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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?"
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?
Really? And compared to your average tablet, how does the Celeron fare? The Chromebook's niche is not that of a PC. Hell, it's not even like that of a traditional notebook. Given that, the Celeron processor is more than up to the task.
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.
but the article is about chromeos replacing desktop use os...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Who cares? CPU isn't the limiting factor on either a tablet or a chromebook. The lack of productivity software is.
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.
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.
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.
The dual-core SandyBridge celeron you find in the HP units is significantly faster than any ARM processor currently on the market. Of course, it also draws far more power, since it's a different class of processor. Apples and oranges there.
"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
So, how's that hernia working out for you? Have you hired a gorilla to carry the Cray for you yet?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This isn't informative. Its pedantic and unuseful in every possible way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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.
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.
Ergonomically, it would suck to have to reach up to your monitor from typing ... it would look like hitting the carriage return on an old typewriter or something. :-P
On my desk, my monitor is about a foot or more behind my keyboard, I'd need to lean forward to even touch it.
Either I'm suffering from a large lack of imagination, or all of these people clamoring for a keyboard and a touch screen haven't thought this through. It seems more like you'd get a bad compromise of both.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Who cares? CPU isn't the limiting factor on either a tablet or a chromebook. The lack of productivity software is.
What lack of productivity software? I have a quad core i7, and Gmail/Google Drive is my "productivity software".
I understand what you're trying to say, of course, but for many, many people, web based software is more than enough for them.
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 $215 from Best Buy. All the Windows 8 machines they had there were several hundred dollars more.
But does Intel still cripple the power saving features in the mobile Celeron? This is one of the reasons I always stuck with AMD in mobile, Intel was too quick to kill useful power saving features in their mobile chips to try to force an upsell. if you want to kill features like hyperthreading or virtualization fine Intel but killing useful power saving features like advanced Speedstep is just DUMB.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What we need is an open laptop running the latest Android NOT a locked down Internet only OS
Yes, that's what WE need, but the vast majority of users want a secure machine that only runs signed code, because they REALLY don't want to do system administration, way more so than they care about software choice.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(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."
Newer celerons are actually pretty decent. Dual core, 64-bit.
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.
Microsoft killed the netbook, Tablets simply are immune to Windows.
I think this is one of the most insightful comments here.
Microsoft went out of their way to make sure the netbook experience sucked, thus it's no surprise the netbook market has shrunk considerably.
Fortunately, Microsoft has not been able to sabotage the tablet market.
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"
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.