Upgrading to a Elite X3 now, is it worth it?

[Prometheus2021]

Been thinking of upgrading to a HP Elite X3. Should I go thru with it or am I better off waiting to see for what MS has in store for the next "Windows 10 Phone"?

 

[tgp]

If Windows and BlackBerry were viable options I would have no problem with the two-headed monster. Let me rephrase that. If Windows and BlackBerry were viable options for the average consumer I'd be okay with it. People like us can make even webOS work in today's world what with all the patches and whatnot. But that's not reasonable. From what I've read, Sailfish OS seems like something I'd like to try someday and it may be able to run Android apps better than the ART on BlackBerry.

Mobile requires extra functionality that you don't need on desktop because you have a full-fledged browser to help you along. Many websites can't or don't run properly on a mobile browser otherwise you wouldn't need apps in the first place.

Well yes that makes sense. I can see how mobile is different in a way. Yet, I still don't believe we need to feel threatened by either Android or iOS because they are keeping each other in check. But for someone who doesn't like either of them, I can see how their dominance is hard to stomach.

I'm good all around. I prefer Windows on desktop, and iOS and Android on mobile (smartphone and tablet). I prefer the current leaders in all categories!

 

[Drael646464]

You did, but you're saying that two giants in mobile isn't good, but one giant plus a couple other little players in desktop IS good. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree with you.

The reason I mention personal preference is because the only place I see this monopoly complaint is on Microsoft mobile forums. I realize that probably everyone here is, or was, a Windows Phone fan, and it pains us to see it fall. Hence the irritation with the so-called monopoly.

Apple and Google act like a monopoly (anti-competitive and anti-consumer), and Microsoft generally doesn't. It's what a monopoly produces that's the problem, not having one. If you have one company and they are not anti-competitive, and consumers still have lots of choices, it's not really a problem.

Apple has their walled garden approach, google has its advertising creep, and increasingly anti-competitive behaviour. Both are behavioural indications that they "feel cozy', and 'the more cozy they feel', the more they will test the market for what it will bear.

Its 5 ads at the top of each search today, and 30 second ads in youtube. But it might be 5 minute, or ten minute ads in youtube one day, and a fixed unchangeable ad on your homescreen, or 10 ads at the top of each search.

Today apple plays nice _sometimes_ with other devices. One day it might be completely incompatible with everything.

If you have four different companies and they all pretty much heard customers like sheep and monetize them, rather than try to woo them, it's still a problem even if its not a monopoly.

When apple nearly went bust, bill gates saved them. Specifically because msft has never had merely one income stream, and it's branded on a sort of 'tinker' oriented free platform, its never really 'been that way' even when it had more market dominance than now. So partly historical basis/branding, and partly the nature of their income stream.

Where apple is dependant on iPhone, and google on advertising, Microsoft has a wide spread of income streams, and it doesn't even need to be a particularly recognised consumer brand to make money (even from consumers). It has no real motive to "push things" in that sense.

Consumers in the smartphone market, importantly also have less choices than desktop consumers. A desktop consumer can get any desktop, and install any number of operating systems on it - android, osx, a number of Linux distros, windows and more. If they want games they can use a console too, or entertainment they can get a stick or mini pc, with android, or apple or windows. Despite 90 percent marketshare consumers have more choices in desktop OSes than in mobile - its quite wide open.

Even some chromebooks can be installed with windows.

A mobile consumer can only buy what OEMs put on there. There's only two that most choose, and there have been no windows mobile phones or bb10 mobile phones made in years. Consumers are entirely restricted by what is popular with others, if you want a new phone is apple and android.

I don't think even switching between those two is something people do very often.

Actually if it was very common, to actively switch between apple and google products, it would do a lot to mitigate these issues.

Apple would not be so propeitary and walled garden, if it had to deal with users constantly using other products, or the threat of apple users leaving in frustration, and google wouldn't have its perpetual ad creep if android, youtube, and google search users were leaving due to it, and using other products.

I think the fact these things are happening suggests that neither company feels like it will lose customers by pushing it further.

What does one even use instead of youtube? Even not using google search is a process that basically requires using multiple search engines. Remember with Google, android isn't the product, the users of the services are the product. Much like facebook.

I've tried to leave google as much as possible. I have to use multiple search engines to provide the same functionality, and there's basically to replacement for youtube, I just have to ad block it.

It's a bit like facebook but worse, - there's not anything that has as much user engagement and content.

Apple is almost like a religion. I'm not sure what they could do that would lose them current customers. If they made the next iPhone unable to talk to a PC, and changed all the file formats to apple specific formats, so nothing on it could be read by another system - even cable and plug, into a non-compliant plug, all network protocols into things that other machines don't understand - would they actually lose significant customers? Maybe if it happened all at once. But if it was bit but bit, like googles advertising creep, I don't know if it would effect sales at all.