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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: 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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 05 2018, @05:05PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Classroom [wikipedia.org]
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(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.
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(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday September 06 2018, @08:08PM
Is it even possible to divert Google apps to another cloud?
-- hendrik