Discussion on:

CES 2011: The biggest winners and losers

They were the most successful corporation in Vegas last week, including the casinos. CES is a hardware show. MS is a software company with a hardware sideline. Apple is the opposite. Why wouldn't they be the CES loser?

There is a huge CES category for apps and software now.

But, even if we accept that CES is largely a hardware show, in the past a lot of the hardware that was headlining the show was running Microsoft software (desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, smartphones, home servers, and even some settop boxes).

That wasn't the case this year. Nearly all of the headliner devices (mostly smartphones, tablets, and laptop/tablet hybrids) were running Android. It was an obvious trend that was everywhere at the CES this year.

Microsoft is usually all over the place at CES. They typically have one of the largest booths, advertising everywhere, and join in on a lot of partner announcements. This year, they didn't have much to advertise (or chose not to) and a lot of Microsoft biggest partners were showing off their new Android gear instead of anything running Windows.

all you talked about was HARDWARE not software. Did you not read what you wrote.

*note* not meet to be mean

Are u kiddin me. Windows on ARM is the biggest news I have heard in the past decade. I hate when random folks with not a clue about technology can become "award-winning journalist" for technology industry.

But now MS has to play nice with Intel and their new SOC. Kind of like telling your wife to ignore your girlfriend.

Somehow I doubt it.

Like Jason mentions in his response, it's more about ARM scaling up, and Microsoft thinking "maybe there'll be some new PC running ARM out, and we'd better be sure Windows will work on that".

I don't see something like a fully featured full sized Windows being released to work on some underpowered ARM based handheld. The point of making Windows actually work on an ARM is all about making sure that if someone comes up with the idea to use an ARM architecture in a full size laptop or something.

And I can definitely see something like an ARM powered laptop in the near future. Other than the x86 family, ARM architecture is pretty much the biggest architecture out there, and it's only been getting bigger and bigger, since there's been pressure to constantly upscale it's capabilities.

I think another factor that's led to this decision by Microsoft is that if there were to be an ARM based laptop or some other device that would normally have run windows (maybe a full fledged desktop??) there's a good chance that if Windows weren't on it, it'd have some flavor of Linux (possibly Chrome OS?), and if that were a huge success, Microsoft would have been so late to the party that they might as well have never shown up in the first place.

Windows is not scaling down to smaller devices (smartphones and tablets), ARM is scaling up so that it can run laptops and PCs.

This will affect Intel more than Microsoft. As it stands, ARM for Windows will have very little effect on the current PC ecosystem.

Windows used to run on other chip architectures as well. NT kernel ran on PowerPC and Alpha chips, but x86 eventually made them extinct. The Windows on ARM announcement is no different than that. It's simply Microsoft seeing the writing on the wall and making sure it's software will be able to run on all future chip architectures that might power laptops, desktops, and servers.

I think if Intel wants to continue, they will have to compete with ARM and make a RISC chip that will stand a chance against ARM. Intel's CISC chips are more for desktops, and if a few early reviews about Sandy Bridge hold, that chip is pretty low power - but good only for the desktop space, not anything mobile.

As far as the "Windows on ARM" case, I would love to see their WP7 on a tablet running on an ARM chip (or a future Intel RISC). But as Thurrott mentioned, they have no plans to put WP7 on a tablet. Big mistake on MS's part, imo.


Just my two cents..

Philip

I agree with Jason. Also, Windows on ARM requires a recompile of every app out there to a new platform. This would be left to a few apps that'll get included with the system. Unless this is some kind of weird play for the ATM market (which I had though they already HAD), ARM isn't a serious contender. Being an also-ran on ARM platform isn't going to make them any more attractive to developers.

Windows NT was born on the MIPS platform. MS has also had NT on PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC... not just the kernel, the whole OS.

Two problems. Onw was simple: Microsoft used this very existance to bleed money from these various chip makers. They didn't just support Alpha, they had DEC doing the work AND paying for that. Same with Motorola.. Windows 2000 didn't show up on PowerPC because not only did Motorola have to do the bulk of the programming, MS wanted $20 million or so for that ability.

Second... no promotion. The on real power Microsoft has with Windows is the ability to move platforms... but that only happens when they push it. So, no alternate processor mandate meant very few apps on non x86 versions of Windows. Kind of like 64-bit on XP. Once Microsoft required drivers and apps run on 64-bit Windows to get certification, 64-bit Windows became a reasonable OS.

MS will have to make Windows on ARM their OS, not try to stick ARM or Qualcomm or nVidia with the bill. And they have to require ARM support as part of driver and app certification, or the port will be pointless.

And even then, there's the bloat factor. One reasson ARm tablets are revitalizing the tablet concept is low power. And sure, price. But also, they're all running reasoanable operating systems, and they're at the top of their class in performance... iPad and Android tablets are the fastest iOS or Android devices, in general. How do you scale dual core Imtel desktops down to ARM tablets, Windows or not, without making them just as terrible as x86 tablets running Windows?

Windows is a PITA that everyone knows and tolerates because of the applications. Those applications don't exist for Windows on ARM. All those legacy apps, that keep people running on XP, will have no chance on ARM.

At this point, Windows on ARM is more of a curiosity than anything else.

Ian

I agree that Windows on ARM is a major step for Microsoft. Essentially they are saying that they are committed to keeping a kernel lean enough to run on low power / low horsepower chipsets. Good for them - it's about time to realize that despite their clear dominance of the desktop, a longstanding bloated non-scalable kernel has kept them out of the mobility and tablet market.

That said, this is not the 'Consumer Electonics Issue-some-press-releases', this is the Consumer Electronics Show. Balmer toted a tablet around 12 months ago at CES and what do they have to show for it? One HP tablet that is priced for the corporate world that has barely been available for a month. Not exactly what I call 'Consumer Electronics'.

Talking about an ARM-capable OS is great - about time. Will MS have anything to actually *show* at the show in 12 months time? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

But is the world going to wait for MS to get their stuff together before buying a tablet? I'm not.

Chris

My VPs are kind enough to ask me first, but I can't make them wait for a Microsoft tablet. It looks like we're heading to iPad land (much as I dislike supporting iTunes to get media onto it...)

?biggest news I have heard in the past decade.?

Give me a break, Microsoft has been promising windows on the toaster since Win32 conference back in 1993. The entire concept of NT was to create a hardware/chip neutral OS.

Microsoft is only about 2 decades behind on their promise. Furthermore, so what. Java has been running on micro devices for almost a decade, Windows OS is still crap, (why Russia?s government and other government are moving away from Windows).

Good analysis, Jason. I think you are right on target.

Two things come to mind:

1- 4G and LTE is pretty much ubiquitous in urban, populated areas, but there are huge swaths in the US where there is little or no cell coverage. This needs to be addressed and is something that the federal government could very much assist with by clearing the way for wireless companies to install enough towers to provide near-total coverage.

2- Where will this take the traditional desktop computer sector in the next several years? I know that the tendancy is to really push desktop capacity by having large numbers of programs and windows open at one time with multiple monitors, but there is also the desire to carry it all with you. Will we start seeing a standard integrated into the O/S, of a WWAN (world-wide area network) where there is a Dropbox-style extension of the LAN to many devices no matter where they are? (Dropbox already has a feature where two devices in the same LAN do not have to sync via the cloud.) That is where Microsoft could provide leadership, but they will want a HUGE slice of the action, no doubt...

Thanks for making the point about coverage. As a Canadian, I know very well how bad it can be when there are large areas with little to no coverage at all.

Sadly, for your second point, I just don't see something like that happening very much in the near future. To create a complete shift like that, requires a lot of coordination between different companies, and unless the companies themselves come to the same conclusions that led you to want some system like that, I can't see it happening for quite some time.

What I can see is more integration of cloud computing into portable devices. I could even see something where the device itself is only really a thin client for a cloud computing system. But heavy integration with the home system? I dunno, I think the solutions will be more cloud-heavy in the near future before they finally figure out a more direct way of doing things.

We are not built to compute, au contraire, we want to communicate: idea's, plans, visions,emotions with other people and in the process create something new.. We are the masters of re-using, if somebody has already done the math, we'll copy it. So: text, numbers, pictures, video's, music is what it is about, to be entertained, or educated for a new job, preferrably in a social environment.

Its clear that the boundaries to where you work are breaking down. But nothing beats a big display (or two) for efficiency. Its no longer about the CPU in the device, its about the screen real estate...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

Can anyone explain why, with cameras boasting double digit megapixels for years now, we are still made to endure tunnel-vision-like, sub 4MP computer monitors?

Why aren't we seeing 10MP and more computer monitors? We've been stuck on low res for over a decade now!

Seriously, folks, we've been stagnating for the past decade, as any improvements have been made strictly to handle the incessantly increasing aggravation of User Control. Simply looking at how much software has become dysfunctional should be enough to convince anyone...

I hope someone answers this, because I am curious as to how the conversation will go. If there are technical reasons we don't have 10MP computer monitors (cards can't handle them, too hard to get 10 million pixels on one screen without too many dead/stuck pixels, etc) I hope someone who knows will pipe up and say why.
On the other hand, vucliriel didn't really make any sort of case as to why we *need* monitors larger than what we currently have.
Cameras (tools for capturing an image in the first place) need to have higher resolution than the eventual display device, because any editing done will benefit from starting with a larger image, whether it be cropping or image compression. This is a good argument if the only source for what is displayed on a monitor is a camera, and that is not the case. Most of what hits my monitor is text, and I can fit plenty of that on my monitor already. But then there is also rendered-on-the-fly images for things like games, CAD software, and other 3-d environments. I am very happy that powerful graphics cards have somewhat recently come down in price as to be affordable by normal people. The last thing I want is for the monitor standards to skyrocket in resolution so that graphics cards that can drive those monitors go right back up in price to astronomical levels.

Higher resolution monitors allows you to view high resolution images in full screen, with NO SCROLLING. Lower resolution monitors sacrifices the camera's resolution. For a photographer, this is unacceptable.

"Why do we need higher resolution monitors" is like asking "why do we need IMAX movies". If you have ever seen high resolution images, you would instantly know what I mean. There is simply no comparison, because high definition corresponds to what the human eye can see. Anything less is a deliberate loss.

Ansel Adams took his great photographs with a camera sporting an 8"x10" sensor, capable of roughly 40000x50000 pixels or 2 GIGApixels, and it truly SHOWS in the resulting image quality. And that was almost a century ago! Saying we don't need this resolution is like saying that computers don't need more than 640K of memory, or that computers don't really need monitors (like the Altair).

The argument that we need more resolution for pictures because of processing is like saying we don't need stereo or high fidelity in sound because we can still get the feel and meaning of the sound on cheap speakers. That is preposterous, of course. It's like saying there is no difference between a recording a live performance. Same thing in imaging. High resolution is exactly like high fidelity, it is ALWAYS better.

On a practical level, larger monitors make it easier to multi-task. You can work on a document on the right side while you look at a picture on the left side. Of course, you could say that the same could be done with multiple monitors, but never be able to see the pictures in all their glory, nor the document in its true life-like representation.

In this day and age, when the technology has existed for already 10 years (the 9MP IBM T221 is already that old), there is no excuse for not being able to produce high resolution monitors, and for continuing to produce documents on dead trees.

Remember, the normal human eye can resolve 1 arc minute of detail. At 20 inches (500mm), that detail is about .145mm, or 175 PPI, which translates to about 1920 vertical pixels for a standard 11 inch tall piece of paper viewed at that distance. At a ratio of 16/10, at that distance the normal human eye could actually benefit from a 21 inch diagonal monitor running at 2560x1920, and THAT is what laptop monitors should be running at!

The other thing we forget, hence my term "tunnel vision" in my last post, is that the human eye has a normal field width of 60 degrees, which means a normal imaging capacity of 60 minutes of arc times 60 degrees, or 3600 pixels diagonally or roughly 13 MP. This means a normal human eye could greatly benefit from viewing images, at a distance of 20 inches on a (2*cos(60/2)*20) [~35 inch diagonal] monitor with 13MP resolution! That's way off the puny 2.3MP at 17 inch monitors that is the high end on laptop monitors and still far off the 30 inch 5MP presently available at the upper end of computer monitors at this time...

Bottom line, the facts known about normal human vision clearly prove we would greatly benefit from higher resolution monitors. The reasons WHY we don't have them 10 years after the technology was first developed is anybody's guess.

The formula describing the ideal monitor at 20 inch resolution (second from last paragraph) should have been read (2*TAN(60/2)x20, NOT 2*COS, which is about 23 inches, NOT 35 inches. In other words, normal vision would benefit from a 23 inch screen for a laptop working distance of 20 inches.

Another error is in the calculation of the total resolution. One minute of arc over a 60 degree angle of vision is 3600 pixels diagonally. If we assume that angle of vision is circular, this equates as (3600/2)^2*PI, or about 10MP, instead of (3,600)^2 which was the 13MP previously calculated.

In other words, IBM had it right with its 20.1 inch, 9MP T221...