OS Install Fest -- Sort Of

[bedouin]

I finally tried Ubuntu 11 after hearing the hatred surrounding it.  My reaction, it's not real bad.  I commend them for trying something new interface wise instead of copying Windows and MacOS.  Some annoyances to iron out I'm sure, but overall it's looking good. 

Windows 7.  I've also heard that this is, "Windows finally done right."  What's done right about it?  Changes under the hood?  Who cares.  The interface is ass ugly and unintuitive.  I could run XP and use less resources for the same thing.  Matter of fact, Windows 2000 was as close to 'right' the OS could have ever been.  If all I wanted was a stable OS I'd run OpenBSD and would be writing this in Lynx.

iOS 5.  Notifications are a nice addition (cue Android fanboys) and a few additions here and there.  Not groundbreaking, but welcome.

WebOS.  Coming soon.

[reactosguy]

Windows 7.  I've also heard that this is, "Windows finally done right."  What's done right about it?  Changes under the hood?  Who cares.  The interface is ass ugly and unintuitive.

This is just consumers being stupid and thinking aesthetics equals usability.

Windows 7 has a fugly GUI for fuck's sake, and now they have the damn Ribbon on Paint and WordPad. Microsoft is also removing support for Windows XP in 2014, but XP has always been the better OS if one were to talk about Windows.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I don't know whether Windows 7 is better or not but I've used it once and hated the UI. Microsoft seem to be going worse, UI wise. Every Windows version seems to have a harder to use UI than the previous. I have lots of the XP features turned off. The XP control panel UI requires more clicks to navigate to the correct application and the search is horrible.

I know it's not completely my fault for not being used to the UI. I've used other non-Microsoft OSes and prefer the UI.

[piratePenguin]

Computers are changing.  But it's not the changes in Windows 7 and new Ubuntus that are worth a damn: try Google Chrome or Amazon Fire.

Amazon Fire has a new WebKit-based browser called 'Silk' that actually connects to Amazons SUPERMASSIVE and super well-connected datacenters and sends back an optimized version of the web suitable for your device. Kinda like how Opera sends out optimized pages, but Silk even models your behavior and starts sending likely pages you will click on next. I think everything comes in one packet rather than stupid HTTP requests back and fourth for every single resource (as many as tens/hundreds on a manys of pages). I don't think the connection is persistent, but as you can imagine anywhere in the world the connection to amazon servers will be superfast. (this raises huge privacy concerns but w/e)

So the effect we have is that the web is going to be quite close to native apps fairly soon in terms of responsiveness.

Additionally - and I've been expecting this for a while - devices (and especially non-Apple devices) are becoming SUPERCHEAP and also the producers are making MORE and MORE money from content distribution systems. I've heard reports that Amazon are actually selling the Fire at BELOW COST. Also, I got a Kindle in June this year (now pretty outdated!!) and I have free unlimited 3G internet on it everywhere in the world for browsing and downloading books .

Will these concepts make it into the future???????????? No question.

Google are clearly getting into the same space and they would love to pull off some Silk-like job (this is a HUGE job and afaik Amazon are in some sense worlds ahead of google when it comes to what they can do with their datacenters). I don't give a balls about Android Google Chrome OS is going to do amazing things. E.g. every new student in my university will be getting a free Chromebook starting next year (these aren't cheap and all our universities are broke so I've no idea how this is to be funded - probably Google paying for a cheap experiment and cheap PR/marketing).

Anyways, there are limited jobs we want to do on our computers and not on the web. Take a look at what computer you're using right now. What would you miss if it was 10 times more compact, made no noise, lasted you 2 weeks without a recharge and generated no heat, was constantly connected to the web anywhere in the world and could run limited native applications beyond a web-browser? Perhaps some work-related stuff, but you bet there's a plan to fix that problem and in any case, there are at least a billion people who would take such a cheap/free device, and spend 5 hours a day on it.

The future is the web, the troubling thing is if Apple get their way the future is an Apple store.

[piratePenguin]

I think I dont need to explain why MS isn't mentioned in the above.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Anyways, there are limited jobs we want to do on our computers and not on the web. Take a look at what computer you're using right now. What would you miss if it was 10 times more compact, made no noise, lasted you 2 weeks without a recharge and generated no heat, was constantly connected to the web anywhere in the world and could run limited native applications beyond a web-browser?

The size would piss me off. I like having a real real keyboard, a nice mouse and a large TFT monitor. I hate the tiny touch screens on portable devices.

I've been contemplating getting a laptop for awhile but could never justify it. Recently a friend gave me their oly Thinkpad T42 which has an old Pentium M processor 1GB RAM and a 40GB hard drive, which is fine but I still use my desktop most of the time.

I wouldn't touch a smart phone, even if someone gave me one for free, I probably wouldn't use it for anything else but texting and phoning people.

A laptop with the features you're talking about would be nice but if I had one it would probably spend most of its life in a docking station connected to my big fat TFT monitor, keyboard and mouse.