There are two events happening this month June 2011 in the computing world which will give us an insight into the shape of things to come.
Windows 8
One is the sneak preview into the upcoming Windows 8 from Microsoft. It’s “touch-tile” computing, a step on at long last from the old START-button/tiny icons based desktop that Windows has had for the last 15 years.
You move your windows around on the screen by touching and sliding with your fingertips. Gets a bit tiring though on the outstretched arms after a while..
Possible solutions: a screen almost flat on the desk, set to the best angle to allow for comfortable viewing and touching and sliding..? Just one of many issues that have yet to be ironed out.
The trouble though with Microsoft is, they’re a company from the pre-Internet age of computing. Indeed, before even the network age of computing. The idea of a Personal Computer – your very own IT center on your own desk was their central concept. And IT centers are complicated.
Everything is now becoming cloud-based and multi-device. The “PC” has had it’s day as the King of Computing. It’s now just one (very clunky) computing device amongst many.
I think Microsoft really needs to go one big step further and break with it’s customs and traditions of the past and take a very different attitude.
Slim their bloated and now almost unmanageable Windows monster right down and put it in the cloud.
It’s debatable though as to whether the company can really do this. It would mean a total shift in paradigm for them. Practically all the cloud-based and Web 2.0 developments of recent years have passed them by. They recently bought Skype in an attempt to try and “get with it”.
It’s worth remembering that Microsoft didn’t invent Skype. It’s not a Microsoft-style product. They had to go and buy it after someone else invented it. It’s just that Microsoft had the money sloshing around and were looking for something to do with it. Not a good sign for the future of the company.
I think Microsoft as a company has gone as far as it can go. Windows 8 is an attempt to stave off the inevitable. From now on, the only way is down. And the trouble with Microsoft is that all their software is over-complicated.
Personal computing has become far too complex. It’s time to simplify things and go in the opposite direction for once. More performance and capability from our apps and our devices – for much much less hassle and complexity.
If Microsoft don’t slay their bloated beast, then someone else will do it for them. And come up with a much slimmer, more efficient, cloud-based operating system which makes life so much easier.
Which brings me to the second event of this month…
Google Chromebook
The debut of Google’s “Chromebook” laptop.
A slimmed down, minimalized laptop which is basically just a browser on a very slim laptop-come-netbook, with no battery hungry hard drive, DVD drive or other facilities.
Advantage: less upgrade, installation and configuration hassle, less hacker and virus problems to worry about – since there’s hardly anything there to hack – it’s all in the cloud.
Also it boots up in just a couple of seconds – literally. No more long Windows-style boot-up waits while your hard drive whirrs away doing goodness knows what while you wait for your desktop to finally appear.
You can attach USB drives and other devices to it. And of course, the big plus: much longer battery life than your average Windows clunker laptop.
Most people though will want to be able to run some additional apps like VLC video player or an audio player to play offline files.
Goodbye to Clunker Computers?
All good news to me and can’t come fast enough. I’m tired of Stone-Age computing. Having to move a mouse around all the time. Long boot up times. Endless update downloads.
I want to say goodbye to clunker computers running heavy clunker software like Microsoft. They’re no longer needed or effective.
Our operating systems, our computer interfaces and our software applications have been lagging behind and have some serious catching up to do.
And I really am not interested in any more chasing down compatible drivers, solving configuration and compatability problems, installing, configuring and updating virus and firewall software, booting, shutting down, rebooting – and then rebooting again.
It was “acceptable” in the old 90s days when Windows had a quasi monopoly. But not any longer.
Stone Age computing might suit Fred Flintstone. But I’ve wasted enough of my lifetime on all that rubbish. I want to be freed from it.
I want simplicity. I want less stress. I want ease of use. I want full and simple connectivity. I never want any reboots. I want the word removed from the dictionary. Together with upgrades. And “service-packs”. And above all I want long long battery life.
I do practically all of my computing work now “in the cloud”. I avoid “clunker software” – such as MS-Office, Open Office, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox (yes, that’s also now a bloated clunker), Photoshop, GIMP etc as much as I can. I loathe the stuff. It’s slow, it’s bloated, it’s inefficient, it’s time wasting and it’s overwhelming and it’s over-complicated. Have you seen the size of the “user handbooks” they have to produce for these monstrosities? I don’t want to have any of it on my machine.
And I don’t want to have a clunker operating system on my computer either – but unfortunately for the time being at least I must.
Microsoft – are you listening?
I doubt it.
But at least Google are.
My next computer will almost certainly not be a PC, laptop, nor a “netbook” either.
I’ll most probably settle for something like a Chromebook, not Windows 8 on a PC or laptop.
And long term I’d bet more on investing in Google stock than Microsoft.
Though I’ve always had a soft spot for Linux. Wonder what the Linux Community has planned in this direction…
See Microsoft’s official Windows 8 preview video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I
See a preview of Google’s Chromebook here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFeD3qGVsrM&feature=relmfu
Image: first mass produced Apple computer – courtesy of Dottie Mae
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Written by kevin
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Kev's Diary