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[Truean]

Eh.  Talk to absolutely anybody in the tech industry, especially end-users like IT departments and computer-reliant businesses, and they'll call you Chicken Little.  Certainly the home user market is a huge huge part of Microsoft's business, but the commercial/industrial side of computing is equally gigantic.  And Microsoft knows as well as anyone knows that à la carte, one size fits all, boutique computing is useless for industry.  Its also a market full of tech-savvy businesses who would be more than happy to turn to or even generate a replacement for the Microsoft server ecology if they found themselves saddled with endless micropayments and hobbled extensibility.

Microsoft can turn personal computers into cell-phones because your average customer has no idea that it could be any different.  Anybody who works with serious computing networks for a living would know it's bunk.  And certainly such a shift is not reflected in that branch of Microsoft's business - the latest versions of all their Windows Server OS's and applications look like they were designed in 1998 for robots, and they fucking give away free ISOs of most niche-OS variations on their website.

For as long as this dynamic exists, free-to-use sessile computers will still be available, and as along as they're available, there will be an industry to supply for them.

While I was talking about the home computing market, I dunno man. I think it really comes down to cost in business settings. Although, I admit I can't really comment on the business area, my admittedly overly suspicious self wonders how the money will dictate this in that setting. Smaller computers, smaller workspace, less rent.... Shoving people into smaller and smaller offices, cubicles, workstations?

I still stand by what I said about the home computing market as a long term trend though. It's been all about miniaturization there for a long, long time. Miniaturization and recently, portability.... Laptops, notebooks, etc. I don't really think that part about them trying to make everything into a cell phone for your average person is too far out there.

Cost structure for that? Who knows What it will end up being.

[Sensei]

I don't care too much, so long s they don't pull a Skyrim on the interface.

[Sir Finkus]

I don't care too much, so long s they don't pull a Skyrim on the interface.

I've got some bad news for you...

The new start menu

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm usually pretty tolerant when it comes to new interfaces, but this thing is just terrible. There doesn't seem to be a unified taskbar or anything, and switching between "metro" applications and ones that are actually useful is extremely jarring.  It almost feels like you're running two different OSes.

You have to learn how to use two entirely different interfaces, with completely different methods of interaction. Buttons do entirely different things in the desktop view than they do in the metro view.

The sad part is that metro by itself would probably make a decent interface for a tablet, or a media center pc, or even a desktop for grandma.  It would have been better as a part of a separate operating system, not shoehorned into Windows.

[nenjin]

Yes but MS learned that they can't leverage just the name to sell products. Windows phones, anyone? No one uses them. Without leveraging their domination of the desktop OS market, their chances are succeeding against their battle-proven competitors is much slimmer. While I don't like it, it has the feeling of do or die for MS.

[Shakerag]

You know ... it wouldn't surprise me if we do get to a point where all "PCs" are basically smart phones, and your traditional desktop computer is just a docking station for your handheld which connects to a monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers/extra usb slots.  That might actually be kind of interesting. 

But, either way, big iron (read: mainframes) will still be there in the background, holding everyone's data.  And likely still running programs that were written in the 70's. 

[Lord Shonus]

Not a chance. There's no real way that a phone or tablet can equal the performance of a full desktop. Not only are processors nearing the theoretical performance limit, which means that mutiple cores are going to be the way to improve processing power, but tablets and phone processors have to be hobbled in performance to reduce heat, because there's not a lot of cooling capability in that kind of formfactor. Performance is a huge issue in many, many applications. Video editing (beyond simply changing encoding), model rendering, and similar task will always be RAM/CPU hungry. Even simple database searches, if done in sufficent quantity, can stress a system. For this reason alone, desktops will stick around. The netbook is doomed. That's fine, it was a stupid gimmick anyway. Laptops may fade away. But the performance gap between mobiles and servers will always be too great to kill off the desktop. This new trend is nothing more than an (overdue) integration of new concepts into ui design.

[Truean]

I don't care too much, so long s they don't pull a Skyrim on the interface.

Yes, [sigh] I like the idea of Skyrim so much so that I actually bought the game. The mouse lag alone, even after the "fix" in the ini file is terrible. For those who might not know off the top of your head, the issue with Skyrim is that it is a game meant to run on multiple gaming platforms. The game has menus that are really not made for a mouse PC desktop system, but rather for a game console with a controller interface. It makes it so you sometimes almost have to use arrow keys and keyboard commands to navigate the menus, or at least it's far, far easier that way (comparatively).

I agree with Shonus to an extent. I know I've had long microsoft word documents for legal research that bog down a new PC desktop. I dunno about the integration of UI designs entirely though. I don't have to care about tablet friendly features on my desktop. The idea of a virtual keyboard makes no sense there when I can have a physical one for less money/hassle. Also I'm loving the dual/multiple monitors thing of the desktop. Likewise there are certain things exclusive to a tablet/phone that sorta need to be there without caring about a desktop.

In summation: do you get custom tailored clothes or one size fits all. <--- Matter of opinion?

[nenjin]

When we've gotten the cost of artificial diamond components down to a rational level, we're going to see huge leaps forward in micro-computing. Right now though, yeah, heat is probably the root issue of many mobile devices. They could have bigger batteries, GPUs, CPUs, weigh a few more pounds.....but the issue of having a device generating 100F+ temps in your hand is something that can't be ignored.

[Aklyon]

Not a chance. There's no real way that a phone or tablet can equal the performance of a full desktop. Not only are processors nearing the theoretical performance limit, which means that mutiple cores are going to be the way to improve processing power, but tablets and phone processors have to be hobbled in performance to reduce heat, because there's not a lot of cooling capability in that kind of formfactor. Performance is a huge issue in many, many applications. Video editing (beyond simply changing encoding), model rendering, and similar task will always be RAM/CPU hungry. Even simple database searches, if done in sufficent quantity, can stress a system. For this reason alone, desktops will stick around. The netbook is doomed. That's fine, it was a stupid gimmick anyway. Laptops may fade away. But the performance gap between mobiles and servers will always be too great to kill off the desktop. This new trend is nothing more than an (overdue) integration of new concepts into ui design.

Darn, you beat me to it.

Either way though, the Ribbon is still completely and totally unnessesary in Explorer. Explorer is for finding and opening files, and unless people are getting more and more dumb by the year, you should'nt require giant buttons taking up a good chunk of the screen to do simple tasks.

[Neonivek]

This is sounding like Microsoft Word 2007 all over again (Which I HATE!!! Honestly who wants Double space by default and to have to reset it on every single page?)

Everyone perfers 2007 except me though.

[Lord Shonus]

Not a chance. There's no real way that a phone or tablet can equal the performance of a full desktop. Not only are processors nearing the theoretical performance limit, which means that mutiple cores are going to be the way to improve processing power, but tablets and phone processors have to be hobbled in performance to reduce heat, because there's not a lot of cooling capability in that kind of formfactor. Performance is a huge issue in many, many applications. Video editing (beyond simply changing encoding), model rendering, and similar task will always be RAM/CPU hungry. Even simple database searches, if done in sufficent quantity, can stress a system. For this reason alone, desktops will stick around. The netbook is doomed. That's fine, it was a stupid gimmick anyway. Laptops may fade away. But the performance gap between mobiles and servers will always be too great to kill off the desktop. This new trend is nothing more than an (overdue) integration of new concepts into ui design.

Darn, you beat me to it.

Either way though, the Ribbon is still completely and totally unnessesary in Explorer. Explorer is for finding and opening files, and unless people are getting more and more dumb by the year, you should'nt require giant buttons taking up a good chunk of the screen to do simple tasks.

From what I've seen of i8, there are definite advantages to it if, for example, you're viewing it an a TV from across the room, which is increasingly popular.

[Aklyon]

I could see that working on a TV screen, yeah. But I still don't like it.

[ChairmanPoo]

It might not even be a big bad conspiracy. Fact is, companies that stick to the tried and true tend to go under (just look at IBM, from quasimonopoly to beta rank). To stay on top they have to look for new potential markets for their products. In fact, I read an article recently in which they flamed microsoft for staying too much on the safe side with pcs and not betting more strongly into the emerging market of tablets and phones

[Aklyon]

Companies that try to be too cutting edge tend to go under much faster, though.

[nenjin]

To be fair, everyone seems like they were behind the ball when compared to Apple. Even people that were doing mobile devices before I-anything became popular. Blackberry was doing very well for itself and its market until the Iphone came along.