http://liliputing.com/2015/05/windows-as-a-service-windows-10-will-be-continu...

Windows as a service: Windows 10 will be continually updated (with no Windows 11 in sight)

"Cynics might think this means Windows 10 won’t be complete at launch… and they’re kind of right. Microsoft has already said that Windows 10 for phones won’t be available until a few months after Windows 10 for desktops launches this summer, and Windows 10 for desktops will include the new Microsoft Edge web browser, but some features including support for Object RTC and web extensions won’t be available in the browser at launch.

But in some respects. Windows 10 will never be complete, just the way Ubuntu, Fedora, OS X, Android, iOS, and other operating systems are never really complete — because there’s always room to roll out updates to patch security vulnerabilities or to add new features."

Microsoft has not finalized Windows 10 after 4 years of working on it now, it has been a continuing conceptual re-write process that has gone through phase after phase and re-write after re-write after re-write.  

Nothing Windows has done has fully clicked with the testers, other than just certain selected feature sections.

So, Microsoft has decided to roll with what they got right now, which is a constantly evolving product which right now is structured greatly like one of the newer developing Linux Distros, great ideas being plopped down constantly with full execution coming and a level of future polish promised.

Microsoft still hasn't even finished with their business model (?? how do they get paid ??) nor do they have an announced plan to completely integrate the PC and Phone/Tablet parts of their disparate worlds.   They have some stuff in mobile that does not play in PC and vice versa.

Performance wise, you get the sense that MS was waiting for Intel to come out with a chip fast enough to make their porky old stuff be quick enough to be blended in with the new features to become "the new quick and light stuff".  

This isn't happening and MS must regroup yet again and put out an OS this summer anyway without any "helpful" Intel super processors to support them.

Tester say 10 is "better" than before in general, but still complain about specific items.   It isn't lighter or smaller (quite the contrary, it is feature crowded with entire thought lines going off in odd directions that were development delayed, but not removed).   For example:



As you can see, it is actually functionally pretty much the same old stuff with different access shells and some "do it while you are sleeping" dodges, but all the old cruft is still there and you will still spend time taking care of endlessly changing the baby's anti-virus diaper, etc.

But, a few of the features recently created show the potential promise of lighter and faster, but this is mostly on the mobile side of the endeavor and they are nothing that is seamlessly integrated across the board right now anyway.

Microsoft wanted to have "one product on all screens" but 10's reality does not seem to be headed that way.   What is released for PC will likely be maximized for a traditional desktop monitor/keyboard/mouse and will NOT contain all the mobile elements per se.

I still hold out some hope for the mobile product to be better, as it hold most of the "new think" items.

Shovel-ware and crap-ware are still going to be around, with some permanent ad bars popping up occasionally to generate some incidental revenue for the crapware people -- it is still the same old MS world view after all with all the old remora fish still suctioning on to the big fish and riding along for an up-front fee.

People will quickly begin to refer to different slices or views of the MS pie as "PC something" vs a mobile "something else" and MS will eventually have to start to use the nomenclature that develops.

Until then, MS will give 10 away for free, push and promote the hell out of it and see if they can preserve their market share as they endlessly continue to work on it.

What has not changed -- Business isn't having any part of it and is sticking with Win 7 as installed in all their functions.  

Until MS comes up with something desktop based that can woo Business off of Win 7 it is all a mental exercise anyway.

Republic Wireless, my Wife and the $10 and $25 plans

My wife lives in an extended family of Apple iPhone users ....  we keep iPad2 tablets for this very reason since the women all like to video-talk to each other and play games together.

I never told my wife that Republic Wireless was a cut down service.   Mainly because it really isn't cut down, it is FULL 3G service, just not 4G which is fine because we don't have a 4G tower anywhere near where we live.

She is coming off a Galaxy S3 (Android) and knows KitKat 4.4.4 as well as she knows anything, so it is all familiar to her.   She does not like the physically bigger phones but says she wants a smaller, handier phone similar to everybody else's iPhone.

So, the MotoG from Republic and the $10 a month plan scratches the 4.5" size itch just fine as it is the exact requested size and it does everything she ever got off her Verizon Galaxy S3.

Everyone iPhonish always complains about them little bitty keys, my wife just hits the Google microphone and talks her stuff in.

She's gone on vacation with her family women, going to look at graveyards in Pennsylvania of all things while working on the family geneology ..... so I moved an icon for Google Maps over to the front page of her phone and turned on her $25 dollar cellular full data plan for the days she is on vacation.

"OK, how do I use it?"

Hit the Google Maps icon, let it open up ----- hit the directions icon at the bottom left, wait for the screen to come up.

"Now what --- those keys are too tiny to type on ...."

Hit the microphone and say "Take me to xxxxxx, in city xxxxxx in state xxxxxxx"   Actually, she doesn't need to know the address, just the correct name for the place (Google does the address lookup automatically).

She does so ...... Google pops up her current location, the first highlighted streets and turns and gives verbal instructions for the first street and desired intersection and turn direction.

She cancels that one and talks in her niece's location in Asheboro, NC.   Pops right up.

Yeah, she likes her little cheapie Republic Wireless Google-enabled phone --- it does stuff that makes them long term iPhone people just turn pea green with envy.

And for $5 for a week ($25 a month full data plan pro-rated) I can afford to make her a happy camper while she is on vacation.

 

     FEAR OF THROTTLING is really fear of this -- fear of a thermal burn up ......

And I say again, "People are LOOKING and testing for thermal throttling now" as an indicator of bad chipset design and they sure are finding it  --  some Intel folks are finding that the new motherboard they just bought as an upgrade can be SLOWER than their old three years ago board once the new voltage regulator and control chipset have throttled the 14nm CPU way way way down to keep it from damaging itself.

They are discovering that a dance is going on here -- the chip slows itself down some immediately as it warms, then the voltage regulator is cut back by Intel software to protect the heat sensitive chipset from internally damaging itself, then it cuts it back again, then cuts it back again, then it cuts it back again.

If it fails to cut back fast enough or far enough, this is what you get (turbo toast).    

Yep, a fully "turbo'd" processor, alias toast.   Turbo'd ..... what Intel PR dribble brain came up with that particular "marketing coverup" and how many generations of Intel managers have approved such lying BS as a normal way of doing business .....  

When your chip slows down by half, you tell the idiot buying public it has "2x turbo mode" and they actually BELIEVE you ...... that is how Intel has been selling substandard or defective chip designs lately.

So, the ignorant customer winds up playing his new AAA game at approximately half your 14nm processor's max speed due to thermal throttling in some cases -- at a real ongoing rate that is slower than your 3 year old 22nm unit could have done it.

So. what are the smarter Intel fans learning?    If you need to pull big watts of processor power, don't go to 14nm, stay at 22nm.   Your old stuff is fine, just keep it.   There isn't anything out there faster or better right now, apart from using the supercooling tricks.

22nm was indeed the high point of Intel processor real world MAXIMUM POWER performance, for now anyway.

Meanwhile, the refrigerated NUC case creeps ever closer and closer to reality, since any real Intel Fanboy is really really gonna want to use that sweet new 14nm chipset he just bought balls to the walls in full overclocking fashion -- but the sad thing is that he has to supercool the whole board to fool the on-board voltage regulator throttling sensors as well as the CPU throttling sensors (and to keep all the various little chips and capacitors from popcorning of course).

Fortunately, the new NUC boards are 4"x4" so the NUC supercooler unit will be quite small sitting there on the floor underneath your desk.



...... but it will likely make about as much noise as your old dorm refrigerator did though .....

http://liliputing.com/2015/05/mediateks-10-core-cpu-is-official-meet-the-heli...



The chip maker is also promising a boost in graphics performance, thanks to an ARM Mali T800 series graphics processor. Other features include support for 4G LTE, 802.11ac WiFi, 4K video recording, dual 13MP cameras, and an integrated ARM Cortex-M4 processor core for always-on speech recognition and other low-power, always-on applications.

The MediaTek Helio X20 doesn’t just have more processor cores than whatever’s in your current phone. As AnandTech notes, also one of the first chips from MediaTek to feature a CDMA2000-compatible modem, which means it could support Verizon and Sprint’s wireless networks. That could help MediaTek gain a foothold in the US market.

Poor Qualcomm -- Samsung steals their royal crown and now here comes Mediatek a gunning for their dukedom as well.

New details are being pre-released by Mediatek about the new ARM hard macro 10 core chipset -- it isn't just 10 cores, it is 11 cores with the VERY smallest being an always-on core that actually comes from the Internet of Things group -- a TINY TINY core that is always on to do voice recognition for voice commands, keep up with your current location and other background stuff like that.

So you got the tiny tiny always on IoT core always keeping up with your location and doing updates and listening for a voice command, if it recognizes a command then it lights the four SMALLEST cores to do what you asked, ramping up the next bigger set of cores if they are needed.   Only then, if you get your tits in a real bind, then it lights the BIG GUNS which are a pair of full PC class cores ....  and it can run them all at the same time if needed (along with compute sharing adder power off the Mali 880 graphics processor).

.....  and yet, oddly enough by stepping through the 11 cores in ascending order this Helio 20 processor supposedly can save you 30% on battery energy usage because you only ever use just exactly the bare minimum amount of power needed to do the task at hand.     .... me, I think the tiny core cuts way back on idle current and the bottom most set of 4 cores will do most normal tasks, adding in the upper set  of 4 cores only as needed -- you should only light up the 2 big boys for games and stuff like that.

Qualcomm is shitting bricks right now as they had planned to come out with their own set of custom BIG HUGE Snapdragon CORES in a 4 up arrangement on the 820 "hurry up  get it released ASAP" processor (so as to fix their current 810 debacle) -- and now Qualcomm has just reflected,  stopped and realized that they would be a charging out of the gate ALREADY BEHIND both Samsung and Mediatek if they went and did that.  

Yep, Samsung has them a Deca-monster of their own coming out at 14nm or 10nm just as soon as they get a gap in their Apple contract runs.   They might even beat Mediatek to it, simply because they own the process lines and can run their own stuff when they want to.  And at 14nm or 10nm if they choose to.  

Samsung intends to keep the crown for a while, in other words.

The Mediatek however is slated for a very low cost 20nm TSMC for the first lots, then dropping to 14/16nm as soon as TSMC really really has a truly reliable non-throttling process to run it on.  The Mediatek will be closely scrutinized for thermal throttling since it is being run on the exact same TSMC process that screwed the Qualcomm 810 over so badly .....

Because of the TSMC 20nm fiasco Qualcomm has started contracting with Samsung to run their chips going out into the future -- having already been bitten once by TSMC's thermal throttling issues they want no more of it.   Qualcomm needs Samsung for a good state of the art lithography process, or else they will go into third place against Mediatek and that just isn't going to happen, by golly.

Qualcomm has a hard life right now you know, they used to just have to worry about Intel kicking up some stinky brown dust occasionally and that was fairly easy to keep on beating Intel year on year on year on year since you could always count on was for Intel to be 2-3 years behind its own brags, much less to be actually threatening anybody with anything REAL in any serious fashion.    

Samsung and them Hockey Stick Boys are quite a different story now-a-days.  
They only seem to do real and they do like to sneak up on you while you are distracted .....    

So, it seems like mebbe Qualcomm actually just took their eyes off of the ARM world for just a second or two while MS wooed them and now look at the mess they are in -- headed straight for third place if they don't watch out.

   MS isn't gonna love you if you are in third place, Qualcomm,  MS only loves a leading winner.

-- MS always/only loves the current leading winner --

..... just remember just how durn quick MS dumped Intel for you if you don't believe me -- you are the next dumpee if you fall down to second or third place.

Intel readies its own horse for the contest ......

(and of course price supports and tech supports it so well it is functionally "free" to use)












  ..... I'm not dead, just thermally recovering from turbo stress at the moment .....

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fanless-Intel-Compute-Stick-MeLE-PCG01-Quad-Co...

http://liliputing.com/2015/05/mele-pcg-01-pc-stick-is-basically-a-fanless-int...

Mele PC Stick vs Intel PC Stick



THE FIRST INTENTIONALLY FANLESS 14nm INTEL PROCESSOR PRODUCT

"Like the Intel Compute Stick, this computer is small enough to fit in your pocket, but powerful enough to run a desktop operating system. It comes with Windows 8.1 with Bing software and features an Intel Atom Z3735F Bay Trail processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

The stick supports 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 and features a microSD card slot, a full-sized USB port, two micro USB ports (one of which is used as a power jack), and a power button.

Unlike the Intel Compute Stick, this model has an eternal, adjustable antenna which could help improve WiFi performance, but I haven’t personally tested this device, so I can’t say for certain that it helps.

And unlike the Compute Stick, the Mele PCG-01 has no fan: instead it relies on a copper heat sink, heat-conductive silicone rubber, and other insulation techniques to prevent the computer from getting too hot.

This isn't the first fanless PC stick… in fact, up until recently, most of the models I’d seen lacked fans, which some users had complained lead to performance issues. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Mele PCG-01 fares any better. But this is one of the first models I’ve seen that has an adjustable antenna.

Some other Chinese companies have also shipped PC sticks with unlicensed trial versions of Windows, but Mele says the PCG-01 comes with a fully functional Windows 8.1 license that has been paid for."

Why is this interesting?   NO FAN  .... remember, the only Intel 14nm products without fans so far have been thermal throttling nightmares --- so how is this one any different?

Mele has settled a large copper heat sink over the protruding processor, a copper heat sink which was sized large enough to cover the entire top side of the stick, then Mele shot an thermally conductive silicone rubber throughout the entire affair making it into a solid thermal silicone brick.  This is a silicone brick made from a compound that is sometimes used as a heat sink thermal conductive compound inside potted high impact high vibration electronics as the electrically non-conductive but still heat conductive potting compound.

So now you have an entire solid black silicon brick as a textured thermal emitter with a large copper heat spreader carrying the primary heat from the processor out quickly over the entire top surface for distribution throughout the locally thin coating of ribbed silicon plastic to then waft out into the ambient air.    As a passive system, this sounds about as good as passive can get without resorting to a large ribbed solid aluminum case with the electronics potted inside it (as done by the Israelis on the Core i7 Mint PC from two years ago).

Curiosity exists on how well this particular trick works, so Brad Linder and others have requested samples for testing -- if the idea works it is a potential breakthrough in thermal control for small devices (and will garner some industry-wide kudos for Mele).

Also remember the results of Brad's tests on the Intel Compute Stick ....  "The Intel Compute Stick is a remarkably small computer that turns just about any display into a Windows (or Ubuntu) PC for about $150. But it’s not a perfect device: there’s a tiny fan which makes a high-pitched (but fairly quiet) sound from time to time, and I found the Compute Stick suffered from poor WiFi range."

Brad noted that processor speed went down and the fan started up, but didn't note any great rebound in processor speed after the fan was in play, it just didn't get much more than one level slower if the fan was in play.    Fans driving air over non-heat sinked chips are not totally effective on this 14nm stuff as the chips only get "medium warm" before the throttling effect starts.

Keeping things cool is very important in Intel's 14nm world right now, so this little stick's thermal design tricks may be right important for Intel's 14nm low cost future .....   also, these same silicon rubber/big brass heat sink tricks might well be used by AMD and other "heat'm up" chip makers such as Nvidia and Qualcomm as they move forward into the new world of tiny PC computers.

   

.... as circuit traces and gates get smaller and smaller and smaller the thermal throttling booger-bear may well become an issue for all processor makers.  This will most likely be by the time generalized production level on 10nm is achieved sometimes in the 2016-17 time frame ....

Remember, when your 3 year ago product actually outperforms your "state of the art" new stuff because of thermal throttling issues -- that then is an issue that can stop your current sales efforts dead in their tracks.  

Especially since current Antutu will report your product "under full load" in its rankings.   And also remember, the yet newer Antutu X test will actually report your throttling delta from a cold chip to a hot chip to make it perfectly clear what is going on.

Either something relatively reasonable is found that works "well enough", or we are headed towards this sort of thing .....  we can't have the current crop of 14nm processors running at half speed due to thermal throttling and not performing as well as stuff that is 3 years old.

http://liliputing.com/2015/05/report-some-mobile-carriers-could-block-ads.html



Let's see --- Google is threatening AT&T and Verizon with technical obsolescence a la Google Fi and the cell phone Big Boys are now threatening back that they will push Adblock Plus out through their networks and auto-install it throughout all of their customer's cell phones to cut off all ads on their networks unless a deal with Google can be reached.

Both sides are dancing around the new Net Neutrality Laws (by cutting off all ads you aren't singling out Google per se, so Google supposedly can't biatch to the FCC).  

People don't like ads, but the big carriers and Google each make money off of them -- a lot of money.

However, AT&T and Verizon feel they can cut that off ad revenue completely and hold their breath longer than Google can.   I think Google actually breathes world-wide and not breathing in just a little over half of the USA market may not even cause Google to get respiratory distress per se.

The Big Boys DO CERTAINLY HAVE TO TRY to do something to stop Google Fi from going forward, as Fi kills their base market advantage (cell tower coverage) completely the very first month it first rolls out and it works well.    That shared tower switching technological "tipping point" won't be able to be called back by anybody once it happens, no matter what they do.   So they GOT to stop it from happening ....

   ..... Republic Wireless is getting all sorts of new customers lately -- I wonder why?  

People do recognize now that the wifi trick is real now and Google Fi is simply not ready to roll out FAST ENOUGH yet even on a limited trial basis to handle the huge numbers of folks wanting to dump their expensive cellular carriers  -- whereas RW has been sitting there ready for years and has over 3 years of experience doing it successfully nation wide right now.

If Google wants to expand this idea a lot quicker all they have to do is share tech with Republic (or to invest in them, if you prefer).

Think forward a bit with the docked cell phones as a PC idea -- you gonna run a carrier alone, or are you gonna run a house internet connection and still have to run a carrier?   With wifi calling, you only need the house internet connection and you can just borrow tower time as needed for $10 a month using RW or for $20 a month using Google Fi.

Or mebbe the upcoming Google Cable/Phone Service going to be able to meet all your needs with one provider .....    

Don't laugh, Google sure could do it because both industries are being so badly abused and milked by the incumbents.

And make no mistake, it sounds like some heavy duty Big Boy negotiations are getting ready to go in motion, now doesn't it?

http://techland.time.com/2013/02/25/why-your-smartphone-will-be-your-next-pc/

http://techland.time.com/2012/02/27/why-the-iphone-has-a-head-start-on-the-fu...



Time Magazine says:  Why Your Smartphone Will Be Your Next PC

The basic idea is that the smartphone itself is your PC and then docks into some type of shell. Various technologies have emerged that could make this vision a reality relatively soon.


http://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/


"With each passing season, another wave of mobile devices is released that’s more capable and more powerful than the generation preceding it. We’re at the point where anyone armed with a current model smartphone or tablet is able to handle almost all of their at-home—and even at-work—tasks without needing anything else. We’re living proof: for the last two years, WIRED has been able to cover events like CES almost exclusively using our smartphones."


http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8560195/microsoft-continuum-for-phones-windo...

"One of Microsoft’s big announcements at its Build developers conference last week was the ability to turn a smartphone running Windows 10 into a PC. Dubbed Continuum for Phones, it’s designed to take advantage of new universal apps that run across Windows 10 on phones, PCs, tablets, and the Xbox One. If you’re running a mobile version of Excel on your phone it will magically resize and transform into a keyboard- and mouse-friendly version for use on a bigger screen. It feels like the future."