paulry

Maybe I'll chain myself to the chair

Unconvinced, I wanted to see what was so good about them so I went into the shop with an "okay, demo and sell it to me" kind of mindset. They failed miserably at the first hurdle. I walked out of the shop thinking "phew, close shave"

Beoz

Saturday kids in uni sales staff. YouTube your own demo

paulry

I've thought that before but been pleasantly surprised how well they know the kit that is on sale - and also their willingness to be truthful about their opinions of the product. ...Haha, but maybe they saw me coming this time and said to eachother: "oh no here comes another dad wanting to know how to use such a simple thing . ....tell him there's none in stock "

Amazulu

I rarely listen to the opinions of shop people when it comes to tech. I'd rather do my own research

paulry

Me too but it's also good to see and touch the product while mulling it over - particularly if you're passing the shop anyway.

Beoz

I've hit a snag .... not a big one for me personally, but it could cause some issues for some people. I have an old POP3 email account which I wanted to include in the mail app. The mail app will not do POP3. Most email providers don't need POP3 these days. The only option was to go on the app store and download the POP3 email app.

So I did check out the Chromebook a while back and came to the same result as this vid. Does make you wonder about the cloud. Kind of screwed without internet unless of course it deploys some type of syncing between local and cloud, offline and online. For apps like PhotoShop I'm sure they will have some type of pixel sharing coming where the cloud does all the grunt work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wAgB5J1gSQ

GarryP

Micro$ofts 'how do we get out of this mess' strategy seems to be coming into focus after the "3 OSs is too much" comment; at least that's what the rumour suggest.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...indows-rt-free

Looks like they will implicitly accept that the desktop/netbooks and the phone/proper tablets are different things - with the proper desktop/start menu/etc. coming back for the desktop OS.

On the phone/RT side, they are looking to combine and give away the OS, in the hope that someone will stick it on their devices in competition to Android. Given the fatter footprint of the metro OS - I'm not sure that's going to work too well, unless ....

My guess is RT will go on a diet, slimming it down to something that will work on cheapo phones. The faultline will run between the RT and proper windows netbooks/tablets - with the gap growing larger as the tension of a 'one size fits all' overstretch goes away.

In this sense the codename for the next windows (8.2/9.0) kind of makes some sense - Threshold - the dividing line between one paradigm and the other.

Beoz

Despite all that, where is the Chromebook going to go? That video does outline the problem with it - too restrictive.

Google really don't want to go down the path of Apple and offer products that don't serve the larger business market.

GarryP

It's one of micro$oft's bullshit hit pieces on it's 'competitors'. It's kind of pathetic really - they are down to trying to rubbish the competition.

The bit they happily miss out is that they themselves are quite keen to flog thin clients - and that chromebooks focus on one key difference; an always on connection.

If you make that assumption then you get a number of advantages - particularly from the PoV of a business. In particular the user admin issue tends to go away, since you always know what the user is running, no updates, not faffing around. You can be pretty certain that key data isn't going to missing if the bozos lose the laptop. You can also easily go platform agnostic - running virtual sessions on a server, displayed in a window on the laptop.

Chromebooks aren't there yet, and I'm not personally convinced of the 'always on, high bandwidth connection', but I can certainly see that that is where the business will be before too long - once you take into account building intranet and 4G. My guess is that's why MS are going at the small market chromebooks so hard - if and when it delivers what the businesses want, MS is history.

PS Adobe are working hard on getting their graphics apps online and cloud delivered. Its part of their 'subscription' focus, and keeping relevant in an age of tablets.
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-touch.html

Beoz

I guess that's the missing link right now. 'always on, high bandwidth connection' isn't there yet and nor will it be for a while. Try telling a business traveller that they can't work while in the air because you need an internet connection - no thanks.

The multi sync, delta file transfer approach seems much more suited to this workflow. I have only ever used SkyDrive and a product called Projectwise (engineering stuff) for this type of approach. Open the file anywhere, copy stored locally and in the cloud. Not sure if Google has this thing going on with there Chrome book. Windows does (hence they take the p*$$ out of Google)

As for Adobe, yep that's where they are headed. They will certainly need to deploy the delta file transfer approach. Massive files will need that. You aint going to want to open a 300MB Photoshop file and wait for it to download locally, then upload again when you are finished.

Pixel sharing and RDP can work but again, 'always on, high bandwidth connection' required.

GarryP

4G is pretty much there, just need to nail down the cost side of things and expand the transmitter numbers. If someone doesn't stop Turnball the bandwidth on 4G might end up being better than that on the NBN.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...67473301551790

My guess is a tablet level of storage and memory, combined with the high bandwidth connection, would be capable of doing 90% of laptop tasks, with all the advantages outlined. After all. 32GB of storage and 2GB of memory is all the PCs of a decade or two ago had, and they did most of what people wanted.

And I think MS think it too.

Beoz

4G is great. I get good coverage from my office. If I'm doing something heavy I plug in the 4G dongle and I'm getting 24 mb/s as oppose to less than 8 mb/s from the office network. Then I ask the accounts dept for forgiveness later

Part of the problem I find is when travelling abroad. I have to switch mobile data off otherwise the accounts department go nuts. They'll need to get that little problem sorted as well.

It's all coming, but its certainly not here today. Little while off yet me thinks.

Alfresco

Any idea on the best cover to get?

My son just got a SP2 and needs a nice looking cover for it.

Beoz

I just used the touch cover as a cover but then again mine never leaves the house. Where did I see some deals? Bear with me. Let me see if I can dig the deals out.

Alfresco

I've organised one.

I also successfully upgraded my laptops to 8.1