A look ahead: 2012 is Microsoft's turning point

whs said:

Microsoft is huge company they don't work for your best interest like Google they work for the Governments best Interest

Now that is a theory you really have to explain. How does Google work for our interest and MS for the goverment?

Hi there

???

Why on Earth should MS / Google etc work for the Government -- doesn't matter WHAT country you are from has there EVER in the whole of recorded history been a SINGLE INSTANCE where ANY Government has shown itself capable of spending taxpayers money wisely

I've seen cases in England where the Chief "Executive" of a tiny "Local Council" gets paid an absolute FORTUNE (well in my eyes a Salary (less "bonuses" !!!) can amount to around 300,000 EUR / 280,000 GBP a year !! and that to me is HUGE) and to cap it all even comes with an almost hugely obscenely large Pension Pot for doing almost NOTHING apart from signing a few checks and saying OK to a few dubious "Micky Mouse" type of contracts.

I'm sure this type of B/S happens planet wide as well.

Why om Earth would M/S want to pour its profits into this type of bottomless "Sink hole".

Ms IMO would be far more capable of spending its money more sensibly than almost ANY Govt dept in any country that I could ever think of.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

whs said:

Microsoft is huge company they don't work for your best interest like Google they work for the Governments best Interest

Now that is a theory you really have to explain. How does Google work for our interest and MS for the goverment?

Hi there

???

Why on Earth should MS / Google etc work for the Government -- doesn't matter WHAT country you are from has there EVER in the whole of recorded history been a SINGLE INSTANCE where ANY Government has shown itself capable of spending taxpayers money wisely

I've seen cases in England where the Chief "Executive" of a tiny "Local Council" gets paid an absolute FORTUNE (well in my eyes a Salary (less "bonuses" !!!) can amount to around 300,000 EUR / 280,000 GBP a year !! and that to me is HUGE) and to cap it all even comes with an almost hugely obscenely large Pension Pot for doing almost NOTHING apart from signing a few checks and saying OK to a few dubious "Micky Mouse" type of contracts.

I'm sure this type of B/S happens planet wide as well.

Why om Earth would M/S want to pour its profits into this type of bottomless "Sink hole".

Ms IMO would be far more capable of spending its money more sensibly than almost ANY Govt dept in any country that I could ever think of.

Cheers
jimbo

The reason why google would work for governments is simply because it's everywhere. Google, Gmail, YouTube, Google +, Google Docs, android. It's a perfect spying tools, from conversations, to messages, to documents, to social activity.

I personally like metro design. The essence of it is design that is clean, easy to read typography, and is vibrant, all what software design has lead up to. I think the Start Screen can use more work, that's fairly obvious, the but the at the core, it's what a user interface should be, clean, easy to read, and vibrant.

As for the cloud approach, I doubt Microsoft will really pull a google chrome os on us. They're a software company and they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot like apple does with its hardware suppliers. I'd imagine they take the cloud approach, like in Windows 8, to have user settings and apps and programs be able to be from one local machine to the next. I'd like that, and I'm pretty sure many a IT professional would breathe a sigh of relief in having Windows Live ID accounts take place of networked drives.

This thread reminded me of the envisioned "one system rules them all" approach with metro. Initially, I though it'd be sucky, but thinking about it, it's pretty nice. Windows will literally be everywhere. The Windows Phone 8 will be running most likely the Windows 8 NT kernel. The new Xbox 720 will be running Windows code. And PCs, well yeah. All three different devices have their strengths, the phone being mobility, the Xbox for gaming, and the PC being the combinations of the two along with content creation and productivity. Three different devices will have a similar interface, so no needing to adapt to different controls or wondering, "Why can't this do this when this does this?" type of thing. I for one, will be buying the Kinekt for Windows 8! :)

Why you people no love for metro

I for one think metro is not a mere eye candy for desktops and laptops.I mean just imagine the possibilities of live tiles showing you the most relevant info without launching any app/software.If developers really create more apps,we could "see" our mails,fb feeds,twitter etc etc right there on the main screen.Also productive applications can be launched/viewed directly from metro.

For those people who hate metro they can revert to traditional desktop by just one click.

Thats just my opinion though.If MS handles it carefully metro might truly turn into game changer.

lehnerus2000 said:

whs said:

noobvious said:

I say screw the cloud. I want my stuff on my devices.

Absolutely. For my data the cloud is no solution and I don't think the cloud will get much use from desktops.

But for running some heavy hitter applications from a phone or a tablet, it may be ok.

Funnily enough I agree with both of you.

It's strange how phones are getting "smarter" and yet there seems to be a push to make PCs "dumber" (i.e. more like terminals).

Coke Robot said:

As for the cloud approach, I doubt Microsoft will really pull a google chrome os on us.

The "Cloud" is the "Holy Grail" for software makers:

• If you don't get access to the code, you can't pirate it.
• They get to "tax" you every time you use it.

What's cheaper, renting a device (long term) or owning it outright?

Hi there
Depends on what you mean by "Pirating".
Have you ever heard of the term "Reverse Engineering".

In the early days of PC's when MS was still a fledgling company they designed MSDOS to run on PC's in a similar manner to the original IBM PC. Now IBMDOS in those early days had patented its BIOS .

MSDOS to be compatable had to "reverse Engineer" the BIOS so its own OS could make the appropriate hardware calls and perform in a similar manner to the original IBM DOS.

This actually opened up the whole PC market to 3rd party suppliers -- until that time IBM had a monopoly since nobody else could "replicate" the BIOS.

Today both parties would probably be emplying 1000's of lawyers and clogging up 90% of the worlds court system with obscure "Patent Infringement" cases but at that time IBM and MS actually worked quite closely together.

So if software is being used via the Cloud somebody somewhere will reverse engineer it -- most of the available multi media codecs (both audio and video) that many "Free" players use were probably reverse engineered -- for example if you mount ANY regional encoded DVD as a Virtual DVD drive as an ISO stored on a HDD or USB drive -- just a straight ISO copy -- no decryption / CSS removal etc etc VLC will play it without a problem whatever the firmware setting of your physical DVD drive has.

So the Virtual Drive Mounter can obviously dynamically change the "regional encoding" parameter at will. As this is 3rd party software on W7 there might well be reverse enginerring of the "DVD Firmware regional settings" depending on the DVD being mounted.

However on W8 developer preview edition there is a BUILT in ISO mounter and similarly VLC will play ANY region DVD that is mounted as a Virtual drive -- and I doubt if MS is breaking other people's copyright deliberately too.

However there must have been some reverse engineering here as well to allow multi region playback.

Cheers
jimbo

M1GU31 said:

i felt 2011 was apples year imo hopefully they surpass apple and Microsoft brings out some good products

Apples year for what? To offer 6 month old technology at twice the cost? The logo is a status symbol, catering to the non-tech savvy who don't understnd the specs of the computer to being with....or else they'd never justify the cost. All Apple does well is market to create a false perception.