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$600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft
Among the new hardware launched this week at IFA in Berlin are a couple of premium Chromebooks. Lenovo's $600 Yoga Chromebook brings high-end styling and materials to the Chromebook space, along with well-specced internals and a high quality screen. Dell's $600 Inspiron Chromebook 14 has slightly lower specs but is similarly offering better styling, bigger, better quality screens, and superior specs to the Chromebook space. These systems join a few other premium Chromebooks already out there. HP's Chromebook x2 is a $600 convertible hybrid launched a few months ago, and Samsung has had its Chromebook Plus and Pro systems for more than a year now. And of course, Google's Pixelbook is an astronomically expensive Chrome OS machine. These systems should cause ripples in Redmond.
[...] Lenovo reps told us that its new Chromebook was developed because the company was seeing demand for Chromebooks from users with a bit more disposable income. For example, new college students that had used Chrome OS at high school and families who wanted the robustness Chrome OS offers are looking for machines that are more attractive, use better materials, and are a bit faster and more powerful. The $600 machines fit that role.
And that's why Microsoft should be concerned. This demand shows a few things. Perhaps most significantly of all, it shows that Chrome OS's mix of Web applications, possibly extended with Android applications, is good enough for a growing slice of home and education users. Windows still has the application advantage overall, but the relevance of these applications is diminishing as Web applications continue to improve. A browser and the Web are sufficient to handle the needs of a great many users. No Windows necessary, not even to run the browser. Second, this demand makes clear that exposure to Chrome OS in school is creating sustained interest in, and even commitment to, the platform. High school students are wanting to retain that familiar environment as they move on. The ecosystem they're a part of isn't the Windows ecosystem.
Finally, it also shows that Chrome OS's relatively clean-slate approach (sure, it's Linux underneath, but it's not really being pushed as a way of running traditional Linux software) has advantages that are appealing even to home users. The locked down, highly secure Chrome OS machines require negligible maintenance while being largely immune to most extant malware. And the platform's cloud syncing means that even chores like backups can be largely avoided. Microsoft may be trying to offer the same with Windows, in particular Windows 10 S-Mode, but it's going to take a rather more radical change to Windows to really rival Chrome OS in this regard.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @07:31PM (1 child)
Do Dell & HP still using chiped Power Supply to lock-in customers ?
When I discovered that my DC-DC home-made Dell Power Supply don't charge the battery because it had no "security" chip,
I decided that I will never buy a DRM infested product again.
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:20PM
Since when have they done this? I've owned multiple devices from both HP and Dell, and I've never had problems replacing power supplies. While on the road, I usually leave my Latitude 7370's power supply at home and bring along one of these [amzn.to] instead because it'll also power my router and Chromecast and charge my phone (though more often than not, the Chromecast can pull its power from the TV). It's one less thing to carry, and it'll only need one wall outlet to power everything.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snospar on Monday September 03 2018, @07:51PM (16 children)
No.
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday September 03 2018, @08:22PM (8 children)
$299 Windows Laptops: A dangerous threat to $600 Chromebooks?
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Monday September 03 2018, @09:53PM (7 children)
$89 Linux laptop. Not for big compiles, but 2GB RAM is fine for client tasks.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday September 03 2018, @11:04PM (5 children)
Have you tried browsing the modern web with 2GB of RAM lately?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @11:10PM (1 child)
It's not too bad, as long as you are like my mother and don't realize that you can open multiple tabs. She literally thinks that only certain websites can do that, despite numerous attempts to explain otherwise from multiple people.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday September 04 2018, @08:02AM
Old people don't have enough cache for a lazy garbage collectors. Sadly, forcing all new windows to open in the same window/tab would break some sites. So, have her use an eager one by opening every new link in new tab/window (but not both if you can help it) and immediately follow up by closing the previous one:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwindow [mozillazine.org]
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction [mozillazine.org]
They'll get used to open new link, close old window/tab in no time. Just don't go around calling her malloc instead of mom. They don't like that.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:13AM
Yes. Works fine.
Oh, but then I have almost all ads, most scripts, etc. disabled. Which means I probably use a tiny fraction of most bandwidth, processing, and RAM compared to users who allow that sort of crap.
Oh, and I run Linux on the laptop I do that with. If I were running Windows, I'd probably be going slow even with no applications running at 2 GB RAM.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 04 2018, @01:56AM
Works OK (using a 2 GB Chromebook to write this comment), especially with a script blocker and adblocker neutering the modern web.
However, make no mistake. 4 GB would be a lot better and tabs would reload less often. And I bet I could find a way to use 8+ GB as well.
The days of 2 GB RAM machines (including smartphones) are almost over.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:59AM
My computer only has 2GB of RAM, so I'm surfing the Web with it using Pale Moon (+uBlock Origin & Matrix) right now, plus almost always have at least one other non-light program running (e.g. Calibre, GIMP, Mednafen, Wine, Open Office) as well as a handful of lightweight applications. The only time I run into serious problems is if I try to run two different web browsers simultaneously; it really doesn't like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @05:44AM
Oddly enough, I have. With 1 GB of RAM, raspberry pi. It even plays utube videos.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 03 2018, @08:39PM (6 children)
I wouldn't be so sure. Obviously, there is a market for the things, at the price they are being offered at.
How did Apple and Microsoft both get their starts? By donating computers to schools. Do you remember that? A generation of students were indoctrinated on Apple products, and soon thereafter Microsoft got the hint, and donated their stuff to all the schools that Apple hadn't got to yet. All those school kids, growing up indoctrinated to believe that things should go this way, and they should work that way, eventually led to a bunch of adults who were competent on Microsoft, but nothing else.
If Chromebooks are being pushed in schools today, then yes, it is entirely possible that the next decade will see millions of buyers of Chromebooks and similar products.
Further, it must be noted that Microsoft seems to be moving in the same direction. They don't want to sell, or even license, an operating system. They want to hook you into their services in the cloud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:42PM (2 children)
Sure there is a market, but not large enough to worry Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 03 2018, @08:45PM (1 child)
Microsoft is like Mome. She worries about everything.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 04 2018, @01:26AM
Your mom wasn't worrying when she gave me head!
:)
Could. Not. Resist!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:48PM (1 child)
From what i remember, they almost gave schools machines.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday September 03 2018, @09:37PM
If any of your demographic are reading this, then you are hipster-faggots. Nobody likes you.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:26AM
Actually, Microsoft got their start selling BASIC interpreters for 8 bit computers to hobbyists.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @07:57PM (2 children)
Going to be hard to market an 'almost computer' at that price. Marketing from the other side will destroy them. In truth all the average person's needs is actually met by the Chromebook, but the perception of being limited will be a deal killer unless its 'cheap'.
Perception is reality.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @09:19PM
We should not approach this as if there must be only one computer type in the world. Windows and desktop Linux will stay for a while in applications that require ultimate flexibility and high performance. Engineers, scientists, gamers will need them.
At the same time the majority of the public does not need the classical universal desktop, as it is too hard to maintain it and keep safe and run backups. Here come computing appliances. They are simple enough for everyone, have already a good variety of applications, and are cheap. But not everyone wants the cheapest model - if people have money, they want a decent physical construction of the laptop. There are chromebooks that cost more than $1,000. The majority sells for much less.
But regardless of the price, people buy Chromebooks (and tablets) because they work for them much better than some Windows laptops. They boot fast, have a lightweight OS, install applications from a store, can save data into the cloud, and do not require maintenance. In other words, these devices are more convenient for those customers than Windows.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday September 03 2018, @10:46PM
ChromeOS Gains the Ability to Run Linux Applications [soylentnews.org]
With Android and Linux applications running on the machines, they are pretty much just a computer.
As for Microsoft's marketing department, they were already burned by Windows RT and Windows phones, and haven't been able to stop the rise of Chromebooks so far. Chromebooks already occupy the $100-400 space. Now we are seeing some options in the segment above that, but below the ridiculous $1k machines.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:22PM (20 children)
As someone very new to Win10 I have to say its UI is a stinking smelling rotting festering pile of junk. Like did M$ devs, project managers, and execs think advertisements everywhere, a Siri-like virtual assistant that is 100x more annoying that Clippy ever was, forced upgrades, forced updates, and a chunky-blocky-confusing start menu were good ideas? Like what is the point of having A-B-C...Z headers in the start menu when the applications are sorted A-Z anyways? This is just a rant but also a reflection on poor design decisions M$ has made in the past decase.
The only reason it has finally surpassed Win7 is because of the forced upgrades.
(Score: 0, Troll) by The Shire on Monday September 03 2018, @08:45PM (19 children)
That doesn't come across as a rant, more like a troll. Hundreds of millions of people use Win10 everyday. The interface is just fine, its virtually the same as it's always been since Win95. Windows isn't going away any time soon, it's not going to be replaced by Chromebooks, or OS X, and certainly not by Linux.
With such a massive user base there will always be a good supply of outlyers who have had some problem, and they are the only ones you hear about. But the vast majority of people use this OS at home and at work every day with no issues at all.
To answer your question about A-Z headers, its a touch screen convenience - you want to find Skype you hit any letter heading and then S and you're there. It wastes virtually no space and adds functionality.
And the "chunky blocky start menu" is actually quite sleek. If you want to use the traditional text menu, its right there, if you want an easy to hit pinned app, that's right there too. If you just wanted the current weather and to see if you have unread mail, simply clicking the start menu button shows all that stuff to you in the form of live tiles.
If you are easily overwhelmed by useful features then perhaps you should just get a flip phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @08:52PM
I agree that it was a troll, i disagree that the interface is 'just fine'. From someone who has been around pre-cli days, The windows 10 interface is piss poor. it is too much 'techie' oriented ( even that is debatable ), and i dont think they involved 'regular people'.
And no, i'm not pushing OSX either, its also confusing to many 'regular' people. Neither are 'intuitive'
The company that comes out with a truly friendly interface will clean up the market. ( or get sued into oblivion )
(Score: 5, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Monday September 03 2018, @09:11PM (5 children)
Windows is widespread not due to quality but due to marketing and exclusive deals with OEMs. If MS managed to get its market position with DOS of all things then it's clearly obvious that quality of software itself is secondary. If MS decides to replace windows with its own linux distro and call it Windows 11 then absolutely nobody will be able to do anything about that beside welcoming their new windows 11 overlord with linux kernel. So it's pretty much question of power, not software quality.
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Shire on Monday September 03 2018, @11:32PM (3 children)
It's widespread becase 1) It's exceptionally business enterprise friendly in ways Linux and OS X are not, 2) It's a better gaming platform than Linux or OS X (though that is rapidly changing with Metal and Vulkan), and 3) It has incredibly broad hardware support which OS X definitely does NOT.
Primarily Windows is a business OS and that means commodity hardware gets created for it which in turn makes the cost of entry for the consumer lower. This as opposed to the costly and limited hardware you see available for OS X. I can load Windows on a very old machine, I can't load OS X anywhere but on Apple hardware and only recent Apple hardware. Linux, like Windows, has very broad hardware support as well, but it lacks in software and it's a massive pain to manage as a desktop OS in a business setting.
Basically, Windows is a general purpose OS which is why it is widespread. OS X is primarily used by those in the design world and people who like the smell of their own farts. Linux works best as a server OS and as a neckbeard workstation. If you want to talk about marketing and exclusivity you need to be poking at OS X with a stick, not Windows.
(Score: 5, Funny) by SpockLogic on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:39AM (1 child)
There was me thinking I was a smart feller but you have demoted me to a fart smeller. Oh the shame.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:50AM
Hey, I'm not judging you for your tastes. You be you!
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @01:29AM
Does the fact that I enjoy my farts and desire to freely share them with as many people as I can make me a good linux user?
I use linux on the desktop, but I have what is described more as a goatee than neckbeard.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:48AM
Windows has been widespread due to a lot of factors. Legacy compatibility was a huge deal, and there are a fair few programs made for Windows 95 that will work without issue on Windows 10 (admittedly, there's a bunch of others that should work, but can't be installed on a 64-bit version due to their 16-bit installer). If you're a (rather) large business, it's often cheaper to just call up MS and file a support issue to get them to keep your application working than to actually maintain it to match the changes in Windows over the years.
Legacy compatibility was why IE held such a high market share for ages (and it lasted even longer in some places where things like banking and government services required ActiveX plugins, as entirely awful as that sounded).
MS got its market position with DOS by virtue of hanging onto IBM, and then held it because Windows ran DOS applications very, very well (particularly Windows 95) It ran multiple DOS programs the same time, and then 95 did so quite a bit better than 1/2/3.x. If you did have issues, your new Windows 95 install had the latest DOS built right in and you could reboot into that. If you had older hardware, Windows went through an absurd amount of effort to hook the patches your drivers would have made to DOS (which wasn't in control of the machine) and allow your hardware to be usable within Windows (this was slow as shit, but your hardware did still work).
As for the competition... well, Linux hardware support sucks.
really, hardware support for not-Windows on IBM PC clone style hardware has always sucked, commercial or FOSS
like, back when IBM was promoting OS/2, good luck and have fun installing that shit on your machine and having high-res/color video, being able to print, and being able to connect to your network
even if you bought IBM during that period, you still had a chance of shit not working
It doesn't matter if the software is better if it doesn't work on your machine.
it's still pretty bad with Linux, if not quite as bad as most other competitors in the PC space (actually, I'd say that Linux has done a ton better than damn near everyone else ever)
Like, I can easily find a machine that you can't connect to wifi with (or worse, it only works intermittently/for a few minutes before puttering out), accelerated video doesn't work (or again, works but is much slower than under Windows or has occasional glitches and texture corruption), sound doesn't work (this one's pretty rare, last set of issues I remember having was when PulseAudio started being standard in many distros), power saving modes are broken, etc. All of these are issues I've actually encountered when installing various Linux distros (although thankfully not all on the same machine).
A lot of that issue isn't really the fault of Linux (well, the fact that there's no reasonable way for a manufacturer to provide their own drivers beyond building them for a specific kernel version/sending what they have upstream to go into the kernel IS Linux's fault, but there's also basically zero real reason for many hardware manufacturers to keep the docs for the hardware secret so someone else can't write a driver for the hardware).
Many of these issues would go away if manufacturers could bundle Linux with their machines and not fall afoul of MS's OEM licensing policies, much of this would stop being such a major issue, so MS's leveraging of their market position isn't something to discount entirely, but it's far from the only reason.
but again, there's also the issue of legacy compatibility with Linux
naturally, all your old programs like the custom VB6 thing your company did back in 2002 can't be brought over without great expense
but there's also the issue of running older binaries on a modern Linux machine, which is absurdly hit-or-miss (this is more on distros than on the kernel itself)
or compiling older sources (really, it's absurdly tricky getting anything non-trivial that hasn't been maintained in more than a decade to build cleanly)
tl;dr: MS succeeded by its legacy compatibility and hardware support more than anything, which is why it hasn't really had any strong competition able to dethrone it (not that it takes away MS abusing their power with OEMs, but that's far from the most important factor)
(Score: 5, Touché) by SomeGuy on Monday September 03 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
And billions of flies eat shit every day.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)
And America was at its greatest when schools were still segregated.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 03 2018, @09:57PM
Wait, you mean you *don't* like being "mainstreamed" with all the non-learning-disabled kids, Timmeh? We're only trying to help you function in society...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @10:23PM (2 children)
You must be either very young and didn't experience Windows prior to Win8 or you're incredibly naive.
The Windows 10 UI is noticeably different from that of earlier versions.
UI elements used to be unambiguously distinguishable. Buttons used to be clearly distinct from plain text; scroll bars used to be visible and useful; checkboxes used to be clearly understandable; text used to be very clearly distinct from backgrounds, not all subtly different shades of the same color. The Start menu used to have fly-outs with some degree of organization to them, not just one long, scrollable list. And sure as hell, earlier versions of the Start menu weren't stuffed full of annoying animations and ads for other Microsoft products.
Earlier versions of Windows certainly had shortcomings, but in far too many ways, the Windows 10 UI has degraded usability considerably. Given a choice between Win10's UI and, say, Windows 2000's, I'll choose the latter any day.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Monday September 03 2018, @11:21PM
Gonna go with no on the very young thing - the first computer I worked on was an IBM 3033 mainframe. I've been in the IT field since before desktop computers even existed and I'm watching them die off now in the face of mobile systems and AI. From the days of Xenix, to DOS, to Win31, all the way to now, there have always been folks who hated current the UI for one reason or another. It's literally not possible to design a GUI that works easily and simply for everyone, but Win10 comes close. Even with modern releases of Linux like Ubuntu 1804 there is no comparison in terms of overall useability. A few weeks ago I setup a new linux workstation and everytime it went to sleep it would awaken with no network. I literally had to dig down and make low level changes by hand to get it to finally re-init the network. This was Ubuntu 1804, the latest and greatest of the various linux distros.
However, if you're seeing ads and animations you hate then you simply haven't gone through the settings and turned all that junk off. My Win10 systems never show me suggestions, or ads, or wiz-bang animations because I told them not to.
All that being said, despite the clunkyness of even modern linux distros, I do find myself moving off the Win10 platform and on to Linux. Not for useability reasons, but for privacy reasons. One of the upcoming version of Win10 that will be forced upon the masses is called "Microsoft Managed Desktop" - basically Windows as SaaS, and then it will no longer be your computer but Microsofts. They will have full control of your system, you will simply "rent" it from them. And that I cannot tolerate under any circumstances. I'll put up with the various headaches on Linux before I relinquish control of my own hardware to "the cloud".
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 04 2018, @11:39AM
The UI of chrome web browser is better than the UI of win10 and its cross platform and can be mobile, so everything is moving to that. Once people get used to the UI of chrome-on-win then you sell them that a chromeebook is the familiar chrome UI they know and love without windows getting in the way and BTW windows license is very expensive, one of the most expensive components of the typical machine, so either keep your money or get a nicer display or nicer keyboard or whatevs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 03 2018, @10:25PM (3 children)
> The interface is just fine, its virtually the same as it's always been since Win95
Uh, no, it bloody well is not. From Win95 to Win7 it was more or less the same, but Win8 came by and flushed 15 years of UI muscle memory down the porcelain pedestal and Win10's start menu is the exact same thing except not fullscreen.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Shire on Monday September 03 2018, @11:41PM (2 children)
Wow, I guess you don't remember WinME, or Microsoft Bob, or WinNT. There have been plenty of misfires in Windows over the years, and Windows 8 is definitely one of them. Win10 however is not Win8. Metro is not forced on you anymore. Does having a text menu and a tile menu pop up really disorient you that much? Remove all the items from the tile section then, you're not required to use it. Windows 10 learned from the massive mistakes of Windows 8. Don't confuse the two.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday September 04 2018, @08:22AM
You are right, the Win10 UI may be less bad than Win8 or Bob. Very exciting. However Win10 definitely does not have less spyware, adware, or DRM than Microsoft Bob, so in the end it is still garbage.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:25PM
I remember WinMe. I remember Win 3.11, if it comes to that. I've *seen* MS Bob but thankfully never got lumbered with using it
I've also been a Linux user since mid-2004. The only Windows that's come near my machine recently is a Windows 2000 VM kept around to run my MIDI sequencer, Anvil Studio, which won't run in Wine. If I ever get stuck with Windows on the bare metal again, its interface is going to be more or less irrelevant since I'll be using it as a fancy loader for VBox and a Linux VM. And it's STILL gonna get Classic Shell installed first thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday September 04 2018, @01:32PM
Ah, sure.
And think how much more productive they'd be with a real UI.
Let's review the complaints from the earlier post:
Doesn't look like it's virtually the same to me. In addition, there was virtually no monitoring of your computer in Win95. Who knows what they're monitoring now, but they have the tools for a very heavy-handed monitoring scheme in place.
It's crap. If I want weather, I open a browser and type in the link just like I would most other knowledge searches. If I want easy access to that, an icon on the desktop or even task bar would do that. I'm not going to open up a pile of icons for the rare cases when I want to look up something that MS decided to put there.
I think the most damning part of this mess is how many refuse to upgrade older versions of Windows until they really, really have to. For example, my employer refused to do it until they were in danger of losing the ability to process credit cards (my understanding is that compliance with payment card industry standards for our size company requires that software involved in the handling of credit cards be supported by a vendor).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:21PM
Maybe you have never heard of Windows 8.
Totally new interface.
People who knew how to use a desktop PC for decades suddenly had to re-learn very basic operations. How to log in. How to log out. How to power off. How to print. The interface has been anything but stable since then. Microsoft begrudgingly was forced to go back to a Start menu again. But not quite a start menu. Then using the new interface as a "start" menu. Then back to a real start menu again and real desktop again. And then the pointless marketing driven cosmetic changes to the UI. Switching to a flat appearance. Changing colors. Changing designs.
And: the ribbon interface. WTF? Where are my pull down menus? The whole point of pull down menus was that GUI applications, like CLI applications might have a hundred commands. But the pull down menus allowed you to hide them, but instantly access them.
I could go on.
I am old enough to remember hearing serious "grown up" people, who wore suits, saying these exact things:
Personal computers are toy computers. They'll never be taken seriously in business. They're just a fad. The microcomputer fad will pass. They're just expensive toys for nerds.
IBM is a powerful multinational corporation. Maybe the most powerful. Do you really think Radio Shake or Apple or Commodore will compete with IBM by selling their toy computers?
I remember Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment: why would anyone need a computer in their home?
Or Bill Gates: the internet is a fad.
Some people just don't see the future and have no vision.
Ten years ago Microsoft was still all powerful and could never stumble. But they fumbled the mobile phone opportunity. Completely missed it. They didn't believe it. At that time I was saying that even though, like IBM before it, Microsoft seemed invincible, that a day was coming soon when Microsoft's best days would be behind it. I think we've already passed that point. Microsoft no longer has the monopoly power it once did. The internet and the web have greatly undermined that. The only value left in Windows is the legacy applications.
As you say, millions of people use Windows every day . . . to do things that don't actually require Windows at all. They just get windows because it comes preinstalled on a PC.
A surprisingly large fraction of the population do little more than use a browser, email, and things they could do on a chromebook. Not all people. But more than you think.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday September 03 2018, @10:30PM (7 children)
I wrote about this before, but it seems worth bringing up again.
Google is playing the long game and they already won the future. By taking over education, the new generation of kids will be familiar with Chrome OS and will demand it over Windows and possibly OSX (Apple is more a status symbol than an everyman computing device; they fill different niches/market segments).
Children ARE our future. By taking over education, Google has already won twenty years from now, and unless Microsoft manages a deus ex machina, nothing they do will stop that, even though they are still "currently winning". It's like receiving a lethal dose of radiation. You feel perfectly fine, except you are already guaranteed to be dead a few days from now.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 03 2018, @10:51PM
They also seem to be doing the "cloud" (as it pertains to consumer hardware, like Chromebooks) much better than Microsoft, and have had free Google Docs on the table for a long time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:01AM
Yep that totally worked for apple.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:08PM (4 children)
Chromebooks are successful in education for good reason.
They are centrally managed. They are self updating. They are easily wiped (eg "power washed") back to factory fresh -- but updated OS.
School districts can negotiate volume deals with any chromebook vendor (eg, Samsung, HP, etc)
All the advantages of web software. Centrally managed. Centrally backed up. If a kid is issued a new chromebook, they sign in, and instantly have all their assignments, documents, etc.
And the same advantages go for staff as for students. Issue chromebooks to staff. Use Google Docs and web applications. More and more business applications are web applications.
With Google Cloud Print, the district can set up their fleet of chromebooks to print onto their printers, wirelessly. Or only for select individuals, such as staff.
Chromebooks are very secure. Verified boot. No unauthorized executable code gets to run.
And with all those advantages, chromebooks are CHEAP.
I have heard that wholesale volume prices can even be $67 per unit, which puts them into textbook prices range. Chromebooks are cheaply replaced if lost, stolen or eaten.
How can Microsoft, or Apple beat that?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:01PM (3 children)
In theory Microsoft could manage all of those same things with Office365 and stripped laptops with Edge. I wouldn't be surprised if they roll something like that out eventually. The only thing they would botch is the ugliness of Windows Update vs. the seamless updates of ChromeOS. But it should be enough to compete. I'm just surprised they haven't.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Microsoft. But I'm no fan of Google either, so I think competition in this space would be good.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @07:56PM (2 children)
Microsoft still has a huge PERCEPTION of being insecure. If not the actual reality of being less secure. They're not likely to break that perception any time soon.
Common non tech people who own PCs know they eventually need to either buy a new one, or get their old one "fixed" (eg, take these droids to anchor head and have their memory erased).
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:13PM (1 child)
Right. But educators and school IT staff love Windows because they already know it. So I would think if a Microsoft representative said: think of a $150 Chromebooks that can't run Windows software and lets the user do all of their work with Chrome, GMail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and file storage on Google Drive. I can provide $150 Windows 10 laptops that lets the user do all of their work with Edge, Outlook.com, Office 365 web version of Microsoft Word, Office 365 web version of Excel, Office 365 web version of PowerPoint, and file storage on Microsoft OneDrive. You can use Group Policies to block users from installing programs locally. You get all of the benefits of Chromebooks and Chrome OS, the same price for the service, and the operating system you already know. All of your office staff that deal in Excel files and Word documents wouldn't have to change anything and would not need to be retrained.
I understand why the typical end user would think that Google is better. And in many respects Google genuinely is better. But I think Microsoft could offer something almost as good for the same price, and I'm shocked that they don't.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:36PM
Perception plays a big role. Even more than facts. (See politics)
Can Microsoft actually offer something almost as good for the same price? Maybe they can't. I understand they are fixing this, but Microsoft has long been divided into competing, fighting fiefdoms all competing for resources and power. After the Windows 8 fiasco, and Windows Phone 7, er, uh, no, Windows Phone 8, do you really think they are necessarily competent? I know they have some bright people. But competent as an organization.
Now, EVEN IF Microsoft really can offer something almost as good for the same price, will people perceive that it is the same price? Will they perceive it is almost as good? Would the product do better if it were not burdened with the Microsoft brand name?
Imagine putting these words together: Microsoft, Internet, Security, PC-like devices.
Now put these words together: Google, Internet, Security, closed secure self updating devices.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Tuesday September 04 2018, @04:49AM (2 children)
>The locked down, highly secure Chrome OS
I prefer to see it as already irreversibly backdoored from the manufacturer.
Of course it's better than a badly irreversibly backdoored system with all the downsides of a walled garden plus all the downsides of having to manage it.
The generation of kids that can only do chromebooks will probably have to learn the hard way about proprietary systems. like we are doing right now.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:24PM (1 child)
Is Chrome OS backdoored any more than Windows or Mac OS? Or even most Linux distributions?
When the user trusts the manufacturer to install updates, the OS is already backdoored, even if only in principle.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @12:05AM
Do your linux distros install updates automatically, by default, without giving you an option not to? (at install / config time)
Do they schedule update mandates reboots for you, possibly being nice enough to allow you to delay it for an hour or two?
Mine don't, even the more "managed" ones I've used go only as far as to tell you an update is available.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:01PM (11 children)
Web based applications are the nightmare scenario that motivated Microsoft to destroy Netscape. ("cut off their oxygen supply", as came out in the DoJ vs Microsoft trial, and much more.)
The web browser offered the potential for applications to run in the browser, without having to install any software at your workstation, and on any OS! Zero install apps with zero maintenance. (Which is what we now see today)
Microsoft was focused on its monopoly. Bill Gates said the internet was a fad. Suddenly they woke up to the potential. Got internet religion. They needed a web browser on Windows that they could make incompatible with existing standards and leverage their monopoly power. There was a company called SpyGlass that made a browser for Windows. Microsoft acquired them for $100,000 up front plus a royalty percent of sales. Microsoft renamed it Internet Explorer and guess how many copies of IE have ever been sold? Microsoft bundled it into the OS so that users had no reason to install another browser that was more platform neutral. Microsoft added Windows-only features like ActiveX -- which was a gigantic security problem, but that only hurts customers, not Microsoft.
IE was able to drive a wedge in web development for a long time until FireFox got more than 50% market share. Then IE became the browser that wasn't compatible with all web applications. Hence suddenly there was IE 7, IE 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, then Edge browser. The whole purpose of IE had become a tool to install FireFox and/or Chrome.
The nightmare has come true. The world is now full of web applications. I would dare say that all new business applications are developed as web applications rather than desktop applications. Again, zero install, zero maintenance. Backups of, say, your accounting data, payroll, etc are all centrally managed. All you need is a browser and a way to print PDF files that the browser produces for you.
I don't know, but I suspect that the major thing Windows has going for it is games. And even that is being gradually eroded.
I would say that the major thing Microsoft has going for it is its enterprise applications. Exchange, Outlook, SQL Server, Office, etc. And the ability to centrally manage and update a fleet of thousands of PCs distributed across an international corporate network. I think, in time, Google will also gradually erode this with centrally managed Chrome OS.
And Chrome OS won't be a glorified browser forever. It already runs Android apps. And soon it will run Linux apps in a sandbox. It was a pretty sneaky way to get a new OS in front of people, at a very low price, and under Microsoft's radar.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:10PM (10 children)
But for what a school needs, a locked down low end laptop with Windows 10, Edge, and Office 365 would be as useful as a Chromebook. So it's absurd that Microsoft has watched Google come in and start a mass invasion of the education market without making a competing offering with similar features. Don't get me wrong, in day to day use my expectation would be that on the same hardware a Chromebook would run faster and the Google Apps would run more reliably than Windows and Office 365. But the difference probably would have been small enough that Microsoft-friendly educators, which is most of them, would have accepted the moderately inferior offering. But the grossly more expensive and higher maintenance current Windows options for education just can't compete.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @08:00PM (9 children)
Is it even possible to make a low end locked down Windows laptop that is as low end as a chromebook?
Low end Chromebooks run ARM processors. Today I wrote a rant about why it won't work for Microsoft. The entire value of Windows is compatibility with it's Intel based legacy software. Take that away, and Windows requires you to buy all new software.
With a Chromebook and everything in the cloud (even of some of the software is run on the school district's own servers) nothing is stored on the device. It is entirely stateless.
I think educators are only Microsoft friendly because it has been a path of least resistance for a long time. If Chrome can be even less resistance, then they will take a liking to it.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:02PM (8 children)
You can get cheap Windows 10 laptops with 2GB or even 4GB of RAM on Amazon for $170. Office365 has webapps for everything, so it can be every bit as stateless and cloud-based as Google's Apps and Google Drive. If a school is willing to use a Chromebook, which can't run any Windows applications, then the school can probably use a Windows 10 laptop with no local applications installed besides Edge for accessing web-based Office365.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:12PM (7 children)
If I were considering this, my big fear would be that a Windows device potentially CAN RUN windows applications. Even if it can't, it's still Windows OS.
Another factor is that Microsoft is a monopolist, and for the longest time had charged monopoly prices because they could. They can't now. But they did. There may be people old enough to remember this and just plain don't like Microsoft having felt screwed by them at taxpayer expense. If there weren't the competitors then they would be getting shafted with monopoly pricing again.
Someone somewhat technically informed might realize that much of what Google does is open source.
Chrome built on Chromium.
Chrome OS built on Chromium OS. (built on Linux)
Android built on an open source "android" (built on Linux)
Now while Google controls the proprietary bits, if Google were to become as abusive as Microsoft, it is much easier today for others to rise up and build a competitive platform, creating competitive price pressure. This never was able to happen in the Windoze daze.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:29PM (6 children)
I don't like Microsoft. But I don't like Google either. Instead of getting screwed by paying too much for inferior Microsoft software, we're going to all get screwed by a company that bases its business on ruthlessly destroying privacy.
Chrome OS in education will take users into GMail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive - all proprietary. You can replace Chrome browser but the real killer feature for Chromebooks and the real problem with using them is the Google cloud, and few schools will have the money or interest to run their own cloud or pay for an alternative. I'm far less upset at the use Chromebooks than I am at the Google cloud. If a school bought Chromebooks but used their own login system, some sort of mass OwnCloud (or even better, the also open source sandstorm.io service software) email, and set the search engine to something like duckduckgo or similar then it would be fine.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 04 2018, @09:52PM (4 children)
The primary use of a chromebook in school may be to access software that provides assignments. Quizzes. Tests. Reading material. Courseware.
Not primarily Gmail, Google Docs, etc.
The kid can't get away with an excuse like: Windows 8 my homework!
Here's a new chromebook, log in, and all your hard work (or lack thereof) is there. And the teacher can see it and know what you need help with.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday September 05 2018, @02:17PM (3 children)
My kids with their Chromebooks are using Google Classroom for most of their school work.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:04PM
Interesting. I have never seen it, nor do I know anything about it. But it probably vacuums up information.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:05PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Classroom [wikipedia.org]
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:07PM
It looks like Google will have a more complete picture of a person's entire life. All the way back to school days, assignments, grades, etc. Still not a complete picture from birth though.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday September 06 2018, @08:08PM
Is it even possible to divert Google apps to another cloud?
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday September 06 2018, @07:59PM
Any news on how available the features to run Linux software is by now? And on which new hardware?
I remember a few years ago that one of my children bought a Chromebook to be able to run Linux on by replacing its OS using well-documented, legitimate procedures. After that the Chromebook would notice it was being asked to boot a different OS, provide a time-limited period for her to acknowledge that, else it would produce such an annoying audio alarm that she immediately returned it.
Of course, having it on a virtual machine is different from booting straight into it.
But, does it use a stock Linux kernel to run chrome and Android apps? Can it easily be user-upgraded or replaced?
Does it allow pretty well all Linux-compatible userspace software to just run on that same kernel?
Are the Linux applications tolerated but treated as malicious apps that have to be sandboxed to the hilt to the extent that they have little or no feasible access to the rest of the system?
And, can I finally used sshfs to mount parts of my server's file system to be accessible to the Android apps?
I cannot whole-heartedly recommend these machines unless enough of the answers are "yes".
-- hendrik