Microsoft Apps Will Be Pre-loaded On Lenovo and Motorola Android Devices (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: There was a time when Microsoft was seen as the enemy of Linux and Apple communities. Understandably, at the time, the company only wanted Windows to succeed. Nowadays, however, the operating system is sort of inconsequential. Microsoft seems happy to have its software succeed on 'competitor' platforms such as iOS, Android, macOS, Ubuntu and more. Today, Microsoft announces that it has partnered with Lenovo on a new mobile initiative. The Windows-maker's productivity apps will be pre-loaded on Lenovo and Motorola-branded devices running Google's Linux-based Android operating system.As of earlier this year, Microsoft had over 74 Android OEM partners. As for submitter's take on this, it's pretty simple. Microsoft is going where users are. If they are not going to purchase Windows Phones, Microsoft will go to Android and iOS.

Comments

I am happy for my freedom

[HBI]

My laptop died while I was on travel. I want to select my next expensive device carefully, so I need a disposable computer, something I can hand off to a computerless person in a few months. I went last night to Micro Center and bought a $219 Acer laptop, a $55 250GB SSD and a $35 8GB stick of DDR3L RAM. And a screwdriver, spudger and static strap.

2 hours later, I was able to shove an Ubuntu 16.04 live DVD into the drive of this thing and start computing on the hotel network. The removed 500GB hard drive preloaded with Windows 10 (yuck) and the OEM 4GB stick of RAM sat alongside it.

I was able to completely avoid Microsoft's preloaded pile of shit and other than throwing a couple of switches in the BIOS, it was fairly painless...for me*. And I got a pretty responsive system for my effort. Compare and contrast to the cellphone situation.

I roll with an iPhone for this reason. My last Android device (HTC Desire Z) was my last Android device, ever.

*this system being such a POS that I had to remove the entire motherboard, blower fan and WLAN card to change out one SODIMM of RAM. The plastic bottom even has a nifty RAM chip pressed into the (nonremovable) solid bottom of the case, as if it were some kind of access door.