Windows 8 tablet freezes in Microsoft keynote demo You've got to hand it to Kirill Tatarinov, the head of Microsoft's ERP division. The Russian Rocket was cool as a cucumber on Monday when a demo of the Windows 8 Metro UI running on a touch-screen tablet crashed and burned during the opening keynote of Convergence 2012. Microsoft is indeed making big, bold bets with the …
Also, they did XENIX for PDP-11 (well, they bought source code for PDP-11, so it was The First Architecture for XENIX), for Zilog Z800x and Motorola 68000 (some Apple Lisa publishing system, does anyone remember?).
Oh, and they had BASIC for almost every home computer in 80s, and this counted as OS BTW.
Android manufacturers maybe, puzzled at why microsoft spends more effort extorting $5 per handset from them than getting its own comedy offerings right: http://goo.gl/1CQE8
Ford customers perhaps, who saw their JD Power customer satisfaction ranking drop from 5th to 23rd because of microsofts MyTouch dash computer garbage: http://goo.gl/t7FPB
Azure users might expect this too, after being left without service due to newbie leap year elementary errors, now being offered compensation (including the British Government): http://goo.gl/u7AUM
And then there are the Bing "users", seeing their searches being conducted by a mere script kiddie style wrapper around Google: http://goo.gl/1qsuo
Sigh. This is starting to feel like shooting fish in a barrel. We mustn't, of course, forget the RDP users wondering who's poking around inside their system every time they use it: http://goo.gl/VT1YP
Still, at least users will take to metro en masse, making everything ok, if it stays up long enough. Won't they?
Well I don't know about all the items on your list (because, well, I don't know about them). But the one I do know about - your little piece about Bing stealing Google's search results, I know you have twisted like a corkscrew to make MS a villain here.
The Register covered this here last year:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/01/google_accuses_microsoft_of_copying_its_search_results/
Your link says that Bing is copying Google's search results and implies some nefarious scheme. Actually what happens is that MS collect data on what people go to after searching, just the same as Google do. And if people search via Google or Bing or Yahoo or anything else, it all just goes into the same digestive process. Your link shows a really contrived attempt to make it look like there is foul play here - making a random string and associating it with a page, searching in a browser with feedback turned on so that the random string is fed back to MS for use in Bing so that they can demonstrate it appears in Bing and claim duplicity.
Anyone taken in by your link's claims should read El Reg's less biased explanation of what is actually going on. Like I say, I don't know about your other links, but the gross bias and misrepresentation in this one leads me to conclude you are very far from impartial.
There's a difference between doing your own searching and then optimising it by seeing what people actually click on and nicking someone else's results and making it seem like they are the result of your own searches. MS are not optimising their searches, they are nicking them and in an underhand manner by spying on what people are doing in IE and the Bing Toolbar. If MS were doing the same as Google then entering anything into the Bing toolbar would perform a search of Bing's database not of Bing's copy of Google's results.
Exactly. That article has been up for well over a year. If there was any doubt whatsoever, with all the legal shite m$ constantly throw at the good guys, does anyone seriously think such defamation would have lasted this long? Nah, clearly they've been caught red handed and all the apologist squirming in the world can't change that. Like it says in the second sentence: "However you define copying, the bottom line is, these Bing results came directly from Google." That's all there is to it - except, of course, for all the FUD spreading downvoters on their payroll.
actully a BSOD is MORE usefull, window 98 crashed, made the user aware it was unrecoverable, and then advised what crashed and where.
Win8 crashed......
what are the odds error screens were prevented from initalising, the BSOD video was a PR disaster, not suprised if MS wanted to avoid a repeat of that, the fact they had a spare about suggest the preped for this.
"Microsoft touts as the first operating system to run across multiple devices "
If you choose to ignore Linux, that has been running on all those devices and many more (small stamp size systems to huge mainframes) for decades.
And today many apps can access data from any device -they are called web enabled. Or is MS calming compile once, run anywhere (Something Java can do today, at least in theory).
I know - it didn't happen till MS announces it.
And here is what I hope was a well rehearsed demo and the box crashes so hard they can't recover it. I know the product has not been released but do you really think this was the first time they tried this on the box.
Have you every seen the old movies where two steam engines crash head long into each other - I keep seeing that but one is called Windows 8 and the other is Microsoft's future.
If I remember my history lessons, the *idea* of a single OS running on different "sizes" of hardware was the big gamble of System/360, so Microsoft are about half a century out. Not for the first time, they call it "innovation" but the idea is actually older than most of the staff developing it.
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You understand wrong. Apple took OS X and ported it to ARM hardware, i.e., an iPhone. They replaced the layer of the UI that displays windows etc. with a new layer that does touch, shows bouncy/scrolly lists, etc. Otherwise it's the same operating system.
As evidence, iOS developers can run their apps in a "simulator" that comes with XCode on their Macs, which just provides the iOS UI libraries displayed in a window and otherwise the apps are running as OS X programs on OS X.
No, some people just have the knack of causing any piece of hardware they touch to crash.
My boss can cause my iPad to freeze every time he touches it. My theory is that he must be slight scared of technology, so in stead of touching a screen or pressing a mouse button, he uses only very light, anxious pressure that the poor hardware interprets as about 1,500 inputs per second - result - instacrash.
Yes I know about anti-bounce, but it's the only theory I have to explain the way everything he touches plays up, crashes & locks, from phones to PCs to lifts, even his car.
I've watched him get frustrated when Outlook takes more than 1 second to open (come, on, really, be fair) and he goes into a clicking frenzy saying "see, it won't open", and then poor Outlook tries to open about 200 windows. He can click so fast he'd probably be pretty useful in a CS or QW match.
You surely mean s/people/software/ right?
On a more serious note, I see your point. My father is that kind of person, he can't even keep a quartz-regulated watch as it would shift several minutes off per day.
And yet, I doubt this is what happened here... Go figure.
I knew a bloke like that, back in the day, in a System/38 shop. He used to go through terminals like they were free.
Eventually the lads gave him an ancient IBM 5251 as they were thought to be indestructible. It burst into flames while he was using it.
To give the thing credit, it did carry on working for quite some time with smoke and obvious flames coming out the back of it......
"To give the thing credit, it did carry on working for quite some time with smoke and obvious flames coming out the back of it......"
Give also the bloke some credit for his dedication, if he just sat there typing away as the thing was on fire. That's what I call a hard core developer.
Its a Samsung series 7 slate.... the cables are top top to bottom; usb, hdmi and power.
Its a rather excellent bit of kit that can be picked up for about £950. Its looks and feels very classy and yeah not sure about the power cable, mine will do over 5 hours easy. HDMI obviously for presentation projector, usb for storage device?
"Fair point and well spotted. I assume from the bottom we have a power cable and a video cable, but what is the third cable at the top for?
Is this the future that MS sees for tablets?"
I see the rabid Microsoft haters are out in full force today. Obviously Microsoft doesn't expect you'll only use your tablet with three cables plugged into it. Third cable is likely for audio. While HDMI carries sound for TVs, it doesn't as often for PCs. We'll see tablet docks from people other than HP and ASUS pretty soon. It is a shame that Apple has no innovation or creative thinking with these things.
Maybe because Apple has worked out how to send sound over HDMI from their devices, they don't need to "innovate" an extra cable?
The iPhones, iPod, iPads, and MacBooks that I use for work are all able to output sound over HDMI just fine.
Although to avoid turning this into a complete Mac vs. PC situation, I use an HP PC as a HTPC and it outputs sound over HDMI just fine too.
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Lol -seriously? You think that this Windows OS can't do hdmi sound where 7 can???
Bullseyed: Anyway, just tested with mine (the same Samsung series 7 slate used in the demo)and it was fine, recognised my onkyo and pushed sound over it fine. So unlikely the usb was for sound, so still stand by my initial thoughts that its probably external storage given the "small"128gb ssd
Over the year that I ran Windows 7 professional I've only experienced 1 BSOD; which was when I was messing with VirtualBox & Windows 8, so all in all not that surprising.
However; if Windows hangs you can always hit control-shift-escape or control-alt-delete, the latter usually forces the system to pick up after which you can start the task manager.
But what should you do when this happens on your tablet? Obviously your screen won't respond, so you probably need to push some button(s). But don't tell me that the only thing you can do is turn the system off (if you're lucky) ?
"However; if Windows hangs you can always hit control-shift-escape or control-alt-delete, the latter usually forces the system to pick up after which you can start the task manager." -- and what do you do when all that three finger saluting fails? Hit reboot.
Yup my Linux box running XBMC never crashes, oh wait not it doesn't because it hung so often i replaced it with a Win XP also running XBMC which runs beautifully. Still spending 3 hours trying to get the right f'ing version and prerequisites for it on Umbongo was sooo much easier than Windows, next, next, next.
XBMC hangs, that is true. But the OS? The OS keeps on trucking and you just need to shoot XBMC.
I have (after some extreme fiddling) managed to get X to vomit everywhere and lock totally. So no desktop, now keyboard response, nada. But the OS? The OS kept on trucking and I was able to restart X from another PC.
Just because an application has choked, do not assume the OS itself is dead.
That's great but what happens when you simply cannot access the machine (i.e. no networking, no remote PC, X completely locked). That's a reboot for you. And hope that when X starts post-boot it doesn't freeze again.
Just managed to convert an existing Debian box into a media centre. It was more painful than I was expecting but at least the result is pretty good.
On a side note, thumbs up to:
Linux kernel, Grub (with Raid), Debian, XBMC, Subsonic
Thumbs down to:
Alsa, Wifi setup
Ctrl + Alt + F1 can occasionally fail if the application is locking keyboard input.
Alt+SysRq completely rarely never fails though. + REISUB for best results :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key#.E2.80.9CREISUB.E2.80.9D_.E2.80.93_safe_reboot
If you're suffering from anything but a kernel panic then `RE` is usually enough to kill the application and gui allowing you to restart the desktop without having to reboot.
PS> e17 is the only window manager I know of that lets you restart it on segfault without loosing applications / window placement... which I like. :)
True, yet that is what triggered my (still unanswered) question...
On Windows 7 I've ran into some ickyness as well from time to time (self-inflicted, the system will go haywire if you run PowerShell as admin while calling some specific methods on wmi or com objects) but so far always managed to get out of that through use of control-alt-delete.
It raises an event which is then picked up by the OS core which then allows you to perform a few tasks (lock computer, logout, restart, start task manager). However, one would expect that Win8 would also have such a key event.
But this story seems to indicate that there are no (hardware) keys which one can use to reset the OS. Which I think could be a very big problem if the device becomes totally unresponsive.
Sure; worst case scenario you can always simply take out the batteries and then power it back on, but for something which is marketed as user friendly that seems a bit drastic to me.
I run two Windows 7 64-bit computers, and both of them have had the OS destroyed by Microsoft Updates. i.e. got into infinite loops that won't break and cannot be reversed. Both times called MSDN support and eventual 'official' problem resolution was format hard drive and reinstall OS.
What happens on a Windows 8 tablet when the OS gets shagged by Microsoft Updates, which is inevitable as far as I am concerned?
I can make Win7 64-bit BSoD on demand, if I uninstall AMD's CAP application support it always BSoD and the only way I can remove it to update to latest version is go through the Registry and do it manually -- I am not alone, there are plenty of people with same issue on support forums. There's also a couple of programs that BSoD Win7 when they crash too.
You don't think they rehearsed this more then a few times before the demo
I hope MS is not that stupid - hey lets try something totally new tl show off what we are pinning the company's future on. Then again this will; not be the first time I underestimated the stupidly of some people.
And why did it just lock up - I would hope the OS is advanced far enough to recover from most errors.
Maybe they are so desperate to get this out the door it was a case of "clean compile - ship it"!
Yes, but that's not the issue here.
Beta or not; Windows has always had options to raise an event to get it to break whatever it was doing. Heck; Windows 7 is very decent (IMO) when it comes to process management; not saying that it will never happen nor that it is impossible; but it has become a /lot/ harder for a mere application to render the whole OS useless.
So seeing that very behavior happening on Windows 8 seemingly without any means to get the system to forcefully close or kill the rampant program doesn't exactly show much reliability. NOT when this is supposed to succeed Windows 7, an OS which even critics have deemed quite decent.
Sure; its a beta. But its not as if they rewrote the entire OS from the ground up.
Would you mind spelling them out at least once? It makes the article much more comprehensible to people who don't happen to work in the same field. I was rather confused as to why Microsoft has an Estimated Retail Price division, and why they cared about Cardiac Rhythm Management software.
I'm sure most of you will have installed and tried beta software before, had in hang, realised that the important part is the word BETA, rebooted and tried again.
So why when a Microsoft beta crashes do you all suddenly start ripping the company and software apart?
CUT THEM SOME SLACK, IT'S A BETA VERSION
It's built in the same old Windows we've known for some time.
The fact they threw together a shoddy new front-end with a new API is no excuse at all for it being a pile of crap.
If it was Microsoft's first ever product, you could say.. CUT THEM SOME SLACK..
But it's not. They're a huge company with a ton of employees and money, they've been making operating systems for a while.. To be fair, it could be a hardware issue, maybe we'll never know.
But you would hope that a demo is rehearsed to make sure the machine is stable.
To all the people saying "this is only a beta version cut them some slack"...
I thought this was a consumer preview? Softies don't like the term beta version this isn't Siri you know this is the future of EVERY device you own......
Microsoft have already taken a massive blow to their reputation by forcing this Metro interface on everyone rather than just tablet / phone users and now they've damaged their credibility further by demoing a tablet that's managed to crash on the 'improved' codebase of Window 8. This is more egg on the face for Microsoft and if they keep making stupid decisions like demoing half baked products using an interface very few people are excited about then they could find themselves struggling to get people off Windows 7.
It's just a shame OS X and Linux aren't viable alternatives for average customers because there's a chance to pounce here for a rival, but nobody is in a strong position (and don't say Apple because the iPad isn't a proper computer and their real computers are too expensive. And don't give me any BS about the Mac Mini the thing doesn't even have a CD drive FFS)
You obviously don't think a CD/DVD drive in 2012 is needed, but your wrong. Nearly everyone I know who has bought a Mac Mini has it connected up to their tele, but without a DVD drive all your existing TV shows & Films don't work, so once again your at the mercy of iTunes for your media content and the AppStore for your software.
While the both do have some merits it's clear that by removing the drive it's a further step from Apple to ensure you can't stray far from them
Now don't get me wrong, I'm no Apple fan and I think for what you get with the Mac Mini it's a little over priced... BUT...
I have a eMachines Nettop running as a media PC (as it happens it's running Mythbuntu and XBMC) and it's fine for my existing TV shows and films and any other media (it works as a PVR after all). Plus it doesn't have any sort of optical drive. What I do have on DVD is now ripped to my hard drive in XVID format.
Now I'm not saying that sort of setup would suit everyone, but not everyone is going to have a media PC, some folks might just use a PS3 or XBOX360 for their media playback (or maybe a Bluray player or even Apple TV).
Oh and "You obviously don't think a CD/DVD drive in 2012 is needed, but your wrong"... ahem.... You might want to check out this site... http://www.youryoure.com :-)
Rob
I remember messing around with voice control back on windows 95.
after spending hours training it to respond to my voice I was actually getting pretty good recognition results.
then my partner went and highlighted the problems of a computer that's always listening for commands by shouting "Computer... Shut Down Now"
Re Peter's comment 12:13 .. "Just imagine an open plan office in 2014 full of suits frantically shouting at their tablets. What could possibly go wrong?"
I'm unsure which would be more amusing to watch, that or an office of people waving their arms about to control their apps - http://goo.gl/q8Vme
Pure comedy either way.
A) "Stop!"
B) Hey, don't talk to me like that.
A) I was talking to my email
--
A) Flapping arms about
B) Who are you waving at?
A) Powerpoint
Actually voice control can be nifty. I've seen this working on the Windows Phone and its not bad at all.
However, there's a bigger fish to fry. How about /localized/ voice control ? Its nice that Microsoft is pushing this feature forward, but so far only English is supported on the Windows Phone. Surely one would expect them to work on that before they try to introduce it as a key feature.
I can't remember the last time I had a BSOD with Windows 7, or had to reboot it because it was fubar. It's been remarkable stable.
Windows 8 looks like a dog's breakfast on the desktop, however, so I probably won't use it. Installed Linux Mint into a VM to get the hang of things ready for when I have to replace W7.
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