Windows 8 tablet sooner than we expect? (Next Microsoft OS will embrace tablets better)

Just an observation.

Android is FREE and the competition cannot beat the iPad in price or performance.

How does MSFT expect to make a profit, selling a Win8 tablet OS - with high performance requirements, when the competition which uses a FREE operating system, cannot beat Apple?

Windows?

Tablet?

Bwahahahahahaha?

I can’t want for the “Blue Tablet of Death”

If Microsoft built cars, they’d be Yugos.

May they rest in h*ll.

Windows is making people dumber.

For example: One virtual folder representing many folders (old school POSIX). Folks “stuff” is all over the damn PC and then they can’t find half of it when they migrate to a new machine.

“Smart” networking. “I can’t connect.” “Did you check the encryption type? WEP, WPA, TKIP, etc..” “Whip huh?”

Next thing they’ll do is get rid of directories and just have everything stored under c:\

Microsoft is scrambling to get some traction in the slippery tablet space, even though it invented the genre back in 2002.

Pardon me but this is akin to saying that the Phoenicians or the Irish deserve credit for the American Economy because they landed some sailors on the East Coast a while back. Microsoft lives for it's corporate installed base and for its XBox360 franchises and solid innovation comes from elsewhere.

Between 2002 and 2010 there was plenty of time and talent up there in the Northwest to bring a superior product to the fore, but Microsoft was the proverbial Elephant tripping all over its little Vista problem. To expect this ponderous pachyderm to suddenly become dextrous is a mirage in the distance. Maybe some day MS will wake up but this long-time shareholder has moved on to Apple and my options are doing very well indeed!

...and I'm a PC.

Gee, will it have another redundant and stupid menu feature, ala “the ribbon” of Windows 7 ?

Will they rearrange all the familar commands into something so incomprehensible that they have to issue a program so people can find them, ala Office 2007 ?

Just bought a new Dell netbook, and am zotting Windows 7 in favor of XP. It’ll cost me my retail copy of XP Pro, but it’ll be worth it.

Just a bit of M$ trivia, but they had a W3.1 version for tablet PC’s in the early 90’s.

“Windows for Pen Computing
Main article: Windows for Pen Computing

Windows for Pen Computing was a series of Microsoft-produced add-ons for Microsoft Windows versions in the mid-1990s with additional tools for tablet PCs. Windows for Pen Computing (also known as Pen Windows and W4PC) was developed as Microsoft’s Pen computing response to the PenPoint OS by GO Corporation[7]. Windows for Pen Computing was rendered obsolete by the Tablet PC support for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in 2002.”

Somewhere I have a copy of that puppy.

Microsoft is scrambling to get some traction in the slippery tablet space, even though it invented the genre back in 2002.

Behold the SONICblue ProGear.

Released in 2000, it had a 10.4" touch screen, and was powered by a low-power Transmeta processor. It ran Linux.

Supposedly, Windows 8 will come in several flavors, with one or more intended for the tablets, and which would be very conservative as far as resource requirements and resource consumption (battery life).

Thus, it wouldn’t be a power hungry version of Windows 8, but would still offer a better and more powerful experience than the tablets of today.

Thus, it wouldn’t be a power hungry version of Windows 8, but would still offer a better and more powerful experience than the tablets of today.

You cannot support Adobe Flash and have reasonable resource consumption - they are mutually exclusive.

There are 2 primary ways to display movies. Hardware acceleration uses specific chips that work with very few codecs - and ALL this chip is able to do - is play that codec. This chip's ONLY function in life, is to play a codec to display a movie. This uses very little power.

The other way is 'Software Emulation' where you use the processing power of the processor to play many different codecs. Now you can 'play' almost every codec known to man - but you must now compute the value of every pixel - and the result is that you chew up power. On a mobile device - this is murder.

So, a iPad gets 10-12 hrs on a charge playing H.264/.mp4 file format movies; or it 'could' run Flash and give you 2-2.5 hours of battery life. That's one of many reasonsy why Apple iPad tablets do not run Flash. And one of many reasons that the Tablets that do run Flash - are not selling well.

You cannot support Adobe Flash and have reasonable resource consumption - they are mutually exclusive.

And, how do you know that, whatever media format Windows 8 ends up using, won't be "reasonable" in its battery consumption?

So, do you know for a fact that Windows 8, tablet version, will be using Adobe Flash?

How do I know this.

Golly, maybe because I work in the industry? Maybe because I know what Windows does, how it behaves, how it uses resources.

Ask yourself some really basic questions, things like “Why Windows?” What does Windows offer, that Android, iOS and WebOS do not?

There is a reason why HP cancelled and postponed the Win7 tablet for a freakin’ year. There is a reason why HP bought Palm’s WebOS instead of using MSFT. There is a reason why Folio, Motorola, Panasonic and Sony are all going with Android instead of MSFT. It’s not random.

There is a reason why WinCE failed, why Win7 Mobile is failing despite MSFT dumping Billions (with a ‘B’) into promoting it.

What takes more power? Speaking English and ONLY English - or understaning every known languages and translating them into grammarically perfect English?

Hardware acceleration does One/two formats - and that is all that the chip can understand. In the case of the iPad/iPhone the A4 chip can play H.264 or .mp4 encoded movies - and that is it. It will not play .avi, .wav, .mpeg, or anything else.

Why? Because the movie is played directly through the A4 chip. Now, you can install a progam like VLC that will ‘translate’ software into a format that the A4 chip understands - but that requires that the processor get invovled and do some processing. This takes power - so when you play VLC movies - you drop your ability to use the iPad from 10-12 hours down into the 2+ hour range.

Software Emulation always (as a rule) takes more power than Hardware Acceleration. It’s really that simple.

Wow, dude!

Arrogant much?

Look, being in the industry does not give you a crystal ball into the future, and much less into what’s going to be coming down the pike 1 or 2 or 3 years down the line. I’m in the industry too, but I don’t go around bragging about my credentials in order to try to give my arguments any more strength. In fact, I’ve very likely been in the industry a lot longer than you have.

Now, if you don’t know what Windows 8 is really going to contain as features, and unless you are privy to that information, then you don’t really have anything of value to make your predictions more valuable than that of anyone else.

Come back to this discussion in 1 or 1/2 years, and then, if you are correct, I can take some of your arrogance and you can tell me and everyone else “I told you so!”.

Meanwhile, all that you have is that typical fanbois preference and blustering that is found in a lot of tech blogs where it’s either Apple that is setting the world on fire, and other times it’s Google, and other times, Microsoft.

Don’t do that, it’s not very flattering for a professional.

Like a Libtard, all you know are these steps. S-I-N

Sidestep the issues - You too are a professional? And you don't konw this extremely basic concept? What do you do? Shipping and Invoice?

Ignore the facts - Flash is Software Emulation, any newbie to the industry knows this requires considerable memory thrash. Memory Thrash burns cycles, burning cycles also burns power. It's really that simple

Namecall - I'm arrogant, I'm a fanboi?

Do grow up - there is an excuse for not knowing, that's simply a lack of experience. But you exhibit a lack of maturity. That's not name-calling, that's a demonstatable fact; re-read your post, not very mature, in fact it reads like a fairly literate high school student wrote it. Congrats on passing the spell checker test.

There is an intelligent reason Apple went with the A4 processor. In a mobile device, you do everything you can to conserve power. You turn off parts of the chip you aren't using, you constantly put the device into S1 or S2 states, you use power efficient chips, displays and pack the biggest batteries into your left-over space that meet the size/cost ratio you have to work with.

Like it or not, Adobe Flash, Apple's own .avi format, Windows .mvw, the .mkv, .mov, .mod and others REQUIRE processing be done. That's why none of those formats are supported either. Adobe Flash is a resource hog - and it's also been tied to numerous virus attacks due to it's numerous exploits. It's not something you would want tied to your OS. Remember Apple rushed a patch out, because you could jailbreak your iphone simply by visiting a website and using an Adobe .pdf exploit to break into the OS?

You could opt to make a hardware chip that would decode any one of these, but that chip would be LIMITED to ONLY do a few of those, and only under certain conditions (resolution, frame-rate, MIP size, ect.). Apple chose to use the .mp4 and H.264 format.

There is nothing 'Fanboi' about recognizing a superior approach. If as a 'professional' you do not grasp this concept, perhaps you ought to choose another profession.

If you were a competent professional, you would know about Page Files, Virtual Memory, Memory Paging and Virtual Memory. Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, Win7, WinCE and yes - even Win7 Mobile all use this concept to address memory spaces that are not physically present. This causes what a simpleton (who knows the industry) calls "Memory Thrash". Simply stated, for your education - real memory is 'thrashed' with numerous R/W operations to sustain the virutal memory. This is done within relatively small memory 'Page'. Every R/W operation consumes power. A 'Good' mobile OS uses as few of these as possible. There is a reason MSFT has failed with WinCE, and is failing again with Win7 Mobile. Delivering a feature-poor mobile OS, over a year late, followed by delivering the SDK 6 months later - didn't help.

These are all facts, no bragging, no arrogance - these are solid, quantifiable facts. What if MSFT does something else is 'magical thinking'. Do you have any evidence that MSFT has changed the strategy they have used for the past 20 years? Did you know that there were hordes of tablets scheduled to come out with Win7 Home running on an Atom processor? Did you know that every single one of them saw that the product had no legs - and they cancelled the programs entirely? Did you know that the HP Slate was supposed to be released over a year ago? Did you know that HP bought Palm because they realized that MSFT didn't have a clue as to what to put into a mobile OS? Guesss these folks are all arrogant too, huh?

Hey, look, dude, you’re still arguing with a very arrogant attitude, and an “I know more than you because I’m an IT professional” reference point.

No matter how you might want to put it or spin it, what you have, as far as the Window 8 smartphone market is concerned, is mostly, guesswork, and a lot of fanboi type rhetoric.

Like I said, unless you are privy to the Windows 8 specs for the Windows smartphone and the Windows tablets, then, all you have is guesswork, and your IT experience isn’t going to change that.

You can throw out all the latest buzzwords you like regarding current or expected technology, but, in the end, you don’t know any more than anyone else about what Windows 8 will have as features or what it will be designed to support. Did you know that Microsoft has already stated that they’ll support the ARM processors, and thereby the smartphones and tablets which use those chips?

And then, you try to label me by calling me a “libtard” while pretending to be offended by me calling you a fanboi? Look, when somebody acts or reacts like you do when being challenged, and you retort with your supposedly superior knowledge in the IT field, then you’re just demonstrating huge arrogance. Your credibility in regards to what’s coming in the future is not necessarily enhanced by pointing to your supposedly superior talent in the IT field. Like I said, I’m in the field myself, but I don’t go around throwing that fact around in order to try to win an argument. I’m not in the hardware field, but being in the software arena, I have to understand the capabilities of the hardware which I might have to develop for, therefore, I need to prepare for whatever is coming down the pike.

Most of what you posted regarding Windows 8 is the same type of “hoping for failure” that I read so often by the detractors of anything Microsoft. And like I said, it would be wrong to have that kind of attitude if it concerned Apple or Google or IBM or any other IT company.

The argument you made, is about what Flash is about and how CPU intensive the software is, and it’s irrelevant. With the multi-core CPUs coming into existence, it may not matter much to the consumer who is not as “IT literate” as you or me. But, either way, do you know for a fact that what Microsoft has in mind is just “Flash” support, or will there be more options to come?

BTW: “libtard”? Does that sound professional to you? And then you’re going to accuse me of sounding like just a grammatically correct “high school” graduate?

The fact is that, I may be a lot more conservative than you when it comes to politics and government and issues. Are you accustomed to making conclusions about the political leanings of a person based on his/her statements/knowledge regarding IT? That would be a pretty idiotic method for critical analysis.

I think your problem is more about not taking too kindly to someone challenging your position and your uppity stance on the issue of Windows 8.

However, I would still like to know what knowledge you are privileged to know regarding Windows 8 that hasn’t been disclosed to the rest of the world.

Also, having been in the industry for, no doubt, longer than you, I do know about “Page Files, Virtual Memory, Memory Paging and Virtual Memory”, because, coming from the mainframe world, and from the massively parallel computing platforms (such as Tandem computers) I had to know how to be very savvy and conservative about memory use. Nowadays, with RAM and drive memory being so cheap, people don’t have the same worries as the “mainframers” of the past. But, like I already said, that’s irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and you don’t need to try to continue pointing out how your arguments carry more weight because of the “superior” knowledge you have in the industry. You may not be able to recognize it as arrogance, but it is.

Now, again, how does my take on this particular issue make me a “libtard”? You, yourself, sound like the typical libtard, who, when he’s not able to subdue an opponent with his side of the argument, will resort to insults or screaming.

Now, ask me about the project which I’m working on to try to get true “fair and balanced” news and information out to the world. (BTW, “fair and balanced” doesn’t mean conservative only or republican, or liberal; it means allowing all news and information and viewpoints). It’s a client/server application which will need a huge database and a huge amount of hardware, with the potential of many millions of daily users, and the potential to draw a large amount of traffic away from Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and all the major news organizations, while generating it’s own traffic. Now, remember, I said “potential”, and that’s because, my system isn’t out there yet. (Yeah, I know, this last paragraph is kind of tangential, but, I would need all kinds of gadgets to be able to connect to my system, including Windows 8 tablets and smartphones, and those based on iOS and Android, and the major OSes, and for all of that, I don’t care who wins the battle of the OSes or the hardware).

Oh, one last thing:

In order to get a message out, one doesn’t need much more than a high-school education in communications skills. When things are kept simple, you tend to reach more people. There’s no need to over-complicate matters. Logic and common sense don’t require that someone be a communications major. ;)

Lots of hot air ....

Any facts to back up your bloat? Anything?

I carefully explained that EVERY cycle burns power. I explained Memory Thrash to the level that even you comprehend it, no; scratch that. You went on to prove that you don't.

All you have done, is attack the messenger - on some presumed 'arrogance' that you are projecting.

I never said I was in the IT field - that's YOU projecting. I'm an engineer - I'm a lead on one of the teams that designs what makes these devices work.

But, what would I know .... obviously you know better ... so, please present some facts. Share what you know, it should take maybe an entire paragraph.

The argument you made, is about what Flash is about and how CPU intensive the software is, and it’s irrelevant. With the multi-core CPUs coming into existence, it may not matter much to the consumer who is not as “IT literate” as you or me.

God, I hope you are an intern. If not, take your diploma back to your college and demand your money back. Every cycle burns power - and a quad-core burns MORE energy per clock cycle than single core. Transistors burn energy - it's what they do. The whole point of making an ASIC (look it up) is to reduce power consumption. Apple uses the ARM processor, coupled with PowerVR graphics to build a custom ASIC. Now, why in the world would they do a thing like that? Hint: 10+ hrs batter life on a charge.

I tire of trying to teach an ignoramous who refuses to learn. Educate yourself, learn some facts and when you know SOMETHING, let me know.

I took the time to point out the S-I-N features, because you are using those tactics - and like a Libtard, you respond using those tactics. Present some facts, some rationale - Don't attack me, defend your statements (there's a difference - hint: facts are involved).

it invented the genre back in 2002

Hahaha, that's a good one. A $17,000 coffee table is a tablet?

Golly gee, guy, get over yourself already!

So, where did I get the idea that you were in the IT field? Well, the discussion concerned Windows 8 and by extension, tablets and a few things "Microsoft", and then, you went and wrote the following in one of your posts:

Golly, maybe because I work in the industry? Maybe because I know what Windows does, how it behaves, how it uses resources.

Without being specific, how was anyone to know that you meant the "engineering" side of things and not as in "software engineering"? So, why not try to be a better communicator next time?

Lots of hot air ....

Any facts to back up your bloat? Anything?

So, what the heck are you talking about? Hot air? Where? Bloat? Where? You need to clarify your statements and questions, otherwise, you're going to be popping a vein or two with your argumentative rhetoric. Take a couple of chill pills and see the doctor in the morning.

I carefully explained that EVERY cycle burns power. I explained Memory Thrash to the level that even you comprehend it, no; scratch that. You went on to prove that you don't.

Like president Reagan famously said: "There you go again!".

Look, you're seeing demons where there aren't any.

Why are you so defensive and rude? There is no need for that, so, simmer down.

I never argued against your assertions about Flash and about CPU cycles burning or not burning power. It's only logical that that is the case. So, why are you arguing about a non-issue?

I also remember explaining to you that I'm not a hardware person, but, that I still needed to understand some of the technology in order to be able to develop and take advantage of how it works. That's not so difficult to understand, is it?

All you have done, is attack the messenger - on some presumed 'arrogance' that you are projecting.

Being called arrogant should not be something that comes as a surprise to you. I'm pretty sure that with your attitude, it's come up more than once in your life.

I never said I was in the IT field - that's YOU projecting. I'm an engineer - I'm a lead on one of the teams that designs what makes these devices work.

Well, making that statement I quoted in the beginning of this response, would lead someone to believe that you were/are in the IT field. Be clear next time. It's the right thing to do with your "college" communications skills.

But, why even indicate that you're on a team that helps design what makes those gadgets work, if you're not trying to gain some sort of advantage in the discussion?

So what part of what you've said so far, demonstrates that you have exclusive knowledge about how Windows 8 will operate and what features it's going to contain? Do you know for a fact that it's going to do contain Flash? If not, which other media software will it have? If you don't know, then you're arguing just for arguments sake with no real information to back up your assertions.

Just to clear it up for you again, I'm not arguing against your credentials or your experience; I'm arguing about what you really know about the issue at hand, that being Windows 8's features and software capabilities.

But, what would I know ....

That's the question I keep asking you, and you can't seem to come up with the answers regarding what you know about Windows 8 features and software.

obviously you know better ...so, please present some facts. Share what you know, it should take maybe an entire paragraph.

B.... S......

I never claimed to know better than you or anyone else about what Windows 8 will be like. I don't know any better than the next guy, and all that I can do is to speculate as much as the next guy, including you. The only thing I did was to challenge you on the information you had about Windows 8.

And, haven't you noticed that you haven't made any more sense than I have, and the size of a paragraph, or a number of paragraphs, isn't going to change the huge lack of facts in your posts? Arguing about how ARM or CPUs or memory chew up energy is not what this discussion was about.

God, I hope you are an intern.

Nope, not an intern. And, it's interesting how you like to throw out your backhanded type of insults while not liking it when somebody retaliates in kind towards you.

I'm an architect and an idea person, on the application side of things. I doubt that you could even come close to the types of things that I've been involved with in my career.

If I can get my project/application going, I'm going to need the same kind of idea and application architect person that I've been. I would even hire someone as disagreeable as you seem to be, as long as he can get the job done, and I wouldn't hold the argumentative spirit against you. I know how to overlook some negatives to achieve a bigger purpose.

If not, take your diploma back to your college and demand your money back.

Sounds like you're a beginner in life. Look, the biggest lessons in life are learned in the real world, and that includes most of what one needs to know in their professions. Most of what I know didn't come from some classroom. You seem to be still stuck in a college environment mindset.

Every cycle burns power - and a quad-core burns MORE energy per clock cycle than single core. Transistors burn energy - it's what they do. The whole point of making an ASIC (look it up) is to reduce power consumption. Apple uses the ARM processor, coupled with PowerVR graphics to build a custom ASIC. Now, why in the world would they do a thing like that? Hint: 10+ hrs batter life on a charge.

I keep telling you that the direction of your argument is irrelevant to the original discussion. As a developer and a software/application architect, the only thing I care about is how to take advantage of the features in the hardware and software in order to create a great user experience. If a gadget or computer cannot make it past the discerning hands-on experience from technical reviewers and perhaps some beta testers, then chances are that, that gadget or computer won't be made available to the masses until the problems are corrected. I might read about the shortcomings of a smartphone or a tablet or a computer, but, chances are that I won't be having to make my application compatible with what's not going to reach the market. So, basically, to me, the argument is a moot one for me on the hardware or engineering side. But, when it comes to Windows 8, and the commitment that Microsoft has made towards its creation and the supported feature-set, I would have to take that platform into consideration. That is why it would be "interesting" to know what it is that you know regarding Windows 8. So, again, what is it that you know?

I tire of trying to teach an ignoramous who refuses to learn. Educate yourself, learn some facts and when you know SOMETHING, let me know.

Would you mind if I called you an idiot?

You obviously like to launch insults at others, so, I'm pretty sure you won't mind me retaliating by calling you an idiot.

Like I said, it's the last resort of someone who is losing an argument and can't think of any other way than to insult and yell.

Let me reiterate. I'm not an engineer in the hardware side, but I do software engineering in the application side of things. And, like I mentioned in my prior post, I worked with the larger computers, including the mainframes and the massively parallel platforms for huge transaction processing applications. In that area, I'm pretty sure that I'm a lot more experienced than you.

I took the time to point out the S-I-N features, because you are using those tactics - and like a Libtard, you respond using those tactics.

You are so dense that you can't even recognize that the "SIN" features are more aptly applicable to your type of argumentative tactics.

Present some facts, some rationale -

I kept asking you, over and over again, to present your facts regarding the topic of the discussion, and you've failed over and over again. As such, you are the one without the facts and the rational arguments.

Tell you what...

Once you present your "real" facts regarding what features Windows 8 will contain, and how those features are going "fail" the platform, then I'll concede the argument to you. But, it better contain the real facts and what will actually be within the feature-set of Windows 8. Comprende?

Don't attack me, defend your statements (there's a difference - hint: facts are involved).

I'm not the one that made "your" allegations about how Windows 8 will fail because of the technology within it. As such, the burden is on your side to present your set of facts and then to match them with your inside knowledge about what Microsoft has divulged to you. Is that too hard to comprehend? Should I have to make it clearer for you.

Hasta la vista.