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posted by martyb on Monday September 03 2018, @07:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-fast-cheap;-pick-two dept.

$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.


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  • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Monday September 03 2018, @09:53PM (7 children)

    by KiloByte (375) on Monday September 03 2018, @09:53PM (#729978)

    $89 Linux laptop. Not for big compiles, but 2GB RAM is fine for client tasks.

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  • (Score: 2) by Apparition on Monday September 03 2018, @11:04PM (5 children)

    by Apparition (6835) on Monday September 03 2018, @11:04PM (#730012) Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 03 2018, @11:10PM (#730016)

      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

        by RamiK (1813) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @08:02AM (#730154)

        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.

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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:13AM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @12:13AM (#730041) Journal

      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

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday September 04 2018, @01:56AM (#730069) Journal

      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.

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      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:59AM

      by Magic Oddball (3847) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @02:59AM (#730096) Journal

      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

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2018, @05:44AM (#730114)

    Oddly enough, I have. With 1 GB of RAM, raspberry pi. It even plays utube videos.