You actually claim to have seen the actual unit that you were buying online? Not saying it did not happen just that the likelihood is very very low.

The theory is sound I'll give you that but in practice most of the time you don't know what you are getting. A laptop that did just sit docked nearly all the time and was well taken care of or one that just barely passed its re certification.

Honestly, brand new cheap laptops are not that hard to find. You will spend more than $200, and no it won't say Alienware on it either but really?, but you will have the warranty to back up if the thing comes DOA due to a bad HD or surface mounted chip.

I guess. What else do we call it? TurboFanPack...FanPack?

I don't like it any of it.

Of all the things MS is trying to shoehorn Azure into, Minecraft is actually not a bad one. Minecraft was built from the ground up to be a client/server setup and so it is a logical thing for MS to offer such a service for.

That is IF, the big IF, they don't screw up the client/game. And their track record for that is not good.

I just fired up Win10 in my VM to remember if I'd missed anything about it. And no...still is not that great.

As others have said it is just a SP to Win 8/8.1 with a lesser version of the Win7 Start Menu. And to boot it looks pretty awful for desktop users still. The flat/square theme might look ok on a tablet, I would not know as I've yet to use it on such a device, but it is pretty bad compared to the Win7 theme.

Also lost functionality is the local backup system that went away in 8.1 and Media Center. I've no problem with the idea of remote backup, provided it's done right, but not having local backup functionality as well is bad. And Media Center was actually a pretty nice thing that seems to have totally gone away.

So yeah, Win10 is more of the same bad that Win8 was/is and likely will meet a similar fate.

With the rise of social media sites that allow for the vast collection of data one people it was only natural that a company like Google that does just that wanted in on that game. So for them to want to establish G+ as a service is no surprise to anyone.

They way they did it however was pretty terrible and they deserved to fail. First of all they had to address the fact that some people are not going to want to join such a service; period. They don't want Facebook, never wanted MySpace, delete those annoying emails from LinkedIn, etc. They might know that they are not being given a service as much as they are being used as a product. Regardless of the reason why there will be some people that will not want, and resent if you try to make them, join such a service.

And with Google's campaign that was trying to force people to join G+ you built up resentment. A lot among the people who did not want the "service" in the first place and others who could have gone either way. The gamble Google was making here was that people would get over that resentment after a time because of how awesome G+ was going to be!

But forcing people to join the service was not enough. They wanted to make sure that this "service" was really a good product for them with their real name policy. The idea of giving out your real name worked for Facebook, and other services, because the whole concept of these social "services" was relatively new. People did not realize that they in fact were the product. By the time G+ was trying their hard sell enough of the population that might have been interested in G+ decided to give it a pass.

And that is pretty much were I think it stands now. Their track record with G+ is bad with their hard sell tactics and aggressive desire to make it a product for themselves rather than more of a service, people know exactly what is up with data collection, and other options exist that don't have such issues. G+ is a failure and likely never will be much more than that.

You are correct and I stand corrected for saying/implying/everything about Win9x running "on top of DOS".

I was looking for some way to talk about how the Win9x series had its own set of issues due to the way it worked vs the transition to the NT mechanics of WinXP and everything else that is of that ilk. And I did so by saying something that was not correct.

I still do stand by my points about how XP was, and still is, a decent OS and I'm no MS fan either. Was right here on /. during those years slamming them for all the crap they did and will do so moving forward. None the less it felt really dishonest to speak poorly of XP given what it was/is.

MS of course can get it right if they just design a solid desktop OS. They have come a long way in stability while maintaining pretty much their desktop monopoly. All they have to do is update the OS for the current tech and continue to polish the desktop UI that has been progressing for years.

But they don't want to do that. They want to use that desktop monopoly to force their way into the mobile market and thus we had Windows 8. And even with that failure they can't just let it go. And I've used the Win10 preview and it still is not as good a UI as Windows 7. It does make a fair amount of concessions to getting back to more of a Windows 7, non-mobile UI, desktop but it still sucks compared to Win7.

And the real thing that I don't understand it this obsession with trying to merge two different UI formats into one. When I'm using a mobile device that has no keyboard/mouse then of course I want a UI that is designed for that. But when I am on a computer with a keyboard and mouse I freaking want a UI designed for that!

I'll finish with an obligatory car analogy. When I'm driving a car I expect that the controls reflect what I'm trying to do. But when I'm in a boat, while similar, the controls are changed to suit that vehicle's needs. UI's should be the same way. And there is no reason why MS should accept that they can have two UI's for their OS.

>Windows 8.1 isn't in need of being fixed, really. It's better than Windows 7, which was better than Windows 2000 (windows XP was a heaping pile of dung).

Huh? Your UID is not so high that you should be making such comments. But lets deconstruct it for the lols.

XP was a heaping pile of dung? XP had its issues, like every OS, but compared to having to run the OS on top of DOS like Windows was previously doing it was a huge improvement. Further the staying power of XP alone is a good indicator that it was not bad at all.

Next you say that 8.1 is better than 7. Why? What exactly does 8 (or 8.1) offer in technical terms beyond what 7 offers? There are a few things I'll grant it does offer but it does not offset the fact the awful UI that it has. A UI not designed with a desktop workflow in mind but rather a power play by MS, that failed, to force people into accepting such a UI for all devices.

Because the system that regulates it is corrupt! At the federal level it is pretty much a given at this point. Go lower to the state level and it is not as bad but it is still not good, ALEC and such, and down to city/county level you likely have less volume/size but you also have less oversight.

Until, starting at the top, we remove the money = speech corruption that started in the 70's we will see "solutions" continue to be be how can we word our new form of corruption in a way that sounds legit.

This game smacked to me of Titanfall marketing. And appears to have delivered the same level game. Nothing bad but not anything near the level of hype that the marketing inspired.

But the marketing DID deliver the hype level sales and that is all that matters to the publishers. So while the culture of pre-orders based on marketing hype that is backed up by paid for "reviews" exist this cycle will repeat.

Yeah the idea that they are going away from streaming is crazy. I used Netflix during their early days, DVDs via mail only, and it was fine for the time. But today I only use disc media when I'm forced to. Everything else is either streamed or moved around via some form of flash tech.

That is for day to day usage. Discs still have their use IMO as backup but the idea of using them for my day to day media consumption is something I don't even consider.

All that being said I still see them in use for people who don't have the same technical skills that I do and or specific needs. So it is not like that functionality needs to go totally away but the idea that Netflix is going to go away from their online streaming is again just crazy talk.

> Customers made them believe they wanted a seamless device to device experience...

Where/who/what exactly makes this true? I am not saying I don't believe that some study like that existed but I'd like to see it before I believe in its validity.

Because what I've been saying all along is that having multiple UI's is not a huge deal. We as humans can deal with that fact all day long. We don't need our toaster to have the same UI as our oven even if they form similar tasks. And that same idea extends freaking everywhere.

I honestly think that idea was never any sort of customer driven event, rather a marketing idea that was driven by shills in the tech press. That then took root into MS's internal culture.

I have used TONS of UI's over the years and have 0 problems with having a UI for my phone/tablet/whatever that has no real reason to expect a keyboard/mouse to ever be present being different than a UI for a system that will. In fact I downright expect better design from those who design UIs. And going the other way, forcing a UI that ignores the fact that my primary input is going to be a keyboard/mouse, smacks of bad design.

But we all know it was not some sort of bad design. It was/is a tactic by MS.

You ignored my other points but whatever. Lets address what you have said now.

The issue is that your finger is not a mouse pointer. It won't be unless you want to stick it in a pencil sharpener and get the tip of the bone down to a nice point. So failing that the UI will have to change to accommodate that. What was something that would be more than acceptable in size and shape to accommodate a WIMP interface has to now accommodate a finger.

Further your finger does not have buttons. To solve that mobile UI's use taps to simulate clicks and holds mostly to simulate right clicks. But it is still not as functional as buttons. Further unlike mobile UI platforms where you are directly holding the device, you would be tapping on a monitor.

Now the old CRT's back in the day could have put up with something like that without movement but modern screens are gonna be moving all over the place in response to tapping/holding.

Finally if you meant to imply that I can't see the value in other interface platforms you are very wrong. The issue is using the right interface for the right platform. And not trying to kludge together UI's for the sake of a single companies bottom line.

Aside from getting gorilla arm and moving your hands away from your primary input device? Smudging up your screen? And having to worry about your UI being altered from being efficent with the standard WIMP interface vs some kludge of one that tries to accommodate WIMP and a UI that is designed for when you don't have access to a keyboard/mouse.

Trying to merge the UI because you want to be able to sell more stuff rather than it actually being a UI upgrade is not a good thing. I don't want a yolk for my car any more than I'd want a steering wheel for a plane. Nor do I want to have to lug around a keyboard and mouse to use my phone. Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this when I sit down at a desktop computer.

Shrug, I still am not sure you have done any real research on this issue because my Logitech remote has ~30 buttons (not counting the number pad) and the remote that came with my TV has ~25. So yeah 5 extra buttons, most of which have direct functions that are not/would not be included on my TV remote like things for a cable box, is not that many.

Further that one remote can and does replicate all the functionality of 3 remotes in one package. (And it could do more.) It has its own programmable screen where you can put functions and or let the software put them there for you.

It is not perfect but damn few things ever are. But as far as programmable remotes go, of which I've been using since I 1st had a programmable remote in the 90's, it is damn good.