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$600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

arstechnica.com

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Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#191

Post by justadudeama »

joezydeco wrote: post #186

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 co…

I am sure a non-trivial reason for this is every Middle School, High School, and College I have ever heard of in my area the emails are g-suite, and they all have unlimited google storage. Almost everyone I know uses Google Docs when it comes to sharing papers, and many it is their primary editor. I see why chomebooks are popular if everything else in your school is g-suite.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#192

Post by osrec »

grandinj wrote: post #170
osrec wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not going to be pessimistic about the endeavour! I think, given time, we can build something that solves at least some use cases better than Calc.

Libreoffice hacker here. Calc is one of the nicer parts of the codebase. Don’t underestimate the enormous list of features that are required in a modern spreadsheet engine. We’re talking 100s of man-years of coding. Come join us and make it better. Or task one of the available consultancies to implement the features you want.

I know I am underestimating; I have a tendency to do that, so I appreciate the warning. May I ask how many people currently contribute to LibreOffice regularly?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#193

Post by UncleEntity »

syntaxing wrote: post #153

Bought a relatively highend Chromebook for a family member and I have to say, these things are honestly really nice and perfect for the average user. I just wish there was something similar for standalone linux. The same sleek profile and price point as the Acer 14/15 series but runs some generic distro like Ubuntu natively. I know you can run Crouton but it just doesn't feel the same.

Just buy some cheap windows box with roughly the same specs and install linux on it. Unfortunately requires paying the "microsoft tax" but c'est la vie.

Requires a bit of googling to ensure there's no driver issues but this is what I've done for nearly a couple decades now.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#194

Post by kbenson »

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…

> but on Chrome OS, you only get two de facto contexts (the white one and the black one with the cool spy icon)

I was wondering if you could somehow get Firefox on one, and apparently for ChromeOS instances where you have access to Android apps you can.[1] Not running ChromeOS, I'm not sure if that means you have to be running an ARM variant, or if the app developer needed to enable a specific set of features or compile a special version (e.g. for x86), or if this actually works, but it does seem promising.

From another article I just found[2], apparently if your ChromeOS supports linux apps, you can just apt install Firefox, or if you really need it and nothing else is working, you can use Crouton to use a linux instance within a dedicated Chrome tab and run Firefox there. I suspect many of these might have oddness when dealing with files and sharing between apps, as you noted that as a specific area of interaction that's somewhat odd within Chrome. I'm not sure whether the Android app works well with that either.

1: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chromebook-ce...

2: https://www.howtogeek.com/357693/how-to-install-firefox-in-c...

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#195

Post by phobosdeimos »

toyg wrote: post #85
gregmac wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not at all defending the practice, but I think it has to do with the legacy. Google is (somewhat) up front about tracking, and has always required an account. There was never a Chrome OS that didn't track you. Windows didn't used to do this, so it feels like they're changing the rules after you've agreed and bought into the platform. If Microsoft had instead called "Windows 10" something completely different, and…

No, it's just that the volumes are still not comparable. Everyone at some point has had a Windows machine, including the privacy-conscious and the paranoid -- simply because, at the time, there was no realistic alternative. Once you reach 90% penetration, any special-interest group with a pet complaint will be sizeable. That's not happened with Chromebooks and it's unlikely to ever happen. Privacy-conscious users now…

Funny how I can block in-app ads and trackers on Android even without root. Although that's more thanks to Linux than Google I'm sure.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#196

Post by badminton1 »

stan_rogers wrote: post #188
badminton1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Gimp may not have full feature parity with Photoshop but unless you are a professional graphics designer or creative worker, Gimp will provide most of the features you need.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#197

Post by yunyu »

z_open wrote: post #6
yunyu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the typical cheap laptop purchaser willing to spend the time and effort into installing and learning to use a different operating system.

You mean like chrome os?

If you buy a Chromebook, Chrome OS is already preinstalled.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#198

Post by zahrc »

ChrisSD wrote: post #169
moksha256 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than that. There's 2 types of crap now: vendor crap and Windows crap. You can avoid vendor crap by reinstalling a fresh version of Windows from Microsoft, but you'll still get Microsoft crap (i.e., various apps from the Microsoft store pre-installed with links prominently displayed on the Start menu).

These are what Microsoft calls "suggestions" (aka adverts). I think they only actually install when you first click on them. Fortunately they're UWP apps so are easy to completely remove. Turning off the "Show suggestions" settings will stop them coming back.

A clean install of Windows 10 (not n versions) is shipped with stupid game installers for things like candy crush, Disney magic and march of empire which you can remove easily, but not just "hide" with disabling suggestions.[1]

[1] just did a clean install of win10 home

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#200

Post by paulcarroty »

nextos wrote: post #104
paulcarroty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I wipe out Android and I install a self compiled AOSP, it's a superb user experience for me. It's doesn't resolve the tracking issues.

Why not? I'm running vanilla AOSP with F-Droid apps only. No Google Apps framework. Threats are limited then to regular baseband radio issues. I know I could be doing better if we had open hardware, but that's the most practical solution I can implement today I think.

Vanilla AOSP still use Google DNS by default and Google servers for an internet connection checker.
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