‘Starting’ to look cult-like? Really?
Hoping for Microsoft's mythical Andromeda in your Xmas stocking? Don't hold your breath
Finding a new form factor for personal computing is harder than Microsoft thought. Reports suggest Redmond has gone back to the drawing board for its "Andromeda" handheld device due to incomplete software. So the mythical computer looks like the victim of another Redmond reorg. In March, the Windows and Devices Group (WDG) was …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 5th July 2018 12:40 GMT Dan 55
Keep Windows off it.
Netbooks were fine, then XP muscled in (remember, everybody was supposed to run W7 but MS couldn't make it happen), then specs had to be increased to run Windows properly and the price went up, then W7 got squeezed onto them, then the form factor died as the price matched bigger more expensive laptops.
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Friday 6th July 2018 06:45 GMT werdsmith
No, UK was a big market but, Psion 5 was sold in a lot of other countries, they did loads of localised keyboards. I can remember looking at them in one of those electronics shop windows in Times Square NY, weighing up the pricing. PSion 7 and netbook were in there too.
Then Swedish Ericsson had the MC218 which was a badged Psion 5MX.
A lot of Gemini customers have mentioned being former Psion users in other countries.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 11:34 GMT werdsmith
Sailfish has become my saviour OS on Gemini, I haven't booted the wretched Android since installing it.
Given the outcome for any phone hardware business that gets touched by the Microsoft poison (Sendo, Nokia) I really do hope that Gemini's business becomes strong enough that they can afford to say no to Microsoft waving big cheques about.
Thankfully the IoT windows fizzled out on Raspberry Pi, they proved they don't need it.
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Friday 6th July 2018 08:12 GMT AMBxx
It will be interesting to see if the multiple, specialised devices idea takes off. Personally, I like the idea of a very small clamshell phone (think old Nokia) with a second, potentially linked device with keyboard etc. My BB Priv is too big as a phone, but too small for real work. Combination of devices without carrying a laptop could work.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 11:58 GMT johnnyblaze
MS hardware is a shit-show. Just look at Surface, a 'premium' brand that's so buggy and unreliable some owners are on their 2nd or 3rd replacement. MS therefore, can't even get their own hardware and software working properly, and yet still think their important enough that they can create a whole new market for a product that nobody is even asking for. It wouldn't surprise me if MS pull out of hardware altogether - it's certainly not a fit fot SatNad's cloud ambitions.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 12:10 GMT Dave 126
Microsoft Hardware
I get the impression that the Surface computers were MS's attempt to show up other Windows PC vendors poor efforts - low res 16:9 displays and shoddy trackpads were the norm - whilst threatening to step on Apple's lawn (specifically hardware suitable for professional graphics applications). It doesn't matter too much to MS if you run Windows on a Surface or on a Dell or Lenovo, as long as you arent running MacOS. It seems to have worked, since mobile PC hardware has markedly improved.
And I'm pleased to draw attention to a non 16:9 laptop (other than a 3:2 Surface or 16:10 MacBook): The Huawei Matebook X Pro - high Res 3:2 screen, discrete Nvidia graphics as an option. Finally!
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Thursday 5th July 2018 19:22 GMT Kristian Walsh
Re: Microsoft Hardware
The keyboards for the Surface range are done by the same group that does Microsoft's standalone keyboards, and they're really very good. The Surface Book keyboard has a good claim to be the best on a current* laptop: that gap when closed allowed them to fit a keyboard with proper amount of key travel.
(* barring that special model they did last year, new ThinkPads really aren't old ThinkPads)
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Thursday 5th July 2018 16:00 GMT Mike 16
MSFT Hardware
Well, MSFT has presumably long wanted to have their hardware considered on a par with the reliability and polish of Apple kit. Apple has been happy to help them achieve parity.
That said, in my mostly MSFT-free computing life, one (or three, depending how one counts) of my favorite compute-on-the-go products has been the Kyocera laptop (TRS-80 model 100, Olivetti M10, NEC 8201) that, IIRC, was spec'd by MSFT, with some software written by BillG himself. Runs for days on AA batteries that you can get even in places where clean water and reliable power are in the distant future.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 16:55 GMT arctic_haze
Cargo cult
Or rather a millennial one. The followers believe that the thing they wait for (end of the world or Surface Phone) will come on such and such date, and when the date arrives and nothing happens, they happily switch to another date.
Maybe human psychology makes us do such stupid things?
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Thursday 5th July 2018 17:37 GMT Miss Config
Drawing BOARD ? Isn't There SOFTWARE For Drawing ?
Redmond has gone back to the drawing board for its "Andromeda" handheld
If Microsoft want to do 'Drawing' surely there must be SOFTWARE that does that kind of thing ?
Somewhere. They might even be really radical and look up a supplier on the interweb.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 17:44 GMT Philip Stott
Maybe it’s just me, but ...
I’ve bought 2 Surface products; a Surface Pro 2 and the first gen SurfaceBook, and I’ve been more than happy with both.
The Surface Pro 2 was bought for mainly tablet usage, but with the ability to run Visual Studio if a client had an urgent problem while I was on a train, or otherwise away from the office.
The SurfaceBook I couldn’t love more. The best laptop I’ve ever had. It’s mostly used for development, so what I want is fast compile time and it does that in spades. This machine seems more than the sum of it’s parts as I have an almost identically specced Lenovo laptop that comparably runs like a dog.
I realise this sounds a bit “gushing”, so I should point out that as it cost two and half grand, I’d be almighty f***** off if it wasn’t good.
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Friday 6th July 2018 09:18 GMT Geoff Campbell
Re: Maybe it’s just me, but ...
Similarly blissfully happy Surface Pro 4 user here. Had it for over two years, and had no urge to ever use anything else, as discussed in other threads hereabouts recently.
I think the ZDNet article on Andromeda is being massively overblown. The project hasn't been cancelled, and hasn't ever had a release date so it cannot have been put back. You can pretty much summarise the article as "rumours and whispers that we made up nixed by official software release cycle".
GJC
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Thursday 5th July 2018 17:47 GMT Mage
Windows 10?
Windows ANYTHING is a kiss of death for anything other than desktop. They've done their best to drive people from it too with the stupidity of Win8 & Win10.
They need a desktop with best of NT4, Win2K, XP (Win7 was only a fixup of Vista, maybe use some bits of it).
Windows Phone, & Arm surface shows that a non-desktop MS system should NEVER EVER be called Windows ever again. Windows CE wasn't Windows. No "pocket" device can be windows as it needs a different GUI.
Desktop windows need legacy APIs, and x86-64, full backwards compatibility to all NT applications and many 16 & 32 bit non-NT Windows apps via NTVDM, WOW, etc. Not experimental new APIs and Run anywhere programs and a Store and slurping, XBox, VR etc all integrated.
MS are a mess since 2004.
Different platforms need tweaked OS, different GUI and different applications apart from perhaps simple widget like email and pure text note taking, or music / video playback.
A Browser made to have same GUI on mobile & desktop is crippled on Desktop. By all means use some commonality below GUI.
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Thursday 5th July 2018 18:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Maybe not so niche?
We've been rolling out a range of mobis across the organisation and the Samsung Note 8 with stylus is proving surprisingly popular despite the outsize form-factor. Of course they'll all running MSFT apps for Android and Skype for Business, managed by Intune.
A foldable device that doesn't suffer from the shitfest that is Android could well appeal to 20% of end-users
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Thursday 5th July 2018 18:16 GMT J. Cook
Re: Maybe not so niche?
You also forgot the shitfest that is Samsung delivering updates for a device right up to the day they EOL the thing, and then you are boned regardless of how much useful life is left in the thing. I have an elderly Note8 from 2013-ish that the stock firmware stopped getting updated right around 18 months after getting it. Lineage... walks on it, rather than runs. (and is missing a bunch of useful features, like the stylus and usable sound)
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