Microsoft's Rumored CloudBook Could Be Your Next Cheap Computer (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a few weeks, at its education-oriented software and hardware event in New York, Microsoft could unveil a sub-premium laptop -- something more robust than a Surface but not as fancy as a Surface Book. And rather than run good old Windows 10, the new product could run something called Windows 10 Cloud, which reportedly will only be able to run apps that you can find in the Windows Store, unless you change a certain preference in Settings. The idea is that this will keep your device more secure. However, that does mean you won't be able to use certain apps that aren't in the Store -- like Steam -- on a Windows 10 Cloud device, such as the rumored CloudBook. Microsoft is going after Google's Chromebooks that are very popular in the education space -- so much so that they are playing an instrumental role in keeping the entire PC shipments up.

Comments

Brick by design

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> reportedly will only be able to run apps that you can find in the Windows Store

So...a brick by design? The only reason to still run Windows is to run stuff that ISN'T in an app store.

Re:Brick by design

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> school looking for laptops for your students to use

Funny you ask - I've actually had this role a few times for local schools.

Generally, if you want tablets to surf the web and dink around on some learning apps, the only financially responsible choice is Android tablets. They're wipe-able and cheap enough that you can break a few every year and not really care that much. Anything over $50 or so a table starts to quit making fiscal sense when you're handing them to second-graders to surf the web - iOS and Windows were never really in the "tablets for schools" game.

Re:Brick by design

[supremebob]

I think that Microsoft is longingly looking at Apple's iOS App Store, knowing that they're getting something like a 20% cut of all revenue that's generated from application sales. They probably also want to use this to force independent application developers to put their applications in the Windows Store as well or risk not having access to this new hardware.

They would probably be willing to sell their branded tablet with a razor thin profit margin if they knew that they would be making that money back on the backend every time they sold an app or processed an in app purchase. The walled garden approach (while annoying) also cuts down on casual piracy and malware installations as well.

Of course, an obnoxious feature like this would probably end up getting hacked within days of release if for no other reason than developer spite towards Microsoft. They would be better off leaving a "allow third-party applications" checkbox buried in the security settings screen like Android has. That should be enough to keep most end users from accidentally downloading malware, while giving power users the ability to install their "legacy" applications.

Re:Brick by design

[Rob Y.]

These things are ARM based, so 'select otherwise' isn't likely to be too useful if you're trying to turn them into full-blown Windows laptops that can run X86 stuff. Then again, there are rumors that these will run X86 stuff via an ARM emulator - so maybe they're trying to get WIN32 apps bundled with emulation into the Windows store to make up for the decided lack of 'native' Metro stuff. I wonder whether that would be more or less useful than the Android phone apps you can run on a Chromebook. There are probably more Android apps in active development these days than Win32 or Metro apps - but there's no denying how big (and how robust) the existing WIN32 app base is. C'mon WINE - time to get an ARM version going. Or not - if web and Android apps are the future.

Re:Brick by design

[tepples]

The only thing Windows is good for is running the three decades of old Windows applications that are still hanging around doing useful things. Without that you might as well use Linux.

The other thing Windows is good for is that entry-level laptops warranted to run it are easy to find. Subnotebooks that "just work" with GNU/Linux used to be easy to find until the end of 2012. System76 and Dell currently don't have anything below 13 inches or below $700. Installing Linux on Bay Trail devices that shipped with Windows, such as the ASUS T100TA and X205TA, has left things like Bluetooth, built-in Wi-Fi, webcam, and suspend broken. And before you bust out "Android is Linux; try a tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard":

With Wine it can run more old Windows applications

As I understand it, most Android tablets have ARM CPUs that can't run Wine, which requires a CPU capable of executing i386 instructions. Or were you referring to Wine in an Ubuntu chroot on an Android/x86 device? Or an x86 Chromebook in developer mode, which begs to be erased every time someone turns it on?

Re:Brick by design

[thegarbz]

So...a brick by design? The only reason to still run Windows is to run stuff that ISN'T in an app store.

The only reason to not run Windows for basic things are licensing costs, and to an extent that no one cares about: security. This is a direct dig at Chromebooks. Given Chromebook's general success, people don't care about brickyness. Given the iPad's general success as educational tools, institutions don't care about brickyness.

As long as the costs remain low Microsoft would be on a win here ... if it could attract developers to the ghosttown err I mean Windows Store.

M$ wouldn't let devs recompile Win32 apps for ARM

[tepples]

During the Windows RT era, developers of Windows desktop applications wanted to recompile their applications for ARM. Microsoft wouldn't let them, instead requiring them to port the applications to Windows Runtime and distribute them exclusively through Windows Store. Only Microsoft's own applications (File Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Office) could run on the ARM desktop.

Sounds like a repeat of Windows RT

[Streetlight]

And you might need to be always connected to OneDrive or a new platform, Microsoft Drive, at some monthly fee. The apps could also be had for a monthly subscription fee, a la Office 365. One post suggested these devices should have cellular data capability which at $10 per GigaByte, along with the cloud drive fee and the app fee, might end up costing its owner far more than the initial cost of the device in a few months. This could be like the famous razor blade business plan.

Re:Sounds like a repeat of Windows RT

[thegarbz]

Windows RT failed due to lack of infrastructure. Windows RT had no apps, no office applications, and was released in a world before do-everything-online became the new programming norm.

Yes it sounds like Windows RT because it effectively is Windows RT, except now it has a name that makes sense out of the box, and exists in a time where people in general are accustomed to online only (Chromebook) or store locked (every tablet OS).

Re:FUDget about it...

[Rob Y.]

So you essentially turned your $250 Dell laptop into the $500 Dell laptop you could've bought in the first place.

Microsoft doesn't want OEM's building cheap full Windows machines - i.e., the kind where the Windows license accounts for 30% of the price of the machine. They will go as far as making Windows Cloud free for OEMs in order to keep from being pressured to make full Windows 10 free for 'real' laptops.

Re:FUDget about it...

[__aaclcg7560]

You should try video game testing. You would be good at it and make a lot of money.

I was a video game tester for six years (1997-2004). My beginning pay rate was $10 per hour and ending pay rate was $16 per hour. After I went back to school to learn computer programming on a $3,000 tax credit that George W. signed into law after 9/11, I got a help desk support job that paid $20 per hour. Do the math.

Microsoft's got an uphill climb

[mykepredko]

Looking at the initial comments, various posters are hoping that the Cloudbook isn't as restricted as a Chromebook but I think Microsoft has a bigger fundamental issue than that.

And that is to accept to be successful in this space, you aren't going to sell a PC and the software tools that go into it.

In evaluating systems to provide to students, our company evaluated Chromebooks (2GByte DDR, 16GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) and low-cost Windows 10 PCs (4GByte DDR, 32GByte EMMc/Flash Drive) - both were manufactured by Acer and had the same Processor/display/Network IO. I should point out that probably nobody on this site would be customers for this type of platform; they're best suited for students and clerks.

Even though the Chromebooks had half the memory of the PC, they booted in a few seconds and allowed surfing the web, running Chrome Extensions/Apps (including those that provide basic, not complete, Office functionality) as well as accessing network resources (ie printers). Something we didn't realize at the time was that updates are annoying but fairly painless along with this, we didn't realize that updates were more or less automatic and just took a minute or two to work through. There are no ads/demands for virus protection under ChromeOS.

The WIndows 10 PCs took considerably longer to boot, required loading Chrome because our customers (that are schools) require it for the students (who all have gmail or Google Classroom accounts) and, if we wanted to use "true" Office, that needed a license and is painfully slow and unusable if you have two apps active at the same time. If did provide a familiar way of adding devices and networks (not that ChromeOS is that difficult to use, but I wanted to put something positive about the Win10 machines). What would have been a killer for us is updates; for the two evaluation machines we still have, they require 16GByte or better thumb drives to perform updates about twice a year and these updates take between one and two hours with lots of warnings about not losing power, network connections or forcing a reboot - I would expect if there was a larger hard drive, they would be considerably less painful. Then there is the inclusion of the 30 day trial of Norton which you are always being bugged to buy.

So, if Microsoft wants to compete against Google and their Chromebooks, I would recommended:
- Coming up with a small, fast booting version of Win10 that can be updated in less than a minute
- Develop a set of web accessible Office compatible apps
- Consciously avoid the desire/need for paid apps.

I can see Microsoft coming up with an OS that meets the first requirement - the second two so go against the grain that I don't think they'll be able to take that plunge and will create yet another also-ran that will be remembered with the same fondness as the Ford Edsel.

Microsoft has a number of products that work to customer satisfaction (Windows 10 being a good example - again, it's really not for people on this list, but I know a lot of non-technical users that really like it) that makes them a ton of money. Rather than putting good money down a rat hole of trying to compete in a space that they will have to give value away to make sales, they can either look at improving the products they have and make them more compatible with what's out there (cough - Edge - cough).

Too little too late

[zerofoo]

Our school moved away from Mac OS and Windows to Chromebooks and Google Apps for staff and students 3 years ago. Two years later Microsoft had a half-assed approach to cloud computing. Their windows-lite laptops required a windows Live account to login to the laptop and then a completely separate Office 365 login to use Office.

There was no way to bring my domain to them, there was no way to deploy policies to secure the devices, and the windows-lite endpoints still needed Anti Virus and imaging tools to create some sort of managed, standardized and secure experience for end users. Finally, Microsoft only gave schools the cloud version of Office 365 - no local copies allowed.

In short - all the drawbacks of running windows with none of the benefits. It was an absolute shit show.

Three years into Chrome OS and Google Apps, the students and staff are pretty pleased with the ease of use of the entire system. I like that it is ridiculously easy to manage and CHEAP.

Finally, families like the Chrome OS/Apps system since many decide to buy a cheap Chromebook for home and have the exact same capabilities for the students at home.

Switching back to Microsoft would have very few if any benefits for us, and I suspect lots of schools are in the same situation.

Re:But can it run Linux?

[tepples]

Almost any intel chromebook can be wiped and linux can be installed

Until someone else in the household turns it on and presses Space as prompted then Enter as prompted to initiate a factory reset. Installing GNU/Linux on a Chromebook requires putting it in developer mode, and the firmware of a Chromebook in developer mode begs at every power-on to be switched back to "run the Google Chrome web browser and nothing else" mode.

First hit's free. Oh wait, you stopped lactating

[tepples]

And what forces poor people to buy baby food that they can't afford, regardless of who's marketing it to them?

Nestle has been accused of two things. One is failing to label infant formula in local languages. The other is getting mothers "addicted" to formula by providing it without charge to the maternity ward for just long enough that the mother stops producing milk.

The new Miscreant-o-soft 'Un-computer'

[Rick Schumann]

I keep expecting Microsoft to foist upon us something like an entirely cloud-based computer, that requires a broadband connection just to boot up because there's no OS or even any real local storage device on the thing, everything is on their servers. Then they'd have 100% control and you'd literally have zero control, which seems to be the direction they're going. It's like they want to go back to the Mainframe days, where your local device was just a dumb terminal with zero computing power of it's own, and the Mainframe did everything.

I of course would never go for any of that, and I'd hope that most people would likewise draw the line well before that point, too.

Ugh...

[XSportSeeker]

Because RT worked so so well AMIRITE? :P

Sometimes, I dunno what Microsoft is thinking. RT is still plenty fresh on people's minds, Windows Store is a complete failure both to attract an userbase and to attract developers (despite being shoved down people's throats since Windows 8.0), most of the complaints about Windows 10 right now have exactly to do with privacy, telemetry and the OS basically working as spyware, I think lots of people still remember how Microsoft tried to forcibly scale back and cut down free OneDrive plans, the ad everywhere scandal is still plenty recent, and yet they come up with a new product line that possibly combines ALL of those in one big shitcake.

It's like someone there just though: Hey guyze, let's pick up all the most notorious and recent complaints about Windows, pack it up in a single product, and see if it sells! Genius product development at work here!

And they are trying to push this in against a device that had none of those issues in the past. I know plenty of people don't like Chromebooks a whole lot, but if anything, it had humble prototype like starts and has been on a steady development frame that works plenty well for schools and whatnot.

"The idea is that this will keep your device..."

[x_t0ken_407]

"...more secure" [by putting everything in the cloud].

Wat.