The direction of Windows

[Coke Robot]

But what about the "Experience"? I don't know that many people who bought an iPad because it had "super awesome hardware". No, the hardware specs themselves or the lack of external cards, or ports...never seemed to bother an iPad user at all. They bought it for the experience, it was shiny, it had good apps via the app store, and practically everybody has one and they all rave about it. Microsoft certainly needs THAT for Surface to really take off. We can give it the most awesome hardware ever...but without a strong desire to use it, what's the point?

I don't think most ipad users have half a billion apps installed on their ipads...if they did, they would have to use apple for saying you can have access to half a billion apps but can't without hassle.

But setting that aside and hardware: Office. No one goes to buy an ipad for Office. No one goes to buy an ipad so they can upload a Word document or to print said document. A Swiss Army knife is more worthwhile than having a expensive knife that can cut through a boot.

And likely almost everybody who bought an iPad found that they can live quite happily without office. I don't hear many complaints about how they would love they their iPad if it only had office.

And I've across people that have. I know a few that use it over their PC but when it comes time to anything worthwhile, a PC is ALWAYS used. A Windows 8 tablet PC just knocks two birds with one stone, or a neatly designed tablet.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Not Altruistic

Data Centres cost enormous amounts of money to build and operate.
Companies don't provide "Cloud" products "out of the goodness of their hearts", they expect to make s***loads of money from them.

I seriously doubt that VDI will become part of the non-enterprise world..

I will try to find for you the article on the research center Google have in US for the only purpose of offering Virtual Desktop to everyone, Citrix, Vmware do the same and of course Microsoft. If you look at Chrome OS, it's clear that Google don't want we use PC.

Agreed.
It's obvious that's the plan.

Companies believe it will generate enormous amounts of cash AND eliminate piracy.
"The awesome new Cloud OS! Only $0.99/day!"

Governments would believe that they could prevent troublemakers from accessing the "Cloud" OS.
"These new powers will only be used against criminals, paedophiles and terrorists. You can trust us."

The only benefit to the consumer would be, they wouldn't need AV software ("Dumb Terminals" don't get permanently infested with malware).
It would actually promote a false sense of security, as consumers would still be vulnerable to monitoring, Phishing and ID theft.

As for the idea that the MS "Cloud" will be "unhackable", I offer Sony, Google and Adobe (just to name 3) as evidence to the contrary.