say whaaaaaaat?

[kmanmx]

Not even close. I have a Surface Pro 3 from work and it's nowhere close to the speed of a real desktop. It also gets hot pretty quickly from regular work. Mobile devices are definitely getting faster but they won't be anywhere near quick enough for regular use for somebody who's used to a decent PC. For companies, below is the deal. We have over 16,000 people who use regular machines, then people with tablets/laptops, engineers with full blown workstations, and then people on the floor with thin clients. They also use iPhones that are connected to our domain. For large companies they typically don't pay what a normal civ would pay. Our machines are a good 200 bucks cheaper than the consumer desktop, and our workstations are 1000-2000 cheaper depending on spec.

I'm actually involved in a project to bring large scale VM to my company for regular users to reduce cost in per-user refresh.

This.

Our PCs at work are Core i5's with 4GB of RAM and a regular HDD, and sometimes I headbut the table in frustration - it really does not handle multitasking well at alll. I've taken another 4GB from another PC and put it in mine, so as soon as I upgrade to 64bit Win7 next week it should help a fair bit. Coming back to my home PC is so soothing and frustration free. I can essentially open as much as I want and launch anything without thinking about whether my PC is going to choke, which is why even if I stopped gaming entirely, I'd still have a high end PC.

Though I was chilling earlier and my mind started wondering, suddenly it occured to me that in the 2 to 3 year time frame, it's pretty much inevitable some company is going to make a 5.5"+ Win 10 x86 phone, which I am really curious to see in use.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

To be fairly honest, we are going to see the traditional desktop go byebye in most all aspects, companies are going with thin clients instead of desktops for regular workers, or even the majority of workers as they don't need anything with beef behind them...

Eventually desktop PC prices will increase due to supply/demand, and we will only see the normal desktop PC in a few scenarios... Gamers... and Power Users that need the processing and graphical processing power.

But, in my experience, the majority of staff only need a little WYSE terminal, most of what your typical employee does is either in office, proprietary software, and in a webgui. I know walmart for a fact has gone from regular desktops to all WYSE terminals in stores for the employees to use in the back, even the offices in new stores are using WYSE terminals, usually you only see ONE desktop, and that's for the store manager. You would be surprised at how often even the maintenance crew has to use a "computer" in walmart. Just sucks when they do maintenance on the system, because they like to take a whole 24 hours every other month.

As for the BYOD, I don't see that as being wise for people, or companies... Especially with 10Gbit and 100Gbit becoming a reality in most places, thin/zero clients will still be able to be deployed in large numbers in a location, so network traffic load isn't really a big concern, and employees bringing in devices can create all sorts of headaches(gee, I wonder how this nasty purpose built worm got into our network?) in the long-term.

 

[PP Mguire]

The problem with converting large companies to thin clients would be needing the backend. When you're talking over 16,000 people in one area all doing tasks AND requiring the bloated company image running it will take an incredible amount of power. We recently overhauled our WYSE terminals and the factory workers still complain about them being slow and they do very very basic things involving categorizing parts that are finished. The people who require their machines for all sorts of tasks (including SQL, PDM, Teamcenter, ect) would go absolutely ballistic at how slow they have to work. One reason I know for certain mobile devices wouldn't work in our environment at least, is due to the nature how old a lot of our software is. Hardware may get better, but when your software lacks behind it takes a toll no matter how fast your machine is. Our QA people are using i5 tablets now and they can't handle what's being done due to most of their software being network driven and requiring processing power to compress before send. Our PDM backend is antiquated in terms of how far software has become for OTN based engineering. Teamcenter is the same.

A lot of "side factory" users are running mobile now as well, and each and every one of them complained about wanting their desktop back because it was so much faster. It would be worse if they were using WYSE terminals. Due to the fact that large scale companies push OEM sales I don't see the desktop going away anytime soon.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

Not even close. I have a Surface Pro 3 from work and it's nowhere close to the speed of a real desktop. It also gets hot pretty quickly from regular work. Mobile devices are definitely getting faster but they won't be anywhere near quick enough for regular use for somebody who's used to a decent PC. For companies, below is the deal. We have over 16,000 people who use regular machines, then people with tablets/laptops, engineers with full blown workstations, and then people on the floor with thin clients. They also use iPhones that are connected to our domain. For large companies they typically don't pay what a normal civ would pay. Our machines are a good 200 bucks cheaper than the consumer desktop, and our workstations are 1000-2000 cheaper depending on spec.

I'm actually involved in a project to bring large scale VM to my company for regular users to reduce cost in per-user refresh.

To say this is not even close is, well, wrong. Simply because it doesn't fit your needs, doesn't mean it won't fit the requirements of others.

"Regular use" as you also call it is mighty subjective too. "Regular use" at your place I guarantee is different than "regular use" at my place.

I also ran a Surface Pro 2 for quite a while here, and it fit every single need that I had. I'm by far a standard user in any sense.

I'm also quite aware that companies get better pricing, however I guarantee I get better pricing than that

We've also spent a large sum of money on our backend. You mentioned that users still complain things are slow after new hardware deployment. To me, that's not a hardware issue and things need to be looked at from software to network to server. We've ensured everything from demanding latencies like VoIP on our Skype 2015 for Business can run over the same network (physically anyway) as data, video, web, etc. our 100 sites have end to end encryption across the WAN and don't stutter a second. We push TB's across our network on a monthly basis like it's nothing.

So, really it's all subjective. Someone in a high rise building where thousands of people sitting in cubicles connect up through a web application to do all their work, don't need massive amounts of processing power. They need a solid network with a server infrastructure at the end running good code. A Police Officer doesn't need a workstation in their car to do lookups. They need a tablet, with a secured connection over a reliable LTE back to HQ so they can query the database. An inspector needs a mobile device that will give them huge battery life so they can stay out all day and do inspections, not have to wait around for their battery to charge. A public works person needs to have a ruggedized, mobile device that they can do W.O. lookups. These people equate to more than 16000.

All IMO of course. No network is the same, so we can't assume one way of doing things will work everywhere.

 

[PP Mguire]

You took what I said and went in left field with it, you're also forgetting one thing. Companies use images, they are bloated, and they all aren't going to be optimized for a specific purpose. When you add this, then possibly encryption on top of it the device gets real slow regardless of network performance. We have a company wide Cisco Wireless AC network with a Cisco gigabit setup throughout the building for end users. It definitely isn't network performance but you forgot another piece of the puzzle. Older software. Here's the deal though.....

So, out of all of this. Here's my question. What do you think "Desktop" needs to do in order to get people excited again about it?

What should Microsoft do?
What should vendors do?
What should hardware companies do? AMD/Intel/Nvidia...

no response to this is bad! we're brainstorming right now!

None of what we're talking about has anything to do with what your original question was. You asked what do these companies need to do to make the desktop exciting again then went off saying how the desktop is going to die off in favor of mobile devices. I have Intel in my office right now and they say the desktop is going anywhere anytime soon. I'd that's a wrap.

 

[kmanmx]

I work for an SME with about 300 users. Big enough to have a full on IT department, proper servers and so on, but not big enough that our IT budget is basically buy whatever the **** we want.

So I can say with confidence all companies of a similar size to ours are never going to abandon desktops. We'd have to spend 2x the amount of money on a laptop to get the same performance back, and they are more expensive in general to operate because they break much easier. They also just flat out don't work as well, people dock their laptops without restarting so they don't load login scripts and drives don't map and all this crap.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

You took what I said and went in left field with it, you're also forgetting one thing. Companies use images, they are bloated, and they all aren't going to be optimized for a specific purpose. When you add this, then possibly encryption on top of it the device gets real slow regardless of network performance. We have a company wide Cisco Wireless AC network with a Cisco gigabit setup throughout the building for end users. It definitely isn't network performance but you forgot another piece of the puzzle. Older software. Here's the deal though.....

Sure I went into left field with it. I did say this was a brainstorming session, right? You do know brainstorming sessions don't need to stay on track? That's the whole purpose of it...to take something and run with it, and you potentially get to another point where you didn't even think you could.

Yes, we use images too. They're lean and quick. We use SCCM, build our base image with our standardized basics - OS, Office, PDF Reader, Browsers. From there the machine is imaged. After that, SCCM knows who's machine just got imaged and only installs the programs the user needs. Nothing bloated at all, it's lean, works great and users have been extremely happy.

None of what we're talking about has anything to do with what your original question was. You asked what do these companies need to do to make the desktop exciting again then went off saying how the desktop is going to die off in favor of mobile devices. I have Intel in my office right now and they say the desktop is going anywhere anytime soon. I'd that's a wrap.

My first question "What can Microsoft do"
I proceeded to talk about the Surface Pro, how it can be a desktop but also give that mobile aspect, mobility is what people like these days. That's what Microsoft can do. Make the desktop mobile.

However, in my first post I said "no response is bad". What was your first sentence to me?

"Not even close."

Seriously? Way to just degrade someone's idea and then proceed to talk about how it's not how you do it at you place.

Guess i'll just abandon this thread *thumbs up*
Can't talk about things in something that I created *thumbs up*

 

[PP Mguire]

I like how you pick my posts apart despite others clearly agreeing with me. You degraded your own thread IMO.

"How can we make the desktop more exciting?"
"By turning everything into mobile!!"
"Uh no, desktop is here to stay..."
"No it's not you're crap shooting my ideas!"

We'll go back to your original idea about the Surface Pro. Firstly, why oh why would a dual core be ok over a quad or more for standard computing? Company image or not, the device even using standard Windows 10 browsing the internet isn't that quick. I leave all heavy tasks to my main PC or workstation at work, but I'd like to see somebody edit a 2,000 page PDF on a Surface Pro lol. We use SCCM too, but our image is corporate wide. The largest defense contract for The United States, which includes every Lockheed Martin location with multiple configurations and standards. Next year it'll be worse, as we're going to start Windows 10 testing in December to have one standard image for each machine company wide, tablet included. You also forgot about encryption, which for a company like ours is required on every mobile device that can be taken out of the facility. Encryption kills drive and CPU performance. It's great for at home use, but work use? Not really. Maybe in 5-10 years after desktop like performance can be transferred to mobile devices, which is the original timeline you gave the standard desktop anyways.

The problem is you saw an argument to be had and wanted to roll with it, yet my side got support so now I'm to blame. Typical.

Edit: And before you want to bring up the home user debate, I still know a ton of people who prefer to use a computer over a mobile device for most internet browsing. With the corporate space pushing real sales for OEMs and the consumers being the little guys I don't see mobile being a foreseeable risk to desktops in the near future. Not to mention, Intel has my back as I had an expo with them and Toshiba today and asked them what their opinion on it was. Intel: "I see mobile usage taking off as time progresses, but for when we want serious work done I still see the desktop being the prime candidate for a large screen and more raw power for the task at hand". Toshia: "I would love for our mobile devices to be used on a more regular basis but the fact is companies like this fill our wallets with workstation buyouts even at a discount. We could make more money [honestly] if mobile took over due to less in production costs, but let's be real, the power is in the desktop for the user". Can't really say it better myself besides what's already been said about alternatives.

 

[kmanmx]

IMO Desktop is just king. I have a myriad of mobile devices in my home, Nokia windows tablets, i5 laptops, iPads, smart TVs. All are basically **** when it comes to just getting anything done reliably. I turn my monitor on and boom, PC is sat there waiting ready to kick off any task from writing a txt file to doing ray tracing in Maya. It doesn't run out of battery, it doesn't overheat, I can run it at 100% 24/7 365 days if I wanted and other than rare hardware failures it's always going to be there chugging away. Even a gaming laptop can't do that. Play Crysis on a gaming laptop for an hour and your framerate is more than likely a fair bit lower than it was at the start due to thermal throttleing. A Note 5 will go from idle to the overheat warning in 10 seconds if you max out all 8 cores at 100%, and it'd probably run out of battery in 10 minutes.

So yeah I am just not a fan of using mobile devices at home or anywhere I can access a PC. I will choose a PC any day of the week, and I can't imagine that changing anytime soon, if ever. There is just an undeniable level of reliability, readyness and raw performance that only a desktop can offer.

 

[Yami]

I go in cycles of heavy use of my PC, and then barely using it for weeks or months at a time. I think in the past 4 weeks I've spent maybe 8 hours on my PC. That's gonna jump now that Fallout is out, but for the most part I'm happy to use my phone for most things.