New Microsoft VP consigns the PC to irrelevance

No wonder MS is itself becoming irrelevant. MS is making Linux look a lot better.

Honestly speaking, i absolutely hate Ubuntu "Unity" and new "KDE" interface of Fedora. They are not any better than "Windows 8" tile interface. Fortunately, Mint with Mate desktop is still available.

Anshad Edavana said:

No wonder MS is itself becoming irrelevant. MS is making Linux look a lot better.

Honestly speaking, i absolutely hate Ubuntu "Unity" and new "KDE" interface of Fedora. They are not any better than "Windows 8" tile interface. Fortunately, Mint with Mate desktop is still available.

Hi there

Linux and its desktop GUI's comes in as many flavours as there are of those delicious curries etc you find on the sub continent -

What's good for one is hideous for somebody else -- that's both its weakness and its strength at the same time -- but I prefer being able to choose the GUI rather than have a single "bog standard" version like windows. This choice however isn't perhaps suitable for corporate enterprises who really need some sort of standardisation / common interface but nothing wrong for Individuals.

These days with plug'n'play and excellent hardware support there isn't a whole lot that Windows can do exclusively although for Linux you have to search a bit to find a decent alternative - and some Windows programs do run on "WINE" without having windows installed. Security is also better to even on the most basic Linux systems.

Still back to the point -- for the first time for ages laptop sales have started to improve again - of course they'll never go back to what they used to be - we all get different digital delivery systems instead of on a single device these days - but some who hoped that a tablet could completely make their PC redundant have been a bit disappointed.

(Things like the SURFACE which when it has a keyboard / mouse attached is really a PC !! nothing wrong IMO with "convertibles" which is perhaps where the market should have gone to in the first place).

Also please tablet and PC makers introduce SCREEN MIRRORING on your next versions -- IMO much more useful than touch and very good for wirelessly connecting to smart TV's etc in conference rooms / remote TV's at home - beats blue tooth also hands down. Mobile phones do this already so the hardware cost should be trivial.

Screen Mirroring is really great for conferences / presentations -- saves messing up with cables / VGA / HDMI cables etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

HI there

Office 20010 runs on WINE I've got it running 99% OK on OPENSUSE 13.1 -- and will try Linux Mate -- I'm holding off Linux Mate because a new release is just in the offing (end of may) - and once I use an OS as a desktop I don't want to have to make "unpredictable" changes.

Jimbo I take it you are talking about Mint 17? Have you considered the Debian Version

Download - Linux Mint

Being semi rolling you do not need to keep downloading a new DVD every time they update it. And it comes in a Mate version, though it only takes a few minutes to download the other desktops if you want to play with them.

Hi there

I might get SHOT for suggesting this on a W7 forum - but with a little bit of shenanigans - so long as you use Custom Toolbars on W8.1 (note W8.1 - forget W8) and can live without the classic start button you can create a Cascading menu system that looks very much like the old XP style - your only concession is that you have to click the toolbar (in this case My Progs) instead of a start Orb.

(The same methodology will actually work in W7) -- my example also shows how to add the Metro apps also to the menu system from the desktop -- W7 doesn't have those though.

The advantage to custom toolbars is that YOU can choose what to have on your menu and how to arrange it.

Cheers
jimbo