CES Highlights

This post pretty much sums up what I enjoy about CES

http://microsoft-news.com/windows-8-laptopultrabook-concepts-shown-at-ces/

Good to see the nVidia here - cosmetically similar to the Samsung BUILD machine but this one I am sure is running Windows 8 on ARM & should be a measure of magnitude cheaper when it finally appears.

Not so sure about the Nikiski until I started thinking about the potential value of Live Tiles.  If I could drag them from my Windows 8 metro desktop onto this new surface then maybe it gets a vote after all ...

Nice but this is so much better: http://cnettv.cnet.com/run-android-apps-windows-bluestacks/9742-1_53-50117878.html

Can't wait to run all of those Android apps on my Build tablet. I hope they can provide support for GPS and other sensors in Windows. If so our Android app will have just added another platform option.

@DeathByVisualStudio:LOL that took me to a 30 second video ad for the iPhone!

@DeathByVisualStudio: It will be interesting to see if there's that patented Android lagginess even when running on PC hardware.

@cbae: It probably will because the apps are written in Java and I have never had good luck with Java running smooth on Windows.

I do wonder if running Android apps on Windows will allow all of the malware to run as if it was on the phone.

@cbae: Java is managed code as much as .NET is. If I have had to live with a slow WPF for the last 4 or 5 years, it is a bit rich for you to never highlight the patented slugishness of WPF, lets not even get to cold start up times for everything .NET related....Just sayin'

BTW, with the amount of money going into Android, I would hazard a guess that they will probably invest more in perf, than Microsoft have of late in any of their products, if you are going to be critical, please be balanced and fair in your views.

@JeremyJ: Java is not that much different from C#, so I cannot see why it cannot be optimised the same way .NET has. People seem to think that Java as a language is just standing still, whilst C# goes to the Olympics, you would be very surprised at developments in Java.

@vesuvius:Panties.Unbunch();

All android phones have a slight lag that hasn't gone away, yet.  Every serious review I've seen of these phones show it.  There may be reasons, and the solution might be right around the corner, but if you like Android as a platform, own it, warts and all.  It's the price you pay for larger marketshare.

24 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

@cbae: Java is managed code as much as .NET is. If I have had to live with a slow WPF for the last 4 or 5 years, it is a bit rich for you to never highlight the patented slugishness of WPF, lets not even get to cold start up times for everything .NET related....Just sayin'

BTW, with the amount of money going into Android, I would hazard a guess that they will probably invest more in perf, than Microsoft have of late in any of their products, if you are going to be critical, please be balanced and fair in your views.

My basis for comparison is Windows Phone, which also happens to run managed code, but is hardly ever, if at all, laggy. It's not the fact that Android is based on a Java-like VM running managed code that gives it its intrinsic lagginess. It's the application stack built on top of it and the design choices that Google engineers made.

@cbae: thats just the opinion of an intern, not a particularly seasoned one either. If you look down that post and read through Ice Cream Sandwich you will find that most of these issues have been addressed. I have had an Android phone for the last 2 years, and cannot understand these molehills being turned into mountains, especially since Windows Phone and iOS are top end phone OS's at present (even though I am paying more for my phone than for a typical iOS), with Microsoft looking to cater for lower end phones, we will see the overall experience then.

Google chose to focus on budget/low end phones first, rake in the money, and are now focusing on the high end experience, whereas Microsoft started in iOS territory. It is almost like when Windows 95 shipped, full of holes, but good enough and most importantly affordable enough for the masses, now that money has started rolling in, and they have won brand loyalty and household awareness, it looks to me as they have prioritised things correctly and in a way that creates the most amount of revenue.

Tweet Choir? *facepalm*

The Sesame Street bit reminded me of the show Guy Montag's wife watches in Fahrenheit 451.

No new information except for the LTE phone launches. All-in-all, a disappointing keynote.

8 hours ago, Ian2 wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio:LOL that took me to a 30 second video ad for the iPhone!

"Your video will play in 30 seconds..." Sorry CNet makes you sit through the ad.

For the rest, IMO, vesuvius is 100% right, the rest of you are wrong. If you watched the video all the way through you'd see it was not laggy at all playing a full screen drag racing game. That's pretty good for an alpha.

I hope Balmer and crew brought some chairs and umbrellas to sit under in the hot summer sun as they get stuck on that WP7 beachhead of theirs.

Can't wait for Windows 8! What a great platform to run Android apps on!

WPF & Silverlight forever! Oh wait...