$600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#71

Post by isostatic » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #31

ChrisSD wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they haven't got a history of doing this. Remember when the iPhone had "no chance" of "any significant market share"?[0] [0] https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2...

FTA: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phon…

What's a Zune?

It's the think starlord got at the end of guardians of the galaxy 2.

Still, at least it didn't suffer like the ipod -- it had No wireless and Less space than a Nomad. It was "Lame".

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#72

Post by jaxondu » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

beerlord wrote: post #4

Chromebooks have one fatal flaw: Microsoft Office on them sucks. You're stuck with side-loading in the Android edition, which is an app with a simplified UI and requiring always-online connection. All of this might be OK for a schoolkid, but for anyone else you might as well stick with a Windows laptop for real work, or an iPad for real consumption.

Chromebook is appealing for enterprise for its cheaper price and low support maintenance. There are many enterprises already running Citrix or AWS Workplace remote desktop to run enterprise app, I don't see how MS Office can not be run this way.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#73

Post by bitL » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #5

I was an intern at Microsoft the day that ChromeOS was announced. Conveniently, a few days later the head of Windows was giving a talk to all the interns. Overall, spoke well, but during Q&A someone asked him what he thought about ChromeOS. He laughed. He said it was a joke. He made it very clear that he didn't understand what Google was even thinking. And that stuck such a sour chord on me. Here's a company well kno…

Alright, you like a challenge, so what's the purpose of a ChromeBook outside of a plastic cutlery-equivalent of a device destined to quickly end up in a landfill, contributing to unnecessary damage of environment? Do you feel good about working on an unsustainable disposable device, meditating how much of a chess master you are these days? Did you meet people that actually decided to move forward with this project and understood their real, not stated motivations? Did you truly align with it?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#74

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

fasafsaf3 wrote: post #68

ericcholis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is entirely due to backwards compatibility.

Absolutely not. All the bloat 10 ships that makes it so slow is completely new. Compatibility has almost nothing to do with bloat.

How can compatibility not have to do with bloat? Entire subsystems in Windows are devoted to backwards compatibility. If you follow Raymond Chen’s blog on MSDN, he talks all of the time about all of the hacks in Windows to make it compatible with one specific program.

There is still a 32 bit version of Windows in 2018.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#75

Post by matt2000 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #37

abraham wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome OS is basically just a browser so anyone who has been on the internet is pretty comfortable on it.

Lubuntu is just as user friendly and comes pre-installed with all of the things one would expect, like a browser and media player and word processing software. There's an app store and browser add ons work well. The hardest thing for a casual user to learn would be "sudo apt-get install" and then guessing what the package name is that they might want to download, like vlcplayer or java

"The hardest thing for a casual user to learn would be "sudo apt-get install" and then guessing what the package name is that they might want to download, like vlcplayer or java"

Everything you said in this sentence is a deal breaker for a casual user, and a terrible user experience in general.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#76

Post by z_open » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #37

abraham wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome OS is basically just a browser so anyone who has been on the internet is pretty comfortable on it.

Lubuntu is just as user friendly and comes pre-installed with all of the things one would expect, like a browser and media player and word processing software. There's an app store and browser add ons work well. The hardest thing for a casual user to learn would be "sudo apt-get install" and then guessing what the package name is that they might want to download, like vlcplayer or java

Don't the pre-installed ones come with a graphical package manager?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#77

Post by dragontamer » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #63

dylan604 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there another quote from Bill Gates on not optimizing Windows because why pay for his engineers to makes things faster/smaller/efficient when RAM/CPU/HDD were outpacing by getting faster/larger/cheaper. Or is that an urban legend type of quote? It makes sense business wise. Getting new features is sexy/sell-able. Refactoring existing/working code to be smaller/faster/secure/etc isn't.

Seeing that in 2008 a midrange laptop came with 4GB of RAM and 10 years later, a low end laptop - like the Surface Go - still only has 4GB of RAM and has less storage than my 10 year old laptop.

I think that's more of a sign that most people don't need more than 4GB to 8GB of RAM, and that storage isn't about TB anymore but about speed (HDD vs SSD).

SSDs are roughly 100x faster than HDDs, so they're superior despite offering less TB. Unless you're a gamer constantly downloading new 50GB games, most people are fine with ~300GB of storage.

People want faster storage, as opposed to more storage.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#78

Post by NegativeK » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #73

mabbo wrote: post #5

I was an intern at Microsoft the day that ChromeOS was announced. Conveniently, a few days later the head of Windows was giving a talk to all the interns. Overall, spoke well, but during Q&A someone asked him what he thought about ChromeOS. He laughed. He said it was a joke. He made it very clear that he didn't understand what Google was even thinking. And that stuck such a sour chord on me. Here's a company well kno…

Alright, you like a challenge, so what's the purpose of a ChromeBook outside of a plastic cutlery-equivalent of a device destined to quickly end up in a landfill, contributing to unnecessary damage of environment? Do you feel good about working on an unsustainable disposable device, meditating how much of a chess master you are these days? Did you meet people that actually decided to move forward with this project an…

I've downvoted you due to the combative tone of your question.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#79

Post by nickjj » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

A few years ago I picked up a $300 Chromebook, spent $50 to upgrade the SSD size (swapped the SSD card in it) and now I run GalliumOS on it (native xubuntu but optimized for Chromebooks).

So for $350 you get a 1080p IPS panel laptop that weighs under 3 pounds and has an SD card, headphone jack and other goodies. It easily runs a bunch of Dockerized web apps without being slow.

One of the best portable computing devices I ever spent $ on. I still use it almost every day 2.5 years later.

Details can be found at: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#80

Post by wrs » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #5

I was an intern at Microsoft the day that ChromeOS was announced. Conveniently, a few days later the head of Windows was giving a talk to all the interns. Overall, spoke well, but during Q&A someone asked him what he thought about ChromeOS. He laughed. He said it was a joke. He made it very clear that he didn't understand what Google was even thinking. And that stuck such a sour chord on me. Here's a company well kno…

Pre-Satya Microsoft had an odd combination of paranoia and blindness regarding the rise of browser applications.

Blindness: I was in a Microsoft VP’s office when he said he was downsizing the IE effort because “the browser is done”, enterprise users were satisfied, and consumers don’t generate significant Windows revenue. I think that was IE6.

Paranoia: I was present for many early-00s decisions where a Microsoft exec weakened the ability to write rich applications in the browser to avoid devaluing Win32. So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract.

Although...at the same time, Office was pushing for browser application capabilities, which is where we got XHR, which is a big reason browser applications became practical. Sometimes you’d never guess Office and Windows were the same company.