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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

#351

Post by omegabravo »

hoosieree wrote: post #325
mark_l_watson wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also buy a windows 10 laptop from the microsoft store and not getting any crap ware installed on it.

Every other OS I've used recently (MacOS, Ubuntu, Centos, RHEL, ChromeOS) doesn't require special knowledge or extra work to remove pre-installed spyware/bloatware. They may well have crap installed, but at least they're subtle about it.

I remember Ubuntu coming installed with Amazon links. It certainly did require special knowledge to remove it.

https://www.lifewire.com/remove-amazon-application-from-ubun...

At least with Windows you can just right click, uninstall. That is until vendors break that mechanism too

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#352

Post by omegabravo »

013a wrote: post #294
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…

> Microsoft has tried various ways to fix this but it only tends to protect high-end models. Try again. Microsoft is complicit in all of this. If you go buy an OEM version of Windows 10 today, even Pro, what you get is a ridiculous set of preloaded games and apps, like Candy Crush, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, Disney Magic Kingdoms, etc. Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it.

My Ubuntu comes installed with Minesweeper and Mahjongg.

Windows historically came installed with Pinball, Minesweeper, Solitaire.

I would guess that a substantial base of Windows users plays games on their PC. It's rare to find a popular game that isn't enhanced by the internet.

I do tend to agree that maybe Professional versions should not come with these _links_, but even a large portion of professional users play games on their company issued laptop. I haven't installed Windows Server before but I would be surprised if that featured game links.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#353

Post by bananadonkey »

ChristianGeek wrote: post #241
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they all come back with the next update.

Does this only happen on Windows Home?

This is also true for my recent numerous installs of Pro, which is absurd

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#354

Post by bananadonkey »

ChristianGeek wrote: post #241
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they all come back with the next update.

Does this only happen on Windows Home?

Another fun fact is if you remove the App Installer or whatever it is called, you can't remove the "adware" apps

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#355

Post by riffraff »

013a wrote: post #294
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…

> Microsoft has tried various ways to fix this but it only tends to protect high-end models. Try again. Microsoft is complicit in all of this. If you go buy an OEM version of Windows 10 today, even Pro, what you get is a ridiculous set of preloaded games and apps, like Candy Crush, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, Disney Magic Kingdoms, etc. Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it.

Is it really problematic if there are preinstalled games? My Huawei phone came with some, I didn't care much.

I mean, they take up some space but don't affect system behaviour, like some old windows OEM bloatware did.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#356

Post by wonthegame »

moksha256 wrote: post #117
jenscow wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this "vendor crap" is now part of the OS.

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).

You can easily remove them. It's still annoying having to deleted Candy Crush.

I would have a hard time justifying $400 for a Chromebook when a tablet+keyboard is cheaper and slightly better.

Plus with Surface Go....$400 seems like a rip off for a Chromebook.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#357

Post by idiomatic1 »

satysin wrote: post #296
supernovae wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Those aren't even installed and you can turn off app recommendations They installed the moment it saw a network connection which was before I even finished setup because it set that up during the OOBE. > Settings->personalization->start-> make sure "Show suggestions occasionally in start" is off. That setting does not seem to have any effect on Candy Crush, Twitter, etc. on a default install. > Minecraft is awesome…

Couldn't agree more. I'm trying Windows 10 after many years on Linux, and I'm amazed at the hot mess I find. There isn't even a usable terminal. ConEmu looks like it could work with enough tweaking, still trying to get all characters to show up properly (many do, some don't).

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#358

Post by 013a »

omegabravo wrote: post #352
013a wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft has tried various ways to fix this but it only tends to protect high-end models. Try again. Microsoft is complicit in all of this. If you go buy an OEM version of Windows 10 today, even Pro, what you get is a ridiculous set of preloaded games and apps, like Candy Crush, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, Disney Magic Kingdoms, etc. Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it.

My Ubuntu comes installed with Minesweeper and Mahjongg. Windows historically came installed with Pinball, Minesweeper, Solitaire. I would guess that a substantial base of Windows users plays games on their PC. It's rare to find a popular game that isn't enhanced by the internet. I do tend to agree that maybe Professional versions should not come with these _links_, but even a large portion of professional users play…

I think I draw a line when companies who aren't Microsoft are paying Microsoft to include this software. And its worse because I paid $150 for this OEM key. And its worse because its the professional version. And its worse because they're right on the Start menu from Day Zero.

Minesweeper, Mahjongg, and Chess are a little different because they were developed by Microsoft, with no motive beside adding value to the operating system, at least for users who find value in them.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#359

Post by Too »

matt2000 wrote: post #15

I never really understood why MSFT didn't start a clean slate rewrite of Windows about a decade ago. Imagine how much simpler and more reliable it could be, and you could run Windows 7 in an emulation layer if you had older apps you depended on. Even OS X has the feel that cloud services are kind of bolted on, whereas a new OS written in this era could feel more like ChromeOS in terms of reliability but still include…

Windows is already very simple and reliable. What it lacks though is easy to use sandbox isolation of apps like Web/Android/iOS.

I'm at a point now where i lost trust in almost all software when it comes to respecting privacy. So even if windows has the biggest share of useful third party apps, most of them are old and not written against UWP/Store so they are not sandboxed, which means i'd rather not install them in the first place. So instead i open my android tablet and see if i can find an equivalent there.

Having to pay the huge markup for Professional edition to get disk encryption is also ridiculous when this is standard on Andrdoid and iOS. If my laptop gets stolen i want my data secure. This should be considered standard feature in this age.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#360

Post by nl »

Fnoord wrote: post #143
nextos wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air 12 inch, Intel HD Graphics: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/xiaomi-air-12-review...

Good bang for the buck but I want at least 8 GB DDR4 in a new laptop (bought in 2018), and preferably also TB3 and an AMD GPU. Regardless of the other unnecessary or lacking features Macbook laptops have (butterfly keyboard, touchbar, magsafe, USB-A ports come to mind) if you want a decent amount of RAM and an AMD GPU you pay the jackpot price on MBPs.

https://www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_651697.html

12.5”, 8gb, full Intel. I haven’t tried it but it looks interesting and well priced.

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