Microsoft to Buy Dell? Woah

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Hornius Emeritus, Mar 12, 2009.

  1. naijahorn

    naijahorn 250+ Posts

    These aren't the times to be yanking chains like that.
     
  2. Beau Vine

    Beau Vine 1,000+ Posts


     
  3. MaduroUTMB

    MaduroUTMB 2,500+ Posts


     
  4. Orangesweat

    Orangesweat 2,500+ Posts


     
  5. jameson_bond

    jameson_bond 500+ Posts


     
  6. fly524

    fly524 25+ Posts

    I have a brand new machine running Vista. Vista sucks. I see no improvements, only complications. Unfortunatly I'm stuck with MS.
     
  7. iamtigerwoods

    iamtigerwoods 500+ Posts

    Anyone in the Tech industry should know that this was nonsense. MS has no need/interest to get in the PC hardware business as long as they have a viable PC OS. Perhaps when the day comes that Windows and Office are no longer installed on a desktop, this might make sense, but that day is much further out than most folks might think.
     
  8. FondrenRoad

    FondrenRoad 1,000+ Posts


     
  9. Bevo Incognito

    Bevo Incognito 5,000+ Posts


     
  10. groverat

    groverat 2,500+ Posts

    NO! It is either growing or it is DEAD!


    [​IMG]
     
  11. jameson_bond

    jameson_bond 500+ Posts

    Okay dead is a bit of hyperbole, but it emphasizes a qualitative transformation in that the desktop that you speak of is fast becoming a specialty platform. No, it won't disappear (dead) for now, but it is being quickly supplanted by other platforms -- this is a fact. disclosure: I do most of my graphics on a macbook pro.
     
  12. groverat

    groverat 2,500+ Posts

    fly524:

    Any specific issues someone might help you with?
     
  13. Orange&White

    Orange&White 1,000+ Posts


     
  14. bozo_casanova

    bozo_casanova 2,500+ Posts


     
  15. 911_horn

    911_horn 500+ Posts

    this will not happen
     
  16. Ramathorn

    Ramathorn 1,000+ Posts

    O & W, at Dell, we're trying to convert everyone to a notebook.
     
  17. Orange&White

    Orange&White 1,000+ Posts


     
  18. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    At a large coffee company here in Seattle we are moving away from laptops for the reasons O&W mentioned. The laptop lifetime is so limited compared to a desktop and the cost of securing the data on those laptops is pretty high. Our Data Security team is really pushing for significant business justification to warrant a laptop purchase. With other options like OWA, Citrix and VPN allowing employees to use their home machines laptops are seen as a "luxury" that isn't really business justified.
    Oh, in order to save money the IT department confiscated all departmental hardware (extra machines, monitors, etc.) and plans to recycle them to meet new requests within the company. So, if my machine dies tomorrow I'll get some other regenned machine. We are doing this for the next year
    to save on costs. We've also extended the lifetime of all hardware from 3 to 5 years. So, departments aren't being asked to request new machines unless they are 5+ years old.

    In other words, O&W's synopsis is exactly what I'm experiencing. Now, if I worked for HP/Dell/MSFT or other PC/OS driven company then yes, I'd expect them to try and push and agenda internally and externally. Dell has a growing laptop business so it would make sense for them to push laptops for their employees. Heck, they write all that **** off as marketing or QA costs anyway.
     
  19. MaduroUTMB

    MaduroUTMB 2,500+ Posts

    I'm going to list a few things that are true now but may not be later. These are facts with some interpretation that inform my opinions.
    1.) Console makers hate making consoles. The only console maker who makes a profit on them is Nintendo, and they make $6 per console at current prices. Sony and Microsoft are both thinking of quitting the game after the next generation because they are tired of losing money.

    2.) iPhone like devices will supplant laptops and desktops for web surfing. I am reiterating this point from my first post because some people seemed to misunderstand it. An iPhone is an x86 ARM processor with integrated graphics.
    The difference between a netbook and an iPhone is packaging, not significant hardware differences. iPhone hardware sucks, but it looks good compared to current netbook hardware because Intel paired their 4W TDP Atom with a 25+W 945G chipset for cost reasons. This brings us to point 3...

    3.) As I mentioned before, Intel wants this market with their 32nm Atom SoCs. They are working to license HKMG to TSMC so that TSMC can cheaply (profitably) fab them, likely driving ARM out of the market. The change is that cellular service is now another form of wireless network serving mobile devices which are simply small x86 computers (running linux that consumers will not recognize as linux). I'm not disagreeing with the statement that small mobile devices will take over for many of the current functions of computers; I am explaining how that will happen.

    4.) The two remaining hurdles for mobile devices are wearable screens (check out Vuzix- it's rudimentary, but extremely cool) and ultracapacitors as a battery replacement (2x the "battery life", no degradation with time and 5-6 minute charge times).

    5.) In all of this, desktops still have a place. Silicon microprocessors are basically large resistors, and the more volts, the more cycles per second you get (that's a pretty broad brush, but it' sufficient here). Volts*Amps=watts=heat. Higher performance means more heat. While the sufficiency of performance on the low end has allowed watts to come down while keeping performance the same (a 2.5W Atom@1.6 GHz~a 25W P3@ 1.1 GHz). On the opposite end, a single 125W Core i7 could overpower many of the early P4 HPC clusters. For $20k, you could log onto newegg.com, load up on 2.3 GHz Shanghais, DDR2 667 and TYAN mobos and build a cluster that would rank in the Top 50 supercomputers list form 1999. With the rise of GPGPU, the situation becomes silly (for certain workloads, the graphics chip from one dork's computer could easily beat everything at Los Alamos in 2000).

    You can say that people will use "cell phones" to access the internet and I'll agree with you to the point that I will help explain your argument to you. However, the assertion that the scary amounts of processing power that are cheaply available won't be used because MS Word and facebook are the limit of business/consumer computing is asinine.
     
  20. MaduroUTMB

    MaduroUTMB 2,500+ Posts

    I really enjoyed the direction this thread took. so I am bumping it.
     

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