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Notebooks on IOS gets side-by-side documents
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Posted by Hugh
Oct 26, 2015 at 10:06 AM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>Ah, Microsoft. What happened? I fear you were suffering from the
>introversion that afflicts all very large corporates sooner or later: an
>assumption - conviction, even - that the inner culture of Microsoft is
>fundamentally relevant to the outside world. This is, of course,
>nonsense: no large corporate has anything resembling a culture that
>matches the “outside world”, which is why you get very large and totally
>toxic companies like Monsanto. And believe me, I know whereof I speak:
>many of our clients are large corporates, and sometimes we just have to
>sit back and marvel at the mystical processes they take for granted, but
>have no relevance to anything else. But I’m wittering. I’ll report back
>once Win10 has installed…
In the UK, I’ve heard it called “the Brigade of Guards Syndrome” (which, to be fair, in the right context can have pluses such as focus, single-mindedness and team-bonding). I believe the Ancient Greeks also had a word for it which has transferred itself into modern English - “hubris” - and which in Greek tragedy usually led to “nemesis”, an unavoidable cause of downfall. Political as well as commercial history is littered with examples.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 26, 2015 at 11:19 AM
Hubris indeed. Although in this post-Classical world, we’ll have to find some other, more Anglo-Saxon noun for it.
Well now. Windows 10 is a vast improvement, at least on initial inspection.
But ironically, I now can’t find out how to split the screen between two apps! The swipe-from-left apps bar has disappeared, or rather, been replaced by a more conventional list of running apps. How annoying. Still, it’s probably quite easy once you know how (sigh!).
But the rest - especially ease of access to settings - is hugely improved. In particular, Microsoft now appear to have taken a look at other OSes (including mobile ones) and realised that hey, there are a whole bunch of really good ideas in there.
And they’ve also included an “optimised for tablet” mode, which is gratifying. And the drivers have also hugely improved - very easy to connect up Bluetooth keyboard, HP printer and so on. WiFi is also better (much!) than Win8.1, which had a nasty way of suddenly deciding it couldn’t connect to the Internet after all.
Actually, I’m quite impressed! The only thing that puts me off is the fact that I’m sending a steady stream of data back to Microsoft. The privacy settings allow you to reduce this to “Basic” (the other two choices are “Enhanced” and “Full”), but there’s no actual “None/Off” option! Still, you gotta laugh, eh?
Still a dearth of good outliners on Windows, however, although WritePlus is quite a nice Markdown editor. Oh, which reminds me, maybe Workflowy…?
Cheers,
Bill
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 29, 2015 at 09:57 AM
Okay, biggest difference in Windows tablets/2-in-1s? The battery life.
The working battery life is great. The little x2 can last all day on one charge – at least 9 hours. BUT, and it’s a big but, it keeps sucking battery juice even when it’s asleep! Not just a little, an awful lot. After a day and a half, it’s comprehensively dead. And that’s with all power settings optimised, in “Flight” mode etc. etc.
So there’s no way you can use your Windows tablet like an iPad. Or even like an Android tablet. Actually, it reminds me strongly of the early netbooks (I still have an Asus 7-series sitting around somewhere), which suffered from exactly the same syndrome, although they were even worse, in that they lost battery charge even when switched right off.
Fortunately the x2 boots up much faster than earlier Windows machines - in around 20 seconds, which is okay. But it’s made me rethink the practicality of these Windows devices. In fact, I’m starting to dribble over the thought of an iPad Pro…