Is there a company out there that would publish a survey stating that individual buyers have actually said they chose a tablet to replace a PC? Until then we won't know for sure. Smart phones are so awesome these days their only limitations are screen sizes. They can do any regular office work. Movie production and engineering stuff isn't practical on phones yet. Soon the processing power will be good enough. Using Air-play with a tablet will allow even high-tech programs to work on phones and have the visual stuff be on a much larger screen.

 

Perhaps some manufacturers have commissioned such studies to learn exactly how many people are foregoing desktop and laptop computers for tablets and smart phones. Would they want to publish such data? Unless they are making tablets that are selling well my guess would be no.

 

How many iPads must Apple sell to equal the profit on one of their computers that wasn't sold because of a tablet? I for one will be buying a small tablet this year. If Apple makes a 7" model it will get my attention first. Apple has proven to me that they can give me a good software experience. If the price is in line with my expectations then Apple will get my money. If not, Google will get it. Toshiba makes a great large tablet. I'd go for it over an iPad if I wanted a big tablet.

 

What exactly will happen to Microsoft if Windows 8 is a failure? They still have the gaming devices and the office software. The OEMs still buy their stuff. Until the OEMs are willing to drop Microsoft the company will continue to do fine for years to come. They just won't be expanding anymore.

I'm excited!

 

 

If Metro (Bets on what the new name will be?) actually animated what was on it, it might be a little more appealing. As it stands… 

 

WAIT A MINUTE. HOW THE HECK DID YOU GET A GIF TO ACTUALLY WORK IN HUDDLER?!

Man does that look confusing as hell. I'll take the simple elegance of OS X thanks

By Monkey boy ?

Windows 8 will run existing programs just fine on the intel version of PCs. The problem is that existing software is not "touch" aware. Even if it were "touch" aware, the UI is not optimized for a touch interface, so when you put Windows 8 on a touch device you gain nothing, NOTHING, nada, zero, zilch, squat. The ARM version of the Surface requires software to be recompiled for the different chip, however the same problem still exists... the software UI is highly optimized for a keyboard and mouse. Like the Intel-based device, you have gained nothing in the process.

 

I believe what Microsoft is trying to pull off is trying to blow the same old smoke up their customer's behinds; "the old software will run just fine." When, in effect, the keyboard/mouse UI has begun to fade in importance and is rapidly being replaced by a touch/voice UI. Successful programs going forward will be those who transition to the newer UI the quickest. And here's where it gets sticky for Microsoft (who believes users want keyboards), over a hundred million users have already ditched the keyboard, and are more productive than their keyboard centric brethren. The install base of these new touch/voice devices run iOS, not some variation of Windows or some variation of Android. 

 

The only excitement I see about Windows 8, is the same excitement I feel in driving past a big train wreck. The Windows 8 train wreck will be on slo-mo so it may take a number of months before many people see how bad it was.

Heh! You don't give up, do you? Win 8 is a desperate chance for Microsoft. They have no tablet presence, almost no smartphone presence, the Xbox is easily being beaten in sales by Apple's hobby, the aTv, and Windows sales are down.

The only way Microsoft can get people to use the unpopular Metro, oh, excuse me, the Windows 8 - Style UI, is to force them to. Yup, that's a great strategy. Force people to use something they don't want. Is there any surprise that Windows users on sites such as ArsTechnica, Anandtech, PCmag, and others have been so disdainful of Win 8?

This is a mess. I've been using the previews since the developer's edition. This is obviously something that was rubber banded together. Microsoft knows it has no time left. If this isn't a hit in all categories, desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone (with WP8's derivation), Microsoft is in big trouble.

These industries are moving faster than ever. The computer industry used to move at a slower pace, with new OS versions coming out every two to three years, with new hardware types at about the same scedule. But that's been compressed to one year, with Apple even moving OS X to a one year schedule to match that of iOS.

With Win8, Microsoft will need to do the same thing in order to keep the two in sync. This isn't something they've ever done in the past. Can they do it now? We really don't know.

Oh, it will indeed be an interesting holiday season.

Windows 8 - Style UI is as ugly as its new, temporary name. It looks like something out of the fifties jazz movie title sequences. Very uninteresting, where everything looks the same. Whole Apple does make its mistakes, this whole thing is a mistake. As usual, Microsoft is doing things the easy way, taking what was designed for the ZuneHD, tiny, low Rez screen, and moving it to a high Rez 27" desktop. That's a joke! We expect more information on a big screen. That even includes high Rez tablets. It's like when some web sites, like PCmag, these days, attempts to force their tablet versions upon us with iPads, rather than the normal pages we prefer.

And you consider that poping back and forth between the Desktop and windows - Style UI to be a great experience? Well, it's not! Particularly since some things can only be done in the Desktop, and others must be done in Win.... What a mess!

But then, Microsoft didn't have a choice. Unlike Apple, they don't have the luxury of moving the UI's of their desktop and mobile systems together slowly, so as to have people get used to it. They had to plop everything together at once, with hardly any integration between the two.

Yeah, find excuses for this hideous junk.

I'm not sure what huddler is, but if it's the forum engine, it seems to take gifs just fine.

 

😡

 

AHA! You did something special. Now I just have to figure out what it was.

 

No one needs to commission a study to prove what the market numbers already tell you: The keyboard, invented in the 1800s, is dying in the 2000s. 

 

You ask, "How many iPads must Apple sell to equal the profit on one of their computers that wasn't sold because of a tablet?"  That's the wrong question when one product sales are growing while the other is shrinking. Here's the question to ask: "How many iPads can Apple sell in the time it took for one iMac to sell?" Inventory turnover becomes the measure, not profit per unit. It's like going into Office Depot and asking them why do they stock Bic pens when they could make a lot more profit off of selling typewriters? 

 

Finally, you ask, "What exactly will happen to Microsoft if Windows 8 is a failure?" They may do well selling Windows 7, which is being widely adopted by large business. Microsoft has a good income stream from their consulting/server/networking business. However, their OS business is waning as well as their game console business. If they make a good version of the "Office" suite of apps that are very touch friendly that business unit will do alright, but if they don't support Apple products, they could lose that income segment. Microsoft has many internal problems and could turn out much like Motorola. Time will tell.

 

Wow, I just noticed that each tile is a jab at Microsoft. Look carefully.BoB, Clippy, Balmer's Monkey Boy pose, MS stock down, IE turns into Chrome, MS earns another quarterly loss. the alarm clock goes backwards, the email tile says spam. And one has Steve Jobs with an iPad. I am not sure if the poster knew these were all there, but it's really funny.

sorry - missed it

Allow me to break it down for you...again.

 

You have an animated gif on your computer.

You upload it to the forum

The forum uses GD library to make a medium sized preview 

It also saves the original as a larger view

When it saves the placeholder it fails to recognize that it is gif89

It grabs the first frame and resizes it as the preview.

 

The image that you noticed is animating correctly

Is hosted on some other server and simply linked

 

Two potential solutions for you

After you upload the gif89 click the image in your post to launch the large view

In another window edit your original post

drag the large view image into your message and delete the old preview

Alternately you just edit the source code to point to the actual image not the preview

 

That's just so horrible… I guess they don't assume people will be posting GIFs with their system.

This less animated version shows more details.

 

Honestly, most BBS forums don't allow image uploads at all. Assuming you are finding these animations already on the Internet someplace, just drag the original into your post from the originating site at the time you first compose your post. Problem solved.

WINDOWS 8 "EXCITEMENT"

 

http://www.neowin.net/news/these-are-the-backgrounds-for-the-start-screen-in-windows-8

 

O_O

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the LSD-fueled images that came with Windows 7…