Author Topic: Bill Gates leaves MS board  (Read 7956 times)

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Online nctnico

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #25 on: March 20, 2020, 01:29:46 am »
Many Linux advocates have been predicting Linux will widely replacing Windows on the desktop for over 20 years now and so far its market share has hardly increased at all. I can't see it happening any time soon
It is happening. Just not in offices where a Windows PC is nothing more than a glorified typewriter. Take these away and you'll see very high percentages. Linux is big enough in engineering that a lot of companies already have Linux support or are working on it.
Where's the evidence to support this? Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows. I believe OS X has gained more than Linux, due to the crappyness of Windows 10.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
But this is including the glorified typewriters  :palm: A while ago there was a poll on this forum showing 30% or so is primarily on Linux and another 30% is using Linux regulary. I have several customers which are using Linux as their primary OS. Windows is only on a few computers used for administrative work. Even Altium is working on a Linux version.
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Offline beanflying

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #26 on: March 20, 2020, 01:53:53 am »
Start a topic INDIRECTLY about Microsoft and get 20 posts about Linux supposed superiority :-DD

Gates for all his pros and cons over decades is now 64 more than a few of us would hope to be retired by about this time so why not he can afford it  :-+
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Offline BudTopic starter

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #27 on: March 20, 2020, 03:59:38 am »
Yes but it marks the end of the era, so to speak.
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Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #28 on: March 20, 2020, 06:06:59 am »
Nutthing wrong with W10 at all, just the performance and stability benefits are well worth it.

If it works for you then by all means use it. Personally I loathe it, I find the user interface absolutely fugly, the ridiculous mobile apps and promotional garbage that respawns frequently with the forced updates to be obnoxious, the way it "helpfully" removes software I installed because it thinks it isn't compatible, replaces working drivers with broken ones, updates whenever it damn well pleases, and many other things to be completely unacceptable. I hear they made the updates a little less obnoxious although one of the few friends I know who uses it still complains that every time he turns on that computer (runs his VR rig so not used all that often) he has to wait an hour for the stupid thing to install updates. Then there is the fact that Search is so utterly and completely broken, for such a fundamental feature that has been perfected for decades I don't even know how it manages to be so bad. I remember trying to find documents that I knew were on my laptop and it would start searching the @#%& internet for what I typed in. I got so fed up fighting with that OS that I swore I would never touch it again, it makes my blood pressure rise just thinking about it.

I spent a significant part of my early career working at MS and loved the company and many of the products at the time but now the only current MS product I still use is Office on my work Mac.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #29 on: March 20, 2020, 06:27:03 am »
Sounds like they finally got the message and improved a lot. Unfortunately it's too little too late, you only get one shot at a first impression and they screwed the pooch royally, my experience with it was *so* horrible that it put me off on it for good. It was so bad that it motivated me to shift most of my stuff over to Linux and the Mac I have for work and I never looked back. Once I was pushed away I realized I don't really need Windows anymore except for all the old software that requires it.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2020, 06:02:27 pm by james_s »
 

Online tautech

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #30 on: March 20, 2020, 06:28:50 am »
Sorta forced to use W10 James for customer tech support otherwise I might still be on W7 like many others. Ran a dual boot of 7 and 8.1 for a while for the same reason so got a good look at 8.1 before 10 came along and waited a while till it was sorted and made a headlong jump to 10 exclusively.
Been the W way since 3.11 and used most but not all W incarnations along the way and if nothing else learnt, unless you keep with the times updating to a much later W version is hard.
10 does all it's shit in the background as far as I'm concerned as has little effect on my daily doings other than the odd rare reboot after an update which is pretty fast if your OS is on a SSD. 15-20s boot times leave all other W versions for dead IME.
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Offline jancumps

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #31 on: March 20, 2020, 08:24:38 am »
That's the problem you get with […] people not giving people local admin rights because it supposedly sounds scary.

[…]

once I put my internal bias aside, and had local admin rights etc, it was better than W7. Until I hard deleted Cortana because it drove me nuts and as a consequence broke the search function...

Didn’t you just show why not giving local admin can be a good decision?
 

Offline all_repair

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #32 on: March 20, 2020, 08:49:37 am »
I don't think Microsoft will suddenly fail any time soon. I think it's more likely they'll just carry on as they are, without growing or shrinking much. There's no reason why the desktop is going to switch away from Windows and companies will always need desktop computers.
What I know is Each time when someone need to reinstall his machine, the chance he pays for another copy of his paid uSoft office is more than 50%.   For many I know, is 100% each time.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #33 on: March 20, 2020, 09:04:11 am »
Many Linux advocates have been predicting Linux will widely replacing Windows on the desktop for over 20 years now and so far its market share has hardly increased at all. I can't see it happening any time soon
It is happening. Just not in offices where a Windows PC is nothing more than a glorified typewriter. Take these away and you'll see very high percentages. Linux is big enough in engineering that a lot of companies already have Linux support or are working on it.
Where's the evidence to support this? Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows. I believe OS X has gained more than Linux, due to the crappyness of Windows 10.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
But this is including the glorified typewriters  :palm: A while ago there was a poll on this forum showing 30% or so is primarily on Linux and another 30% is using Linux regulary. I have several customers which are using Linux as their primary OS. Windows is only on a few computers used for administrative work. Even Altium is working on a Linux version.
But this forum represents a small subsection of desktop users.

I agree Windows 10 is a turd and am currently typing this from a Linux PC, but that won't change the fact that Linux has a comparatively small user base, compare to Windows and there are no signs of that changing soon.
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #34 on: March 20, 2020, 09:05:43 am »
Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows.

Because that number includes houesewives and gamers.
In engineering, that number is at least a ten times higher.
Even higher in software development.
 

Offline Electro Detective

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #35 on: March 20, 2020, 09:12:28 am »
Billy G got Win10Doh'D on his home PC, like MANY others   :horse:  and decided to get out while the getting was good

i.e. he knows it's a dud and isn't hanging around for any blow to his rep, or fingers crossed on Win 12   :-[

Smart guys know when to do a runner   :clap:

« Last Edit: March 20, 2020, 09:59:00 am by Electro Detective »
 

Offline ggchab

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #36 on: March 20, 2020, 09:19:32 am »
Today, Windows is simply an OS like any other OS and I don't think Microsoft is still making a lot of money with it. Many people moved for free to Windows 10 and its maintenance is probably very expensive. I would not even be surprised if one day, the kernel of Windows moved to a Linux kernel.
As for many other companies, the future of Microsoft is probably in services: Office 365, Sharepoint, ...
 

Offline beanflying

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #37 on: March 20, 2020, 09:25:21 am »
Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows.

Because that number includes houesewives and gamers.
In engineering, that number is at least a ten times higher.
Even higher in software development.

Show your evidence for this assertion or I call  :bullshit: And yet again Linux over Windoze is way off topic and has been thrashed to death so many times  :horse:
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Offline all_repair

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #38 on: March 20, 2020, 09:37:53 am »
What I know is Each time when someone need to reinstall his machine, the chance he pays for another copy of his paid uSoft office is more than 50%.   For many I know, is 100% each time.

Just happened to me. So I gave LO a try. To my surprise, LO has finally sorted out the Win10 sluggish issue and Win10 HiDPI issue.
So, no more MS Office for me.

BTW, each retail MS Office license can be activated 4 times on different machines, and no more than once per month.
For people like me who have a really bad luck with computers (bad pixels, bad memory, etc., all sorts of returns), the activation limit runs out pretty quickly.

Also just FYI, Office 365 can be roamed, so if you move form computer to computer frequently, 365 is not a bad choice.
As for me, I pay it, I need to own it. I ideologically repel the idea of subscription-based software.
But considering the activation mechanism essentially makes me not owning a perpetual license either, I'm saying goodbye to MS Office at all.

As for Windows, every computer from a big brand comes with a copy of it, and there are sorta illegal but working $15 Pro upgrade keys on the Internet, so $15 per computer change is acceptable for me.
For the average Joe, when they need to reinstall, they likely have lost the activation code, or didn't know they have to keep them at all  .
 

Offline Karel

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Offline golden_labels

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #41 on: March 20, 2020, 10:40:52 am »
With Windows Microsoft was caught in the trap of misunderstanding that software development is not like any other industry. Pieces of software do not wear out if you use them a lot, so there is no demand driven by the need for replacement or repair(1). Once a given problem is properly solved in software, there is very little room for further improvement (compared to other industries) and if any occurs it’s rarely perceived by the customer as worth paying for. You can’t sell a copy of an operating system and hope the user will come to you after 3 years to get a new version: it doesn’t have 2× larger image sensor, it’s not 2× faster, it doesn’t come packed with three times more features, it’s not half as cheap to run. As long as there are some things you didn’t solved in your product, you may expect demand, but later you end up with a product you must maintain indefinitely despite no one wants to pay for it anymore. With hope that perhaps technological progress will create new problems to solve, and forcing the customers to pay by preventing them from getting updates for older versions.(2)

Companies like Microsoft are built on the belief many early programmers had: that software development is not different than other industries, but they can develop a product once and then forever profit from it with little effort. Reality has shown that that effort is far from being small, but at the time no one knew this. But software development is different. Some of the differences were patched using state interventionism and creating the artificial market. Some other issues were addressed by practices like cutting users off from updates, intentionally introducing icompatibilities, damaging official documentation, producing problem to solve etc. But one can’t make money forever by going against reality.

Though I would be happy to see the world without Microsoft, I doubt there are any reasons to think they will fall anytime soon. The company may simply do what they were always doing: buy a product at bargain price from another company, polish it a bit, rebrand it as their own, sell at much higher price, and if competition comes — just FUD or EEE them.

____
(1) Though Windows is somehow an exception and requires periodic reinstalls or at least heavy renovation. ;)
(2) Not to be confused with the general EOL of LTS versions, which is only about platform stability.
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Offline Zero999

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #42 on: March 20, 2020, 11:45:41 am »
(Attachment Link)

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems
(Attachment Link)

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/what_s-your-main-operating-system/
Quickly Googling shows Linux is just under 1.9% which is tiny, compared to Windows.

Because that number includes houesewives and gamers.
In engineering, that number is at least a ten times higher.
Even higher in software development.
So, what's your point? I already knew that. Do you really think I didn't come across those statistics during my Google searches? Developers represent only a tiny percentage of the desktop computing market!

The only way I can see Linux increasing its desktop market share is by more causal users having their computing needs met more by games consoles, smartphones and tablet devices, than by desktop computers. If the Linux desktop market share increases, it'll be because the total number of desktop computers declines and it will be the Windows users who stop using them, leaving a proportionally higher number of Linux users, rather than more people using Linux.

With Windows Microsoft was caught in the trap of misunderstanding that software development is not like any other industry. Pieces of software do not wear out if you use them a lot, so there is no demand driven by the need for replacement or repair(1). Once a given problem is properly solved in software, there is very little room for further improvement (compared to other industries) and if any occurs it’s rarely perceived by the customer as worth paying for. You can’t sell a copy of an operating system and hope the user will come to you after 3 years to get a new version: it doesn’t have 2× larger image sensor, it’s not 2× faster, it doesn’t come packed with three times more features, it’s not half as cheap to run. As long as there are some things you didn’t solved in your product, you may expect demand, but later you end up with a product you must maintain indefinitely despite no one wants to pay for it anymore. With hope that perhaps technological progress will create new problems to solve, and forcing the customers to pay by preventing them from getting updates for older versions.(2)

Companies like Microsoft are built on the belief many early programmers had: that software development is not different than other industries, but they can develop a product once and then forever profit from it with little effort. Reality has shown that that effort is far from being small, but at the time no one knew this. But software development is different. Some of the differences were patched using state interventionism and creating the artificial market. Some other issues were addressed by practices like cutting users off from updates, intentionally introducing icompatibilities, damaging official documentation, producing problem to solve etc. But one can’t make money forever by going against reality.

Though I would be happy to see the world without Microsoft, I doubt there are any reasons to think they will fall anytime soon. The company may simply do what they were always doing: buy a product at bargain price from another company, polish it a bit, rebrand it as their own, sell at much higher price, and if competition comes — just FUD or EEE them.

____
(1) Though Windows is somehow an exception and requires periodic reinstalls or at least heavy renovation. ;)
(2) Not to be confused with the general EOL of LTS versions, which is only about platform stability.

Software doesn't wear out but hardware does and software will always need to be modified to run on newer hardware. Try installing MS-DOS and 3.1 on a modern machine and using it to post here and watch YouTube.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2020, 11:50:53 am by Zero999 »
 

Offline rdl

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #43 on: March 20, 2020, 12:08:48 pm »
It's actually kind of funny, Microsoft generated so much bad press for themselves with the release of Windows 10 that many people were turned against it without ever seeing it or using it.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #44 on: March 20, 2020, 12:28:33 pm »
Developers represent only a tiny percentage of the desktop computing market!
But developers and engineers (too) run very expensive software and have much larger budgets to spend on software and hardware. That is an interesting market to be in. And if that market starts to shift to a different OS then software and hardware providers have to move along otherwise they are going to lose sales.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #45 on: March 20, 2020, 06:15:29 pm »
Software doesn't wear out but hardware does and software will always need to be modified to run on newer hardware. Try installing MS-DOS and 3.1 on a modern machine and using it to post here and watch YouTube.


The cycle is much, much longer today though. DOS/Win3.1 on a modern machine is a HUGE gap, but you can install WinXP or Win7 on a new machine in a lot of cases and you can install Win10 on a 10+ year old machine. It may not be the most painless experience but it will work.

Hardware and software used to both evolve rapidly. I remember being able to upgrade my 2-3 year old PC and get something that was dramatically faster, I could do who categories of things that the old machine wasn't capable of. It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic. Today it's not that a big stretch to use a 10-15 year old system for productive work, while a 5 year old machine is absolutely fine for all but high end niche stuff. That would have been absolutely unheard of in the 90s and early 2000's.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #46 on: March 20, 2020, 06:27:33 pm »
It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic.

Yeah, well I also remember going from a P4 (with HT I think) to a i7-920. For computing-intensive stuff, the difference was very significant, but for more mundane tasks, it was almost unnoticeable. So yeah it all depends on your needs.

Another major point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

which makes hardware upgrades progressively look like they are insignificant.

But we're still seeing major improvements with the trend to add more cores. Of course it's useful only for software making full use of that. For servers, the gain is obvious. For desktop computing, it will show only with very specific software such as video or 3D rendering, intensive simulation stuff, etc.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #47 on: March 20, 2020, 06:36:48 pm »
Software doesn't wear out but hardware does and software will always need to be modified to run on newer hardware. Try installing MS-DOS and 3.1 on a modern machine and using it to post here and watch YouTube.


The cycle is much, much longer today though. DOS/Win3.1 on a modern machine is a HUGE gap, but you can install WinXP or Win7 on a new machine in a lot of cases and you can install Win10 on a 10+ year old machine. It may not be the most painless experience but it will work.

Hardware and software used to both evolve rapidly. I remember being able to upgrade my 2-3 year old PC and get something that was dramatically faster, I could do who categories of things that the old machine wasn't capable of. It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic. Today it's not that a big stretch to use a 10-15 year old system for productive work, while a 5 year old machine is absolutely fine for all but high end niche stuff. That would have been absolutely unheard of in the 90s and early 2000's.
For the PC platform that is true. I replaced a core i730 (IIRC) with a high end Xeon a couple of years ago and the difference in processing power isn't that much. In the last decade the best performance upgrades I have done where parallel RAID and SSD.

However on the ARM platform there is huge progress. For a project I'm working on I do development on the ARM platform itself. It runs all the tools and IDE necessary. I'll admit it is a bit slower but not immensely.

There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #48 on: March 20, 2020, 06:58:50 pm »
The main point is the issue of software "wearing out" is not really a thing anymore, it used to become rapidly obsolete but that has slowed to a crawl, hence the push toward subscription. They cannot entice people to shell out money for a new version every couple of years anymore because the software is mature, the 20 year old MS Office 2000 is still totally usable today, for the average home user who wants to write a document, print a newsletter, put their household budget in a spreadsheet, etc it simply does not matter. Going to subscription allows the company to keep extracting the money that would have previously been spent on new versions while not really having to deliver anything of substance. I mean what more compelling functionality can really be added to Office productivity software? It's a very mature area, it's a solved problem.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Bill Gates leaves MS board
« Reply #49 on: March 20, 2020, 07:12:28 pm »
Agreed. On the topic of MS Office: the older Office software works much better. Try to use style formatting in the newer Word versions for example. It is a total mess compared to Word 2003 and earlier. Learning a new UI is something I can overcome but a newer version being worse compared to the older one is just sad.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2020, 07:16:12 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 


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