Vocal Voices

I've been picking up on it for a few days now.

Really it's Microsoft trying to out Apple, Apple. Now that I have a Surface as a work machine (no desktop, just a surface with wireless mouse and keyboard added), I can confirm that it is one of the best portable machines I've ever used. So MS get's kudos for that.

Their Surface laptop is now a good spec with a "claimed" 16 hour battery life. But, again, you're going to have to spend £1,300 to £2,200 to get the spec I want. Not so bad though I spent the better part of £4000 or more on my Alienware.

Their new Surface Studio is interesting, especially in how thin and pretty it is, but at around £3,000 it's really in the business range, not home.

As for the surface dial, a thing like a hockey puck which you can use on existing surface laptops, beside it, to control tools and other things by turning or pressing it, or you can actually place it on the Surface Studio screen and control the app directly from there.

I'd say Gimmick but, in reality, it is like all those excel equations. If you need them (8% of the user base), nothing else will do; however if you don't then they're totally wasted space.

The two most interesting announcements received the least press. The OS and design tools (including Paint), have received 3D design extensions to allow you to model in 3d. The presented possibility was that you could take a photo of something, model it in 3d in the tools then print it out again on a 3D printer.

The second announcement was that the hardware vendors will be shipping relatively cheap (£250 - £300), 3D headsets for the new "Designer" update of Windows. Put this together with gesture based controls and the ability to photo and model things you have just seen, means you could see something, take several photographs of it, import it, put on your 3D headset and walk around it and re-model it all inside the headset with gesture tools and controls (curtesy of the Hololens suite), then 3D print your new item.

That last bit has some pretty dramatic connotations for the design and manufacturing world or even for the home ad-hoc projects.

The headline launch may have been a bit underwhelming, but the potential it unleashes is quite dramatic.

I am probably in the 8% of the 8% group.

I am left totally cold by most of these new things, which is strange given that I have been a big fan of science, mainly physics, since I was a child. I also worked in 'tech' for many years.

If I want to draw the curtains or dim the lights I can get off my rear and do them. I do not need a robot to fry me an egg or hoover the carpets. And I much prefer real reality to the virtual kind.

Oh, and do not get me started on driverless cars!

I know that I am a bit "caveman" with these views, but I'll survive.

Workingman wrote:I am left totally cold by most of these new things, which is strange given that I have been a big fan of science, mainly physics, since I was a child. I also worked in 'tech' for many years.

If I want to draw the curtains or dim the lights I can get off my rear and do them. I do not need a robot to fry me an egg or hoover the carpets. And I much prefer real reality to the virtual kind.

A friend down here has had British Gas fit a smart-meter in the house. He has had no end of trouble with it. It seems, he thinks, after many calculations, to be potentially recording double the amount of gas he believes is actually using. British Gas have said they will come out and look at it, but if it's accurate, they will charge him a £60 call out fee .....

And we will all be having these things by 2020?

EDIT: He has just phoned me in a state of high excitement - apparently all is well, he was confusing imperial and metric measurements in his calculations!!

Nice one Ossie.

Interestingly the press are talking up something I noticed from the very first time I saw the HoloLens demo'd by Microsoft. Blended reality. The HoloLens kit allows us to overlay the digital world with the real world. Tell the computer that there is a TV on the wall in such a place and when you look at that place on the wall you see (and hear), the TV. Simple gesture based channel changing and you never need to buy another TV, or another satellite box or another DVD player. All you need is a fast internet connection and "services" you pay £29.99 per month for.

Ditto "themed" houses. Walk into it without your "HoloLens" glasses on and it's a featureless grey room. Walk in with them on and it's a palace with paintings from the great art galleries in the world, wallpaper you could never afford, sculptures from the greatest artists.

Bored with it? Pull up your "house theme" app, choose your new home decoration and pay £29.99 and you have a totally new "theme" for your home.

The world is changing and it's actually going faster than we think. Although they are not telling us everything. Yet.