I travel on a train for a medium length journey 2-4 times a week. In the last 12 months I've noticed that the transition from never seeing a Surface (Pro) to seeing 5-10% of tablets being a Surface (Pro). The vast majority are iPads still but its interesting that Surface has made such inroads. Based on what I see the main reason is the combination of the keyboard and Outlook.
A lot of people forget that IT departments in medium to large companies need to be able to remotely manage equipment, Macs are "annoying" and iPads are damn near un-manage-able.
So while a lot of middle managers outside of IT think that iPads are "cool" and push for them, they get a lot of push back from IT due to their impracticality and the amount of time/resources it would take to manage.
A Surface Pro has none of these issues. It is a standard Windows 10 PC which can be managed via System Center/AD/GPO/etc, so they're non-effort machines for enterprise/IT.
So that, I suspect, is why you're seeing so many so quickly. Internally non-IT management wants a "tablet" and the IT department is deflecting from iPads onto Surface Pros because it is in their best interests to do so.
> I'm well aware that Skype did not change for the better after MS took over
While I'm acutely aware of the negative impact various changes had on privacy, cf the leaked documents referencing it, however I'm not sure that statement is blanketly true.
I can now have Skype running on my phone where previously it used to drain the battery in a few hours flat. That is, personally, a huge improvement.
Another thing I've noticed is I get both better video quality (when I use video, I prefer audio only) and I get less disconnects due to "network" reasons.
I only use Windows 10 in a VM for browser testing but I just disable the Windows Update service. I have a PowerShell script which can enable it, hang around and disable it again later which I use when I want to do updates, i.e. when I'm not busy focusing on a task.
I guess it will slightly reduce the overall security but as I only use it as a VM and am generally testing locally its an acceptable trade off in my opinion. The reason I set it up this way was to avoid the time sinks that come from when I do use Windows and then have to wait an age for updates to be done when I'm focusing on work. Previously I always used the option to be notified about updates rather than auto install which was a reasonable trade off. I understand why Microsoft made the change but I strongly disagree with it.
> The real and politically-incorrect reason for the higher prices is that the cost of doing business is higher in Australia. For example, the minimum wage is very high and consumer protection laws require the company to provide a 2-year warranty at no additional cost.
I wonder what the price differential between Australia and Europe is, at similar points in time, then as these 2 example reasons also apply within Europe. Such a comparison might go some way to explaining if there are structural reasons, as suggested by these specific examples, or if it is simply price gouging.
I'm hoping that Android gets a lot better on the battery usage before that happens in earnest though. I've read they've focused on this recently but I haven't had time to drill into details.
I love Windows Phone and have had 3 different models since Windows Phone 7. I'm currently on a Lumia 830 for my private phone and get about 3.5-4 days of battery life. Granted I don't call/text a lot relying on email, Lync and Skype. My previous Lumia 520 was about the same, and the previous LG E900 was 2.5-3 days.
My partner has a Moto G (1st Generation) and loves it but only gets about 1-1.5 days of battery life. Good phone, similar price levels after offers on the Lumia 830, but dramatically lower battery life.
In Belgium BASE, which is owned by KPN, do a reasonable deal compared to the others with BASE 0. Its technically a monthly invoiced plan but works as a pay as you go card - you only get charged for what you use. Its basically the same price as any of the "outside the bundle" costs for their other plans. If you either use phone calls/internet/text infrequently or highly variable it's very interesting.
Interestingly also in Belgium there is legal requirement that the phone company evaluates your bill every X months and notifies you if you could save money by moving to a different plan. Invariably I used to always be recommended BASE 0 due to my highly variable usage.
I think the UK had a similar thing from O2 but I don't remember if it was a legal requirement. It could be a European thing.
Please don't go to Cloudfront, it's truly horrendous (wearing my end user hat) to see so many sites have problems and timeouts because of them.
For example Ninite.com moved to them and now the site is virtually unusable because of it, over 90% of the time I get a "403: Forbidden" error when trying to do anything...like send them feedback on how the website doesn't work...
I even see more HN problems this week and I'm sure its because of them.
Win9x is not a portable OS. Because of its DOS and Windows heritage, the underpinnings are very much tied to x86 and would be difficult to port to ARM. (Although not as difficult as OS/2, which uses the dreaded ring 1.)
Whereas Windows NT has always been portable. Except that Microsoft has already ported NT to ARM.
Indeed, I realize this. My comment was mainly facetious, I admit. Porting DOS/Win98 would be totally silly anyway unless you needed a blue screen generator.
Porting ReactOS would start to make sense, if anyone wanted that - say, there was a desire to run windows programs on modern mobile hardware without licensing fees (rendering farm? Most use cases I can imagine would be better served by Linux anyway). Otherwise... Emulation such has DOSBOX makes the most sense for anyone who desires to run legacy Win32 software.
