Re: Edge is better than Chrome, though.
Chrome has had some nice improvements recently. Automatically sleeping unused tabs, for example, reduces its memory footprint.
1002 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
Speed tests are down from early 5G, but I'm generally able to do what I need to do. Teams and Google Meet sessions are pretty reliable. Manchester is problematic with EE (especially in the centre), where I often need to switch mobile data off and back on again when on the move (even with an apparently good signal). I think they have a problem handing off between cells. This was not a problem in the early days of 5G and might (I think) be down to the replacement of Huawei equipment not going smoothly.
“ One intriguing finding is that Copilot was the most useful to the most experienced programmers.”
Far from intriguing, I would describe that as a statement of the bleedin’ obvious. It has been pretty clear to me from the start that someone with a good foundation and experience in a given subject matter would benefit from the emerging LLMs. For those who lack foundation and experience, it probably becomes the crutch that stunts their development.
Even by the time of the fire sales (and it was tempting then), the QL never made sense to me*. It was clear it was never going to get the software (especially games). It was all a bit too grown-up at the time! My move to 16-bit didn't come until the Amiga 500, which ended up making a great deal of sense given the many similarities to the grown-up OSs we used at University. That said, I'm rather surprised at the following the QL has to this day.
* I'm the classic 80s child. Got a ZX Spectrum for "homework".
It's not just computers. Certain large companies, in a variety of sectors, have become very closely intertwined with government at all levels. If you want better value for money, for large IT, infrastructure, education and health projects, then a way needs to be found to break that. We have a lot of very good SMEs who are more than up to delivering an awful lot of government-funded work and who, at the moment, would never stand a chance.
At the time, I think it only really needed a decent desktop search option (though Google Desktop search could do this - albeit, I suspect, at considerable risk to your privacy). That said, I don't mind 10 and 12 either (I prefer the Mac, obvs), probably because I only use the search part of the start menu.
Lots of options. Vim and Neovim* happen to be what works for me. Unless Microsoft brings something new and innovative, I assume their efforts are better spent elsewhere.
* Keeping it simple, though - you can expend much effort getting to work a thing that installs and works with a single click in VSCode.
“ It has and does all of those things, and has an i5 processor that lets me run a complete software dev environment - Xcode, eclipse, Visual Studio, git .... even VMWare for Windows if I'm desperate”
Having picked up Chromebook Plus for curiosity money, in the sales, I can report that Chromebooks do that. Well, not the Xcode bit, and Windows virtualisation is a bit new, but a dev environment is fairly straightforward.
“ Mexico City is one of the highest-elevation cities in the world, sitting at 7,349 feet (2,240 meters) above sea level”
Ouch - Nairobi was hard on me (seriously unfit back then though) and that’s a couple of thousand feet lower. Marginal if elevation was a factor in Woz’s minor stroke though. Time up there can actually be good for health.
The only thing stopping the prosecutor from asking for the Chair is a little thing called the law, and the prosecutor will have half an eye on their next political office.
Also, does the US do jail for posh people (like the so-called open prisons we have here) or is it next stop Super Max?
M1 and M1 Pro owners, like me, who are sitting pretty with systems that are still overkill, for us at least, three years down the line. Unless I find I need more than 16Gb, there is no need for me to upgrade. If I do find I need more than 16Gb, I doubt I’ll buy new.
With these new releases, I think Apple is targeting segments it has already saturated.
“ Companies that have their computers due for replacement get Apple products as they are now in another league, in very much every metric.”
So many misconceptions in this thread, so I’ll try:
- Is Mac a good fit in the corporate space? Most of the time. They do sometimes break SMB shares between OS upgrades, but that’s what IT departments are for. Office Mac is pretty good. Most of the time.
- Is the Mac more expensive? For users who need little more than a thin client, they are bloody expensive. For power users, high end Macs and PCs are pretty much the same.
- Is the Mac a good development platform. It’s great for many use cases but I always have a PC for when the Mac does not for. Docker in the Intel space is a good example.
- Is the Mac repairable? As others have said, the extended guarantee lies inside the buy/disposal cycle of a lot of big companies.
- Is that pretty despicable? Yes! Love my Mac but I can replace the battery in my corporate Dell 5590 with my own hands (not to mention upgrade the memory and SSD).
I know a couple of (infrastructure/software) consultancies who offer new consultants/developers the option of a Mac. It’ll be a good fit for some; not for others. In the pure corporate space, Office 365 is Microsoft’s smart move. It’ll work anywhere, but unlike Google the desktop apps are always a bit ahead of the web experience (which is actually very decent). I have no idea how anyone else would usurp that at the moment.
I was tasked with making Excel the front end presentation tool for reporting, mid 90s. As I often feel the need to remind people, we were surprisingly advanced back then. VBA and ODBC were both things. Getting stuff from a database* and having Excel do the presentation work (including actual spreadsheet type stuff) was fairly straightforward.
Later, it turned out VBA was insecure, and Microsoft ultimately had to make it almost completely unusable to make it more secure. I like to think that VBA ultimately murdered Gates’s beloved BASIC, which is no bad thing.
* Paradox desktop databases, in our businesses, but the we’d experimented with Informix and all the developers got the bit about it being perfectly reasonable (with a fast enough connection - not ours at the time) to do the same stuff with a database on the other side of the world.
"However, what amuses me is that when offering their opinions about exactly which version of L a Win refugee might plump for, it's usually either Ubuntu or Mint. I get the impression that they haven't really tried many different distros. Perhaps said refugees need to be pointed in the direction of Distrowatch to choose for themselves?"
Let them eat Arch (and RTFM).
As far as I can tell, the whole point of Windows 11 is planned obsolescence for old but otherwise very capable hardware. Until recently, I had a 2015 Thinkpad that still performed perfectly well but will not upgrade to 11. The happy new owner will likely bin Windows and install Mint. We reached a point of sufficiency, as far as hardware goes, a decade or more back - I suspect there was a risk of sales slowing down as people stuck with stuff that still works. Antitrust? Anyone?