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

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#181

Post by microcolonel » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

sarcasmic wrote: post #24

Any Chromebook more than $400 right now is just there to absorb even more disposable income from the market, because they ship with nicer finishes and faster processors, but they are anemic on memory and storage, making them subpar for intense multitasking, or getting certain types of work done. The situations in which they excel can be reliably hit by Chromebooks around a $400 price point, and even cheaper Chromeboo…

The Chrome OS experience has, for the last few years, been a higher quality experience than that of OS X or MS Windows. Upscale Chromebooks have a market with people who don't want to suffer just because they don't really use their laptop that often (which with Windows, means that the performance-sapping, non-atomic updater will take up about half of your useful time with the thing).

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#182

Post by DennisAleynikov » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #167

londons_explore wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, after over a decade of trying, Apple still only has 15% market share. If Microsoft had the other 85%, they'd be in a good position.

Why should Apple care about the other 85% of the market if all the profit margin is in the 15% they have?

I guess apple is totally okay with being a minority of the market then since they're doubling down on proprietary sensors and apps that only work in their own ecosystem.

they can ignore the 85% if they want. The 85% of the market will ignore them back in turn.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#183

Post by mattkevan » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #71

reaperducer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

But you could ‘squirt’ songs from one Zune to another.

The Zune was a litany of poor decisions, but that word choice must have been the worst.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#184

Post by slededit » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #88

adrianN wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you consider funding the improvement of Libre Office instead of trying to write your own spreadsheet app. There has been an incredible amount of work poured into it, starting from scratch doesn't make much sense imho.

Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I find the entire ecosystem of LibreOffice a bit clunky, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a lot of technical debt that would need to be understood before we could make any sort of contribution. Don't know why, but my gut says starting afresh would allow us…

That is maybe doable if you don't care about importing existing files. You'll spend years just getting that right.

A grid of cells is the easy part. Compatibility is hard.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#185

Post by pymai » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

soniman wrote: post #149

One thing that's good about Chromebook is that if I save something, it's in one of two places - Downloads folder or Gdrive. On Windows it could be in Downloads, Desktop, My Docs, some random file, Onedrive, Gdrive, etc etc. I realize this is not a big deal but given so many choices, ultimately files will multiply and spread everywhere.

> On Windows it could be in Downloads, Desktop, My Docs

they're all in you're user folder on Windows so wouldn't that be pretty much the same as the root gdrive folder and whatever subfolders you have things organised into?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#186

Post by joezydeco » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

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

That's really the takeaway here. GSuite has gotten its hooks deep into elementary/secondary education and now that's starting to sweep into the college market.

Families also shop for new laptops around the holidays, and they'll want something that dovetails with the work kids are doing at school. If the choice is an iOS or Chrome device, the choice becomes a lot easier when they're nearly the same price.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#187

Post by UncleEntity » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #119

detaro wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the data that chromebooks have shorter useful lives than other laptops in the same price class? Other laptops on average? It's possible that's the case, but not obvious to me.

How much of a lifetime could a device with soldered on 2GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage have? How much repurposed could it be? Pricier Chromebooks with HiDPI screens and Core-M or better processors are still castrated in one way or the other comparing to general computing devices, yet approaching their price levels. What's the point for a developer? "It just works"? "It's just safe!" due to mandatory secure boot a…

I doubt a developer would buy such an underpowered machine in the first place.

That said, I currently use a laptop that's seriously underpowered (by choice when I bought the thing ~7 years ago) with 4GB of RAM running Fedora and it does everything I need -- never once have I found I wasn't able to compile whatever random code I happen to be playing with at the moment. If ever I had to do serious dev work (like, it was my job) I'd need a better laptop but for the tinkering I do it works out just fine...though I did have to give up on Blender hacking a while back because of OpenGL versioning issues and I can't afford to buy a fancy new machine. That might not be an issue anymore, haven't checked on the OpenGL compatibility in quite a while TBH.

I actually used to hack on Blender with a 2GB netbook (also running Fedora) before I got my current "beast" so those things aren't completely worthless as you would suggest.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#188

Post by stan_rogers » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

badminton1 wrote: post #128

csomar wrote: post #62

No they are not. We are still not there yet. First, $600 is pretty expensive. Most Windows laptops that I see run on less than $500. Second, they don't have the ecosystem yet. Here are things you do on Windows: 1. Browse the Internet using Chrome. 2. Play a relatively demanding Video Game. 3. Run Office, Word and Excel. 4. Install your Canon Printer and print a few papers. 5. Plugin your Nikon Camera. 6. Run Adobe Ph…

Please tell me which of this things you cannot do on Linux right now. With Gimp you can do a lot of what you can do with Photoshop. TeX and any math package like R beat Microsoft Office and produce better documents. WordPerfect was a much better alternative to Microsoft Word, but guess what happened: Microsoft invested on Corel and suddenly they stopped releasing on Linux. There's a lot of money invested in making Of…

WordPerfect died for two reasons: the transition to Windows (and WP6 for DOS, which was the worst of both worlds); and its lack of a real office suite integration. Lotus 1-2-3, the other application that owned to office, lost out for much the same reason. SmartSuite was a whole lot closer to an integrated solution than bundling WP with Quattro Pro and friends was, but Ami Pro was a less-than-competent word processor for business purposes.

TeX/LaTeX may make some pretty documents, but the learning curve is pretty heavy-duty, and compiling a typeset document isn't exactly dash-it-off quick for normal typist/secretary activities. It doesn't matter much what you can do with technical or book-length documents; that's not what the world runs on.

And Gimp ain't Photoshop. It's not even a close thing.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#189

Post by phobosdeimos » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

Crontab wrote: post #156

I like the idea of ChromeOS but I don't understand why anyone would want to own a computer that you can't even create a user account on without the manufacturer's permission. I am also unsure, from a privacy prospective, if it is wise to use an OS created by an advertising company.

Well I haven't seen an ad on any of my computers or phones in the last 2 years. Obviously if everyone was like that the entire tech industry would have collapsed already.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#190

Post by osrec » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

slededit wrote: post #184

osrec wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I find the entire ecosystem of LibreOffice a bit clunky, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a lot of technical debt that would need to be understood before we could make any sort of contribution. Don't know why, but my gut says starting afresh would allow us…

That is maybe doable if you don't care about importing existing files. You'll spend years just getting that right. A grid of cells is the easy part. Compatibility is hard.

Compatibility is actually the least of my worries. I think it's a losing battle that's not worth fighting.

Better to create an open ecosystem that people adopt for that very reason - that it is open. In the early days, Excel would actually obfuscate its output, making it extremely difficult to parse. Now things are a bit better, but you're still trying to hit a moving target.

If we have an open format, and a corresponding high-quality, open application ecosystem, I can see many corporates making the switch. Not easy, but I can see a future without total dependence on Excel.