Posted on 01/01/2014 3:59:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Fearing rapidly plummeting sales of traditional laptops and desktop computers -- which collapsed by as much as 10 percent in 2013 -- manufacturers are planning a revolution against Microsoft and the standard Windows operating system, analysts say.
At the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January, multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and the Android OS that powers many of the world’s tablets and smartphones, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will be called “PC Plus” machines, explained Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies.
"A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well," Bajarin wrote recently for Time. "They are doing this through software emulation. I'm not sure what kind of performance you can expect, but this is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem."
These machines will be able to switch nearly instantly between the two operating systems, according to Computerworld
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Gotta admit, I'm pretty good with a motor -- but I ain't that good! You got me.
The only thing I managed to SuperCharge during my wrenching years was my old 1996 Jeep Cherokee Country when I installed a Munson M90. Sure gave that Cherokee a kick in the ass!!!!
I've done one reformat total on a combined three computers running XP. I am not buying W-8 I don't care how their corporate Nerds window dress it and call it great. I understand VISTA was another pathetic Boo Boo MS would not own up to as is W-8.
Personally I'd rather shell out up to $125 for a re-licensing and support of XP. This isn't Microsoft bashing. It is simply saying their R&D department doesn't listen to users. I'm still on 52kps dial up and where I live and high speed is still likely a decade off. I use the laptop to download larger files when I go where high speed is accessible. Windows has focused it's entire recent OS products on high speed availability thus abandoning a lot of long time customers in the process.
I still utilize some 486DX4-120 machines for certain dedicated tasks and files, some Pentium machines for other slightly more intensive tasks, and have recently dropped down as far as the 98SE OS on certain machines for certain programs that simply do not work at all well on the newer machines.
Linux has been a blessing in this regard, and working with it for so many years has taught that for many projects, working with an OS that only requires about 8MB per X-window session allows quite a lot of processing to occur.
Heck, I may someday even see if I still have some of those 8086 and 286 machines are still functional after all this time, lol! After all, how much processing power do you REALLY need to type words on the screen and save them to a text file, and then perhaps; upload them to be read on the net or as an email?
You have a very hard time understanding the written word, or you’re as good as spinning what you read as the best liberals out there.
Look, Macs are made with limited hardware choices, thus, you can’t upgrade your memory or your hard-drive. They may be the same kind of components as can be found on PCs, but Apple limits the make and model of any component that goes into any Mac. Thus, if you get 4GB memory in “Model A” from vendor A, then you can’t upgrade your memory to 8GB from vendor A or B or any other vendor. It’s a static machine, and if you wanted the “upgrade”, then you can only get it at purchase time, or by getting a new machine with your new specs.
Now, if you were to “upgrade” your machine with bigger memory or from a different make, OR, if you were to upgrade to a bigger hard-drive from the same original make or any other make, THEN, you have effective invalidated your warranty from Apple. There’s also no guarantee that your upgrade will work with your version of Mac OS that came with the machine. Whereas, with Windows, you can virtually switch to any size memory (as long as it’s supported by the machine’s specs and OS), and you can get that memory from any vendor (as long as it’s compatible with the machine and OS), and you can upgrade to amy hard-drive from any vendor. Windows will support the hardware, as long as the drivers are available. That’s not the case with Macs, since Macs only work with the components and drivers specifically chosen by Apple for each of their machines. If I upgrade to a different hard-drive, the drive will carry the warranty from the factory, and Windows is almost certain to support it. That’s not the same with Macs.
Heck, I know that you mean by Macs being made with quality being a main point, but, they are still very limited in what a person can do with “his/her” purchase, and if a person wishes to make modifications to “his/her” machine, he/she should not be limited by what Apple dictates or by what Apple manufactures. I’ve upgraded my desktop to include a lot of other hardware, and Windows still supports them all. Apple can’t do the same with it’s Mac OS.
Macs are still, way overpriced for what they do, and for what they include, and the hype behind Apple’s devices won’t change those facts.
> “A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well,” Bajarin wrote recently for Time. “They are doing this through software emulation. I’m not sure what kind of performance you can expect, but this is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem.”
IOW, after updating 8.0 to 8.1 — which is over 3 GB, meaning I won’t be doing it at home, but somewhere the bandwidth is at no cost to me — Bajarin wants to put that loony mobile phone crap back on. Nutsoid. Thanks SeekAndFind.
Unfortunately the established market isn't quite that subject to fad. I loved my iPad when I had it but it wasn't a substitute for a multi-screen desktop with a dozen windows running simultaneously. That's how working people work. If your biggest demand all day is "Plants vs Zombies" you probably don't need it. But guess what? The people who have that dozen windows open simultaneously spend a heckuva lot more money than BillySue with her iPad, and they - we - don't like being bullied into a new (shudder at the word) paradigm just because the cool kids all run their cellphones that way.
I wasn't really angry at the issue until the Metro interface turned up on SERVER2012. F'Petessake, who has a server with a touchscreen? My CIO made a flat decision right then that we'd wait for R2 because this thing wasn't usable unless you ran Core and we already have Linux sysadmins. Don't get me wrong, I love PowerShell, but try administering IIS with it. Best of luck.
So there I am at work, trying to run a server through a command line, and at home I have a Linux box with a GUI. What the hell happened here?
What I’m saying is that, while including anything that can be done with smartphones and tablets, PCs can do a lot more, on the internet and off. I cannot type effectively on a tiny screen with tiny entry fields, and I cannot read the tiny words on a smartphone as well as I can on a PC.
Carrying a phone in a shirt pocket is not the way most people “use” them. People do take them out of their purses and pocket so read and type (or enter text). “Typing” can’t be done with the smartphone in your pocket.
BTW, when driving, I don’t even use my smartphone device, since I have it “connected” to my SUV via bluetooth. But even there, I still cannot enter text or do a lot of the web surfing I can do with my BIG SCREEN PC.
While it’s true that internet usage via mobile has increased, the stats still show (June, 2013) that most internet usage is done via the more powerful and bigger PCs:
Mobile Marketing Statistics 2013
Statistics on mobile usage and adoption to inform your mobile marketing strategy:
bump
I have successfully used an 8088 with 640k to set up a network file server using the dos networking software. The only problem is with all the TSR programs in memory there isn’t enough memory left to run other programs while using it as a server.
The odd behavior I seen was when I tried to view the shares with XP or a newer OS was the fact that I could see the computer on the network but it would not let me see what shares were available on the DOS file server. Even though I could map one of the DOS shares as a network drive on the XP machine and use it. It just would not let me browse the shares without mapping. And the file name truncation appeared to be automatic when copying stuff from XP over to the dos server.
With a win 3.11 file server I can see and browse the shares on XP without mapping them. Filename truncation is also automatic when moving files from xp to 3.11. I haven’t tried viewing win 3.11 shares on WIN 7 yet so I don’t know what that would do..
I also know that you can view/map XP shares with win 3.11 and dos clients. Haven’t tried viewing win 7 shares with 3.11 or dos yet.
One thing I like doing when setting up a temporary server on a network that I strictly intend on using myself is setting it’s protocol to netbeui. Security through obscurity. No one else on the network will have the protocol installed. Packet snuffers will not show the traffic. I can move about the building while I work on stuff with my portable computer dumping data back to the temporary server and no one will notice a thing even if they are looking. And most switches will forward non routable protocols to all ports so I don’t have problems with wired connectivity. And the router will not dump it to the net.
The only problem is I can’t use wireless connectivity when using netbeui. It has to be a wired network connection at the work locations..
You sound young. Have you completed potty training yet?
Must remember that one, no doubt.
As for ease of use and viruses, there are more secure and just as easy Linux variants. Macs get Viruses and in many ways are less secure than patched Windows 8.1 machines.
Not a point we need to argue. It's well known Microsoft supports operating systems far longer than they probably should which BTW stifles innovation on their part. Mac's don't have this problem. ;-)
It's called supporting business and allowing the poor to have working computers for years.
Put down the Apple Koolaid
Compassionately conserving much?
My main problem is that I do not have any more CGA, EGA, or HGA monitors anymore. I know I can put together an interface if I have to to change the TTL video signal levels to a more current VGA standard, but I need to order some 2N2222A transistors and standard carbon-film resistors to implement the change in video levels. Thankfully I still have some of the old ISA vidcards also stored away or it would be even more of a burden.
Network cards are another problem, since some are so old that the old DOS drivers are unlocatable at the moment. I might have some 3COM 3C905C ISA cards possibly that I can set up, however. The main stumbling block is that all modern network routers no longer have the old BNC connectors and only come with the RJ45 ports instead. Have to look and see if I have some older models put away instead, although I would be leery of using them for any sustained length of time.
Your networking difficulties are one of the reasons I stuck with the 98SE OS: it supports the USB standard, so other peripherals can be connected with only minor difficulties. Generic drivers are our friends. W95bOSR2 only had partial support, and that was always Plug 'N Pray from what I recall working with it. DOS 5.0, and WFW 3.11 still work quite well for quite a few things, and you would be surprised at how well a ripple counter, shift register and serial-to-parallel interface with a higher default bus speed work when you have reconfigured the system for more speed.
Other older OS's are also quite handy to use -did you know that Red hat 5.0 requires 8MB minimum of memory on a 386 for a useable GUI, but only 4 megs for a CLI? I am using it now on a machine that is one of several hooked up to a central server. It runs its own OS and transfers the text files to the main server out of the cluster for uploads and downloads. Really, for texting you only need the CLI -and an 8MHz machine has absolutely no problems with that. Think of a Beowolf cluster for comparison: the main machine is busily processing its Computer Aided Mechanical Stress analysis on some designs while I type away on this lowly x86 for posting and only transmit the finished text file for uploading to FR when I am done. Gotta love the simplicity, struth!
Hmmm. I seem to recall something... an EMM386 Memory Expansion Board (actual name could be off a bit) for the ISA bus that was quite popular back then. Dunno if it would work on an 8088 machine, though. Perhaps on a custom dual-cpu 8088 or 8086 board, but you would probably have to customize the instruction set if you went that route.
“Heck, I may someday even see if I still have some of those 8086 and 286 machines are still functional after all this time, lol! “
Ow….. forgot to mention something.
On using old motherboards one thing you have to worry about is bit rot in the EPROMs
The ones in the older MBs are reaching their retention lifetimes. I have several old MBs that are not useable because of the EPROM bit rot. If you have a MB that worked perfectly when you stopped using it, and it won’t work no more, then that is one of the probable causes. If you have a MB that uses straight ROMs then you won’t have to worry about that causing the death of the MB.
If you do have an old 8086/286 board that is still usable and it has an EPROM, I would highly suggest you pull it and make a backup. And then reburn the data back to the EPROM to refresh it. That will guaranty many more years of usable service.
People that collect old video game cartridges have the same problem with bit rot on the old cartridges.
The other thing that kills old MB is the CMOS backup battery. That dies and leaks corrosive liquid across the MB. When you see one that has went bad, the you will understand why it kills a MB. It just eats the traces away. If you are going to set an old MB back for long term storage, ALWAYS remove the backup battery. Just take a pair of clippers and cut the leads to remove it. That way, when you pull it back out years from now, you will have something that hasn’t been eat up to the point that it’s almost unrecognizable.
Other problems I have noted on mixing old and new equipment is using older MFM/RLL hard drives with newer motherboards.(P3/P4) If you have a newer MB with an ISA slot, you can put a MFM hard drive controller in it, and it will be able to use a hard drive that has already been low level formatted by the controller on an older MB. ..
BUT you will NOT be able to LL format the hard drive while it’s connected to the newer MB. The reason why is the program for LL formatting the hard drive is located in the BIOS. In newer MBs they left that program out of the BIOS because it was no longer used for IDE drives. Sometimes you can access the ROM on the MFM controller card with debug to LL format the drive using the program built into the MFM controller. Some controllers do not have that feature. Even if the controller does, it still leaves many HF LL formatting utilities dysfunctional because almost all of them rely on the program in BIOS to carry out the LL formatting.
“Dunno if it would work on an 8088 machine, though”
8088/8086 only supports 1MB memory addressable. 640k usable. The only memory expansion boards available are paged memory. You can’t use paged memory for active or TSR programs.
Wait: Extended Memory Module or Expanded Memory Module -that was it!
“Network cards are another problem, since some are so old that the old DOS drivers are unlocatable at the moment. I might have some 3COM 3C905C ISA cards possibly that I can set up, however.”
Download the MS dos client here.
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/BusSys/Clients/MSCLIENT/
You can edit a couple files to enable sharing.
It includes drivers for many ISA network cards that were common at the time.
Many with a 10baseT interface.
Just select the card you got, the card configuration, and the setup program does the rest.
With those disk, you will be able to set up a network file server with an 8088 with 640k ram.
Forgot to mention: with USB on that OS you can access wireless cards and devices, not to mention hard drives that were at least 30x larger than was available at the time. And SD cards, Memory Modules, USB-powered Optical Scanners, etc.
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