Windows 10 about face

[John Coloccia]

I just wish they'd make up their mind and give clear guidance on exactly what they're selling.

[Jim Becker]

I think that the "last version" thing was pure speculation...

They have provided clarification that Windows 10 will have something like 10 years of support, however.

[Larry Browning]

I think most of the confusion is due to marketing spin, with a little indecision thrown in there to boot. But mostly marketing spin.

[Brian Henderson]

I will be retiring in a year or so and I may start looking at a Chromebook. It's got the web and email. what else will I need in my golden years? Oh, one thing, I promised Dave Richards I would learn to use Sketchup after I retired. I bet that won't run on a Chromebook!

Unfortunately, pretty much anything creative won't run on a Chromebook or tablet. If you just want to consume content, they're fine. If you want to actually create all but the simplest content, you're pretty much screwed.

[Larry Browning]

Unfortunately, pretty much anything creative won't run on a Chromebook or tablet. If you just want to consume content, they're fine. If you want to actually create all but the simplest content, you're pretty much screwed.

Web browsing and email pretty much covers about 99% of what I will be doing on a computer after I retire. I can probably live without that final 1%. If I find I really need a real computer, I have children.

Well, actually that is not true. I will probably have one real computer and then get a CB for day to day stuff. I love to tinker to much!

[William Adams]

Creative app for ChromeOS, GraviT: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...mjmclfhjeaapaa

Also for Windows and Mac OS X: http://www.neowin.net/news/gravit-10-rc1

[Curt Harms]

I just wish they'd make up their mind and give clear guidance on exactly what they're selling.

It sounds to me like they were thinking the Microsoft equivalent of a GNU/Linux rolling distro. There really are no versions, new/updated components are rolled out as they're deemed ready for prime time.

[Julie Moriarty]

I think the problem with saying there will only ever be updates is you have to keep building on architecture that will one day become obsolete. When MS had Windows NT competing with whatever standard Windows version was playing, a programmer told me the standard version had something like 11,000,000 lines of code. NT had 4 million. The reason was the standard version was built on old architecture and they to write additional code to make it work with present day hardware and software. When I was doing CAD on a big project, our computers kept crashing. I had a lot of conversations with Autodesk techs. One told me the main problem was AutoCAD was built on old architecture and had the same problems as the old Windows.

Advances in hardware will bring about software designed to utilize those advantages and the operating system has to keep up with that. Now what would really be nice is if computers didn't need an operating system. Just load the program and run it.

[John Coloccia]

It sounds to me like they were thinking the Microsoft equivalent of a GNU/Linux rolling distro. There really are no versions, new/updated components are rolled out as they're deemed ready for prime time.

That's what we all were thinking. And why not? OSX is like that too.

[William Adams]

Now what would really be nice is if computers didn't need an operating system. Just load the program and run it.

Been there, done that. It’s what the early home computers (and before that industrial machines) were like back in the days of CP/M, &c..

Every program has its own user interface, every programmer has to work up their own windowing toolkit, text handling, encoding, &c.

Everything is different, there are no standards, and there was no interoperability save by moving files around. No clipboard, no copy-paste between apps. Networking interactions were CLI using tools such as FTP (and requiring that one make the conceptual leap that one had to move a file from the machine that it was on to the machine that one was connected to, then initiate the transfer to the machine which one was using).

[Brian Elfert]

Just about every piece of software out there occasionally just needs to be rewritten from the ground up. You often can't build world class software with 15 year old code. A number of software companies have rewritten their software from the ground up to get rid of the old crusty code. It usually upsets long term users, but it allows new technologies to be more easily supported.

[Robert Delhommer Sr]

I just wish they would quit selling a new OS that is so full of holes & bugs and perfect a OS.

[Curt Harms]

Just about every piece of software out there occasionally just needs to be rewritten from the ground up. You often can't build world class software with 15 year old code. A number of software companies have rewritten their software from the ground up to get rid of the old crusty code. It usually upsets long term users, but it allows new technologies to be more easily supported.

But that old crusty code is sometimes required to support software or machines that will never support new O.S. s for any of a number of reason. They're still working and would be $$$$ to replace. There are people here in that situation - machines with no support on newer than WinXP and no prospect of that changing. There's no magic fix.

[Jason Roehl]

Why would anyone ever need more than 640K?