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What Will The Expanding World of ChromeOS Mean For Windows?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Hewlett-Packard is the latest PC manufacturer to jump into the Chromebook game, whipping the curtain back from a 14-inch device loaded with Google's Chrome OS. Powered by a dual-core Intel Celeron processor, and touting roughly 4.25 hours of battery life, the HP Pavilion Chromebook follows in the footsteps of other Chromebooks released by Acer and Samsung over the past few months. While these manufacturers continue to produce devices loaded with Windows, the growth of Chrome OS could spark some worry among Microsoft executives, who have become used to their hardware partners operating as Windows-only shops. But is Chrome OS a true threat to Windows, or just a way for manufacturers to gain some additional leverage in negotiating with Microsoft over licensing fees and other matters?"
If it has a celeron in it, there is no need for Microsoft to worry.
For the reasons stated in the summary, from the manufacturer's standpoint it just doesn't matter. The effort to port ChromeOS, measured in engineer hours, could easily be paid for by a 50 cent drop in the per laptop licensing fee for Windows. It's a good gamble. It's a win either way.
Personally though, a Nexus 10, with all those pretty pixels, and a bluetooth keyboard seems to fill this niche better than anything I've seen with a hinge.
Windows 8 is the true threat to windows.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Introducing the new Microsoft LiveBook. Boots right in to Microsoft's cloud-based OS. Skydrive, Skype, Office365, Bing search, Hotmail. Coming your way in 2015 or sooner.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
It seems that Chromebooks are trying to slide into the market slot that Netbooks are currently vacating. I'm not entirely sure I understand what's going on there, netbooks were well refined products that seem to have gone out of favour and everyone is designing Chromebooks from scratch. Considering these are effectively the new dumb terminals, you'd have thought they could've done better than a Celeron and 4.25 hours of battery life - netbooks were rather more capable than Chromebooks appears to be, cost about the same and had far superior battery life.
Or has everyone (finally) just realised that 10" is really not that comfortable a form factor?
Chrome OS is a threat in that it enables users to easily make use of Google's applications. As far as operating systems go, Windows 8 is the biggest threat to MS (in the sense that it is probably causing a lot of users to steer away from MS). But as a platform for using Google's services, MS definitely will have to worry seeing as how many of Google's applications (e.g. Google Docs) eat into Microsoft's profits.
Because you live in the real world where Windows is pretty much the corporate standard and there's no way to get away from it?
You can get away from it on personal machines, but in any office environment -- Microsoft isn't going anywhere.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't get why they're pushing ChromeOS (I mean I do but it's fail).
We want a fucking Android Desktop flavor.
Linux hardware support + big company with lots of OEM friends and lots of capital to put towards ironing out issues + a popular platform everyone knows and trusts = death to windows.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Uh, no. Most people care about having shiny baubles, and them being cheap. They may "claim" to care about privacy, but in practice, they give it up pretty freely.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I'd otherwise have agreed with you, but I'm starting to see change. A guy I know who works for the US government (probably the organization you'd expect to leap on board new tech trends *last*) reports his new CIO is aggressively investigating Google products, google hosted email, and so on.
If that's true, there's hope. Face it: Microsoft was a real innovator in the early 90s. Maybe even the late 90s. And for a while there, Microsoft software was useful in ways other software was not.
That age ended long ago, and increasingly Microsoft finds itself struggling to catch up. They have no mojo with the "young" generation, and since Windows/Office has produced no software worth writing home about. Google now has enough brand name recognition even the most easily scared/reticent CIOs can suggest Google products without fear of getting "the blank stare."
Good times for everyone. Bad times for Ballmer (who should've gotten his ass thrown out the Microsoft door - or is it a window - many, many years ago). That guy is sinking the Microsoft ship.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
For casual use, content consumption, sure. It fills the same niche as those netbooks of a few years ago, and tablets (for the most part) now. But for content creation, they need apps that are currently only ported to Winders and OSX. So, will Chrome OS be a threat to Winders? Don't ask me, ask the developers. I couldn't possibly care less what OS the device is running. I'm only concerned about what I can do with it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I *need* Windows, the apps I run can only run on Windows. Yet I cannot find a Windows PC that's suitable.
I want, i7 or i5, 4Gb+ ram, big portrait monitor for code, these days 2500 vertical pixels I think should be the minimum. I want mouse and window system, because touch doesn't really work on a big screen. I want quiet, I want DVDR+-, card reader, reliable big hard disks, RAID perhaps, maybe SSD if the price come way down.
I took a look at the Windows 8 all in ones, there's a Dell one with a big 27" screen. Yet you can't rotate the screen into portrait for code editing, the DVD is on the side, and would be on the bottom if you rotated it! I also see them use touch in the review video by tilting the screen till it's almost flat. Seriously? Do you imagine anyone wants to use it like that?? What are they going to do? Tilt it to touch and move the mouse, then tilt it vertically to read the screen??
It's like Microsoft's directionless right now, a ship without a captain, just trying to copy Apple or Google depending on what day of the week it is!
So, IMHO, Chrome will take the just-for-surfing market, because Ballmer seems quite clueless. But the core development/business market they could still keep simply by basic competence. Yet they push Windows 8 to everyone????? Why! Seriously why push a touch OS on a non-touch user??
And revenue down 20% overall...
I'm not really sure where ChromeOS is supposed to fit in. For people who want to do heavyweight stuff, it's no substitute for a full-fledged OS, and people who just want a content consumption device have mostly already switched to smartphones and tablets running iOS or Android. I sort of see where it fits into Google's marketing strategy – it's an OS for people to live their entire life "in the cloud" – but is there any actual demand for that? One thing we should have learned from the WinRT and WinPhone fiascos is that just because a company thinks a product is strategically important doesn't mean that its customers are going to agree.
People just want something that works and requires little to no maintenance to maintain stability. That's why Android phones and tablets have been very successful globally. On the other hand, just performed a clean install of Windows 8 Pro and while it's noticeably less laggy than Vista it still brings the headache of instability.
People and systems need Windows, I don't think we'll reach a point where we can finally sever the birth cord to it, no matter what at some point there will need to be a windows computer running. Microsoft might see sales drop off a bit but they wont, at least for a long while, need to really worry.
Good thing I can get away from corporate office environments then!
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Why would you want Android on the desktop? I love Android, but I don't want it on my desktop.
Besides, if you want that, you can get a tablet and a bluetooth mouse/keyboard. Or get an Asus Transformer with the keyboard/touchpad/battery attachment.
I'm happy with both Windows 7 and Mint on my desktops just now.
which is totally what she said
I find it interesting that Google can repackage Linux with their own web browser and call it an operating system, and we have no problem with that, yet will engage in lengthy discussions about whether Stallman really invented GNU/Linux.
The US government is not a monolith. In the USDA where I currently contract, Google Chrome is banned from installation. There is alternating reticence and enthusiasm from the various agencies I've worked with lately about cloud solutions, so there a patchwork of 'progress' depending on how that's even defined.
I've been using Chrome OS for over 2 years since google sent me a CR-48. I use it daily to catch up on news, emails, comics, facebook .... It sits on my nightstand is perfect for how I use it. The OS is really nice and easy to use. I would no hesitate to buy one of these devices for my dad, aunt, etc where I have to be "tech support".
Zoid.com
Yes, but if that half of the ass is the only part you use (Docs, web browsing, web 2.0 apps) Then it's a good, cheap alternative.
It starts becoming a threat when Google makes it very cheap (approaching free) to own a Chrome OS device.
This will eventually be possible because Google is not in the software or hardware business, they are in the advertising business,
an industry that values collecting personal information to profile a potential sales audience.
Google will cause the collapse of the traditional software and hardware vendors because they will not be able to compete with free.
User content is king.
Well at least that is my 2c prediction...
In North America, Chromebooks are largely an education (K12) play. The "traditional" OEMs are seeing tremendous market share erosion to iPads in schools - So this provides them with something to sell. The schools struggle with iPads because they're expensive (next to no edu-discounting from Apple), fragile, difficult to manage and are theft targets. It's also difficult to create content (such as writing and essay) on iPad.
Oh, I have NO idea what the source code looks like. I just know how it behaves. If it were written well, it wouldn't have to reboot it so often nor would it crash on me all the time. Both the Mac's OS and Linux are better choices.
Although, I do have to say, Windows XP was well done. Security was questionable, but over all, from a user perspective, it was well thought out. However, how long ago did XP come out.
A piece of hardware that boots very fast to a browser and is semi-useful when connected to the Internet.
When the Internet is not available, you have a useless metal brick.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
If Chromebooks are a hit, it's evidence around how much backwards compatibility is important; or in other words, how it might be unimportant. Windows is full of bugs, which don't get fixed, or have really nasty work arounds, because somebody has a crappy written piece of software that they tell the Windows team that they can't live without. So Windows merrily, goes along shimming, or not fixing existing bugs. Perhaps a successful Chromebook would show the Windows team that the type of customers who refuse to pay for updates to broken applications are also the type of customers who aren't going to buy new copies of Windows. Giving Microsoft the guts to risk breaking 15 year old software, is what Chromebooks might do to Windows.
Yes, my company laptop uses Windows 7. But I did not pay for it. I use Outlook because it hooks into their email system that combines scheduling and tele-conferencing.
Everything else is open source because I have that choice. My development work is all on Unix.
Microsoft isn't going anywhere
Everyday, I am hearing of more and more people using an iPad or and Andoid tablet as their daily working machine. Sure, they still have that Windows desktop, but many days, it isn't even turned on. How much longer will the wallets of that 'office environment' be willing to shell out for an unused system?
So in a few years, can I quote you about MS?
I feel like the niche that netbooks were filling is being filled by tablets now.
No netbooks as a more portable cheaper, laptops never went out of fashion...look at a Macbook Air or a Surface. Microsoft killed the netbook, Tablets simply are immune to Windows.
Professional development:
Yes, we probably cannot do real-world programming projects merely inside a browser.
But old school people should really do a Google/Bing search to see how many online compilers / IDEs / interactive learning environments are already available.
Yes, I've seen low-end embedded chips with proprietary and Windows-only supply software.
But how many people ever seen "embedded" and "chip" been put together; who cares?
Anyway, how many normal people still have ideas about programming today?
Professional authoring:
We all know there are Google Apps.
There are a shit load of sophisticated online graphical editor already.
Yes, there is no Adobe Crappy Suite.
Crappy Suite is cryptic enough for some people to make a living, quite cool.
Most personal could take a break away from Adobe stuff at some point, though.
Professional gaming:
Most non-hard-core game should be available right in iPad or Android tablets.
There are Windows-only hard-core games.
What about waiting some time for PlayStation 4 or Xbox next, though?
I'd like to see if someone can add something new into the list.
Seriously, you should try suggesting that a multi-billion dollar, multi-national. Small shops, maybe, but larger corporations? I doubt it.
There's a lot of inertia involved to start moving corporations to something like Open Office, and corporations want to be sure they have support contracts with a vendor who can actually fix the problems -- not someone who can look at the code and submit a patch. They don't want to post on some internet forum, they want to be able to hold someone to the terms of a contract -- and I'm not convinced Open Office even covers all of the functionality people expect.
It's all of the non-technical people in all of those other jobs that keep businesses running which are going to howl the loudest if you start removing Microsoft products. And Slashdot frequently forgets that, as a group, we are NOT representative of how the rest of the world uses computers, and most of us are even further removed from how they buy software.
I don't disagree that for many people, there are alternatives -- but Microsoft is firmly entrenched, and is now like IBM was in the 80's and 90's, it's what everybody uses and they don't feel a strong need to move away.
But don't confuse the fact that there are alternatives with the fact that companies will continue to go with Microsoft for years to come. I can see them losing market share for home users, but a lot of places already have invested a lot in it, and continue to invest more into it for things like Sharepoint.
Many companies are now spending literally millions of dollars to roll out Win 7 ... and they're not going to walk away from that expense.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"because obviously there is no such thing as software that is only able to run on Windows"
If they don't port it, it doesn't run, and their commercial decision isn't a turin machine. There *is* such a thing as software that can only run on Windows.
A piece of hardware that boots very fast to a browser and is semi-useful when connected to the Internet.
When the Internet is not available, you have a useless metal brick.
ChomeOS and Google Docs do not need a permanent internet link. The work offline quite nicely. Here is a quick overview...I Googled it. http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/landing.html
Azure has a better chance of gaining a broader audience than ChromeOS IMHO.
Yeah, specially if you want to take February 29th off
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
Google itself has no chance against iOS
Seriously you been asleep. iOS could be made from magic of unicorns tears and nobody would care. Its not its kind of stuck in a time loop from 2007, but the fact is they take profits over Market share which makes them irrelevant.
It's a tablet with a keyboard.
Right now it doesn't even have touchscreen; it has more in common with your standard desktop. I personally would like ChromeOS to come touchscreen with a little android compatibility thrown in :)
I bought the $199 Acer chromebook, and threw Chrubuntu on it. It runs quite well, even Skype works haflway decently on it, and in a pinch I can do real work on it.
Looks like what M$ did to nokia was just a test run before doing it to themselves
In ten years chrome may provide a commensurate level of productivity that Windows does today. But by that time Windows will have achieved a new level of being all together. What's most disturbing about Chrome is the short-sighted strategy that it will be an alternative to Windows without acknowledging how much ground it has to make up. If you want me to be excited about Chrome give me a vision, not just some hype based on anti-Microsoft sentiment. I’d love to see Chrome do something meaningful in computing and society but right now it’s on the wrong track and the only fuel for its marketing engine is irrational exuberance.
Except for those with the near monopolies...
Uh, no. Most people care about having shiny baubles, and them being cheap. They may "claim" to care about privacy, but in practice, they give it up pretty freely.
– Bob Dylan/Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Sure, go ahead ... statistically I'll be no more wrong than pundits, economists, analysts, and CEOs will be on the topic; and I've got a 50/50 chance of being right. ;-)
If I was an Australian economist, those would be good odds.
If you're making long-term, high-dollar decisions based on what I or anybody else on Slashdot says ... well, you'd have to be an idiot to do that. In fact, from what I've seen, all those companies making choices based on what Gartner or any other market analyst says would be as well off flipping their own coins.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's NOT Android. It's ChromeOS, which is basically the Chrome Browser running on Linux.
Everything is the web, man.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Microsoft should be scared shitless. I've done ONE test install of Windows 8, HATED it. I've been installing Linux Mint xfce edition (x64) all OVER the place. Love it. Same functionality as XP, more stable, quicker boot, better software selection out of box.
The ONLY problem with mint atm is that skype is not quite as good (go figure). If google steps up the game and gets google hangouts as good or better than skype and/or gotomeeting (the screen sharing in google is totally unusable right now), I don't see Microsoft as having a chance at all in any market.
At least not amongst the IT educated who see all the other options.
And Mac? How can any shop justify the pricing? LOL
Our sysadmins are all on nagios/android now with anag in particular. Most of us aren't even using linux except when we're doing the actual installs. Everything is android now. And the prices keep dropping.
It's game over. Microsoft and Apple are done, and I'm not going to miss them at all. Corporate scum bags should've been put out of their misery years ago. Especially apple with their drm crap. When I explain to apple users how they've been screwed by apple.... Which is not hard to do, they relook at my jellybean phone and tablet, realize that both of them TOGETHER are cheaper than an iphone, and instantly vow never to buy apple again.
I don't know a single person who has any feelings about Windows 8 other than abject hatred. NOBODY is switching to that here. Even on calls where a client got a new machine, their question is always, "How can I downgrade?" For the majority of them (non-gamers in particular), I convince them to use Mint xfce edition, and they couldn't be happier. Now with Steam growing it's library on Linux? The gamers are next. As soon as Civilization 2 comes to steam, I won't even need my old microXP VM any more!
These are good times for Linux, for open source, for human freedom, and for the tech industry. I for one welcome our new open source overlords.
PS Not to be an unabashed google fanboy. I disable google now everywhere I go (battery chewing spyware), as well as killing all the maps background data processes, etc.. Google is great, but only if you install android fresh and turn off all their spyware.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Not to mention with the ChromeBook all you are doing is trading the openness of X86 for a system that is as locked down as a cellphone. With a Windows laptop i can be booting up in under 10 minutes with any flavor of Linux or BSD that I want, I'm not beholden to ANYBODY to continue support of the machine as its mine and i can run what I want. With ChromeOS you have to 1.-Go into "dev mode", 2.-Wipe the OS completely (no dual boot allowed!), 3.-After all that you can run ONE and ONLY ONE OS, and that is a bootloader hacked version of ubuntu run by just one guy. if he quits hacking Ubuntu bootloaders or doesn't support your ChromeBook? Tough shit, regular Linux and BSd WILL NOT RUN on a ChromeBook.
So while i'm all for breaking up the MSFT monopoly on X86 this is NOT the way to go about it, we are trading one corporation for another that is worse in every single way. With Windows laptops if you don't like the latest from MSFT, or they no longer support your hardware who cares? You have dozens of distros to choose from that will have updated software so your device is still usable. With this you're getting the worst of X86 (shorter battery life, more heat) and the worst of ARM (locked down hardware, little support outside the OEM) with the upsides of neither.
What we need is an open laptop running the latest Android NOT a locked down Internet only OS. There are still a lot of places where free WiFi isn't available and if all the ISPs go to 6 strikes you can kiss free WiFi goodbye anyway so unless these have a SIM card slot and you buy a data plan they are gonna be paperweights quickly enough. Maybe its just me but I want a system i can use offline and on, that I can put whatever OS I want onto, and which isn't gonna be locked down like a cellphone and be a PITA for other OSes to support.
I thought MSFT locking systems down with UEFI was wrong, and its still wrong if a company does it while claiming they "do no evil". So I hope these bomb, maybe they'll give us open Android systems instead.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.android-x86.org/download
http://android-x86.googlecode.com/files/android-x86-4.2-20121225.iso
Boot off the iso and you can try it out, if you like it, install it.
I have it running on my dell mini 10v and android on the laptop is amazing.
I just picked up a Chromebook yesterday and am fast at work getting Ubuntu running on it. It's a great little machine, fast, light, great battery, cheap as heck. It's perfect for just getting online fast.
These things are going to really slice away at the low cost PC market which in turn will take a real dig at Windows. When I see the market share numbers for where Windows is at I see most of it as just people picking up the cheapest thing they can find to get online. These Chromebooks are perfect for that and undercut the price by a huge amount. This Samsung was $215 from Best Buy. All the Windows 8 machines they had there were several hundred dollars more.
I don't get why they're pushing ChromeOS (I mean I do but it's fail).
We want a fucking Android Desktop flavor.
Because you don't win against Microsoft by waiting for the merge to be done to get to market. Patience, grasshopper - the OEM's who have signed on for ChromeOS know they'll be hitting the ground running with Android laptops. But now is no time to taint the Android brand with the current status.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I love Android, but I don't want it on my desktop.
Not as long as desktops are around, which won't be forever. Prounouncing the death of the desktop now would be premature, but lets face it, 20 years from now, 10 even, people aren't going to be using a mouse, dude. Lets get real.
Is it going to be that "Metro" horror? I doubt it. Applications like Siri will be ubiquitous, they will be more intelligent and there will be an ansi standard for the protocol that describes them. They will have a generic name, in a short sci fi story I wrote (wherein I made the "Siri" prediction) I called these applications and called them "Digital Butlers", but I have no idea what the actual designation will be. But I do believe they will be infinately customizable, including looks and and persoalities. You want a sexy Geisha to be your digital assitant? Done. Three Headed Hydra that speaks French? You got it.
And for direct manipulation of digital objects, gestures a la Minority Report, but no need for special gloves. Just reach out and manipulate the objects that will be shown from a 3d projector that your cell phone is equiped with.
Quick portrait of the future; an engineer is walking around downtown when he gets a call from his boss that a change needs to be made to a product design asap. The engineer ends the conversation using his cell phone and then whips out a can of instant LCD and sprays it on a convinient wall in a rough 32x32 box. The spray contains nanite machines that assemble the components of the spray into the LCD + a wifi (or bluetooth or other, new gen, interface). The engineer then tells his digital buter application (in his phone) to connect to the display that he just sprayed on the nearby wall, and to bring up the product plans. He then makes changes using his hands to manipulate directly the product parts. Then tells his digital assistant to save the changes, puts his cell phone in his pocket, and moves on. The connection to the spray-on LCD terminated, the nanites from the spray can dissassemble the spray-on LCD, rendering the wall the same as it was before.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I can't for the life of me figure out how you'd mix a keyboard and a touch screen and have that make sense.
I use a keyboard and mouse for 3D shoot'em action; A Joypad for Platform ....and touchscreen for RTS. Why would you want to be confined to the one form of input.
What we need is an open laptop running the latest Android NOT a locked down Internet only OS
Yes, that's what WE need, but the vast majority of users want a secure machine that only runs signed code, because they REALLY don't want to do system administration, way more so than they care about software choice.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why would you want Android on the desktop? I love Android, but I don't want it on my desktop.
Nobody would want the CURRENT Android on their laptop. But they'd sure love a consistent and portable environment that works for all their use cases, preserves app store purchases, provides access to all their data, etc., if it could do what they need a desktop OS to do today.
Right now the ChromeOS laptops can take a SIM card. Give it a couple years, and they'll take the whole phone, and the thing will switch into "laptop mode" when it's in (or near) the KVM case.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have it running on my dell mini 10v and android on the laptop is amazing.
And fast. Fast, fast, really fast.
I'm running the AndroVM flavor in VirtualBox, and, hey, I like my phone (a little bit) but damn, JellyBean boots in a couple seconds on my laptop.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Face it: Microsoft was a real innovator in the early 90s.
Uh, what exactly did Microsoft innovate? As far as I can tell, people who think Microsoft innovated in the 90s only think so because Microsoft's products are the first place they saw some things, not because Microsoft was the first, or even the best, to do them.
They did have sharp business practices. I will give you that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't think Microsoft will go that far (buggy whips). Their dominance on the desktop will decrease and they'll focus on server side becoming just another vendor in a sea of vendors. I think that scares them the most. No longer can they sell their products from their name. Instead, it'll be, "Yeah, you're Microsoft. So what?".
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
Not as long as desktops are around, which won't be forever. Prounouncing the death of the desktop now would be premature, but lets face it, 20 years from now, 10 even, people aren't going to be using a mouse, dude. Lets get real.
They've had the ability to do touch-screen displays for well over 20 years. They even tried to do it in the 1980's. However, they found that it was not practical for a desktop - and produced what got coined as "Gorilla Arm". That's why Touch Screen will never take off on the desktop.
That said, I still think you are right that the desktop won't really be around in 10-20 years except for in some very niche cases. Touch-based systems will replace it, but they won't be desktop's like you think today. They'll be mobile systems integrated in a fashion that provides the same functionality most people need from a desktop now.
And for direct manipulation of digital objects, gestures a la Minority Report, but no need for special gloves. Just reach out and manipulate the objects that will be shown from a 3d projector that your cell phone is equiped with.
Personally I think it will be more akin to the keyboard in "Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within" than what was shown in "Minority Report". One company - HelioDisplay - pretty much already has the technology in one form (ionized air + projectors) but it is still a long ways from the requisite capabilities.
Quick portrait of the future; an engineer is walking around downtown when he gets a call from his boss that a change needs to be made to a product design asap. The engineer ends the conversation using his cell phone and then whips out a can of instant LCD and sprays it on a convinient wall in a rough 32x32 box. The spray contains nanite machines that assemble the components of the spray into the LCD + a wifi (or bluetooth or other, new gen, interface). The engineer then tells his digital buter application (in his phone) to connect to the display that he just sprayed on the nearby wall, and to bring up the product plans. He then makes changes using his hands to manipulate directly the product parts. Then tells his digital assistant to save the changes, puts his cell phone in his pocket, and moves on. The connection to the spray-on LCD terminated, the nanites from the spray can dissassemble the spray-on LCD, rendering the wall the same as it was before.
More like, the engineer drops his cell phone on the table, and the wall lights up with the display. The touch interface on the table in front of him activates and allows him to start manipulating the display and operate the computer running from the cell phone. Additional processors and memory, if needed, are supplied by the table to help run the software using NUMA techniques.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
It's NOT Android. It's ChromeOS, which is basically the Chrome Browser running on Linux.
Everything is the web, man.
The person you were responding to was responding to someone who said he wanted Android on the desktop.
Please read.
I guess it depends what field you are in...or maybe just where you happen to work. The Sysadmins here are all complete 100% windows guys. They couldn't get a job in any other environment. Some of the employees are windows only at work people...but the infrastructure guys are all windows only. It has been this way at the last couple places I have worked. I haven't changed companies in a while, however.
Not to mention with the ChromeBook all you are doing is trading the openness of X86 for a system that is as locked down as a cellphone.
Which is great in some places (e.g., education) and for some people (e.g., very non-technical users).
With a Windows laptop i can be booting up in under 10 minutes with any flavor of Linux or BSD that I want, I'm not beholden to ANYBODY to continue support of the machine as its mine and i can run what I want.
Running Linux or BSD on the desktop appeals to, what, maybe 1% of desktop users?
So while i'm all for breaking up the MSFT monopoly on X86 this is NOT the way to go about it, we are trading one corporation for another that is worse in every single way.
Wow! Claiming Microsoft is worse than Google in every single way is quite an extraordinary claim!
What we need is an open laptop running the latest Android NOT a locked down Internet only OS.
What's wrong with having both?
I thought MSFT locking systems down with UEFI was wrong, and its still wrong if a company does it while claiming they "do no evil".
This hyperbole is beneath you.
I just can't figure out how having my desktop machine have a keyboard and a touchscreen would work from an ergonomics perspective.
I'm sorry I suspect your talking to the wrong person, I would never suggest touch for the sake of it. I find the Dual environment of tablet/Desktop in Windows 8 messy, with Microsoft trying to make traditional desktop Applications touch, programs where a mouse and keyboard are simply better choices like say Gimp/LibreOffice.
I would love an environment where keyboard and mouse are prefered say Gimp/LibreOffice in as desktop environment it would stay in desktop [keyboard and mouse] and only Applications specifically designed *and* preferable to being touch would be touch enabled. like manipulating share graphs/maps [with fat fingers]....in a mixed *windows* environment. The simple method of getting this working would be windowed Android Apps [I'd run them on Ubuntu rather than ChromeOS]
To me the *preferable method* of input decides which is used not whether you are comfortable or not.
Not to mention with the ChromeBook all you are doing is trading the openness of X86 for a system that is as locked down as a cellphone.
It's not locked down at all and it's well documented how to install other Linux distros.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Not to mention with the ChromeBook all you are doing is trading the openness of X86 for a system that is as locked down as a cellphone.
Go educate yourself, seriously. All chromebooks come with a dev mode switch that unlocks the bootloader and lets you do *whatever you want* to the hardware. Such as installing Ubuntu.
Only on Slashdot can such an ignorant, and *factually wrong* post get modded "insightful"
Naturally if anyone creeps up on their market share they'll lash Office tighter to Win 8. In corporate environments they do that by default through AD and Sharepoint.
What will the expanding world of ChromeOS mean for privacy?
google makes their money by selling your privacy and access to your information, really how much worse can you possibly get? locking yourself into google is worse in every possible way. You have literally gone from in the frying pan to sizzling on the devils dick.
and it works in my world. Maybe it doesn't in yours...
I don't have it set up yet, but I noticed someone said these can't be dual booted. Yet I find sites where people state they have these things dual booting w/ Ubuntu & Fedora. I plan on trying this shortly.
If all the ISPs go in strike, I'm shut down anyway... My cellphone is AT&T which I hear is essentially a voip system, or rapidly being converted to one, any more. My office is all voip telephones. I do real estate and that entire system is net based anymore. Even if I still had a land-line at home, I don't, if the local ISPs go on strike, they are also our local phone companies. I suspect that if one side goes down, so does the other.
The chief academic attraction of Chromebooks is precisely their crippled nature. As true "netbooks", the ordinary users can do less harm with them than with laptops running a full OS. Would-be computer geeks can of course repurpose them. But I suspect that these classroom versions, classChromebooks, will include a "security" feature that will prevent casual modification.
I don't think Chrome OS is any more a threat to Windows than Windows is to itself. The Windows business model may not work anymore, but it has worked so long that Microsoft could (and probably will) glide along on inertia for a very long time. So are Netbooks going to destroy Windows, no they didn't. Is Android? Nope. Chromebooks? Nope. Tablets? No again. Will Microsoft realize too late that the rest of the industry has switched to a different business model, (which, incidentally, is the real issue, of which all the other technologies above are only symptoms) and make increasingly desperate attempts to win back the market, both trying unsuccessfully to play in these new markets and with decreasing success to force the market back into their comfortable space? One could say that's already happening. But it will continue to happen for a very long time, and a lot more chairs will fly, before the company is to the point where people would say yes, right now, they're threatened. Potential threat, meta threat, maybe, but not real threat.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The only person that need an education is YOU friend, why do you think that one guy puts out "ChrUbuntu" anyway? For his health? No its because the ONLY way to run another OS is with a bootloader hack because "dev mode" does NOT give you an open BIOS, its still as locked down as ever. in fact "dev mode" is just that, a way for developers to test their applications on ChromeOS, its NOT made to allow you to install any alternate OSes.
Again I don't give a flying shit WHO locks down the hardware, locked down hardware is wrong PERIOD. Its wrong when Apple does it, its wrong when MSFT does it, its wrong when Google does it. Just because they say "do no evil" doesn't absolve them of dickish behavior and turning bog standard X86 units into a locked down platform is wrong and very much evil in my book.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But the whole point about Metro, GNOME 3.x and Unity was that having the same interface for laptops and tablets is a bad idea. The people who got it right so far have been Apple, w/ iOS & OS-X being different, the KDE folks, who made Plasma Active for tablets, and the normal KDE for laptops. Now, Google is doing the sensible thing - leaving Android alone for tablets, while using ChromeOS for desktops.
Good thing about Google driving this is that there is some viability here, instead of the usual distro wars that one sees. Only thing - I think they ought to take ReactOS, make it as close to Windows 7 as possible, and run w/ it - covering all the win64 apps. Include in that Windows VirtualPC (XP-Mode) and the win32 apps and run w/ that. The advantage of that approach is that no one would have to toss their current PC apps - be it their games, work applications or whatever - or run it under Crossover. Just let it run normally under a Google Windows, and let the current ecosystem - like Symantec, Kaspersky, et al help maintain their security updates, instead of the OS itself.
As I pointed out in another post above, having Android on a PC would repeat the same mess we've been seeing on Metro, GNOME 3 and Unity: putting a tablet interface on a PC. Also, ChromeOS, as described above, is there for both Xeons and ARMS. The reason the ARM version has to be locked down is that it's not going to run Windows apps, as the Atom versions can, under Crossover. Also, ChromeOS neatly sidesteps all the pitfalls of the various Linux distros out there. If one likes struggling w/ ALSA or PulseAudio or getting WiFi support on their distro, ChromeOS is not for one. But if, as most people, one just wants it to work OOTB, then you at least have Google working w/ hardware vendors to ensure that their hardware will work w/ ChromeOS. The open alternative to this would be Chromium OS, but how many people do you know who would compile the OS from source before installing it?
However, I do think that Google could have done better by taking ReactOS, doing their version of it while letting ChromeOS be a placeholder, and then introducing it to the market. Model it on Windows 7, where win64 support would be built in and have Virtual PC w/ XP Mode running on it, so that win32 support would be there as well. Once that was complete, they wouldn't have to re-spin new versions, and they could probably get companies like Symantec or Kaspersky to do the security maintenance for the OS.
But otherwise, I agree w/ the ChomeOS strategy. Google can position it towards the cheaper ARMS for those who are just looking for prices in the $200 range, while also feed it to the top of the line i7s. And given how Linux has done, I prefer ChromeOS to get a shot at taking over the desktop market.
No, dev mode lets you do whatever you want. It's full access. It doesn't give you a BIOS because there isn't a fucking BIOS on ARM.
There is not a single possible way you can call a chrome book "locked down". That's just horseshit. I agree locked down hardware is wrong - good thing Google isn't doing it with *any* of their devices. Their Android phones aren't locked down, their tablets aren't locked down, and their laptops aren't locked down. Hell, their failed experiments such as the Nexus Q aren't locked down.
And FYI dev mode very explicitly supports running other OSes.
I'll admit that I've not tried ChromeOS yet. But I see nothing appealing about an 'operating system' that only runs HTML+Javascript apps...
(Or is there some sort of native code support too? NaCL maybe?)
If I want a device for browsing the web/content consumption, there's a plentiful selection of Android/iOS devices out there already. And they run native apps too.
The thing is that Microsoft already has an Enterprise software called Dynamics, which it tries to pitch against Oracle, SAP and others. Now, if they got into services, they'd again get into the same trouble they got into w/ the DoJ for simply bundling Internet Explorer w/ Windows. IE was small potatoes - now, if they get into services, they'd instantly be accused of leveraging their Windows monopoly for this.
I do think that at this stage, Microsoft should declare Windows as complete, and that from now on, they'd only be doing maintenance fixes. If they did something like Symantec and just issued patches for an annual fee of, say, $49.99, they could easily get huge business. In fact, if they throw in support for pirated versions in exchange for such a fee, their gravy train will grow even more. Honestly, most of their apps are mature enough, and any improvements can be released as patches, again for a fee.
As it is, they've seen what it is being in the crosshairs of the DoJ, so becoming even bigger should not be their goal. Maybe, they could start paying dividends on their stock to justify low growth in stock value. Leave the mobile wars to Google & Apple, and just focus on what's already theirs.
Before they lose it completely!
The truth is, that Google can find you even when you're actively trying not to be seen.
For instance, my Android is not tied up to my regular Gmail account, but I bet Google knows just by browsing habits. (Yes, Android and Gmail are both Google products; but they are the best and cheapest.)
People think about what they "share" in terms of the explicit. But it's knowing the implicit information that is really valuable to Google and Facebook, and scariest for the users.
So it's more like people not knowing what they are agreeing to. It's a problem for individual rights and will become a problem for democracy (if or when Google bevlvomes a Govt agency).
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