Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is Windows Lite? It's Microsoft's Chrome OS Killer

petri.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 30 posts

Re: What Is Windows Lite? It's Microsoft's Chrome OS Killer

#7

Post by amanzi »

Apart from the stupid clickbait title, this is an interesting article. Not sure what it's like in other countries but here in NZ Chromebooks have become the de-facto education laptop/platform. But the underlying OS is almost the unimportant bit - the key is the Google Apps Education platform and how well it works for both students and teachers. Even if (and that's a big if) this Windows Lite OS was successful and managed to replace Chrome OS, I can't see how Microsoft will get schools to stop using Google Apps?

Re: What Is Windows Lite? It's Microsoft's Chrome OS Killer

#8

Post by zapzupnz »

amanzi wrote: post #7

Apart from the stupid clickbait title, this is an interesting article. Not sure what it's like in other countries but here in NZ Chromebooks have become the de-facto education laptop/platform. But the underlying OS is almost the unimportant bit - the key is the Google Apps Education platform and how well it works for both students and teachers. Even if (and that's a big if) this Windows Lite OS was successful and man…

Source: I'm a digital technology teacher in NZ.

The Ministry of Education and Microsoft have an arrangement whereby all public schools have free access to Office 365 for Education, including online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint; Teams as a replacement for Classroom; Forms as a replacement for … well, forms; PowerApps and Flow as a replacement for App Maker; and five free licences per student for the desktop and mobile versions of Office.

To sweeten the deal, the revised deal that started this year also grants all schools free licences for Minecraft: Education Edition. This is pretty huge at the moment, since the zeitgeist is calling for learning through play, and Minecraft: Education Edition also includes some programming tools, useful for implementing the new Digital Technologies curriculum introduced this year and mandatory by 2020.

Microsoft also provides free professional development to schools, including staff members and IT administrators. Schools that have always used Active Directory to store staff and student user credentials are supported in moving to Azure Active Directory, providing easier integration between user credentials and Office 365.

So full, free replacements for G Suite; free Minecraft: Education Edition; free professional development, and the online version of Office 365 is just as usable on existing Chromebooks as any other device. On top of that, a lot of schools are moving to iPads, and the Office apps for iOS beat the Google Docs apps.

Microsoft has a few tricks up its sleeves, to say the least.

Re: What Is Windows Lite? It's Microsoft's Chrome OS Killer

#9

Post by zapzupnz »

auslander wrote: post #3

Microsoft should consider running on Apple A12X too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X

Apple's A, S, T, and W processors represent a significant competitive advantage (performance per watt, energy efficiency) in the mobile space; there'll be chilled water in Hell before Apple cedes that to anybody else, least of all Microsoft.
Post reply on HN