Heater goes hard core Microsoft.
Heater.
Posts: 21,230
Heater goes hard core Microsoft.
I write this to you using a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. For the first time in my life I went into a store and paid money for a Microsoft product.
Those familiar with my previous posts here will know this is a very upside down happening.
It all started at a Microsoft developer day in Helsinki in the winter time. This was all about Azure and cloud solutions etc. I happened to attend out of curiosity.
Some very nice young MS guys, one of whom had previously worked for Mozilla and was seriously into open source software, explained how there was now an open source IDE from MS, Visual Studio Code. And how MS had open sourced the new Javascript Engine in the web browser. And how MS were supporting Javascript and node.js for cloud services.
Could this be true? Am I dreaming? It's only yesterday that MS described open source software as a cancer.
Later I found the VS Code does indeed run on Linux and Mac and is a pretty cool IDE. Turns out that JS engine is pretty good too and they want to make it useable as an alternative to Google's V8 engine in node.js.
They assured me vigorously that it was true, MS had realized the error of it's ways and was making amends.
They plied me with free beer and food I started to believe them!
Available for general use that day they had Surfaces Pros laid out. Reluctantly I tried one. Hmm.. this is kind of a cool hardware gizmo.
So it came to pass I had to travel to the USA. No way, I thought, was I going to drag my old and heavy laptop across the pond. I need something much lighter. Besides I hate laptops anyway. Tabs are nice but I need a real computer. And the boss insists I can use Skype and Webex which is a pain on Linux. Hmm...I remembered those Surface Pros....
So here I sit in a bar in San Jose, supping on an IPA, with a Surface Pro. Typing this in Visual Studio Code.
Back in the office is a surface dock that does a great job of converting this little thing into a PC driving two big screens and ethernet.
In case you are thinking I have lost my mind. I am spending the bosses money:) And, importantly, if this Windows thing annoys me too much I know I can get Linux running on here.
Now to important things... The Prop Tool installed and runs here nicely. No idea if it works as I neglected to bring any Props with me on this trip.
Now where is Simple IDE and Propeller IDE ...
I write this to you using a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. For the first time in my life I went into a store and paid money for a Microsoft product.
Those familiar with my previous posts here will know this is a very upside down happening.
It all started at a Microsoft developer day in Helsinki in the winter time. This was all about Azure and cloud solutions etc. I happened to attend out of curiosity.
Some very nice young MS guys, one of whom had previously worked for Mozilla and was seriously into open source software, explained how there was now an open source IDE from MS, Visual Studio Code. And how MS had open sourced the new Javascript Engine in the web browser. And how MS were supporting Javascript and node.js for cloud services.
Could this be true? Am I dreaming? It's only yesterday that MS described open source software as a cancer.
Later I found the VS Code does indeed run on Linux and Mac and is a pretty cool IDE. Turns out that JS engine is pretty good too and they want to make it useable as an alternative to Google's V8 engine in node.js.
They assured me vigorously that it was true, MS had realized the error of it's ways and was making amends.
They plied me with free beer and food I started to believe them!
Available for general use that day they had Surfaces Pros laid out. Reluctantly I tried one. Hmm.. this is kind of a cool hardware gizmo.
So it came to pass I had to travel to the USA. No way, I thought, was I going to drag my old and heavy laptop across the pond. I need something much lighter. Besides I hate laptops anyway. Tabs are nice but I need a real computer. And the boss insists I can use Skype and Webex which is a pain on Linux. Hmm...I remembered those Surface Pros....
So here I sit in a bar in San Jose, supping on an IPA, with a Surface Pro. Typing this in Visual Studio Code.
Back in the office is a surface dock that does a great job of converting this little thing into a PC driving two big screens and ethernet.
In case you are thinking I have lost my mind. I am spending the bosses money:) And, importantly, if this Windows thing annoys me too much I know I can get Linux running on here.
Now to important things... The Prop Tool installed and runs here nicely. No idea if it works as I neglected to bring any Props with me on this trip.
Now where is Simple IDE and Propeller IDE ...
Comments
I had a similar experience and I needed a compact laptop, one with actual ports and a proper keyboard. So I bought one of those Dell XPS15 with the 4k screen, 16G RAM, i7, 512G NVMe SSD etc. But it was loaded with Win10 and it looked good, so I worked with it......for a couple of months that is before I got the jack of it. One of the annoying things that would happen is that MS would take over my laptop and wake it up, even when it was in the bag, just so I could have a flat battery and a nice warmer for my lap. Argghhh!!!
Now I have installed Linux I have been very happy with my laptop.
edit: I should add that MS would wake the laptop up even from hibernate!
For sure a VM and Linux is on the Agenda. There is a lot I still need Linux for.
@Peter
I have not looked into this very hard yet but I suspect a Linux install on this machine won't be able to make use of the dock. Which would remove a lot of the attraction.
@mindrobots
Yes, cats and dogs sleeping together.
At least it's not Apple, we like to support the underdog
-Phil
It turns out this Windows 10 on a Surface Pro is as insane and unpredictable as every MS product I have ever had to use in the past three decades.
So I close the thing up for ten minutes as I walk back to the hotel. When I open it again there is no mouse pointer and no response to the keyboard.
After messing around a bit I shut it down totally and restart it. That's what you do with Windows, right?
Great, it starts up with no mouse pointer, no keyboard input, no way to log in, and... the screen upside down!
Hmm...OK, restart it again a couple of times. Eventually it came right again.
WTF?
Are you suffering from early stages of dementia ???
Lucky MS is not building a car! When it stops, take the engine out, then put it back, and everything will work once again!
What Linux version are you using? I have a Dell Inspiron 13 with Win10 and similar problems and am considering a switch to Linux.
My experience with openSUSE has been that as much as I admired it, it just required too much work, even with just getting multimedia to run since they do not include anything that is not open or something to that effect. However I persisted and learnt (it's a word) about it, added multimedia and even found out what I needed to do to get my favorite tools on their including BST and medit etc. Now it's a joy, that's all I can say although I would like to be able to disable the touchy touchpad during typing.
I went with the rolling distro, openSUSE Tumbleweed (20160603) (x86_64) 64-bit.
edit: had another quick look at my touchy touchpad issue and it turns out that little gnome app I tried before just needs me to select another method, synclient, not gconf. So now it works perfectly.
This OS certainly make you feel like you have lost your marbles.
So here I am in San Jose using a Windows machine. Meanwhile Mrs Heater back in Helsinki has been complaining about her Windows 8 laptop for months. All kind of problems with Facebook and getting video from the local TV channels to play. Internet to slow, and for some reason it is very slow even if all the other machines on the same WIFI network are getting 5 or 10 times the speed.
Today she tells me she has taken over my Debian Linux PC back home and everything is working fine. Nice and fast too. She said "You are not getting your computer back". With a bit of a smile perhaps. Mrs Heater is totally non-technical but now she is a happy Linux user.
So there we have it. Upside down. Role reversal.
Now, why doesn't up arrow work in the text input boxes as I type into Chrome on this Surface Pro? Never seen that problem before.
I open the thing up. Screen says something about loading or applying updates. Won't go to login or do anything else. Takes 6 minutes to complete and let me in.
Six minutes to boot up!
Lucky I was not in a hurry or about to give a presentation with this madness.
The other day I transferred some photos from my Android phone to this Surface over bluetooth. Today it refuses to work.
On the phone: "Error: Unable to communicate with DESKTOP...."
On the Surface, Manage Bluetooth Devices says "GALAXY J1 Paired"
Bluetooth Settings says: "Device status : This device is working properly"
Even when both ends claim to be paired sending a file fails with no error message anywhere.
Mind you, have never gotten Bluetooth to work anywhere, always the same chaos, apart from a cheap Chinese Bluetooth speaker I have.
Can any mods move those to "Heater go America".
That's because you're sending them to someone else's Bluetooth. Hopefully they're SFW photos!
Oddly enough it started working again. Hence the pictures in the "go America thread". That's after complaining for a long time that the bluetooth device on the Surface was not installed.
So I'm watching a YouTube video. I have to move to a different location so I close the thing up. The vid stops playing, as one would hope it all goes to sleep at that point.
Half an hour later I open it up again, it wakes up and presents me with a login screen. That's good, I may have lost it or had it stolen on the way. Or I don't want casual snoopers looking at what I'm doing whilst I go to the rest room.
But, the vid resumes playing, I can hear the audio whilst not logged in.
That is a major security leak!
I'll consider that bug reporting idea. Although I'm loath to put much time into reporting bugs and mis-features to a for profit company regarding closed source software. Crafting a meaningful bug report takes time, it's work, who works for free? Compounded by the fact that many of these things are un-reproducible.
I'd be happy to report bugs in their open source offerings, like the JS engine in Edge or Visual Studio Code.
But then I don't use Edge. VS Code is nice though.
Yeah, that's a screwy one. I accidentally do that all the time, when I suspend my laptop while Google Play is streaming... Then I'll open it back up some time later (it always seems to be in a coffee shop or library), and the music starts blasting away while I'm still sitting at the lock screen!
On the one hand, I find it to be more of an annoyance than a security issue. On the other hand, I blame the streaming software (almost always a web browser) more than the OS. The software is perfectly capable of knowing when the computer is being suspended and treat the event as an explicit "pause". Otherwise, I just don't see how the OS could reliably prevent specific applications from resuming, while leaving others alone.
I've reported a few myself and only takes a few minutes. It's not like you have to go into great detail.
Edge has gotten better in the last few previews, but Internet Explorer is still available, though it's not up front like it used to be. And nothing prevents one from installing a 3rd party browser.
Also, the latest insider previews have included "Ubuntu Bash on Windows". Might be something interesting to you?
Of course I only use Chrome and Firefox. The Edge has the same bug with internationalized domain names and certificates as Firefox
I usually install cygwin when I need BASH on Windows. Perhaps this new "Bash on Windows" better.
But surely if you bash on windows they break?
Get serious here! They are just OS features, not bugs
As for bug reports, do you think they would bother to take any notice???
Thing shuts down. Press the power button to wake it up. Keyboard and slidy mouse don't work. No mouse cursor. Suspecting it's forgotten it has keyboard attached I remove that and replace it. No good. Power down and up again and it works again.
And show stoppers, even if they only affect one person would seem to raise flags with them.
But if no one reports problems, how will they know?
No comment.
I believe it's called "dogfooding" now a days.
Hmm....