Posts by dipique

Design guru: Windows 8 is 'a monster' and 'a tortured soul'

Re: .....

I hope you're being sarcastic. On the off-chance that you're not, allow me to educate you a little about how CPUs work.

A CPU clocked at 2 Ghz (or any speed) will always use the same amount of power. Unused processing cycles go into something called the "Idle" process. A CPU can save power in one of two ways: shut off different components (like an integrated video component) or change the clock speed to reduce the voltage requirements.

Modern CPUs can change the clock speed (and hence the required voltage) on the fly--this is particularly important on laptops, where minimum CPU speeds might be 1GHz or less, and might go up to around 3Ghz.

So for live tiles, since disabling components is off the table (tiles don't require any secondary components to help), the question is: can the laptop manage updating tiles at the minimum clock speed/voltage requirement? The answer is yes, and easily. A computer will never (or at least rarely) increase its clock speed just to handle live tile updating.

The upshot is... the earth may be burned to a cinder, but Windows 8 won't have anything to do with it. In fact, given how much it shortens the extremely power-intensive boot and shut-down processes, it might put off that day a little.

Dan

Microsoft to biz: Just so you get off XP, we don't mind if you go Win 7

Two things:

1) Re-clarification, Windows 8 runs Windows 7 apps. Darn near all of them. It ALSO runs Windows 8 "Metro" style apps. Windows 8 runs alllll the apps (except for Windows XP apps).

2) One thing a lot of people don't bring up: Windows 8 is really, REALLY cheap. Windows 7 Pro is what, $200? Windows 8 Pro is $40. Tell me that doesn't mean anything to enterprise and government.

Dan

Post-defenestration Microsoft: It's the APIs, stupid. And Metro

Interesting.

I think this article says more about the ignorance of the author than anything about Microsoft. Microsoft had a huge logistics problem: it had two completely incompatible platforms (Win 7 and Win Phone 7) and a third platform to build (WinRT).

From a software development perspective, the next move was predictable: develop a shared code base that produced as much overlap between the three platforms as possible without taking 6 years to do it.

They did so very successfully. Metro apps can be written for two platforms at once (Win8 & WinRT) and can be easily adapted to Win Phone 8--certainly much easier than you could adapt an OS X app to IOS, right?

As phones get more powerful and Microsoft has more opportunity to merge these platforms, the development space will get easier and easier. As a developer, I think Win 8 (in all its variants) was an admirable first step. I'm on board.

I just LOVE Server 2012, but count me out on Windows 8 for now

I could be wrong on this, but I don't think MS ever intended you to roll out Windows 8. I'm not saying that Windows 8 WON'T be rolled out in some places, but by and large I think Windows 7 will keep the installed base of most enterprises.

But Windows 8 WILL ship out to LOTS of consumers. Consumers will get used to Windows 8, and in 2014 when Windows 9 comes out, the UI will feel very common and familar, and enterprises will happily roll it out.

I say all this believing that the Windows 8 UI is superior for productivity once you get used to it--and it has been for me, a professional that has used Windows 8 for the last several months as my primary OS.

Dan