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posted by mattie_p on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the yes-microsoft-still-has-relevance dept.

A couple of interesting tidbits came out of Build 2014 yesterday. The conference is being streamed for those who cannot attend in person.

Microsoft Planning on $0 Windows for Some Devices

Apparently competition, combined with a desire for Microsoft to invade new market spaces, is applying downward pressure on the price of some forms of Windows licenses. Microsoft announced that Windows would be available at no cost for "Internet of Things" devices as well as for phones and tablets with screens less than 9 inches. Not included: Whether this applies to Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 RT, but the inclusion of "phones and tablets" leads me to believe that it will be the RT version.

Start Menu To Return To Windows 8.1

After nearly a year and a half since it was removed in Windows 8, the start menu is finally returning. The previews shown at BUILD show that live tiles (similar to those on Windows Phone) will be displayed side-by-side with the more traditional hierarchy of groups. No word on when this will finally be released to users.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by dotdotdot on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:42PM

    by dotdotdot (858) on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:42PM (#25676)

    Just when I finally get used to working without a start menu (by pinning icons to my task bar), they change it again.

    When Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 3, they called it Windows 7. Maybe they should just rename Windows 8.1 Update 1 to Windows 9.

    • (Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:22PM

      by mmcmonster (401) on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:22PM (#25821)

      The place where I work just started rolling out the first Windows 7 desktops. Lots of confusion from the people working on the floors. Things don't quite look right. Pinning is an unexpected behavior.

      If we could give WinXP another decade of life, it wouldn't be long enough.

      • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by starcraftsicko on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:36PM

        by starcraftsicko (2821) on Thursday April 03 2014, @08:36PM (#25832) Journal

        You almost seem to be saying that... WinXP was/is? the pinnacle of desktop OS design based on functionality and, most importantly, usability... which is remarkable given the Microsoft hate of a decade ago. Are maybe just averse to workforce training?

        --
        This post was created with recycled electrons.
        • (Score: 2) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:57PM

          by clone141166 (59) on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:57PM (#25917)

          What is remarkable is that Micro$oft managed to take an operating system that was pretty terrible (XP) and make it worse (Vista, Win8) to the point that it actually made its previous bad operating systems look amazing in comparison.

          • (Score: 2) by keplr on Friday April 04 2014, @01:08AM

            by keplr (2104) on Friday April 04 2014, @01:08AM (#25958) Journal

            XP Professional grew into a fine OS after three service packs and being hammered on for a decade. The only real "problems" with it are related to artificial version limitations that MS imposed in an effort to force people to upgrade (IE, Direct X, et al). We are going to see the same thing with Windows 7.

            They've already made their money back on XP. Anything else they could squeeze out of it is pure profit. They should have re-released it for $50 and another five years of support. MS follow the needs of other businesses, but MS have spent the last decade thinking the world works just the opposite; that they could control the flow of enterprise and dictate update paths and product life cycles. They can't. They shouldn't try. Sell what your customers want, and if that's more years of XP support then sell that while you're working on your Next Big Thing (TM).

            --
            I don't respond to ACs.
            • (Score: 1) by clone141166 on Friday April 04 2014, @02:48AM

              by clone141166 (59) on Friday April 04 2014, @02:48AM (#26008)

              Yes I have to concede that for certain common needs it was quite a capable operating system in the end - definitely in comparison to some of MS's later OS's.

              However, even XP was lacking (either completely or in configurability) a lot of what I would consider "basic" functionality and options that are available in *nix based operating systems.

  • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:55PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:55PM (#25680)

    I'm glad they're taking steps in the right direction, it's just too bad it took them so long. I'm liking the way things are running without Ballmer at the helm. Unfortunately the bad part of this is they're essentially giving people a reason to stick with windows, or at least reducing the reasons to abandon it.

    I know it's a controversial P.O.V that *a lot* of people disagree with, but I was looking forward to companies porting enterprise applications like CAD to another OSes, which would have been the only option if Windows became unusable as an enterprise OS. It looks like Satya Nadella recognizes where MS bread and butter is.

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:24PM (#25691)

      It looks like Satya Nadella recognizes where MS bread and butter is.

      CAL's and Office (which they are moving to a yearly sub rate). Everything else is about 'even' or at a loss.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:17PM

      by edIII (791) on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:17PM (#25777)

      Mr. Nadella recognizes one thing clearly, that Ballmer was just too plain arrogant to understand:

      The majority of people do not love Microsoft, do not love paying high dollar licensing fees, and do not love having to pay multiple expensive Microsoft certified engineers to keep their systems up

      This is very much like when the new method for aluminum was found and all of the sudden it was worth far less than gold. It simply doesn't cost hundreds of dollars in licensing and more than that in infrastructure and maintenance costs per employee to have productivity and collaboration software anymore.

      Mr. Nadella will do whatever it takes to preserve the vendor lock-in, and part of that is the fight for the consumer desktop as well as the enterprise desktop.

      In the company I was managing I pushed out Open Office simply due to the costs alone. Those savings allowed me to afford other SAAS that improved customer retention. The biggest problem? Training? No. Features? No. Compatibility? Yes.

      Microsoft and Adobe create a vendor lock-in stranglehold on industry. That only happens because Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum conspire together to create specific formats and features that will only work in Microsoft/Adobe software.

      Time and time again I would be called to deal with a PDF or Word document that had some strange encoding or encryption that no 3rd party reader could possibly deal with. I ended up creating a remote desktop machine for everyone that had a single copy of Word/Acrobat for those issues. Talking with the companies creating them was no help as usually the response was, "Just get Word/Acrobat and stop bothering us".

      If Mr. Nadella pushes the consumer and enterprise too far on the desktop and causes a mass migration it could upset that delicate vendor lock-in ecosystem that more than Adobe is cooperating with them to create.

      Open source is more than capable at this point of delivering all of the features (the useful and common ones) and that is driving the price down.

      I think Mr. Nadella knows that his only hope of keeping Microsoft alive is to preserve that vendor lock-in as long as possible till they can and have fully switched over to SAAS and Azure virtual machines for enterprise.

      Even then the revenue will be cut in half when all is said and done

      I bet the biggest thing he is pissed about is how Google can do it so cheaply since it figured out a way to be subsidized by the advertisers all across the world for everything they do.

      So I am not surprised in the least that they are bringing it back finally with Ballmer gone, or that they are planning free operating systems for mobile devices. Microsoft will do whatever it takes to remain relevant, which usually involves some form of vendor lock-in.

      It's finally starting to get ugly for Microsoft and in another 10 years you will see Microsoft start to struggle like Apple had when they almost had to call it quits.

      Less revenue, a war on all fronts, and mistrust and malcontent with the techies is not a recipe for long term success. They need something unique and high quality to compete in the future, not just relying on the people to be there because they have to.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by dotdotdot on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:30PM

        by dotdotdot (858) on Thursday April 03 2014, @09:30PM (#25876)

        ... Google can do it so cheaply since it figured out a way to be subsidized by the advertisers all across the world for everything they do.

        I don't see this as a good thing. I would rather pay for something up front than have it subsidized by selling my private data to advertisers.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 04 2014, @01:55AM

          by edIII (791) on Friday April 04 2014, @01:55AM (#25981)

          It most certainly is not a good thing.

          The Google paradigm is as damaging or more to end users and businesses. Government may be one thing, but advertisers are pure evil with no pretense of wanting to make things good for the consumer. They already have indexes and risk assessments for practically everything like whether or not I am likely to take my prescriptions on time, am I pregnant, am I gay, am I deadbeat, etc.

          Can we really trust Google to maintain our privacy and agree to not use the individual indexes they create for all of our communications and data? When there is that much money at stake and they literally require it to continue operating?

          I think the general consensus is no. They are just the competition to Microsoft by providing a very disruptive influence to whole scores of industries. They are like a true scourge in that way. Like we needed a new plague.

          As big as a problem that they are though, I cannot truly hate them as much as Microsoft for their behavior. Google can and does make tremendous code contributions to the global communities. They can be a little bit arrogant about how their way is the right way do it, but still they do push out quality product compared to the rest of the proprietary offerings.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by MrGuy on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:16PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:16PM (#25688)

    Microsoft's biggest, boldest new ideas are:
    * Fix our our own misguided usability disaster by going back to the way we've been doing things since 1995
    * Give away stuff that the market isn't interested in paying for free of charge.

    Cutting edge stuff, indeed!

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by DECbot on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:40PM

      by DECbot (832) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:40PM (#25699) Journal

      * Give away stuff that the market isn't interested in paying for free of charge.

      Isn't that repetitive of your other statement? They were giving away IE and the likes to gain market share for years now. Adding the OS to the mix isn't a stretch. Hell it comes on nearly every PC for "free" already.

      Though what is cutting edge is MS's SaaS offerings. I'm sure the bean counters would be happier writing a check to MS every month than having a bunch of engineers demanding server upgrades, larger IT budgets, CAL renewals, emergency server maintenance and related tech support fees. If they could remove the datacenter and all the techs and engineers related to having in house IT off the balance sheet, and only have one line item called MS IT Services they'd be happy. ---Well, as happy as an accountant can be. Perhaps vindicated and satisfied are better terms. Just write a check to MS for all things IT and then focus on what really matters, the company coffee budget and janitorial services. Can't let those get out of hand, it'd ruin the company.

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
      • (Score: 1) by spxero on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:44PM

        by spxero (3061) on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:44PM (#25746)

        It's odd what people perceive as value. Yesterday a friend on Facebook was complaining about having to pay for Office just to finish out her term papers so she could be become a nurse practitioner. However, when people bring up healthcare costs of course that's a worthwhile use for money spent. Among the comments left to her rant were mentions to use OpenOffice, Google Docs, and other similar software or services, all free. I think Microsoft is realizing that Word is about as good as it's going to get, the Office suite is about as good as it's going to get, and it's time to start expanding into the markets that they aren't in (read: iOS & Android) or they're going to be left behind.

        Of the family members I am around most, my wife only users her laptop to work on her schooling, my father-in-law has stopped using his desktop and laptop in favor of an iPad for everyday surfing, and my mother in law only uses her iPad once a week and doesn't own a computer. In discussions with my mom about getting new equipment for grandma a computer wasn't even in the discussion- the choice is either an Android tablet or an iPad. Of all these family members, I'm the only one that uses a computer on a regular basis, and most of that is for work. Microsoft's focus needs to be on supporting the data centers and business servers, because the end-user perception is that they don't need a computer. Focus on their formats being a de-facto standard and they'll eventually wedge their way into the mobile market.

        • (Score: 2) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:51PM

          by clone141166 (59) on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:51PM (#25914)

          I am currently studying a medical related degree also and it saddens and disappoints me how readily it is assumed that everyone will just be using Micro$oft Office. Most assignments *require* submission in .doc or .docx format - I just use OpenOffice and then convert to .doc prior to submission. Some subjects even go so far as to require the use of non-free fonts (Times New Roman). It would be nice if people were at least *aware* that other, less restrictive options exist beyond M$ Office.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by spxero on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:22PM

    by spxero (3061) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:22PM (#25690)

    I tried Windows 8 and 8.1 in some VMs before installing, thinking that the hot corners were just annoying and unusable because it was a VM. I was wrong. Without a touch screen it was the most unusable start menu interface I've used. I found it was easier to click, start typing, and then click again to start the program.

    Classic shell has been the best thing to put this machine back to useable. The fact that they are testing going back to a start menu shows the absurdity of the decision to do the tiles in the first place.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Lagg on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:03PM

    by Lagg (105) on Thursday April 03 2014, @06:03PM (#25711) Homepage Journal
    I'm seeing some comments here regretting that they are admitting defeat and putting back the start menu and therefore giving people less of a reason to move. But if that's your thing, look at the screenshot. Seriously. It looks like what would happen if you embedded a nested X server into the KDE start menu and then started a hacky tiled WM in it. I really doubt this is what people meant when they requested the start menu back.
    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
  • (Score: 1) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:06PM

    by clone141166 (59) on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:06PM (#25922)

    Just thought I would comment saying that I really liked that two important sub-stories under a single umbrella story (build conference) were carefully joined together into a single article. Imho it was a nice piece of editing mattie_p. Thank you! :)