Microsoft exec admits new reality: Market share no longer 90%, it's 14

[matts6887]

Hmmm......Well; I know I for one hope windows 9 turns out to be a better venture into the market than windows 8 and 8.1 was; because their intro; was.....well.....not welcomed by more than its fair share of people out there.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You are correct, Jody, I always heard it in the past as vinyl for both singular and plural. I just never gave it a thought when people use vinyls for plural; both work for me. If you go back far enough (and I do), records were made of wax (shellac, the substance sealing wax is made from) and were called wax. You want to talk about fragile?!

 

[lffoar]

@Iffoar. What are you requiring for the transition from Windows 3.1 to 95?.

Knowledge mate, knowledge :shock:
Gotta rush now, the mate is here to sort out the file manager....which I stuffed up......again
Then he's gonna upgrade the old Pentium to 450 mhz and take it up from 8mb RAM to 16mb. WOW, this bird is gonna fly now

 

[King Arthur]

I'm also amazed that people tout vinyls as being superior to digital because they have a "warmer" sound. That "warmer sound" is just distortion due to distortion and vinyl being unable to capture all details. One can achieve the same sound with high quality digital by filtering out some of the details and attenuating some of the highs. Big deal! I prefer the cleaner, more accurate sound one can get from digital and the freedom of needing huge amounts of space to store and play vinyl and the hassle of taking care of them to avoid pops and crackles and delay the inevitable wear.

It's similar to how most movies are filmed at 23.976fps (or was it 29.976fps?) and how movie fans feel that films recorded at 60fps "don't feel right" even though the film recorded at 60fps is actually higher in quality. It's been ingrained into most of our minds that certain forms of media are "better" when in fact they are made to have worse quality.

 

[Ranger4]

@Iffoar. What are you requiring for the transition from Windows 3.1 to 95?.

Knowledge mate, knowledge :shock:
Gotta rush now, the mate is here to sort out the file manager....which I stuffed up......again
Then he's gonna upgrade the old Pentium to 450 mhz and take it up from 8mb RAM to 16mb. WOW, this bird is gonna fly now

Windows 3.1 was on 3.5 floppy discs & Windows 95 was on a CD, which I think was the first Windows to be on a CD.
Windows 95 came out in August or Sept 1995 to a world wide release. As we are going back almost 20 years I can't remember whether Win 95 came as a straight out clean install version or as in my case I had to start off with the CD & then reinsert one of the floppies during the install. This would have made mine an upgrade in today's installations. Someone else may be able to clear up this point.
Installing 95 was a slow job & there were plenty of options to select from when installing to make it more complex. One thing you could do was add some of the options later from the CD.
It was a big improvement on 3.1 & was the first with the current desktop layout.

 

[King Arthur]

Windows 3.1 was on 3.5 floppy discs & Windows 95 was on a CD, which I think was the first Windows to be on a CD.

My dad still has a boxed Japanese retail copy of Windows 95 from way back when it first debuted that came as a set of floppies, no CD to be found. I don't remember the exact count, but I think the number of floppies for that boxed copy of Windows 95 came to around 20~30+ floppies total.

 

[jimbo45]

I'm also amazed that people tout vinyls as being superior to digital because they have a "warmer" sound. That "warmer sound" is just distortion due to distortion and vinyl being unable to capture all details. One can achieve the same sound with high quality digital by filtering out some of the details and attenuating some of the highs. Big deal! I prefer the cleaner, more accurate sound one can get from digital and the freedom of needing huge amounts of space to store and play vinyl and the hassle of taking care of them to avoid pops and crackles and delay the inevitable wear.

It's similar to how most movies are filmed at 23.976fps (or was it 29.976fps?) and how movie fans feel that films recorded at 60fps "don't feel right" even though the film recorded at 60fps is actually higher in quality. It's been ingrained into most of our minds that certain forms of media are "better" when in fact they are made to have worse quality.

Hi there
Not sure about that --have you seen test transmissions of UHD -- this is 4K but at enhanced frame rates of 100 fps -- it BLOWS you away. BBC are testing this with the Commonwealth Games now on in Glasgow (Scotland).

My problem with modern movies is usually the AUDIO mixing -- the effects are deafingly loud - and if you lower the volume to make these bearable (and not get "Neighbourly Complaints") then the spoken dialog can't be heard --seems today's Audio mixers (The Humans in the studio - not the hardware versions !!) aren't as good as in the days of the old Hollywood black and white classics -- the dialog was always easy to hear.

If you've ever seen a 4K video shot at 100 fps - you will regret at your previous post. !!!

BBC - BBC R&D announces Ultra-High Definition trials - Media centre

@King Arthur -- I've still got a pile of Floppy Disks with the old Word for Windows (Windows 3.11) -- very annoying if you'd loaded up 13 disks and you'd get a Disk error on the 14th. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Ranger4]

Windows 3.1 was on 3.5 floppy discs & Windows 95 was on a CD, which I think was the first Windows to be on a CD.

My dad still has a boxed Japanese retail copy of Windows 95 from way back when it first debuted that came as a set of floppies, no CD to be found. I don't remember the exact count, but I think the number of floppies for that boxed copy of Windows 95 came to around 20~30+ floppies total.

I actually trialled a beta version of Win 95 from May 95 which was also on CD. The Japanese version may have been on floppy.

 

[King Arthur]

Hi there
Not sure about that --have you seen test transmissions of UHD -- this is 4K but at enhanced frame rates of 100 fps -- it BLOWS you away. BBC are testing this with the Commonwealth Games now on in Glasgow (Scotland).

If you've ever seen a 4K video shot at 100 fps - you will regret at your previous post. !!!

I actually don't mind 60fps films unlike most movie fans. I can only imagine what 2160p@100fps is like on a proper display, though at some point we're no doubt going to achieve a level of video technology that our eyes can't keep up.

My problem with modern movies is usually the AUDIO mixing -- the effects are deafingly loud - and if you lower the volume to make these bearable (and not get "Neighbourly Complaints") then the spoken dialog can't be heard --seems today's Audio mixers (The Humans in the studio - not the hardware versions !!) aren't as good as in the days of the old Hollywood black and white classics -- the dialog was always easy to hear.

This might actually be a side-effect of downmixing 5.1 audio down to stereo, which I found to be the case in most cases. One workaround I've found to address this is DRC, aka Dynamic Range Compression, which can "equalize" some of the audio volume though the process is lossy and does result in some noticable bits of quality loss in some cases.

 

[eatup]

Windows 3.1 was on 3.5 floppy discs & Windows 95 was on a CD, which I think was the first Windows to be on a CD.

My dad still has a boxed Japanese retail copy of Windows 95 from way back when it first debuted that came as a set of floppies, no CD to be found. I don't remember the exact count, but I think the number of floppies for that boxed copy of Windows 95 came to around 20~30+ floppies total.

Some one gave me a "pirated" version of EN W95 on floppies. I think you were not able to copy the floppies as is and make the OS work. The "pirated" version was just a copy with the copy protection mechanism defeated... Anyways, if memory serves me right, it was about 4-5 floppies total, not the 20-30 floppies in the Japanese version! (Too bad the copier didn't bother to verify the copies he gave me --- one of the floppies was corrupted so I couldn't really install it nor use it!)

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Not sure about that --have you seen test transmissions of UHD -- this is 4K but at enhanced frame rates of 100 fps -- it BLOWS you away. BBC are testing this with the Commonwealth Games now on in Glasgow (Scotland).

If you've ever seen a 4K video shot at 100 fps - you will regret at your previous post. !!!

I actually don't mind 60fps films unlike most movie fans. I can only imagine what 2160p@100fps is like on a proper display, though at some point we're no doubt going to achieve a level of video technology that our eyes can't keep up.

My problem with modern movies is usually the AUDIO mixing -- the effects are deafingly loud - and if you lower the volume to make these bearable (and not get "Neighbourly Complaints") then the spoken dialog can't be heard --seems today's Audio mixers (The Humans in the studio - not the hardware versions !!) aren't as good as in the days of the old Hollywood black and white classics -- the dialog was always easy to hear.

This might actually be a side-effect of downmixing 5.1 audio down to stereo, which I found to be the case in most cases. One workaround I've found to address this is DRC, aka Dynamic Range Compression, which can "equalize" some of the audio volume though the process is lossy and does result in some noticable bits of quality loss in some cases.

Hi there

Then great thing about 100 fps is that now the human eye can't perceive any flicker or video "lagging" at all -- it's surprisingly easy to watch and enjoy. No problems at all -- Give me this over 3-D ANY DAY !!.

@any women - the real problem with this super UHD display is that ANY blemishes on one's face will be magnified / exaggerated on the screen in stunning detail -- The Wardrobe / dressing room assistants really will have their work cut out for them -- note not intended to be sexist - just that with Men people don't notice blemishes so much -- or if they do it often adds to the character !!!.

As far as AUDIO is concerned - there's not a lot of adjustment you can do when watching modern movies via satellite or cable. The optical audio output doesn't have (usually) a "Dialog enhancement mode" that can emphasize the speech while supressing a bit of the effects that are geared to a large cinema rather than a person's home.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[King Arthur]

Windows 3.1 was on 3.5 floppy discs & Windows 95 was on a CD, which I think was the first Windows to be on a CD.

My dad still has a boxed Japanese retail copy of Windows 95 from way back when it first debuted that came as a set of floppies, no CD to be found. I don't remember the exact count, but I think the number of floppies for that boxed copy of Windows 95 came to around 20~30+ floppies total.

Some one gave me a "pirated" version of EN W95 on floppies. I think you were not able to copy the floppies as is and make the OS work. The "pirated" version was just a copy with the copy protection mechanism defeated... Anyways, if memory serves me right, it was about 4-5 floppies total, not the 20-30 floppies in the Japanese version! (Too bad the copier didn't bother to verify the copies he gave me --- one of the floppies was corrupted so I couldn't really install it nor use it!)

Fun fact, if you can use the Linux console it's literally only one line of command to have the computer take a 1-for-1 exact copy of a floppy (or any piece of data really) and dump that into a file or another floppy.

No comment on the Jolly Roger though, I love my rum but this is neither the time nor the place for it.

 

[Wenda]

I have three versions of Win 95.

There are two versions of 95A, one on floppy (upgrade) and one on
CD (upgrade), and one of 95C OEM full, on CD.

Sadly, the floppy version is incomplete, as I've managed to lose or
misplace several disks over the years.


Wenda.

 

[soho1]

Sidebar: Piracy is bad. Besides, it just makes our lives harder with crappy safeguards.

This has been a fun read. No worries, as it will probably take another 10 years for the CIOs of bigger companies to care about this.

My take away is that I miss the multi-tasking version of RT-11. Now THAT could have been a fun direction for the industry with a GUI add-on. Anyone got a teen with a few weeks left in summer to re-invent it?