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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

#281

Post by mcny »

j0hnml wrote: post #201
ac29 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro? Yes, with the caveat that full BIOS/UEFI support sometimes lags hardware releases by 6-12 months - out of the box most Chromebooks can only boot ChromeOS. Pretty much all the Chromebook firmware work to support 3rd-party OS' is done by one guy, see his page here: https://mrchromebox.tech I…

Which chromebook do you have and what are its specs? I'm interested in doing the same, and I don't want to spend $800+ for a laptop I'm not going to be super happy with.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Chromebook and I would not recommend it mostly because you have to fully disassemble it to unlock the bios. I managed to do something wrong when I opened it and closed it so after a while one of the hinges just broke.

Look for a Chromebook that you can unlock by just removing the battery. Anything else is just torture.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#282

Post by supernovae »

satysin wrote: post #278
supernovae wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 start menu doesn't take up that much screen unless the user has configured it as such. Start menu from store is pretty clean. Go to a microsoft store and mess around with devices from there - they are "signature devices" that are clean. Windows isn't a mess these days in any sense of the word, It's just people who have a negative opinion of it speak about it with sympathy from others who have a negative op…

My "signature edition" Surface Book 2 running Windows 10 Professional came with a bunch of crap on the start menu such as Candy Crush Saga, Twitter, some travel app, Minecraft, and advert for Office 365 and some other crap I can't remember. I had to right-click and uninstall them all manually but then a few days later a couple of them returned?! I ended up searching for a PowerShell script that actually removes them.…

Those aren't even installed and you can turn off app recommendations

Settings->personalization->start-> make sure "Show suggestions occasionally in start" is off.

Minecraft is awesome BTW :)

My android phone came with a ton of crap, my amazon tablet had a bunch of amazon crap.. i don't really think showcasing the marketplace of the hardware you have selected is that evil - especially since its easy to customize if it really bothers you.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#283

Post by jmagar »

dylan604 wrote: post #47
scarface74 wrote: post #16

Dependence on Windows is the most dangerous development for Microsoft. An 8GB RAM Windows Surface Go is less performant than an iPad with 2GB of RAM for consumers. For the server, I recently had to write a process that takes messages from a queue in AWS and store it to a database. It ran well as a .Net Core based lambda running on a 256MB RAM Linux VM. I did the same with a .Net Framesork app that inherited and the s…

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.

You may be thinking of Spolsky:

‘As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.’

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/09/18/strategy-letter-vi...

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#284

Post by emodendroket »

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…

I mean frankly that's still kind of my attitude to Chromebooks. I've never seen someone using one and I can't see the point.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#285

Post by candiodari »

ac29 wrote: post #133
nextos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in Chromebooks for a different reason, the same reason that brings me to Pixel phones. I hate software that tracks me, but if I wipe out Android and I install a self compiled AOSP, it's a superb user experience for me. Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro? Right now, Xiaomi laptops are excellent cheap machines to r…

> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro? Yes, with the caveat that full BIOS/UEFI support sometimes lags hardware releases by 6-12 months - out of the box most Chromebooks can only boot ChromeOS. Pretty much all the Chromebook firmware work to support 3rd-party OS' is done by one guy, see his page here: https://mrchromebox.tech I…

Additional caveat: chrome DRM will no longer be functional if you do this.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#286

Post by emodendroket »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #35
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…

First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. - Microsoft should have known this but they had made too much money for too long.

Right, that's why now we all use Cuil for searches and look up information about various subjects on Cpedia.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#287

Post by curioussavage »

j0hnml wrote: post #201
ac29 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will these more upmarket Chromebooks (which have x86 CPUs and acceptable RAM & storage) be OK to run any regular Linux distro? Yes, with the caveat that full BIOS/UEFI support sometimes lags hardware releases by 6-12 months - out of the box most Chromebooks can only boot ChromeOS. Pretty much all the Chromebook firmware work to support 3rd-party OS' is done by one guy, see his page here: https://mrchromebox.tech I…

Which chromebook do you have and what are its specs? I'm interested in doing the same, and I don't want to spend $800+ for a laptop I'm not going to be super happy with.

I have the dell 7310. i3 with 8gb ram. Same as me chromebox last I heard(I think he had the i5 model but it’s not really much faster) it’s about the best experience. Flashing his full firmware is super easy

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#288

Post by reaperducer »

supernovae wrote: post #279
reaperducer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is entirely due to backwards compatibility. That's the current conventional wisdom. But it's more like an excuse. Windows got bloated because Microsoft relied(s) on cheap masses of mediocre programmers, backed by equally mediocre managers. A pattern that Windows application developers copied. Yes, Microsoft has some really talented people. I knew a good number of them from the Bing and Xbox group when I…

This isn't true at all. The ENTIRE industry had to re-invent itself MANY times - and MANY companies failed and have long since shutdown. Microsoft on the other hand has survived - and not only maintained backwards compatibility but embraced new technologies - and is doing so at a breakneck pace today. Microsoft research is a top notch research company. Microsoft is also a large, if not the largest, contributor to Lin…

Horror stories aren't unique to Microsoft

So because other companies also did sucky things, Microsoft’s sucky things don’t count.

Got it.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#289

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

nextos wrote: post #228
paulcarroty wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I patch that, and a few other things. It's a poor man's CopperheadOS.

Have you considered writing a guide on how you do this and what changes you make? I also own a Pixel, but kept running into problems when I tried to compile Android, eventually making me give up.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#290

Post by krn »

bena wrote: post #158
wrs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exe…

In a lot of ways they aren't/weren't. Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's why you'll find you'll be able to do something in Office, but other Microsoft programs won't. Or vice versa. Like Notepad and Internet Explorer are pretty much just containers for certain Windows controls. Controls Office don't use. They roll…

> Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products.

That's probably because unlike most Microsoft products, Office is cross-platform and has to support multiple operating systems, including MacOS, iOS, and Android.

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