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

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#151

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #31

ChrisSD wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they haven't got a history of doing this. Remember when the iPhone had "no chance" of "any significant market share"?[0] [0] https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2...

FTA: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phon…

What londons_explore said. Windows OS didn't succeed, but the comments about the iPhone seem to have been basically accurate...?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#152

Post by jasonvorhe » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #61

Let me just say right off the bat that I like Chromebooks and think they're fantastic for education in particular (combined with GSuite). But that being said, Chromebooks don't scale with better hardware very well. You can spend $250-350 and get 90% of the experience, and a very good experience at that. If you spend three times more you'll get more memory for Chrome and slightly more responsive tabs but hardly blows…

Isn't that basically the same on a Windows Laptop or an iPad? Are there any premium features that are hardware bound on any platform?

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#153

Post by syntaxing » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

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.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#154

Post by on_and_off » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

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…

It reminds me of Microsoft organizing a burial for Android when they launched a new Windows Phone version ..

Both are extremely bad reactions at face value but also show how clueless the company can be (at least if you believe it is indicative of the company's mindset)

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#155

Post by jasonvorhe » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #2

$100 Pre-2010 laptops running Lubuntu are an even more dangerous threat that more and more people are learning about

You can't be serious. Even know activist circles where they actually upcycle old laptops for poor people, I haven't heard of any actual interest in such devices. They're just happy to have something that resembles a computer.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#156

Post by Crontab » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

I like the idea of ChromeOS but I don't understand why anyone would want to own a computer that you can't even create a user account on without the manufacturer's permission. I am also unsure, from a privacy prospective, if it is wise to use an OS created by an advertising company.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#157

Post by sebringj » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

I recommended my son and father to get a chromebook. They got the $600 Samsung model that flips back and has a touchscreen with stylist. I think these are great devices and do what most people need to do sans annoyances. My parents bug me much less now on how to do this or that and my son can still learn how to program javascript games not needing to crack into the core but that's still a possibility if you put it in dev mode at some point.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#158

Post by bena » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

wrs wrote: post #80

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…

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 their own. Or at least, used to. Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#159

Post by combatentropy » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

ericcholis wrote: post #32

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…

I think this is entirely due to backwards compatibility.

Maintaining backwards compatibility makes improvement harder. But I lay the blame mainly at the feet of culture. It has been a company run by the sales department. Programmers are not in charge. Speed and stability come with leisurely refactoring, an activity impossible to explain to business and marketing majors.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#160

Post by anoncoward111 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

jasonvorhe wrote: post #155

anoncoward111 wrote: post #2

$100 Pre-2010 laptops running Lubuntu are an even more dangerous threat that more and more people are learning about

You can't be serious. Even know activist circles where they actually upcycle old laptops for poor people, I haven't heard of any actual interest in such devices. They're just happy to have something that resembles a computer.

How am I not serious? My T410 Lenovo from 2008 is my daily driver. Have been on Lubuntu since 2014 and before that Ubuntu and Win7.

Chromebooks are targeted towards college students and websurfers are they not? Lubuntu is perfect for them, especially, if they don't have $600 to shell out on a Chromebook.