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

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#371

Post by phobosdeimos » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:46 AM UTC

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #59

open-source-ux wrote: post #7

Don't forget that ChromeOS is an operating system (OS) that tracks everything you do. To use the OS to the full requires a Google account, so you aren't even anonymous while you use it. (As a reminder, your Google account = your name, your date of birth, your location, your gender and mobile phone number i.e. some of your most private and personal details.) We've seen Microsoft criticised, quite rightly, for introduc…

> To use the OS to the full requires a Google account, so you aren't even anonymous while you use it What can't you do without a Google account? There's a "browse as guest" option.

And win10 has a local account option, no MS account needed to access all the features.

ChromeOS is for people who are not technically inclined and don't care much for privacy. The majority of users I am sure.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#372

Post by nunodonato » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:48 AM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #254

osrec wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for Office and the ecosystem around it, I don't think many firms would opt for Microsoft products. In my firm, we're purely Linux, but have Windows VMs, just for Excel. As an aside, we run a business management app called Bx ( https://usebx.com/app ) and have recently started making some money. We're putting aside some cash to fund the development of a feature-rich, cross-platform spreadsheet app (I wish…

> If it wasn't for Office and the ecosystem around it, I don't think many firms would opt for Microsoft products. Many firms and people need Windows software, MS Office is just one example. You want to edit pictures, Photoshop only runs on Windows and OSX. You want to build things, AutoCAD only runs on Windows. You want to produce music, Cubase only runs on Windows and OSX.

there are great alternatives for all of that

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#373

Post by stinos » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

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.

Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it.

It is disgusting, but I fail to see how e.g. the team working on the C++ compiler should be ashamed for something another completely seperate team was forced to do by management (assuming something like that is responsible for this). In my opinion MS has gone too big for that, with a bunch of seperate departments almost acting as standalone entities (i.e. seperate companies) who can take a lot of decisions on their own without much interference between them, just all sharing the MS name. E.g. there's the research going on, there's VS/Office/Windows etc.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#374

Post by boomboomsubban » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

omegabravo wrote: post #351

hoosieree wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The current version of Ubuntu just has an affiliate link to Amazon. It may be overly difficult to remove and upsetting to some users, but it's nowhere near as egregious as the software many Windows machine are shipped with.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#375

Post by tluyben2 » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:20 AM UTC

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…

We are saving so much on hosting since migrating from framework on Win to .NET Core on Linux and more so with 2.1. Performance and low latency on much lighter hardware; very well done.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#376

Post by tragic » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:20 AM UTC

marpstar wrote: post #321

gmueckl wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Office for Mac a completely diverged fork from an old Windows version of Office? I remember some blog posts from the understaffed Mac Office team stating that much several years ago. I don't know if they rebased it in the meantime. The posts read as if the big Office team was focused entirely on Windows and everything else was done by understaffed teams struggling to keep up.

Earlier this year they put out a blog post that announced that their cross-platform versions share a common codebase for "core functionality". https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Share...

Does 'core functionality' include opening a UTF-8-encoded CSV file properly?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#377

Post by fulafel » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:24 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #363

awucs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "2% or 3%" was very realistic, but you have to remember that when the iPhone first came out it wasn't very good. I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things). Apple was certainly ahead, but the market also wasn't ready nor big at that. When it actually matured there were a couple of solid offerings including from Microsoft, which among other things had arguably better design than An…

> I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things) I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores. > iPhone first came out it wasn't very good Unequivocally false! It did everything a normal phone did fine. Howeve…

iPhone's competitors did have GPS & 3G: http://archive.fortune.com/2007/10/04/technology/nokia_N95.f...

(The timeline varied a lot by your country - I saw the iPhone available a year later than N95)

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#378

Post by tluyben2 » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:31 AM 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.

Can you point to some? I am searching and even high end ones came with 2gb. If I search for midrange laptop and 2008 I get your comment of 16 hrs ago. In my (for sure limited) memory, 4gb was rare back then; high end laptops had it but I had to search for them and pay a lot. I definitely paid $3000$ for a Fujitsu with 4gb back then (I still have it, it still works and I have the receipt); best laptop ever but definitely not midrange.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#379

Post by user5994461 » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #150

nextos wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xiaomi Air 12 is really good quality for ~$550 if you go for the m3 CPU. It's fanless (but only 4 GB of RAM), which is something I love. It's a different price point than Lenovo. Much cheaper. They are good ultrabooks. Regardless of the CPU you choose (e.g. i5 has 8 GB, but it's not fanless), all 12 inch models have Intel components only, including the wireless card. It's one of the few laptops that truly runs we…

There's a few ThinkPads where you can remove the BIOS and replace it with Coreboot, and remove Intel ME as well. For example the ThinkPad T60 and X200, available on second hand market. Replace the keyboard if you find it dirty to use those 2nd hand. The advantage these have is the hardware is serviceable by the user.

These Think pads were released 10 years ago, it's a really bad idea to invest in used hardware that old. They can fail anytime.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#380

Post by intended » Sun, Sep 02, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

osrec wrote: post #164

fooker wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with starting from scratch for an Excel alternative is the classic quote : "Everyone needs 10% of the features Excel offers, but is a different 10%."

I don't disagree with you, however someone needs to take up the challenge. Perhaps by creating a base that can be plugged into more easily than LibreOffice or Excel would help encourage development by the community (much like atom and its plugins) Basically, I'm not happy with the status quo that we have no real alternative to Excel on Linux.

There is no alternative to excel period.

Its like dwarf fortress or bloomberg terminals - when you are digging through what you thought was cruft, you'll suddenly find an entire project/application worth of material to handle a feature you never thought you would use.

Except that feature is used by someone else everyday.