Android Will Surpass Windows By 2016, Say Gartner Stats 149
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Android operating system will be used on more computing devices than Microsoft's Windows within four years, data from research firm Gartner showed on Wednesday, underlining the massive shift in the technology sector. At the end of 2016, there will be 2.3 billion computers, tablets and smartphones using Android software, compared with 2.28 billion Windows devices, Gartner data showed." The comparison would make less sense if Android was strictly for phones, and Windows was strictly for desktops-with-keyboards, but gets interesting as the devices on which each system runs overlap ever more.
Extrapolating (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Extrapolating (Score:4, Funny)
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There's always SE Android -- Android for Spooks! No tracking here, thank-you-very-much.
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Have Gartner ever predicted anything correctly?
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Even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while...
(Probably not this time)
Re:Extrapolating (Score:5, Informative)
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Becasue Gartner is really good. They take good data, and create conclusion for that fixed data.
They arn't perfect, but the are pretty damn accurate. I listen to people from Garter, and they know their math. and they general have great methodologies.
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Breaking news. Slashdot user geekoid is outed as Gene Hall, CEO of Gartner.
(Philip Fry squint)
Or are you "Donnie" Darko Hrelic?
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Right. One problem with their great methodologies might be incorporating their predicted 215M shipments of Windows phones by 2015. And their 10% current smart phone market share.
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
No. Right now.
608 million android device.
1.68 BILLION windows devices.
devices being defined as " computers, tablets and smartphones"
SO, maybe you should put down the pipe and actually read the article.
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If he was smoking something good then he'd probably not care about such trivial things.
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400,000 being activated daily, but how many are being discarded daily? There's a lot of crap Android hardware out there. Also, what are the turnover rates for Windows gear? I haven't RTFA, but I'm assuming Gartner takes all this and more into account.
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Try 1 million: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57461870-94/android-activations-reach-1-million-per-day/ [cnet.com]
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x86 port (Score:2)
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*facepalm* It's called linux, Android is based off it. Also you can run Android OS via an emulator just about anywhere.
Re:x86 port (Score:5, Informative)
Splitting hairs here, Linux is the kernel, and if one really wants to be technical about it, Android can be considered a really modified Linux distribution.
The issue with Android making the jump to the desktop hinges around one issue: User support. Android uses UIDs to separate apps. How would it keep users separate, which is a must on a desktop box.
The only way I can see that happening would be a hypervisor based system with each user on their own VM, and the core filesystem everything sits on having deduplication built in (so each user's environment only saves what the user's changes are.) Then, have a system where users have one mounted filesystem for sharing between everything.
It can be done, but it would take a lot of work for it to be decently elegant. However, it done right, it would be decently secure unless an app is able to get out of the hypervisor.
Other than the fact that Android is a single-user OS, it would not be too bad on the desktop. The permission model is solid enough that a compromised Web browser wouldn't mean the whole user or machine is nailed.
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Simple- it wouldn't. Android on a desktop box would work just like Android on a phone. It wouldn't keep separate users. Why would it? It's not a multi-user system. You seem to want a new feature to Android for a desktop box. Since desktop isn't their goal, I doubt they'd add it.
For the record- I don't see why you'd want Android on a desktop, it would be a bad experience. But nothing is stopping you right now, x86 support is out.
Re:x86 port (Score:5, Informative)
Simple- it wouldn't. Android on a desktop box would work just like Android on a phone. It wouldn't keep separate users. Why would it? It's not a multi-user system. You seem to want a new feature to Android for a desktop box. Since desktop isn't their goal, I doubt they'd add it.
Your claim is easy and quick to dispute, amigo. [androidpolice.com]
But don't worry; pompousness and self-confidence will get you far in life!
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I'm glad you pointed the code out. Having Android be able to tackle users in an elegant fashion (while making sure user A's instance of an app doesn't bang into user B's instance) is a very good thing to have.
That beats having to have a hypervisor and deduplication on the backend any day.
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I would guess it wouldn't be too much different then one of these
http://www.amazon.com/Telikin-Elite-Touchscreen-Computer-Processor/dp/B005T3XEHE [amazon.com]
Met an old person who had one. It would drive me crazy if I had to use it, but it did everything they needed. Pictures, documents, internet surfing all worked and they didn't have to worry about Windows viruses.
Re:x86 port (Score:5, Funny)
For the record- I don't see why you'd want Android on a desktop, it would be a bad experience. But nothing is stopping you right now, x86 support is out.
Isn't what Windows 8 is all about? I mean, the bad experience.
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Obviously M$ believes it because that is exactly what they are trying to force a tablet and phone based interface onto PC users. Putting in a cheap upgrade path and are going to become real dicks when it comes to fucking up windows 7 on purpose. They are trying to force everyone to become used to their interface in order to do an end run around android appearing on the desk. Instead they will end up really pissing off their customers at the most risky time, this dependent upon how much they purposefully sc
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Interesting, I didn't know about the whole UIDs thing, but taking a shot at it in the dark, it would probably have to have the user portion built up from scratch and in terms of individualizing the apps, it would probably look like the Windows appdata folder for saving app settings per user. As it stands now the apps aren't configured for multi-user environments is the biggest hurdle. That can be handled either by some really clever directory manipulation re-pointing application settings repositories to t
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Re:x86 port (Score:4, Interesting)
I would wager that Android on the desktop would suffer from the same problems that other distributions suffer from.. drivers for one. All Android would be is a distro that updates infrequently and has an integrated app store.
The app store is a really big deal... one of the major reasons people don't use desktop Linux is the fact that it doesn't run many of the programs they want to use. There are probably more apps for Android by now than for desktop Linux, and certainly more apps that the average person would be interested in using.
Drivers are a chicken-and-egg problem... a lot of vendors don't bother with drivers for Linux because it's a small market, and it remains a small market in part because driver support sucks. But Android, by solving some of the other barriers to Linux-kernel adoption, could help break that logjam.
Please make it so (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget desktops; even for single-user mobile devices, what you're describing sounds like an excellent idea anyway. "Excellent" maybe even understates it; I'd say something like this is necessary for phones to ever stop sucking.
It'd useful not just so that different users could use different VMs, but also to optionally hide one user's applications from one another. Something refuses to install unless I give it access to my address book? Ok, here, have .. um.. an address book.
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Android IS a really modified linux distro, I run Debian under chroot on my ICS phone (I wanted a useful command line for some hacking I was doing and there was no combination of partial GNU ports I could find that gave me the tools I normally use so when I found linux installer standard [google.com] I was very happy)
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The issue with Android making the jump to the desktop hinges around one issue: User support. Android uses UIDs to separate apps. How would it keep users separate, which is a must on a desktop box.
The only way I can see that happening would be a hypervisor based system with each user on their own VM
You clearly don't know what sort of features exist in Linux for handling that. First of all, there are enough UIDs that one can be assigned to each application installed by each user. Additionally the file system separation has been supported by Linux since version 2.4.19 (according to the clone man page). Each user can have their own file system namespace. And no need for deduplication either. Those parts of the file system, which are read only (or only writable by root) can just be mounted in the same pla
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Some things in Linux have gotten better in the interim.
. . . and then there's GNOME.
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*facepalm* It's called linux, Android is based off it.
Android is based on the Linux kernel. And the reason it's been successful (aside from Google's marketing muscle, which is a not inconsiderable factor) is that it blasted away the 20 layers of worthless legacy shit that sits on top of the kernel on desktops, and replaced it with a new stack that (to borrow an Apple term) "just works". Well, at least for most users, most of the time – but that's more than can be said about [spit] desktop Linux.
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Android is based on the Linux kernel.
No, it's really Linux. Just get a root shell and look around. Or alternatively, get any book on operating system design and you will see that 99% of it is about the kernel.
Re:x86 port (Score:4, Informative)
Android does exist on x86. They officially support it in the NDK, and several OEMs have released products on it.
Oblig (Score:3)
Re:Oblig (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if your desktop device is a phone. I suppose it's possible.
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Motorola tried, phone specs aren't high enough yet.
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No. They are talking about " computers, tablets and smartphones"
And hardly anyone has a phones. They have small computers. One of the applications is to make phone calls. I can drop my device into a cradle, and use it to send email and surf the web. Open docs, create spreadsheets.
Assuming current rate of power* growth, by 2016 the small device you carry will do everything except play high end games, Cad, video editing etc..
*I don't actually think that will happen unless some key fab technologies are rolled
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They are still not desktops. You can call them pocket computers if you want, but they don't fill the top of a desk.
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At some point it might be. Why do you need to have a physical computer if your phone can dock with and power a decent sized monitor and keyboard. Then you can take all of your information etc. with you everywhere, and it can be backed up to a server in your house/office, so if you lose your phone you get issued a new one and voila, all of your data and settings.
The thing is, we're not really far away from that being a very reasonable possibility. My Galaxy SII has more than enough horsepower for all stan
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Different interaction method required for desktops (Score:3)
If you've run the Android VM that was knocking about a while back, you'll know that using a mouse to interact with an Android device is horrible.
The long press and gesture method works fine for fingers, but when you've got a mouse in your hand, certain things happen without the concious mind getting in the way.
TFA may be talking about mobile devices, but if any mobile OS is to take on the desktops, it needs to support traditional input methods.
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And that is going to work out just about as well.
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gartner! (Score:3)
Since Gartner is reporting anti-Windows news, count on it happening in 2 1/2 years!
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Since Gartner is reporting anti-Windows news, count on it happening in 2 1/2 years!
Has Gartner reported significant anti-Windows stuff before? I thought they fell into the Windows Über Alles camp...
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That's pretty optimistic, IMO. I'm thinking more like 2.6 years.
Is Android ready for non-phablet use? (Score:2)
Does anyone know if Android, as it now stands, is ready for use on "real" computing devices (desktops and laptops)? In other words, is there any support built in for full multitasking, running apps in resizable and movable windows, a taskbar, and other essentials?
If so, then Android could be a serious contender, especially if ported to x86. If not, then Android still needs work before it's ready for prime time on devices other than phones and tablets.
I think Adobe may serve as a bellwether here. When/if a f
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It will run on x86. But the features you're asking for? Nope, and they have no plans to- it's not what Android does, and it would totally break their activity lifecycle model. Its not meant to be a desktop OS. You could use it as one, but why?
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Does anyone know if Android, as it now stands, is ready for use on "real" computing devices (desktops and laptops)? In other words, is there any support built in for full multitasking, running apps in resizable and movable windows, a taskbar, and other essentials?
Android the OS, yes. However the applications are not there and the hardware is firmly targeted at mobile devices.
In 4.1 (4.0 on after market ROMs like Cyanogenmod) you have resizable windows (resizable widgets). The concept of running applications in windows (called Widgets) in Android and a Task bar (the notification bar) as well as full multitasking (background services) have been in there since Android 1.0.
The problem towards using Android in the same fashion as Windows and Linux are two fold. The
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Linux on the desktop is fragmented shit with essentially no commercial software available.
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Change 'commercial software available' to 'useful commercial software available' and then tell me how Android is any different.
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Wake me up when they have Photoshop and MS Office.
Stupid easy predictions are stupid. (Score:1)
Pen and paper is also going to surpass windows by 2016.
Windows 8 is such a fuckup microsoft is going to be lucky to exist by 2016.
Getting real (Score:2)
2) No, Gartner is just comparing the number of apples with the number of oranges.
Move along...
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This is huge! (Score:5, Funny)
First, this means that Gartner is admitting that people might like something other than Windows. Second, now it means that it won't actually happen.
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One more (Score:1)
Microsoft isn't the only one to be worried (Score:5, Insightful)
M$ should be worried. Along with Apple and anyone else trying to keep their proprietary little death-grip on their market share. Android is turning up everywhere. It's becoming ubiquitous. You can find it on everything from smartphones to Televisions[0] to Refrigerators[1]. Why do you think Apple is going 'thermo nuclear' on Android? It's not just due to 'Rounded corners and rectangular design' it's because Android can be made to run on just about any home appliance imaginable -- and guess who makes a lot of home appliances (TVs, fridges, washing machines, etc) as well as smartphones? Now guess who doesn't?
Apple and Microsoft PAY people extraordinary salaries to forecast market trends. They know where the industry is trending. And it ain't trending into Cupertino or Redmond at the moment -- at least not in the world outside of the US.
[0] - http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/android-powered-pocket-tv-turns-any-television-into-a-smart-tv/ [digitaltrends.com]
[1] - http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425210/do-we-really-need-an-android-powered-fridge/ [technologyreview.com]
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Android most popular Linux distro (Score:5, Insightful)
For years we've been talking about "The Year for Linux on the Desktop". As veteran game developer, it's always boggled me how Linux, despite it's power, is so shortsighted when it comes to 3rd party support and distribution. 3rd part support and easy distribution along with backwards and forwards compatibility is what made Windows so dominate over the past 20 years. The typical solution bandied about by Linux users is "you can always distribute the source and recompile". Yes, that's what the average computer wants to do; fiddle around recompiling source code on their personal micro-flavor of Linux out of a sea of 100s of distros only to have it break again with the next 0.0.0.1 release of the underlying OS.
What's telling to me is that now when you ask "What's the most popular Linux distro", you can arguably say "Android" and the reason Android has become so popular is because it easily supports 3rd party apps like a reasonable OS is expected. No fuss no muss. Just like Windows.
Congratulations, Google, for finally taking Linux in the right direction.
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Except android isn't really like any other linux distribution. Android uses the Linux kernel, but it doesn't use the gnu libraries, x-windows, and all the other supporting infra-structure of a typical linux distribution.
Android is largely a linux kernel to support the hardware and multi-tasking, with a modified Java VM running the apps. That's quite different from what most would consider Linux. I still think it's great, and a wonderful alternative to the Windows stack, but grouping it with the other lin
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For years we've been talking about "The Year for Linux on the Desktop". As veteran game developer, it's always boggled me how Linux, despite it's power, is so shortsighted when it comes to 3rd party support and distribution. 3rd part support and easy distribution along with backwards and forwards compatibility is what made Windows so dominate over the past 20 years.
I've read these sentences twice and see nothing even resembling insight in them.
Backwards and especially forwards compatibility are useful aspects of Windows, yes. When they work. But the DLL Hell of the late '90s was one of the main factors that drove me away from Windows. One of the other main factors that drove me away was finding bugs in commercial (proprietary) software, notifying the developers and being told, "Yeah, we'll take a look at that for the next release cycle. Thanks!" The next release cycle
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You're using the wrong value of 'you'. If you had explored Linux distributions in any detail at all, you'd know that the 'you' who does the recompile is the package maintainer. This means that the actual developer can simply maintain a stable code base and leave it to others to handle dependency issues on their particular platform. Which is as it should be, because each distro knows its own requirements better than any third party software developer could ever be expected to.
I appreciate your thoughts. There are many aspects of Linux I like from a power user's perspective and even a developer's perspective. If I, as a developer, were maintaining an application such as Gimp, OpenOffice, MySQL or other tool-centric applications, I love the idea of just focusing on source code development and letting package maintainers handle the distribution and sort out the various distro differences.
Where this breaks down is when I'm developing and supporting an application that can change f
Hence Windows 8 (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why 8 is so absurdly tablet-centric. If people are buying tablets instead of PCs, well, you can retain them as customers by shoehorning your PC OS into the new paradigm.
What this strategy misses is the fact that people are not replacing their PCs with tablets. They still use PCs, but they don't upgrade them very often. So Windows doesn't have any special advantage as a tablet OS, and is unlikely to rival Android or iOS.
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What this strategy misses is the fact that people are not replacing their PCs with tablets. They still use PCs, but they don't upgrade them very often. So Windows doesn't have any special advantage as a tablet OS, and is unlikely to rival Android or iOS.
I think what MS is counting on is interoperability. Sure, they have a tablet, and a desktop, and a phone. If you can make sure you can seamlessly (in an information sense) transition from one to another (desktop at home, tablet/phone on the road) and they all contain the same information (i.e. constant sync), then you would like it. Amazon does the same thing with its Kindle app - doesn't matter if I use a phone/PC/Kindle/Fire to read a book; they are all in sync.
While the idea is good, they want to make t
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As your experience with the Kindle indicates, you don't need the same OS on all your platforms to do interoperability.
So you like 8 on a dual monitor system? In what respects is it better than 7 with that same setup?
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Too bad my NAS holds 2TB of information, while my phone holds 2GB only. Once in a while, MS gets into a pipe dream, and they need decades to discover it can not be done.
I'll believe it... (Score:2)
...when Netcraft confirms it.
Oh man... (Score:1, Insightful)
Most Androids sold are already in the landfil (Score:4, Insightful)
Data?! Can I borrow your time machine? (Score:2)
Gartner's data shows that?!?! Can I please borrow your time machine? I need some data from the future too!!!
"It's a fucking projection, damnit"
2016? (Score:2)
I doubt it, at least at a practical level. So what if there are 10x more phones than desktops? The real 'work' is still being done on windows and microsoft is still making tons of cash.
Same goes for ARM, there may be more ARM chips out there but the desktop still may be owned by x86.
Now id like to see both Microsoft and Intel go away and i bet in time this will happen, but im trying to be realistic too. 2016 is right around the corner, and i dont see that drastic of a change that fast.
Pointless Prediction (Score:2)
Stupid analysts (Score:1)
Does this mean Linux wins? (Score:1)
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Android is not linux, its a virtual machine, yes most of the time android runs on a linux base, but if someone ported it to run on be-os you would never even know
Wow, stop the presses! um... (Score:2)
They do realize Microsoft is making a big push into phone and tablet markets?
Why do people consider Gartner a reliable source for stats? Its like: "Me sa say dat Windows no sella, me sa say Android sella more, me sa thinks no bombad changes for 4 years".
Yes, I think the people of Gartner are retarded Gungans.
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Yes, I think the people of Gartner are retarded Gungans.
What are these Gungans that you speak of? There were no such monsters shitting all over a beloved franchise. You must have imagined them as being part of three movies that don't exist.
again! OFFS (Score:2)
stating the obvious, I'd also guess that Apple will sell more hardware with MacOSX and derivatives (iOS) than there are MS Windows equipped devices, or UNIX(-like) systems will rule them all!
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Of course that means further demise of the desktop.
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Of course that means further demise of the desktop.
I'll stand on the sidewalk and wave as the desktop heads outta town, providing the apps I need work reasonably on tablets.
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Of course that means further demise of the desktop.
I'll stand on the sidewalk and wave as the desktop heads outta town, providing the apps I need work reasonably on tablets.
And what happens when they don't, and then tablets move in and start shitting on your kitchen counter and demanding you fork more money into them every year because last year's model isn't supported anymore, while your desktop chugged along happily for years on end?
That's an awfully big "provided" clause you've got there. But, provided Jesus comes back and everyone gets candy and happiness in solid, tangible form, all wars and conflicts end, and we all live in permanent euphoria forever and ever, I guess t
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> That's an awfully big "provided" clause you've got there.
Yes, it is.
I've argued until I got sick of it over in the Adobe forums that a "lite" version of their apps for tablets is worse than useless. They seem to expect me to carry a laptop *and* a tablet. Not going to happen. I don't currently own a tablet, and won't until I can work in the field *without* my laptop. Until I can do that, tablets are dead to me. I don't buy into the alpha-geek thang where you lug along one of every kind of portable
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Given that there quite literally is no such thing as "Windows 7 Tablet Edition" and the last time anything similarly named existed, it was XP, I find your credibility rather questionable.
All editions of Win other than Home Basic and Starter are capable of handling both touch and stylus input if the hwardware supports it. With that said, most tablets (even if they support a stylus at all) aren't designed with the digitizer resolution needed for professional artwork. The stylus is instead used as a somewhat m
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> Given that there quite literally is no such thing as "Windows 7 Tablet Edition" and the last time anything similarly named existed, it was XP, I find your credibility rather questionable.
Verbal shorthand on my part. The thing came shipped with Home Basic, requiring an immediate upgrade to Pro in order to wake up the tablet features, such as they were.
As to why someone would ship a tablet with an OS that does not have tablet features, you'd have to ask the manufacturer.
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In addition; After being very frustrated with the device, I gave it to my daughter to play with. She was at first excited, because she likes to draw and it had a stylus. But she soon became frustrated with the device, and now it's shelfware. ...which is why I typically say "I don't own a tablet and won't until certain things work on it". That lump of plastic in the bookshelf between Shaeffer's Data Center Operations and Java In A Nutshell isn't technically mine (it belongs to my daughter) and I'm waitin
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I'll stand on the sidewalk and wave as the desktop heads outta town, providing the apps I need work reasonably on tablets.
Demise of the desktop does not mean demise of the monitor+keyboard+mouse interface.
If my next phone/tablet/whatever can drive three monitors and be a frontend for excel/visual studio running off some terminal server/cloud setup and still give me a seamless (albeit degraded) interface for the same programs when I take it on the train.... ...then I'm more than happy to get rid of the giant
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Enh. If you have to attach a keyboard and mouse to a tablet in order to do real work, you've already lost. I would submit that this would *not* be the demise of the desktop. Rather, it's an admission that OS and app creators don't understand the touch paradigm.
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Enh. If you have to attach a keyboard and mouse to a tablet in order to do real work, you've already lost. I would submit that this would *not* be the demise of the desktop.
When you plug a mouse, KB and monitor into a tablet, the tablet has not destroyed the desktop PC, the tablet has become the desktop PC.
I'll put money on this happening, as components get smaller, more powerful machines will be created in smaller form factors. Hell, my Galaxy Nexus is as powerful as my 2002 gaming box (Pentium 3, Geforce 4), Within a year I expect phones to surpass my 2005 gaming box (Athlon 64, Geforce 6600) which would make them almost as powerful as a PS3.
Rather, it's an admission that OS and app creators don't understand the touch paradigm.
This is not true. You can have
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It's not the Desktop paradigm that is important. Rather, it's the freedom to tinker with one's machine, something that Android not only allows but promotes (at least fundamentally, given its FOSS/open-source nature).
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Call me when Android development doesn't suck.
(Because right now, it sucks. Even Apple and RIM are ahead there. How sad is that?)
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If that were true then why do I see all these monkeys with iPhones?
Oh...
It all makes sense now, thanks!