Replies

The replies in this thread prove the notion I read about years ago that when its finally clear that the traditional old ‘grampa box’ PC form factor and desktop OS is finally on death’s door, it will be a time of bafflement and lethargy as to what is to replace it in the traditional business environment.

Enthusiasm for PC tech is next to nothing these days. Nobody cares about AMD vs Intel CPU battles. There’s zero ingenuity in big old business PC development. Most people not in IT/MIS in the corporate world connect to the workplace information stream with smartphones and pads. Traditional email has been surpassed by IMs, SMS, Skype, and app-sharing video conferencing suites. The big cubic rectangular sheet metal case PC is becoming the least popular way to interface with your workplace anymore, byte by byte. Don’t even get me started on what a bloated garbage pile MS Outlook is.

Corporations don’t even bother investing in infrastructure anymore from the back office to the employee desktop. I barely even see laptops anymore in the office environment. Much non-critical business data is handled by the cloud on personally-owned devices. Home users have faster Internet connectivity and larger downstream bandwidth through their cable company than many workplaces offer at the business premises. Microsoft’s desktop OS is still stagnant in the world of complex UNC paths, server farms, and relics of the last generation when by all rights this ancient crap should have long ago been made transparent to the end user like pads and phones have accomplished. MSFT has nothing to compete with in this arena. Windows8 and Microsoft Phone sales prove that miserably. Surface is a sad joke. No surprise, as MSFT didn’t even see the direction the web was going. None of this will change until the whole rotten structure comes crashing down, and both the foundation and ceiling of the Windows PC is finally giving way.

These last several years of economic downturn, job loss, and curtailed corporate spending to keep the lights on proved two things: If you lose your job they won’t bother replacing you now that they’ve figured out how to get along without you, and secondly, anyone still using a PC can get by with an outdated six year old PC running Windows XP/2000.

I’m still enslaved by the PC grampa box at my workplace. I do MSSQL development and VB.NET business ops and still have to do all the rotten backend work of DLLs, OCXs, XML, SQL, .ASP, and SOAP. I need to have my PC running 24 hours a day with dozens of active apps running at once and leave my system up with development windows open for the dev I’m doing. Yet, every Wednesday evening Microsoft automatically reboots my machine to apply the weekly Windows Update ‘fixes’ to its train wreck of an operating system because our corporate group policies demand it for the security compliance standards we must adhere to. My Apple hardware maybe updates twice a year. Microsoft completely sucks donkey balls by comparison. You’re better off not even using MSFTs own development tools like VSS to develop for the tech they invented. We don’t even need MS Windows for development except for unit testing. How sad.

The problem MSFT set in motion years ago was that they sat on their laurels, let themselves become outdated and boring, and every talented developer went elsewhere. Last person I knew that visited Microsoft said that Redmond is filled with nothing but pregnant female H1B visa holders who just maintain the old garbage. It’s like a complete reversal from when I contracted there.

If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t use it to kill Hitler. I’d use it to kill Microsoft and ensure that Apple took over the business computing world back in about 1985.

Okay, /rant off

I really don’t see the fascination with tablets. I honestly just don’t see it. I can do everything I need. Skype, etc, whatnot with a cam on a laptop and it’s easier and more comfortable than running it with a tablet.

Most folks I know run a tablet as a supplement not a PC replacement. For the times when they want to be out and around and not have to carry a laptop in their backpack. That’s about it. Or for playing games on the bus, talking with friends, etc.

Which makes sense. The tablet does have things it does better on the go - but it’s not really a laptop replacement.

As for MSFT - apple fanbois should love 8. It’s totally ‘metro’.

Enthusiasm for PC tech is next to nothing these days.

I have a theory about that; I'm involved in the SW industry and we're pretty much forced into C-style (C/C++/Objective-C/C#/PHP) languages in "the industry"... despite their many obvious flaws — The if-statement being able to take an integer combined with the assignment returning a value being a common one; though this is corrected in C# — and the disservice of the education-industry stemming from many little failings, like failing to instil the idea of subtypes as being useful. (Seriously, with as many math classes as I took to get my BS in CS, I know how useful it is to be able to constrain values in making stable & elegant algorithms.)

Nobody cares about AMD vs Intel CPU battles.

To be fair, Intel vs. AMD is pretty boring — both being basically the same thing (like Democrat vs. Republican). We really lost out when Apple moved from the Motorola to the x86. More interesting would be things like the 144-core GA144 or the Rekursiv (well written summary).