Where do you get ALT F4 on a tablet? Which is what we are discussing here

Yes, I just bought a Winbook, as I wrote elsewhere. When you swipe from the left of the screen, it switches b/w apps, pulling up the last running app: however, you can't pull the boundries enough to have all the running apps show up, and then you swipe them down. It's more refined on both iOS and Android in that respect

Will this be upgradable to 10, though? I too bought a Winbook from them, but knowing that the $69 one would be limited, particularly since the integrated flash is just 16GB and almost completely eaten by the OS, I went for the $99 version. 2GB RAM and 32GB flash. Can definitely support Windows 10 - we're now talking about the 32-bit version here, not 64-bit, which would suck on these configurations. I also bought a 64GB SD card (which is the max that this thing can handle), and retargeted My Documents and everything to reside on this, rather than the integrated 32GB flash. That way, I have space for my apps, which typically can't be installed on a SD card, while ensuring that ALL data, not just my photos & videos, are there on the SD card.

Also, what I've been told - in 10, the Windows Phone OS and Windows will both be identical (aside from the CPU level binary differences), and the store will have common apps for both. For instance, right now, you can download Yelp! on Windows Phone, but not from an Atom based tablet. In 10, any app that's there on the phone will be there for the tablet, and vice versa. I'm assuming that apps that require cellular connections (like calling apps) might be an exception.

This is certainly good news, since there are some things that my Windows tablet can do quite handily, but while Windows Phone has those apps, the tablet doesn't. Downside could be that legacy Windows apps (from, say, 7) may not work, if the only way of getting things installed in a laptop or tablet would be over the internet. Next week, I'll see whether I can get the technical preview on my tablet

Yeah, this could have been a good idea - have the 'desktop' icon actually be a VM icon, say Virtual PC, and have 2 versions of it - a 64-bit 7 and a 32-bit XP. Whenever someone wants to run a 32-bit program, invoke XP and run it like that, in a XP mode VM. If one wants to run a 64-bit program, invoke 7 and run it like that in a 7 mode VM. Oh, and have an easy way to kill the VMs so that they don't end up hogging CPU cycles & battery if the device in question is a laptop or tablet, as opposed to a PC or server.

Loading apps would only do the above things more if one spends very little time w/ an app. But it can't take more energy than leaving the app running in the background for hours, consuming CPU cycles when the device is idling, thereby consuming the battery along w/ it. Which explains why my new Winbook battery doesn't last long (and I can't exactly complain, since I paid just $99 for it).

On both Android & iOS, killing an app is very easy - in iOS, it's double-pressing the center button and swiping out the background apps that you no longer want, while on Android, it's tapping the right-most button at the bottom. In Windows 8.1, you need to swipe first south and then east, and then hit Task Manager, which takes you to the desktop, and then you highlight the app you wanna kill, and tap 'End Task'. Or you go into the desktop, tap on the taskbar and select Task manager, and do the same. A lot less intuitive, and not convenient for a touch interface either

In Windows 8.1, you have the same for applications running in the desktop. If you are running, say, News, or Weather, or Sports, there's no way to close the application without invoking the Task Manager. I dunno about Unity, but GNOME 3 does have a way to close every app. Problem there is more w/ some GTK3 apps which under non-GTK UX's like KDE or Lumina go into fullscreen (as opposed to maximized) mode, thereby preventing one from doing anything else w/o closing the app.

Actually if you swipe to the lower screen & then swipe right (assuming a touch interface here - I neither try nor recommend 8.x for non-touch), you'll find the Task Manager there.

I find this constant switch b/w Metro & Desktop really annoying. More annoying to me is that there is no way to close an application w/o going into Task Manager & then End Task: something that doesn't need to be done for desktop apps, but does for Metro apps. I do not want all applications running at the same time - that's probably what causes my tablet's battery to run out pretty quickly. Once I'm done w/ an application, I'd like to hit on the 'X' in the north east corner, and end it! All apps don't need to run in the background all the time.

Might it be Intel's fab advantages over Qualcomm? Or anyone else Qualcomm is using?

I bought a new Winbook tablet a couple of weeks ago, and for the little that I do w/ it, it's okay. I wanted to get the trial version of Windows 10, since I plan to migrate this to that platform whenever it's available. I checked out the Windows store, but didn't find any such app. Where is it?

Please don't tell me to check out the app on my iPad or Android tablets -I won't! I'll only do it on the one tablet I currently have that runs Windows.

I have a normal Dell Inspiron 17, which was $800. 8GB of RAM, 1TB of hard disk (not SSD), a wide keyboard w/ a numeric keypad panel. I overwrote Windows 8.1 w/ PC-BSD, and except for the WiFi issue, no complaints. This whole thing sure beats a Chromebook.

I also bought a new $99 Winbook - 2GB RAM, 32GB integrated flash (translation: NAND flash, same as in SSD). For things that must have Windows, such as my label maker, or GoToMeeting I use that. But my daily activities - browsing, email, even my game FreeCiv - this PC-BSD laptop does it very well. I couldn't be happier!

Feeding the troll, but...

Ain't Chrome OS derived from Gentoo? That too, only the first version - it's not a rolling derivative, like CentOS or Scientific Linux is of RHEL. So ChromeOS didn't have systemd, and likely won't, unless Google decides they want something like it in the OS.

Precisely! With FPGAs, one can have all sorts of designs, copied, modified, whatever. Just that since separate expensive chips are needed, this is nothing like copying software from a CD to your computer.

This sounds like a good idea - for Valve to buy Canonical. Given how Ubuntu has lost its way ever since Unity.

One thing I wonder - will PC-BSD play all these Steam games? Or will it only be able to do it under a Debian VM?

Speaking of which, what happened to the plan to make a symmetric version of micro-USB? Or will they just adapt Apple's lightning connector?