The New Microsoft

[budwzr]

I think M$ is finally going in the right direction.

And I think they have an advantage. Google and Apple are pretty much fixed in their directions of future computing, as demonstrated by their current offerings. So Microsoft has an opportunity to come in now as a "New Player", with fresh ideas.

But can they Seize The Moment?

[TreeTops]

Are you referring to the upcoming Win9? If so, I don't see that as a "fresh idea".

[budwzr]

No No, not so much Win9, but the opportunity to do distributed computing, i.e. "Cloud", and "Apps" a little better.

I'm already impressed by their Cloud service. Like the ability to make files online only, or keep a copy local. Very handy if you have an SSD drive that's smallish compared to regular hard drive.

Their Cloud Drive eliminates the need for any local backups, and the security of a Microsoft Cloud Drive is probably the best backup solution on the planet.

M$ has a chance to see the mistakes and shortcomings of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and build something even more encompassing.

They definitely did the right thing to get rid of Steve Ballmer. That putz was sinking the whole company. The guy had no vision whatsoever.

RE: "Inside Every Older Person Is A Younger Person Wondering What The Hell Happened." Try a FourLoko-a-day, or imbibe some herbal, listen to Alan Watts, and you'll be OK. I DO NOT want to live forever and watch everyone else pass. These internet forums allow us to interact regardless of age. Just try to keep up and you'll be OK. Don't become an old fart, and you won't be treated as one.

That goddam Apple is trying to capitalize on M$'s downswing and go for for the Enterprise market, but I don't think they have the expertise to offer what M$ has to offer. The M$ Query Server is top tier stuff. That's what Sony Vegas is built on. It's a very robust platform.

M$ Query Server is right up there with Oracle, and in my opinion is much more closely aligned with Edgar Codd's vision of the relational model. This "new" Cloud stuff is a rehash of an old idea that never caught fire. AKA "Distributed Computing".

[TreeTops]

OK...It's the Cloud you like. Some feel that if the internet goes down during the next blackout, you won't be able to access your data. I use MS OneDrive for some files only because our Board of Directors ordered me to file important stuff off site. We'll see if that is a wise move. I had already backed up those important files on external drives but they said if my office burned down I would loose those external drives also and they have a good point. Since these files are synced, I have always wondered what happens to the cloud files if the files on my local drive disappear. Do they get deleted from the cloud server if it can't find the files on the local drive? Hard to test this as you would have to pull the drive then test to see what happens to those files in the cloud server.

[budwzr]

Hmmm...I think what you would do is restore from the Recycle Bin online via browser? Go to OneDrive.com.

If you set the OneDrive folder or subfolders to "Make Available Offline" it will keep a local and web version and keep them in sync. So if the power goes out you still have your local files.

If you're on Win7, you won't have the advanced features like that though. It will just keep everything local by default. So even though your files are all in the OneDrive folder, and syncing, they're still there physically.

I don't know if the other Cloud Drives do that.

The beauty of it, for us, is my wife can go overseas and have potential access to all her business docs and records, but not have to store all that stuff on removeable media. She has 25 years of records, and a lot of it is escrow related and takes up tons of space. Often times her clients will ask for some copy of something, often years later, and the old filing cabinet system doesn't cut it.

And if I'm in the field, doing some editing, I have plenty of room locally to offload from the cameras. Granted, I could also carry around a USB drive, but like you said, that's not safe, and you have to remember to sync later, and worry about file versions. OneDrive takes care of that.

We're paying $10 a month for the 5-user Office365/Cloud service. Each user gets 1TB and separate accounts. That's a great price for us. We don't use Office much anymore, but the Cloud space yes.

I finally bought a new laptop, Asus N550JK-DB74T, and it comes with Win8.1, so I finally took the plunge. Windoze will last a long time, there's no worries about that. Even the Adobe Cloud Suite is still running on Windows locally. Maybe in 30 years everything will be fully distributed, but that's a long way off.

These Android tablets just don't cut it for real work. The editing and graphics apps are clunky and severely lacking in capability. I blew $10 on the Adobe Android photo editor and it's buggy as hell and very un-intuitive. I get a headache trying to use it.

[stiltman]

I know what you mean Bud. However MS has a ton of ground to make up on the likes of Amazon for cloud services. Apple and Google just can't compete against Amazon. Sure you get your app from one of their app stores, but 70% of the cloud based apps are using Amazon's cloud services for the backend. On the user front, MS made huge gains with the Surface, sure they had to write down a ton of $$$ for the first one, but it spurred the market to create a bunch more from other vendors. I have the Pro 3 and love it. That along with OneDrive for Business (read 20 times the storage space per user) I use it as my standard laptop now.

My iPad is just a mobile game platform now. If I want to do work, I do it on my Surface.

[budwzr]

Yeah, the SP3 is a real marvel of technology. My wife just got one about a month ago, and I set it up for her. No surprises, just smooth sailing.

Not so lucky for me. I bought myself a regular laptop, Asus N550JK-DB74T, and when I installed Vegas Pro the Windows Store and Apps stopped working. So now I'm debating to install Win7 or wait for 9 to come out. Don't really need the Apps though, just a bunch of time waster stuff.

VegasPro runs so fast it's scary. I can playback at Best/Full in realtime.