The Flybook...what's keeping it from being YOUR handheld PC?

Bruised, I enjoyed reading your mini article! ... sometimes I get tons of cool info just reading posts on this forum. Yours is one such post!

I think there are quite a number of industry "experts" or "old-horse" around who share your sentiments about how well a MS Windows OS is. And if you read the other threads, some of us even opt to try out non-MS OS such as NetBSD or JLime on our HPCs like MobilePro790 and Jornada680s.

I think I also speak for others when I say I've used Unix, liinux and others to varying degrees and not just Windows OS, *and* they are better in various aspects over Windows. No disagreements with that.

I think what we have here is a fly-past! From reading your posts, I am guessing that by the statement that Windows will fail after 15,000 RW cycles (assuming to the hdd here), you are referring more to *DURATION* of run, rather than actual failure of the Read/Write cycles. Maybe I am wrong, but that explains why we are disagreeing that Windows will fail Read/Write operations (to the hdd) after 15,000 cycles whereas you are saying that Windows become unstable or crashes after sometimes.

As we all know, an OS can crash for various reasons, one of them being a hardware RW failure. But since we all know how flaky Windows is , Windows OS fails mostly before hardware even fail. And from most experiences, the failure results from higher level app crashes, which in the past were predorminantly due to corrupted memory blocks because apps overwrite into memory spaces wrongly, or more recently something known as DLL-HELL in the Windows world. (DLL-Hell refers to how newer versions of apps overwrite system (or private) dlls with older versions (and the system allowed it, causing invalid function pointers etc etc).

The point is that unless we can statiscally show that Windows OS has a tendency to fail after 15,000 RW (to the hdd), it might be better to say "Windows crashes so easily".

EDIT:

I've not experienced a WindowsXP crash on a PC for a loooong time (like years).

Edited by Snappy! 2005-03-12 2:13 PM

me neither!!
been using XP for 2,5 years. only one crash. and without any windows reinstall. (ok, i had to do it just now, but for other reasons..)

Edited by cmonex 2005-03-12 11:15 PM

you know, when my colleague back in 2000 gave sales pitch about how his win2k installation. And he was going on about how his notebook has not crashed, gpf or bluescreen for 1 month ... and the company folks just *LAUGHED* .... the laughter came in a half-hearted believe that win2k is actually so stable. And that was just talking about problem-free usage for 1mth. hehehehe

I think the win9x legacy just got everyone so resigned to having a PC crash, that when it does not, it is a surprise!

I'm running Win2kAdvSvr on a system for almost a month ... and no crashes as well. It's running on PIII-500 with 192MB ram. ok ok, laugh ... hehehe ... its a stupid notebook that has a max of 320MB ram installation and the 256MB SDRAM is somewhere out there but not installed yet. However, even with this setup, everything runs pretty well and there is no bluescreen, gpf, or crashes/hang whatsoever.

Just as a point of clarification on this topic (which has morphed into three different ones I think I see)....

The minimum requirements for CompactFlash are as follows:

Erase Cycles: 1,000,000
MTBF: 1,000,000 hours
Insertions: 10,000 (physical Insertion)

The read/write cycles are embedded into the Erase Cycles. This is not clearly defined in the standards.


This is physical hardward standards, nothing to do with the OS involved.

Regards,

I have not had a true crash with Windows XP Pro but many people have. Most seem to be virus, trojan or hijack related but a certain number of these begin with Windows faults. MS, in my opinion, needs to make its flagship O/S & desktop system and its programs (like Word) modular. That is the ticket.

It seems to me that if the goal is a good product as opposed to just huge profits, the way to go is modular architecture and I hope that is the real purpose and outcome of the recent Gates contract with Torvalds (creator and owner of Linux O\S kernel) as "consultant". If Gates manages to buy off Torvalds, Linux and the bulk of the exciting Open Source movement will be history.

If the claim of many expert accusers that MS wants and pursues program bloat in order to force purchase of a new Windows , PC, and Software versions every few years, then nothing positive will come of the contact with Torvalds. I will say this. I am to rational to think I can predict the future. I can remember the past. MS practice repeatedly is to co-opt or smash others, not improve their performance.

Inernet Explorer is typical. MS did not create I.E. It may have sort of stolen it. Originally, it was named Mosaic and it was created and owned by Spyglass. MS licensed Mosaic from Spyglass & turned it into Internet Explorer, which they used to embedded to destroy the dominant web browser Netscape. MS wanted Netscape to carve up the Internet with them. They wanted Netscape to stop making Windows web browsers and MS would make only Windows web browers. Netscape refused, so MS destroyed them by in effect stealing basic code from Spyglass to make IE and then embeddening it into Windows and including it free. MS also forced OEM computer makers such as Gateway & Dell to stop including Netscape browser with PCs, or they would lose their Windows licenses.

MS has a long repeated history of killing off competitors, by buying THEM or their technology or simple theft. Gates started MS by acts of dishonesty. He negotiated a contract to supply an operating system he did not own. That is fraud. He got a $50,000 advance and used it to buy the rights to the new MS-DOS.

According the Spyglass, MS never paid the royalties they owed Spyglass. MS used bully tactics to replace Wordperfect with inferior MS Word. You can get an accurate, detailed account, complete with references at:
[kmfms.com/whatsbad.html?]

suggest moving this to a new topic as it is clear this has changed from the OP.

BTW: I use to work for Microsoft. There is a lot of IE that is MS original. Not "stolen"



Regards,

Most agreed ...

ok, here's a paradox. If most of MS apps are stolen from competitors, and MS apps are crap, then ... does it imply is the original app good or crap? If it is good, and MS after stealing it, make it crap, then how can a crap product beat a good product?

Granted, I don't believe MS actually go around stealing code or modules or apps from companies and manage to get away from it all these while. IP infringement is a very subtle thingie ... ...

XP 2.5 years no crashes. The Flybook...What's keeping it from being my handheld PC? MY JORNADA. Other than that nothing.

One of our Win 2000 domain controllers here is currently at 7 months of uptime, with none of the updates since then requiring a reboot. I don't think it ever crashed

As for hardware failures, we just replaced our active database server last week when the old one started reporting problems with its RAID controller, after 5 years.

1) The criticism & fight with the Microsoft cartel has two basic levels. A) The tech-computer pro and long term observer level B) The punter level of guys who make wild & unsubstantiated claims and when pressed usually cannot back up anything they claim. I call them the sloganeer haters of MS. I am a member of the first group. From the beginning I have not been impressed with Microsoft Products beginning with MS-DOS, which neither Gates or Microsoft had anything to do with creating. CPM was much better and it had a huge software base, which is why it was IBM's first choice.

2) Our group of critics do not claim MS stole its apps. I mentioned that the creators and owners of Mosaic claims they were cheated out of their royalties and received nothing for the basic code MS took and used to base IE on. MS made IE and embedded it into Windows. I merely used the Mosaic-IE case as one example of MS tactics. The point was how Windows threatened Netscape and crushed the Netscape browser. Netscape was clearly the superior browser at the time but how could it survive when PC makers were forced not to ship it with new PCs? This is public knowledge and it was proven in the Clinton era Justice Department case against MS.

3) I thought I explained, albeit briefly, how MS clobbers superior software with inferior software that it mostly buys. Sometimes the inferiority comes later when MS does not bother to improve it. For instance, MS-DOS early on included a tiny, simple line editor for writing batch files. MS never improved it but it being free (MS-DOS included a host of free utilities and programs) it prevented better line editors from getting very far. Up to the very end, Copy Con had no erase or correction function. I edited batch files and errors near the end with a shareware product called Galaxy Lite, the best text editor of its day. I mentioned one example of any excellent and well marketed Graphics Desktop operating system owned by Berkeley Softwares. MS clearly set out to destroy them and did so and if you ever check out a copy of GEOSWORKS or GEOPUBLISH (Their last gasp) and the Windows of the day 3.1, it would be so clearly obvious to you that 3.1 was a terrible joke and Geosworks was a serious, small (very tight code) excellent GUI operating system. It was also much cheaper than Windows 3.1, which was little more than MS-DOS with a shell. There were many shells then, most of the better than Windows 3.1 but they were written by young men at home who had no capital to fight an already big MS corporation.

Berkeley Softworks was the creation of a group of excellent programmers who comprised a team at Atari. The team wrote the first and second generation of video arcade games. To write the games they wrote, they had to write very efficient, tight code. The early arcade systems were well under a megabyte. The team moved on to form Berkeley Softworks and to write a GUI operating system for Apple IIGS similar to the one Apple had released with MAC. Next, the wrote a version to port on Commodore C-64, which was a 64k computer. I kept my C-64 and C-128D two years longer because of GEOSWORKS for Commodore. For $39.95, I had a GUI operating system that was stable, included a great publishing program, word processor, data base, etc and left memory to port other programs.

Later, Berkeley published GEOSWORKS for PCs and it made my 640k Intel 8088 IBM clone sing. It allowed me to hold out for two or three years from resorting to Windows. MS tolerated GEOSWORKS until a version came out for PCs. I knew two of the main programmers at Berkeley. They suddenly began talking to me about future releases in hush-hush paranoid tone. Soon, Berkeley was out of business. The group re-emerged in a niche MS was not interested in PDAs and Word Processor Typewriters. Many pioneer PDAs (especially Casio, Sony, Brother) used GEOS as their OS. A few years later, MS entered the PDA field and crushed GEOS.

Finally, you can learn a lot about this by reading the Justice Department case against MS. A lot of charges were filed. MS was not found innocent of any and admitted to a few. The total of the many fines leveled at MS amounts to a few million dollars, a joke to a firm that makes billions a year and has averaged 40% or higher growth a year since inception.

Probably because none of their games run under Linux... ;-)



Why must a small business owner upgrade at all? I own a small retail store and have run inventory, payroll, point-of-sale, and all my accounting on the same PC hardware and software since 1997. It runs Real World Accounting w/Synchronics Point-of-Sale on DOS 6.22. The process of ringing up sales, managing inventory and keeping books hasn't changed since my doors first opened, so neither has the hardware or software! I did upgrade from DOS/Win3.1 to Win95 to run IE and Outlook (to sync with my PDA, mostly) increasing boot-up time from 30 seconds to what seems like a week and a half, however! ;-)

Sure a lot of MS stuff is bloatware, but I'm sick of hearing how everyone is "forced to upgrade." People CHOOSE to upgrade for ease-of-use, new features, or just to keep up with the Joneses, perhaps, but Mr. Gates and Co. has never "forced" me to upgrade anything.

Come on. I owned a few businesses before I retired at 43. If you are a successful business person, you are aware of the business landscape, not just your particular business. I wonder: Is it attempt to get at truth or attempt to appear to win an argument by resort to blanket ideology and use of one particular business to deny there are entire business niches in which the big boys support wintel machinations because it reduces competition? I gave examples, none were general retail. Seems to me one would need to argue that Blockbuster and chain auto parts retailers do not buy the latest in special software and hardware in order to harm the competition. Are you aware than bar codes and scanning retail merchandise DOES NOT speed up cashing out customers and every huge retail company from Walmart down knows it? What bar code reading does is gives chain stores a big advantage over smaller competitors. Walmart, for example, uses the data collected with bar coding to dictate to manufacturers and suppliers what prices they will pay and what services they will provide Walmart.

I personally know couples who owned 30 to 40 year auto parts businesses and auto junk-salvage yards and were forced out of business by the escalating expense caused by wintel cartel marketing tactics. They were forced to upgrade or go out of business. Automart and Murrays (go check out their PCs yourself) have powerful servers and bigger and bigger highly expensive software to inventory, find and sell parts with. I am a former inventory control executive. That does not mean I know everything but it does mean I know something about use of PCs and software and robotics to knock off smaller competitors. By the way, are you aware that Gates new project is to make MS the world's banker?

The business that allowed me to retire young, by the way, was business consultant. I assure you simple accounting and payroll software has forced no one out of business. Many small businesses get along fine with neither. I currently advise a friend with a 25 year-old spinkler biz who does accounting and payroll by hand. Two years ago he suddenly was confronted with three new corporations swiping his customers. How? Offering free services and use of highly expensive Windows parts software. To compete, he had to invest in three XP systems with a lot of ram to run a $15,000 inventory program that allowed the corporation units to provide much faster installation and repair. Training for owner owner and employees alone cost him thousands. By the way, when I say small business I do not mean corner party stores or tiny mom-pop chicken take out. I am talking about serious small businesses that gross one to twenty million a year.

I was hired by smaller, highly successful businesses(serious small businesses that gross 1 to 20 million a year, not buy-your- own- job 'businessed' like hire a janitor, Jill's hair salon, Joe's hauling or corner party store) that were bringing in business galore and serious gross bucks but the owners were making low profit. I remember a highly successful Yo-Go Nutt firm in which the truck drivers made more than the owners! A growing problem I discovered in many cases was highly expensive PCs, hardware and very expensive software. An important auto salvage, parts inventory and Internet integrated salvage parts program that firms like Auto Zone, Murray, etc demand from used parts dealers costs $10,000 and yearly upgrades are in the thousands. Each Windows version is a immediately necessity. Big auto parts salvage firms have managed to evolve and eat small salvage businesses across the USA, due to the expense of required PCs and software.

Another example is the use of PCs and software of huge corporations to eat community hospitals. One hospital near me that was dear to most residents of Ypsilanti for 65 years was driven down by the big boys use of expensive PCs, wireless PDAs, peripheral hardware and overpriced dedicated software. The residents tried hard to save their hospital but it finally had to be closed & then sold for a mere $100,000 by a corrupt city council. The community no longer has a hospital. A big plastic surgery corporation bought it and makes huge profits with the facillites. They provide one service. Instant weight reduction by liposuction of stomach reduction. One example of how PCs and software killed the hospital is the major insurance firms demand that providers use a specific huge, expensive Windows program in order to bill. Of course, each big insurance firm demands its own, different program. This requires the latest in PCs and the latest Windows.

Similar tactics drove out phamarcist owned drug stores. Big firms like Kroger, Kmart, Sams Club, Canadian CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aide and insurance companies drove small business drug stores out of business with the ASSISTANCE of very expensive software, broadband connections, and need to have latest PC and Windows version in order to operate the current version of the software. Pharmacist owned drug stores just could not afford the layout in addition to paying more for the drugs.

Most businesses are started and run by people who do not have time to invest in mastering PCs and constantly changing software and Windows versions. To expect them to become computer officianados in order to own a business is tatamount to defending inferior auto makers by implying that all businesses that rely on cars and trucks must become skilled auto mechanics and then saying poorly made trucks that make small sellers trucks inadequate in 2-3 years is not unfair but the fault of the small businessmen, who were not really forced to upgrade. My last business, by the way, was small business computer consulting. I saw business after business fall largely due to unbearable PC, Windows and software expenses together with high expense of training new employees to use the stuff. This Wintel bloat tactic resulted in a recent firestorm of HR Block type chains of tax preparers. Our area saw five new ones emerge and take over in a two year period. We have two small tax preparers left. A CPA I know got so fed up with the Wintel jazz that he abandoned his accounting business for a far more lucrative computer consultant business. He installs and manages PC systems for smaller big accounting firms. They save money by hiring his firm by the hour on a need basis than by having their own full-time IT department.

I got a laugh from what my CPA friend did. He said one day "If I can't fight em, I side step em and make out big". His first Lan system customers were the two huge CPA firms that were driving him out of business! In three years, he had gone from 25 employees and six million a year in account fees to 5 employees and one million. His yearly PC and software expenses climbed over the same period.

Of course, Wintel does not put a gun to anyone's head. Given your defense of Wintel or more accurately your blanket defense of a political-economic ideology, I can assume you had no problem with the junk cars Detroit kicked out in the 1970s? "No one forced anyone to buy them." Consumers should stop demanding standards in prescription drug making and selling because no one forces a heart patient to buy drugs that turn out to kill heart patients? People have no complaint when city water managers allow germ contaminated water to flow like they did in a province of Canada? The manager should not have gone to jail because no one forced anyone to consume the bad water and besides here is this one guy who never drinks city water. He drinks well water and this eccentric loudly announced "I always got buy without city water. No one made them use it" --August, 2004, CKLW 800AM, Canada

Your perspective as expressed in your post to me is theoretical and anecdotal based with one special retail case experience (a claim I might add, since we have no way to verify the claim). As Socrates discovered many years ago in his youthful quest for knowledge, most people view the world from the lense of their particular trade experience. Of course...this is just all my humble opinion. I am too old to think I know anything with any finality.

I'll bite- they do it in order to facilitate in-house information exchange and information analysis.

Before I started my own retail store, I managed RadioShack stores for a little over a decade. I was with them from the paper ticket books and wooden cash drawers to their eventual use of (then) state-of-the-art networked POS systems (running SCO Xenix at first, BTW!)

The advantage of the computer systems was to gather information about customers and product to see what sells, when, to whom and for how much. That information streamlines a corporation in a big way, making them more profitable. Is that a "conspiracy" to eliminate competiton? I guess, in the same way everything a company does is an attempt to beat and eliminate competition. Not just the IT department!



Bar coding is an efficiency. Maybe it doesn't speed the checkout process, but it sure as hell speeds the check-IN process- incoming shipments are entered into the inventory system orders of magnatudes more quickly and accurately than hand-ticking off paper count sheets.



Are you suggesting that these companies, if not for the "Wintel Cartel" would still be doing business on Zilog Z80s running CP/M? Or Apple IIe's? That they wouldn't continually improve their data-gathering techniques to continue to streamline their businesses?

As for the "world's banker" stuff, frankly, since the vast MS conspiracy doesn't keep me up nights, I admit I haven't delved into it.

The old saying "nature abhors a vacuum" is a business truism. If Gates and Co. didn't have market dominance, SOMEBODY would've. And we'd all be ranting how IBM is pushing yet another buggy bloated version of OS/2 at us, or AT&T or somebody.



The sprinkler guy isn't simply losing customers because he lacks an XP Pro network- indies are getting killed (myself included) by chain/coprporate stores in every field. Customers like name-brand recognition, and they (usually correctly!) have faith that the large corporation has a better chance of being around next year. My guess is the competition luring your boy's customers away with "free services" (more agressive advertising and marketing) has a lot more to do with his woes than the XP systems! Again- streamlining and efficiency win, regardless of how you get there.

(My retail store, a satellite/cell phone retail shop, is squarly in the "corner store"/"Mom-n-Pop" category, just so we're clear!) ;-)



Then that's a barrier of entry to play with those guys (Auto Zone, Murray, etc.) If you don't want to play, find a different customer base. Seriously, it's not "Wintel" beating those guys up- it's the large chain demanding their suppliers comply with their streamlining. They don't want to waste an hour calling 50 junkyards on the backroom phone to see who has a functioning '72 AMC Gremlin water pump.

You make many good points, but then you (seemingly) go into left field. It's kind of like discussing the pros and cons of Fluoridated water with someone, who's making excellent points about the build up of Fluorine in bones, and then he goes "and besides- it was all a plot by the Russians in the first place..." It kind of takes the "credibility edge" off of the rest of the discussion!




Again, small druggists were killed by economies of scale. Not Win XP.



The 70's Detroit car problem was fixed by the marketplace- Detroit gave up marketshare to cheaper and more reliable Japanese imports, and have regretted it ever since. As to prescription drugs, are you really going to play the "health card"? Of course things like food and drug quality are too important to let the free market sort out. If only the Goverment had some sort of agency, or perhaps "administration" to oversee food and drugs... Same for the water. As to the free markets choice of business machines? I wonder if Pascal used to take the same kind of crap we dish out to Gates for that infernal calculation engine of his... ("Forsooth! He's driving out of business those good fellows that still do long division on parchment!"



My perspective is based on nearly twenty years in retail doing it "both ways"- with and without PCs. I am not supporting the use or non-use of Windows, I'm mearly pointing out that "Wintel" makes an excellent scapegoat and a pretty decent example of the forces that cause small business to fail- I simply think it's disingenuous to lay the collapse of a small business at the feet of PCs in general, much less "Wintel" specifically. Why not pick on those OSHA guys forcing business to improve safety, retrofitting wheelchair ramps in 200-year old buildings, or the FDA for requiring packaging changes? Large business will always find it easier (on a cost per unit basis) to deal with ANY kind of change- regulatory, technological, legal, etc. I would be the first guy in line to buy $20,000 of PCs, OSes, software and networking equipment if I thought it would give me a leg up on my competiton, whether it be Linux, WinXP, System X, or the entire eBay supply of Commodore 64s. Sadly, my problems with competition are the good old fashioned "economies of scale" kind, that I can't blame on, or fix with, a shiny new battery of PCs. The old joke said a businessman's worst day was when he saw the 60 Minutes news crew at your door. Today, your worst day is when Wal-Mart has decided to carry the same product line you do! A lot of things in this world might be Bill Gates fault, but that's not one of them!

As to my perspective being "theoretical" or "anecdotal", I spend a lot of time checking out the competition looking to "borrow" ideas, (or even employees) as most small business people do. The small fry like me tend to use cheesy DOS-based database type apps (using running in a DOS window on a $2000 PC system! Blame a slick salesman or their gullibility there- not a "Wintel" conspiracy!) and the big chains tend to use a Win-GUI based networked system to facilitate communication between departments, stores, etc. In my old Tandy/RadioShack days, they used Zenix for a variety of good reasons. Back then Tandy was still a PC manufacturer, selling IBM-compatible and non-compatible systems so they had a large in-house department that actually WROTE software. Zenix networked a lot better than DOS, and the licensing was cheaper.

I really didn't respond to your post to defend MS or Windows. I just wanted to illustrate that often real world problems require putting aside your philosophies for a while. Sure it would be a wonderful world if open-source alternatives for every business problem existed. It would also be great if I could buy the world a Coke and keep them company, too. Unfortunately, just like with my joke about your grandkids not crashing Linux because their games don't run under it, if the apps I need to run are "Wintel" apps, I gonig to use a Wintel system, regardless if Bill Gates personally kicked my dog, or tries to usurp the world's banking system. There are certainly problems with MS software and their corporate philosphy as well, perhaps, but let's not go blaming every small-to-medium sized business failure in the last, and coming, five years on them. If it were a true conspiracy, they'd price their stuff just low enough that every business could afford it, to stay in business and buy more. It's like the mob protection racket- if you empty the guy's cash drawer completely, he won't be in business next week for you to hit him up again- you need to skim almost all the profit, but not all! ;-)

It's been fun sparring with you- like I said, you make excellent points- I just wanted to counter those that didn't jive with my real world experiences (anecdotal, myopic, or otherwise). This thread is already so wildly off topic, I'll sign off, let you crush me with your reasoned last words if you so choose, and hope we can still be cyberfriends!

Ciao!