Xbox One

[megido-rev.M]

Would you relieve stress by buying the XBone?

[Tanis]

Smart idea. Are you a student?

Yep.
I'm in my last semester, with the majority of my bills paid for by student aid (yay decent grades in HS!), so my saving to cover is based on the average cost of living in the nearest 'big city'.

Given how few hours I'm getting (lots of workers, few jobs, small town) it's kind of amazing I managed to save this much.

That is really great but you don't have to go with out either.... You have to have blow money also and buying something new every once in a while helps relieve stress.

I thought that's what porn was for?
XD

[AceHigh]

Indeed, masturbation is free.

[Tanis]

Would you relieve stress by buying the XBone?

I've written this before, and I'll write it again...

I am not buying ANY of the next-gen consoles at launch.

I'll wait AT LEAST a year, so most of the bugs can be ironed out.

[revo]

Well, this isn't news. Kinect being part of Xbone has been the selling point from the very start. The real victory is the added function where you can disable Kinect. Disable and throw Kinect somewhere behind TV, problem solved.

Until they release a OFW update that FORCES you to use Kinect.

I trust MS about as much as I trust the NSA.

Speaking of which: LEAKED: German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA

So glad I have windows 7 and am reusing it for my next build.....

to bad windows 7 is ancient ,it does not use all cpu capabilities so encoding is faster on windows 8 even more on ubuntu

[ThePlaneJet]

Well, this isn't news. Kinect being part of Xbone has been the selling point from the very start. The real victory is the added function where you can disable Kinect. Disable and throw Kinect somewhere behind TV, problem solved.

Until they release a OFW update that FORCES you to use Kinect.

I trust MS about as much as I trust the NSA.

Speaking of which: LEAKED: German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA

So glad I have windows 7 and am reusing it for my next build.....

to bad windows 7 is ancient ,it does not use all cpu capabilities so encoding is faster on windows 8 even more on ubuntu

Wonder how many people actually read then research stuff like that.

[Gh0st93]

I use to use nothing but Ubuntu but will probably be doing fedora 90% of the time with windows for odds and ends.....

[megido-rev.M]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within a year’s time

[Gh0st93]

Wonder if that was fully by his choice...

[megido-rev.M]

Maybe. Apparently the stock price went up.

[Gh0st93]

Sounds like a good time to jump ship.

[sawakosadako]

Speaking of which: LEAKED: German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA

This is why DRM is such a bad idea to begin with.

I wish I could install Win7, but my laptop came with Win8...and wouldn't ALLOW me to install Win7 for some reason.

:/

It's probably because of UEFI, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI. I haven't tried it with windows 7 but I don't think it's that different.

Looks I'm right, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417359,00.asp

[megido-rev.M]

That's quite a bit of work for downgrading Win8.

[Bob2004]

I wish I could install Win7, but my laptop came with Win8...and wouldn't ALLOW me to install Win7 for some reason.

:/

It's probably because of UEFI, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI. I haven't tried it with windows 7 but I don't think it's that different.

Looks I'm right, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417359,00.asp

Yeah, it's not a hardware issue at all, Microsoft just included a thing called secure boot in UEFI which blocks you from installing any OS other than Windows 8 on that PC. If you go into the BIOS-equivalent (whatever it's called in UEFI) and disable secure boot, you should be able to then just install Win 7 easily.

A general principle of business is that having a monopoly, or even just an overwhelmingly large market share, is actually bad for your company rather than good for it, and so you should generally avoid getting yourselves into that situation. Some companies even go as far as to fund new competitor companies in whatever market they're in to ensure it doesn't happen.

Microsoft are a very good example of exactly why market domination is a bad thing. The most common reason given for not dominating a market is that you get complacent, and it stifles innovation in the market. Eventually your products will stagnate so much that you'll be dislodged by other startup companies swooping in and shaking things up all at once - this is already happening with the OS market, and MS are not able to react quickly enough.

The other reason, which seems to be fairly unique to a company like MS, is that they've got into the bad habit of thinking that everybody is dependent on their products, everybody uses them, and as such nobody can use any others - and therefore, rather than making things they think people want to buy, they can just make something then force it on customers instead, because they have no choice but to use it. This attitude permeates the entire company, and the Xbone is a great example of it (as is Windows 8 ). However, they do not have that strong a grip even on the OS market, let alone the console market, so that attitude of theirs is going to be their undoing, I believe.

MS has many other major problems too, but those are the main ones. I think it would be too optimistic to say that it will lead to the death of the company any time soon, though we can always hope, but if they don't learn their lesson sharpish, they're going to find themselves in a rather sticky situation.

Well, that was meant to just be a brief summary of my opinion, but it dragged on a bit there - sorry. Basically, I think MS suck and they are going to pay for it in the relatively near future.

[halfelite]

Microsoft are a very good example of exactly why market domination is a bad thing. The most common reason given for not dominating a market is that you get complacent, and it stifles innovation in the market. Eventually your products will stagnate so much that you'll be dislodged by other startup companies swooping in and shaking things up all at once - this is already happening with the OS market, and MS are not able to react quickly enough.

The other reason, which seems to be fairly unique to a company like MS, is that they've got into the bad habit of thinking that everybody is dependent on their products, everybody uses them, and as such nobody can use any others - and therefore, rather than making things they think people want to buy, they can just make something then force it on customers instead, because they have no choice but to use it. This attitude permeates the entire company, and the Xbone is a great example of it (as is Windows . However, they do not have that strong a grip even on the OS market, let alone the console market, so that attitude of theirs is going to be their undoing, I believe.

As much as people like to think Microsoft still and will have the OS market on lock down. When they dominate over 80% of the market its there's to do as they like. And as much as people like to say there is alternatives there is no alternatives 90% of business grade software is windows only this is your CRM's your ERP,s, Then you have exchange server which almost any business uses then in turn they run AD, So its still and will be for a long time Microsoft OS world. There is no replacement.

[sawakosadako]

That's quite a bit of work for downgrading Win8.

I think they offer you for an easy downgrade but you can't use your own copy of windows so you have to buy another one for the easy downgrade.

Microsoft are a very good example of exactly why market domination is a bad thing. The most common reason given for not dominating a market is that you get complacent, and it stifles innovation in the market. Eventually your products will stagnate so much that you'll be dislodged by other startup companies swooping in and shaking things up all at once - this is already happening with the OS market, and MS are not able to react quickly enough.

The other reason, which seems to be fairly unique to a company like MS, is that they've got into the bad habit of thinking that everybody is dependent on their products, everybody uses them, and as such nobody can use any others - and therefore, rather than making things they think people want to buy, they can just make something then force it on customers instead, because they have no choice but to use it. This attitude permeates the entire company, and the Xbone is a great example of it (as is Windows . However, they do not have that strong a grip even on the OS market, let alone the console market, so that attitude of theirs is going to be their undoing, I believe.

As much as people like to think Microsoft still and will have the OS market on lock down. When they dominate over 80% of the market its there's to do as they like. And as much as people like to say there is alternatives there is no alternatives 90% of business grade software is windows only this is your CRM's your ERP,s, Then you have exchange server which almost any business uses then in turn they run AD, So its still and will be for a long time Microsoft OS world. There is no replacement.

They don't own the 80% of mobile market and I think it's pretty obvious that the future is in the mobile computing.

[Bob2004]

That's quite a bit of work for downgrading Win8.

I think they offer you for an easy downgrade but you can't use your own copy of windows so you have to buy another one for the easy downgrade.

Microsoft are a very good example of exactly why market domination is a bad thing. The most common reason given for not dominating a market is that you get complacent, and it stifles innovation in the market. Eventually your products will stagnate so much that you'll be dislodged by other startup companies swooping in and shaking things up all at once - this is already happening with the OS market, and MS are not able to react quickly enough.

The other reason, which seems to be fairly unique to a company like MS, is that they've got into the bad habit of thinking that everybody is dependent on their products, everybody uses them, and as such nobody can use any others - and therefore, rather than making things they think people want to buy, they can just make something then force it on customers instead, because they have no choice but to use it. This attitude permeates the entire company, and the Xbone is a great example of it (as is Windows . However, they do not have that strong a grip even on the OS market, let alone the console market, so that attitude of theirs is going to be their undoing, I believe.

As much as people like to think Microsoft still and will have the OS market on lock down. When they dominate over 80% of the market its there's to do as they like. And as much as people like to say there is alternatives there is no alternatives 90% of business grade software is windows only this is your CRM's your ERP,s, Then you have exchange server which almost any business uses then in turn they run AD, So its still and will be for a long time Microsoft OS world. There is no replacement.

They don't own the 80% of mobile market and I think it's pretty obvious that the future is in the mobile computing.

Exactly. When you control 80% of the market, you control 80% of the market. The problem comes when the market evolves - as it inevitably does - and the products people want change. A company which dominates the market gets complacent, and tends to end up just making the same products to meet the same demand. When that demand changes, as it is now with the rise of mobile and cloud computing, the company fails to react quickly enough, and is dislodged by other companies.

Operating systems for standalone personal computers are, bit by bit, being replaced by mobile OSes like Android and iOS, because that's what consumers are increasingly beginning to use. As you can see, Microsoft have only just begun to wake up to this change, and their initial offerings are very uninspiring. Their main effort still seems to be to try and adapt their current product - Windows - to fill this new demand, hence Windows 8, but that was never going to work.

That second paragraph you quoted was referring more to the way that their "We control everything, the customers will just do whatever we want, and so there's no need to try and make what they want" attitude, which has historically been true of the desktop OS market, to an extent, has permeated the rest of their business, and effects all their other products too. A fine example being the Xbone, where they haven't paid the slightest bit of attention to what customers want, and instead just came up with a product which suits them, then tried to sell that. You can see it in other product offerings of theirs too - Games for Windows Live is another good gaming-related example, though you could argue that that was just an attempt to copy Steam.

[zherok]

though you could argue that that was just an attempt to copy Steam.

It's more just a top service with little perceived value. The fact that it's even a store is kinda obscure (incidentally, the PC store apparently closed three days ago.) And for what it's worth, GFWL regularly works on top of Steam titles.

I suspect that initially it was planned as a straight port of their 360 Live service, but they'd pretty much abandoned PC gaming by that point so there was absolutely no reason for anyone to want to pay for it. The fact that they'd willfully sabotage their own PC holdings just to ensure a game was exclusive to their console didn't help things.

[halfelite]

Exactly. When you control 80% of the market, you control 80% of the market. The problem comes when the market evolves - as it inevitably does - and the products people want change. A company which dominates the market gets complacent, and tends to end up just making the same products to meet the same demand. When that demand changes, as it is now with the rise of mobile and cloud computing, the company fails to react quickly enough, and is dislodged by other companies.

Operating systems for standalone personal computers are, bit by bit, being replaced by mobile OSes like Android and iOS, because that's what consumers are increasingly beginning to use. As you can see, Microsoft have only just begun to wake up to this change, and their initial offerings are very uninspiring. Their main effort still seems to be to try and adapt their current product - Windows - to fill this new demand, hence Windows 8, but that was never going to work.

That second paragraph you quoted was referring more to the way that their "We control everything, the customers will just do whatever we want, and so there's no need to try and make what they want" attitude, which has historically been true of the desktop OS market, to an extent, has permeated the rest of their business, and effects all their other products too. A fine example being the Xbone, where they haven't paid the slightest bit of attention to what customers want, and instead just came up with a product which suits them, then tried to sell that. You can see it in other product offerings of theirs too - Games for Windows Live is another good gaming-related example, though you could argue that that was just an attempt to copy Steam.

But the market is not evolving that way fast enough. The problem has always been business class users, For every home PC there is almost always a work PC counter part, And while yes people are moving towards mobile platforms that kicker is they use there mobile platform and rdp/citrix into a windows based setup to do business, So while yes we are moving mobile believe it or not Microsoft is one of the first to adopt a lot of there programs to the "cloud" to be accessed from other platforms, You have have office 365 to bring office to any platform, and dynamics CRM just came out with multi browser support as well, But the problem still comes down to, yes your business could subscribe to office 365 online and dynamics CRM online. But again both integrate heavily with exchange and the second your move to on premise with any of these solutions you are back in a microsoft only world again.

While they might lose ground to the regular consumer market the business market alone will still be enough to keep it on top. It would take some of the heavy hitters to adopt the programs to interact better with IOS/Android and so far not many companies are putting time and money into though platforms.

[megido-rev.M]

That's quite a bit of work for downgrading Win8.

I think they offer you for an easy downgrade but you can't use your own copy of windows so you have to buy another one for the easy downgrade.

Yet another ripoff.