, via incompetence and the suppression of countless actually-competent ideas--for $$ manipulation Only.
And always there will be the icon of Ed Curry/and the criminal misrepresentation of NT.xxx's actual 'security': for which-all criminal scam, affecting Govt. purchases too--NoOne has yet gone to jail.

M$ OWES $Ts.. for the wasted mega-hours of fixing-labor, lost data, ez==facilitated criminal-$-related hacking they made so easy. And especially: for SO LONG.
All by themselves M$ constitute Proof IMO, of the fatal defects of unregulated ergo Vulture-capitalism.
But that's just me ... (though I see it's not just-me making similar deductions, either.)

You think/say that Ballmer (et al) 'made Lots of Profitable Products'; implicitly--they earned that largesse,
whereas I deem that: they Stole over-all, $trillions from millions--in every human-recognized sense of that word. (I sure hope that Karma IS a bitch--for Corps and their humans inside.)

New 2nd doze box in 3 years
first one cakked the MB. New one is running doze 8. Has not crashed or frozen prior one no blue screens or driver issues either. Does its job which is to intarwweb, write docs and act as a terminal from time to time. Other than having to ask around here for shortcuts it does everything the macbook and mac mini can do for me with as little or less interruptions.Edit, have not had a virus yet in 3 years.Of course does not mean there maynot be one, just that I dont notice it and it leaves my shit alone
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Expand Edited by boxley March 2, 2014, 07:25:02 PM EST
New I don't spend any time "keeping it running".
There's this myth, you see, that Windows post-XP is some kind of terrible needy baby of an OS, and if you'd just get a Mac, all those maintenance headaches, they just go away.

Guess what? Neither position is literally true, although as usual there's a tiny kernel of truth at the root of it.

If you say something like "Doze sucks", I'm going to dismiss that, because the fact is that all modern operating systems suck, and pretty much equally; Windows needs antimalware attention or it'll put your nude selfies on the internet, Linux has no useful desktop software for normal people, OS X has no games and you need to buy a relatively expensive and more-or-less-impossible-to-repair-yourself computer to run it on, etc.

My Windows PC has my MS account signed into it, and it's on the internet. I don't run any externally-facing services on it. That's something I would only do - irrespective of platform - with a separate, firewalled computer, because I'm not an idiot.

I'm really glad your Mac is working out; if the hardware were different, it'd be working out for me, too. But I can't justify the spend on the Mac hardware I need to do the things I want to do, and (as I found out twice to my detriment) I'm just too far away from a Mac service centre to make ownership a viable proposition - and I can service this PC myself.

As for whether Windows is an inferior design - well, OS X has two filesystem layouts, one of which is hidden from the user, 40 years old, and has only really made it this far by inertia, the other is simplified and insufficient on its own to make the computer go. The display compositor can't be made to work over a network (Screen Sharing is VNC). The Finder still sucks. The filesystem is still archaic and slow (let's go with ZFS, Apple; get with the programme!) and the OS, SHE LURVE DE RAM. The command shell is, like the filesystem layout, 40 years old.

But that's all OK, because OS X is a stunningly effective OS, despite its limitations; it looks good and feels good, and lets people get shit done, and that's why people love it.

Windows has a robust, scalable filesystem. Remoting the display is WAY better. API access to everything is better. My nerdular programming friends tell me that Apple's API documentation is a bit cack compared to MS's (although they could both do lots better). There's more software of every kind, and yes, that includes The Evul Malware. (BTW, most attacks these days are phishing/soc-eng types, and the Mac offers exactly the same resistance to those as Windows). Hardware support is a no-brainer. Storage Spaces mean I can dick around with my terabytes very easily.

It's not shit, it's not incompetent, and it's not illogical.

I don't have OS religion any more (and I remember switching from Linux to FreeBSD because something GPL something something CVS something something.). I have things in my life that are both more interesting and more important to me than the OS running on my computer - people, things to take pictures of, latterly shotguns and rifles. If in the future Apple produce a computer that meets my needs both digital and fiscal, I'm so there. The trials and tribulations of mega-corporations all of whom don't care whether I live or die - abstractly and sporadically interesting, but I'm not invested in any sense of the word.


(It's my dad's fault. When he died in 2004 (it's OK, this isn't a plea for sympathy or anything, it's been a decade, I've dealt) I had a sudden and more-or-less total loss of OS religion, and that's when my Linux box got sidelined and I got my second Mac to which I switched full-time. I was a perfectly happy little Linux|FreeBSD nerd up until that point.)
New Thanks, I appreciate your informed (and er, granular!) POV
Well, nobody here needs to fight the OS Warz; that was appropriate in IWE/NT madness daze, when DLL-Hell etc. were daily nastiness
(and even we mere spear-carriers could cite individual insults.)
Mainly I feel for the neophytes, but realize that my aversion to the re-labeling by MS of perfectly sensible conventions, already accepted:
may not seem so insane to folks who actually Like the kiddie-speak versions (they still retain.)

And yes, life IS too short to be a fanboi for any corporate propaganda--especially given the plight of so many real Matters, currently.
We already did that stuff, when it was current: IWE, 'NT is the futchah!' etc. while dealing with DLL-hell, daily and debating MS fanbois on the Obvious.

Fact is, You Can bring years of lore to bear on any problem in several OSs; your switch for specific photo options and evasion of the Apple Tax makes good sense.

I was lucky to buy-in/used, on what turned out to be: the near-last of the maintainable iMacs.
That Leopard SOLVED the backup-problem utterly seamlessly via Time Machine--was wondrous to behold!
Then, learning it via osmosis, finding out that it DID Just Work: was/is compelling.
5+ years of only trivial glitches becomes.. confirming. It fucking Works--as claimed.
As I can replace some boards, fix an HD or optical, (but can't get >6GB to fly) I'll stay til it dies.

Next: as Apple becomes asymptotic to The Beast in its grandiose and crass machinations, I'm back to becoming vulnerable: either switch to Ubuntu next
or be a willing-idiot to miniaturization as excuse for soldering-in that which Should remain replaceable By Users.

Anyway, no argument re the overview: the further Apple suits escalate the standard Corporate hubris of vulture-capitalism,
the more they become Beast II, and the less-likely I can continue to enjoy the stability I have now.
(Maybe I need to find a clean '09 iMac. IIRC that was last << the great-Shrinking started.
However long Mavericks lasts, maybe 3-4 years? can extend my time before bailing.)

When my ship comes in ... another UK trek is #2 (if not #1 by then) ... a pint + supper is on me.



New One non-minor quibble
Win 7 on a laptop is a pain in the ass, which is something I had to deal with for 6 months at my previous job.

1) Multiple external displays just don't work well *at all*. At least once a day I would get to the conference room and discover that Windows had left my primary monitor back on the desk, with no way to recover it apart from hiking back and fiddling with the mirroring controls.

2) Switching between wired and wireless networks, ditto. Every time I left the wired connection, if I had a document open on the share I'd get into a fun-filled round of "that document is read only, save it under a different name".

When I left the Windows world again (hopefully for the last time) this January my productivity shot up more than it should have.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Re: One non-minor quibble
This relates to my work laptop. I don't have W7 on anything at home.

1) I have Nvidia drivers, and my displays behave themselves. YMMV, it seems.
2) Yeah, this is probably fuckery.

One of my big problems with OSX for work-related stuff (when I tried it) is that for better or worse, a lot of people (my organisation, all its customers, all their customers, etc) use Outlook, and Outlook for OS X is arse.

There were weird incompatibilities between Excel for Mac and Excel for Windows, too, usually related to conditional and format-as-table formatting, both of which I use a lot. I don't remember the details but I'm sure that according to the documentation, some of that shit should have worked.

Also, we seem to be sprouting Visio documents all over the place. I hate Visio, and so does your Mac. Omnigraffle is OK for simple stuff (and it's certainly nicer to use than Visio), but anything with any complexity turns into a hot mess.
New Hates the Visio, my Precious
I was using nVidia as well, and it was still pretty much ass.

I've always used PowerPoint for system diagrams, which happily works fine on a Mac.

I haven't had any issues with Excel going back and forth, even with conditional formatting. But yes, stuff happens with compatibility, always.

That said, I just had a chance to use Pages from Mavericks last night, and wow so compatibility very impress. Track changes and everything.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New I hate PowerPoint more than I hate Visio
and that's going some.
New Same here.
After all these years, there are still Mac/Win PPT formatting issues (e.g. with fonts for symbols and the like). LibreOffice is very good these days, but it has the most trouble (for the things I do) in getting PowerPoint formatting exactly right.

I've been fortunate enough not to have to use Outlook or Visio, so 1 > 0. ;-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New The main saving grace: command-Z
I've had Visio refuse to undo itself after completely destroying a document with a single move of an object.

At least PowerPoint's undo actually works.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New This is why
You never get the Chief Exec on stage other than to hand out long service awards.

The minute it goes beyond shaking hands and smiling...

...shudder.

cringe.
New The finance guys on Wall Street didn't much care for him...
it seems.

The stock was basically flat since 2000 or so (for lots of reasons) - https://www.google.c...nce?q=NASDAQ:MSFT

I'm not sure they're a "ludicrously effective money-maker" any more - http://www.microsoft...4/Q2/default.aspx

Devices and Consumer revenue grew 13% to $11.91 billion.

· Windows OEM revenue declined 3%, reflecting strong 12% growth in Windows OEM Pro revenue, offset by continued softness in the consumer PC market.

[ There are about 30 SKUs for Winders - "Pro" is just one. And MS always massages Winders revenue that they recognize ]

· Surface revenue more than doubled sequentially, from $400 million in the first quarter to $893 million in the second quarter.

[ After the huge writedown for Surface stuff earlier, one would expect revenue to rise sequentially ]

· The company sold 7.4 million Xbox console units into the retail channel, including 3.9 million Xbox One consoles and 3.5 million Xbox 360 consoles.

[ Units, not revenue here. ]

· Bing search share grew to 18.2% and search advertising revenue grew 34%.

[ Meh. These numbers can be fudged, too. How much did the search advertizing industry grow? ]

Commercial revenue grew 10% to $12.67 billion.

· SQL Server continued to gain market share with revenue growing double-digits.
· System Center showed continued strength with double-digit revenue growth.
· Commercial cloud services revenue more than doubled.

[ To what level? ]

· Office 365 commercial seats and Azure customers both grew triple-digits.

[ What about revenue? ]



No mention of Phone in that earnings press release, of course.

Ballmer was handed a golden goose in 2000. He acted as if anything MS did would automatically dominate. MS was doing tablets in 2001 - they were expensive and not very appealing because MS was trying to shoehorn Winders into doing that job. And they still couldn't get it right with Winders 8 when it was released 11 years later. And Zune couldn't compete with the iPod/iTunes. Even the very damaged Sony is still able to compete with their gaming console. And so forth. He didn't run MS into the ground, but he could have done so much more for the company and for its customers. Instead, their hubris let Apple (and others) drank their milkshake.

Cheers,
Scott.
     64GB Microsoft Surface RT Tablet (Refurbished) - (Ashton) - (19)
         Can't give 'em away - (scoenye)
         What scoeyne said. - (static) - (17)
             So then, this FAIL shall forever be Ballmer's Legacy? (Good) - (Ashton) - (16)
                 Not really - (pwhysall) - (15)
                     Guess I'm not up to the cognitive dissonance - (Ashton) - (11)
                         No dissonance - (pwhysall) - (10)
                             re. 'Not really sure what you're driving at here.' Really? - (Ashton) - (9)
                                 2nd doze box in 3 years - (boxley)
                                 I don't spend any time "keeping it running". - (pwhysall) - (7)
                                     Thanks, I appreciate your informed (and er, granular!) POV - (Ashton)
                                     One non-minor quibble - (malraux) - (5)
                                         Re: One non-minor quibble - (pwhysall) - (4)
                                             Hates the Visio, my Precious - (malraux) - (3)
                                                 I hate PowerPoint more than I hate Visio - (pwhysall) - (2)
                                                     Same here. - (Another Scott)
                                                     The main saving grace: command-Z - (malraux)
                     Nah - (crazy) - (1)
                         This is why - (pwhysall)
                     The finance guys on Wall Street didn't much care for him... - (Another Scott)

Juan Valdez has the answer...
149 ms