Imagine they skip 12 and call it 13 like they did with W10
With as little sense as Microsoft makes most of the time, that decision actually does make sense. A lot of programs and scripts were lazy about checking the Windows version and just checked for the presence of a ‘9’ in the version string to determine if they were running on Windows 95/98.
A bunch of shit would have broken if they had released Windows 10 as Windows 9, which is what it should have been semantically.
I’m not talking that old programs can be run. I’m talking if you dig into the settings deep enough, a Windows 2000 looking screen will pop up out of nowhere.
It’s the same thing. Stuff relies on it. And some stuff is just there from laziness. The only Windows being reskinned is 10. That’s what 11 is underneath.
I mean control panel still is usable on windows 11. Control Panel has been there since 1985. The UI control panel uses now hasn’t really been changed since Windows 95. There are plenty of other screens like that too, like the hardware properties menus and stuff.
You can easily schedule it yourself but I wouldn’t. I have used sfc /scannow about 10 times. It did fix an issue once - a VM repeatedly locking up doing Windows updates.
I wish they would make their configuration better. At this point even MacOS easier in that regard. And that is saying something. I constantly find myself googling how to open the old configuration pages because it’s either impossible to find where some of the configuration options went or they don’t exist on the new UIs in the first place. It’s a real down grade. They are trying to go the MacOS route but stopped half way through. Windows 11 feels like a real downgrade compared to Windows 10.
All these new handhelds with windows seem to have completely forgot how much of a failure windows has been on mobiles in the past (other than laptops and such). I know windows mobile was a whole different ui but isn’t windows 10/11 even worse to use on small screens like this?
I really hope valve starts supporting steamOS for devices other than the deck soon so we can have the full deck experience including all the tweakable settings.
As happy as I am with my steam deck I love to see competition. I love portables all the way back from my game boy, game gear, all the way through to the vita.
I hope this new wave of high powered portables keep pushing each other to their limits so we see the best in our hands.
Man, everyones jumping in onto the handheld gaming PC segment. Pretty cool. Hopefully it will light a fire under Nintendo’s butt to do better with its hardware.
Yet the sales figures show Nintendo have amazing sales.
PS2 - 159 million.
Nintendo DS - 154.02 million.
Nintendo switch - 125.62 million
Gameboy/ Gameboy colour - 118.69 million
PS4 - 117.2 million.
3 out of the 5 top sales belong to Nintendo. So regardless of hardware, Nintendo is a loved gaming system.
Whereas Xbox is number 9 on that list with the 360 at 85 million. So the console war seems to be between Nintendo and Sony at this point.
I think Nintendo knows it’s market pretty well. I have both a switch and a steam deck andO have a lot of the same games on each. The deck is obviously the higher power unit. I got it just a short time ago to try to play through my backlog, although to be honest I’ve logged more hours on new purchases like Stray and Dredge. It’s a good system.
The switch outshines it in a couple of places, though. First, they got the form factor - specifically the size and weight - better than steam did. It’s smaller and lighter, and I think the battery lasts longer. More importantly, the games that run on the switch were made for it. There’s no squinting at tiny fonts or trying to figure whether and how to use the trackpad to control the mouse bits. If it’s on the switch, I can be pretty sure it is playable on the switch. I’m still getting used to the issues with scaling down the desktop experience to a deck, but already I’m thinking I won’t be playing a lot of cyberpunk without booking up a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
In short, the deck and windows handhelds need to perform at the level of a (low end) desktop (because they’re playing desktop games) as well as worry about scaling and transforming the UI. The switch doesn’t have that problem, and the trade off is a more limited (but still extensive) library.
The switch is my first Nintendo device since the NES, and the first party content isn’t what made me finally try it. I like playing games like Diablo on it. I think Nintendo, by owning the entire stack, can serve up a better and more curated experience. If I didn’t have a library of a couple hundred steam games that I’ve never played, I’d probably not have considered getting the deck. I am enjoying it, and some games are phenomenal, but from a performance-that-actually-impacts-the-user perspective, Nintendo might just come out on top.
Asus and Lenovo clearly put no thought into how controlling windows desktop with a controller feels worse than pancaking your own testicles. The steam deck trackpads are far from an amazing experience for desktop input but it is at least usable and not the worst thing ever.
If this form factor is here to stay, and hopefully it is, Microsoft will probably adapt Windows to it (also hopefully). SteamOS is very good though, can manufacturers not just use that?
As long as you don’t use it for Office, Microsoft isn’t going to spend money on it. Their cash cow is M365 and Azure, they don’t even care when every single gamer pirates their OS.
Eh, this and the Ally are cash grabs, I doubt they intend to spend the money needed to support custom software long-term. They’ll just hope that Windows updates don’t mess it up and if they do, they’ll blame Microsoft.
They don’t; there was an internal tech demo that never went anywhere but was spread around online a few months ago with a bunch of misinformation that Microsoft was preparing to fight the Steam Deck head on.
I second this. I’m planning to start switching my devices from Windows to Linux in a couple of weeks due to good experience I’ve had with the Steam Deck
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