Tablet PC

[roger43]

I like the comfort and flexibility of using a Tablet PC. Is there a way to run NOF from an Android Tablet PC. Any Apps available or in working progress.

Thank you
Roger43

[franko]

I don't think NoF has been ported to Android and won't be any time soon (although I have no knowledge in this regard, I suspect NoF have much higher priorities on their radar screens). People are working on virtual machines for Android, though:

http://code.google.com/p/android-pc/
http://www.vmlite.com/

[Kenfriedman]

I think that Windows 8 may be the solution to this problem. The new Windows version emphasizes running Windows on tablets although it also is supposed to be for desktop and laptop systems. Tablet vendors may announce a whole raft of new tablets after Windows 8 becomes available this fall (October 2012). If this turns out to be true, you may be able to run many Windows applications on these new tablets. Also, that would pique my interest in tablets on which I can do more than just email, text, look at or take pictures, or play games.

<rant>
IMHO, current day tablets are just expensive toys and NOT SERIOUS computing systems that are designed to do real work, such as develop web sites or write books for instance. For security and performance reasons, I also have little use for cloud computing.
</rant>

I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

[franko]

I'm with you Ken, although I'd much rather developers worked on developing virtual machines that run on Android while software companies work on porting their apps to Android. IMHO Android is the OS of the future. For a start it's open source and nerds have already extended and improved the latest version (ice cream?) so that it does a lot of which Google didn't anticipate.

As a photographer I'm particularly interested in being able to shoot tethered to a tablet rather than a laptop. This is already possible with iPad and Canon cameras but I will always go with open source when I have a choice - and on phones and tablets I do.

Frankly I shudder to think of windows running on a tablet; just another opportunity for disaster which has been windows lot since v2. 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, xp and 7 have all been remarkably unstable; only NT4 approached being a mission critical operating system. Android offers a great deal of possiblity simply because it is open source and not tied to corporate profits.

[Kenfriedman]

[snip]

Frankly I shudder to think of windows running on a tablet; just another opportunity for disaster which has been windows lot since v2. 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, xp and 7 have all been remarkably unstable; only NT4 approached being a mission critical operating system. Android offers a great deal of possiblity simply because it is open source and not tied to corporate profits.

I have used Windows for at least 30 years. Windows 7 is the most stable of them all. I do not think NOF will migrate NOF to the Android OS; they have their hands full just trying to stay in business with the few products they already sell.

I also do not necessarily think that having an "Open Source" OS is a distinct advantage to the user. There were many who said Linux was the "operating system" of the future. It might be but has been used for selective applications such as web servers and not a true general purpose OS like Windows or Apple's OS for their desktops and laptops.

[franko]

Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on windows' stability. Incidentally, Apple's OS X is a Unix OS just like Linux; it's FreeBSD which came out of, I think, Berkley Labs back in the '60s. 'At least 30 years ago' would have meant windows v1 which was announced in 1983 and shipped in November 1985. It led to an altercation between Gates and Allen on one hand and Jobs and Wozniak on the other; the latter claiming they had showed their Apple OS to Gates who had then 'copied' it. Since Apple's interface looked remarkably similar to the graphical OS developed at Xerox's PARC in Palo Alto it's more a case of the pot calling the kettle black. So I think you actually mean 'nearly 30 years' rather than 'at least' 30 years. Nitpicking I know, but i have a nose for hyperbole.