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Leaked Document Sheds Light On Microsoft's Chromebook Rival (windowscentral.com)
Microsoft has announced plans to host an event next month where it is expected to unveil Windows 10 Cloud operating system. Microsoft will be positioning the new OS as a competitor to Chrome OS, according to several reports. Windows Central has obtained an internal document which sheds light on the kind of devices that will be running Windows 10 Cloud. The hardware requirement that Microsoft has set for third-party OEMs is as follows: 1. Quad-core (Celeron or better) processor.
2. 4GB of RAM.
3. 32GB of storage (64GB for 64-bit). 4. A battery larger than 40 WHr.
5. Fast eMMC or solid state drive (SSD) for storage technology.
6. Pen and touch (optional). The report adds that Microsoft wants these laptops to offer over 10-hour of battery life, and the "cold boot" should not take longer than 20 seconds.
2. 4GB of RAM.
3. 32GB of storage (64GB for 64-bit). 4. A battery larger than 40 WHr.
5. Fast eMMC or solid state drive (SSD) for storage technology.
6. Pen and touch (optional). The report adds that Microsoft wants these laptops to offer over 10-hour of battery life, and the "cold boot" should not take longer than 20 seconds.
>> Leaked Document Sheds Light On Microsoft's Chromebook Rival
The Russians did what now?
Q: what do you call a stalker who waits six years before taking a step to follow target
A: not much of a threat
I'm betting they name the device the Microsoft Zunebook!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
As long you can completely turn off the "cloud' thing, yes.
Under 20 second cold boot...My cheap Hisence chromebook will cold boot in about 6 seconds and resume in 2 seconds. The entire out of the box set-up process takes 10 seconds (google log-on & password + wifi selection) and your ready to go. Windows laptops seem to ask 20 questions at setup and need to reboot and install updates several times before first use. Also, Chromebooks don't show ads on the lockscreen or app menu, have tons of presinstalled apps you don't want and do not have a bunch of 60 day trialware programs.
It depends on the price, if it is ~$249 it will be nice especially if we can install a linux distro on it!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
When I took Introduction to Computers in the early 1990's, the instructor informed us that 4GB with a 32-bit CPU was all the memory we would ever need. Back then 8- and 16-bit CPUs was quite common and RAM was in single-digit megabytes. His statement held true in my personal life until I upgraded my nine-year-old motherboard/processor/memory last year. For years I had 4GB RAM. Now I have 8GB RAM on my gaming rig and laptop, and 12GB on my file server. I think 4GB is the new 2GB.
Keep in mind Microsoft would of NEVER done this had Google not had success with the Chromebook model.
No, that would ruin it for this niche. You can buy a cheap laptop right now that is not locked down. The benefit to a Chromebook or Chromebook clone like these is that you can hand it to a school age kid and not worry at all about viruses, malware, misconfiguration, etc. It just works all the time.
I completely agree that it makes these things unattractive to a large number of Slashdotters. I'm one of them, and I only have Chromebooks for the kids and wife, not myself. I have spent _zero_ hours screwing around with the Chromebooks*, which is something I cannot say about any other computer that I've ever owned.
* So technically, I did screw around with them because I'm a big dork. I played with developer mode, but my wife blew away my efforts by hitting the space bar on boot. Which is for the best. Also, printing can be hard to set up but I got lucky because I already had Chrome set up to share a printer.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Can I reformat the Hard Drive and install Linux? One of the reasons that I have steered away from Chromebooks, is the whole "Developer mode Wiping out the OS" thing. I will not accept a situation where I cannot install whatever I want, or have to wait 30 seconds to boot, or if I don't press Space Bar then Enter it will wipe my OS. I would only consider this if I knew I could:
1. Disable UEFI Secure Boot, and load a Linux of my choice.
2. Nothing would trigger it to delete my Linux install and start reinstalling Windows from Elsewhere.
This is what I do with my Toshiba laptops. Windows never boots. I put the disc in, boot to the CMOS, boot from the disk, wipe hard drive, fresh install.
It wouldn't matter because the virus would go away on the next boot - just like Chromebook.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Your list of features is directly at odds with the goal of making a laptop that is immune to malware and brainless to administer. The whole system needs to be protected against any kind of modification by the end-user. So no, this will not meet your needs. And that's OK, because not every product needs to be for Slashdot readers to use directly. I imagine there are a lot of us whose lives have been made way easier by the broad adoption of Chromebooks, even if we don't use them ourselves.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In the previous /. posting, I noted my disbelief when I said that Microsoft would have to seriously change it's operating model and asked about them trying to compete against Google, which doesn't monetize the platform.
Well, if there's a "pro" version of the Windows 10 Cloud OS, then I don't think Microsoft understands what they have to do to be successful in this space.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
How do I discern between a laptop with SecureBoot turned on and one that has corrupted firmware that pretends to have SecureBoot turned on? If this takes more than a few seconds, then your product is less compelling to one that is simply locked down.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So to me the problem is flat out simple that we waste our computing resources with gay abandon.
I paid $50 for 8GB DDR3 RAM in 2016. The same price I paid for 4GB DDR2 RAM in 2007. When I upgraded my nine-year-old system last year, I doubled the specs for the same price ($150).
[...] just to run your programs elsewhere, "in the cloud"?
I run my programs on my systems and store my data on my file server. Hackers can't steal what isn't in the cloud.
In this space, you're not going to see any Kaby Lakes or massive amounts of memory or even impressive video/audio so listing the hardware doesn't mean much.
What I'm most interested in is what will be the application infrastructure is (ie a useable version Office) as well as document distribution for classes (Google Classroom has developed into a pretty slick tool). Another question would be what Microsoft will do for a browser on the device as Edge doesn't work all that great and pages don't display the same as they do on Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.
So, what will make Microsoft's offering special/compelling against ChromeOS?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Chromebooks are successful because if one breaks you simply give the kid another. When they log in it'll quickly be their machine again. Windows is going to be to slow to repair/replace. Even the best they can do is come within 25% of Chrome's boot time. Nothing Windows is "fast". I don't expect any OEM's to use a high end quad core CPU, just Celeron J1900 and AMD 5350 types. I see no advantage to end users here. Microsoft is again grasping at straws.
Just not in a positive way - just for all the reasons you've mentioned and more.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I would assume it is meant to be used with Office 365
love is just extroverted narcissism
RT, only shittier, and partially banked by selling your data.
1. Quad-core (Celeron or better) processor.
Of which generation? I guess it doesn't matter, because Celeron is ass regardless.
2. 4GB of RAM.
I was on 16 GB minimum 6 years ago! I understand that plebs don't need that much, but come the fuck on. If this is a "cloud" OS then it's going to involve shitty web apps gobbling up tons of RAM in a bloated browser. How could you not specify 8 GB as a minimum? It's hardly any more expensive in terms of BoM.
3. 32GB of storage (64GB for 64-bit).
Two fails here. First, why is there a 32-bit variant? If this is a locked-down "cloud" terminal, seize the opportunity to move forward. Who the fuck makes 32-bit-only hardware that will be connected to a "cloud" device such as this? Secondly, most of the 32 gigs will be eaten by Windows itself. Even on 64 gigs, Windows will slowly eat away more and more of it.
I guess the 6-month cadence of updates is their plan to fix that, as each big update on Windows 10 (and whatever the fuck they end up calling this) is a complete reinstall. They nuke your old windows directory X days later, thus curbing the cancerous growth that is WinSxS (or whatever it's called in 10) and other such shit.
64 gigs would be serviceable for people who truly live "in the cloud", but I expect people who expect to have local copies of photos, music, or shitty apps/games from the store will quickly hit the wall on the 64 GB models. I presume many of these things would have a microSDXC slot for increased capacity, of course that's' not ideal.
4. A battery larger than 40 WHr.
This is shit, but it lines up with a lot of the other shit on the market, so I can't say it's unexpected.
5. Fast eMMC or solid state drive (SSD) for storage technology.
Define fast. There are plenty of crappy SSDs. Why not just require a certain (random) read/write speed? My guess is that many of these things will have soldered-on storage chips, so fuck you if you want to upgrade or when the performance starts to degrade over time.
6. Pen and touch (optional).
You mean as an added cost. I hate the 2-in-1 concept. Just be a laptop or toy, don't try to be both. A stylus can be useful, but I doubt any of the devices sold under this shit will use a good one / good digitizer.
The report adds that Microsoft wants these laptops to offer over 10-hour of battery life, and the "cold boot" should not take longer than 20 seconds.
Well, then maybe the 40 WHr requirement should be stepped up. And what is a "cold boot" for this "cloud" OS? Is it the fake cold boot / hybrid shutdown shit? Is it the fake cold boot where UEFI skips a ton of shit and if something ever borks up you have to let it fail to boot X times in a row or force shut it down during boot to trigger a true full boot?
I just don't see what the point of these devices is. For MS, they want people locked into their ecosystem. For users? These things are the modern net top. Remember that fad? They'll suck compared to regular laptops and be too expensive compared to budget laptops. Compared to tablets, no one will pick it over the Google / Apple prisons. Hell, people would prefer a Kindle Fire over this thing.
Does it? Wouldn't protecting against unintentional/inadvertent/accidental modification achieve the same thing, while still empowering those who know what they're doing?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The only way that would work is if there was a trivial, fool-proof way to tell if the firmware had been modified. A blinky light on the external case would probably do it... obviously the light would need to be controlled by a dedicated circuit that cannot be modified by the user. If I were administering a laptop cart full of these, I wouldn't want to have the job of periodically booting each into a bios screen - but checking for blinky lights isn't too onerous.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So no, this will not meet your needs. And that's OK, because not every product needs to be for Slashdot readers to use directly.
But on the other hand there are users who DO need such product.
If manufacturers only produce device that cater only to the most popular users, this is going to be problematic. Because nobody will produce any product that could also fill the needs of less common users.
On the otherhand, manuacturer could produce device that could, if the user is motivated enough, be converted to the needs of more peculiar users (e.g.: how easy it is to switch on developer mode on Jolla, and older HP / Palm smartphones), you end up with a device that is both cheap and mass-produced, but also can be coerced to fullfill the needs of a few atypical users who'll otherwise be left in the dust.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've never heard of this happening with a Chromebook. There are two ways to run Linux on these boxes, either in a chroot (Crouton) or to wipe the machine and install Linux.
For machines that just need a Linux app or two, I use Crouton. Crouton has a sweet Chrome plugin that pushes X Window frames to a browser tab. So, you can install a Linux desktop manager, and push the whole GUI desktop inside a tab. Or, you can install without a desktop manager at all, and just push the selected app inside a tab. This works remarkably well. Need Audacity on a Chromebook? No problem. Need Dropbox client? Again, no problem.
What's really great about this is you actually WANT Chrome to get all of its automatic updates, especially of the drivers and security. That really is a huge selling point for Chromebooks. Set it and forget it.
For machines that will really be a Linux desktop, such as my dev box, I did open up the laptop, replace the tiny SSD, and remove the silly little sticker that was preventing me from writing my own boot loader image. 10 mins., tops.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The weakness is if you never turn it off (make it sleep once in a while at best) and never need to reboot for crashes either.
A mild example of this is running an out of date version of Firefox because recent 64 bit versions don't crash anymore or crash all your web pages but not the browser.
Solutions like "delete cookies when browser closes", "wipe VM or OS to known clean state on shutdown/boot up" don't always work, if the hardware is too reliable and the software doesn't even crash or recovers instead of quitting.
So I fully except the Microsoft Somethingbook to have forced reboots. Cheap BOFH way to take care of the problem.
Maybe long term we'll need live kernel upgrades without reboot, perhaps even a way to load a new browser version (e.g.), handing other the program state and live network connections to the new version, if that's possible. All for your grandma's solitaire and email box.
Dual color power LED: green for unmodified, red for modified.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Yeah, schools are adopting Chromebooks en masse because of their superior DRM.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I believe we'll see a version that, at least buy default, will only allow signed apps from the Windows store. This would also presumably help them drive additional revenue to offset the low cost devices with smaller margins.
Sooooo.... don't buy it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You could do the same thing with "DeepFreeze" software for Windows which protects the drive from any changes, such as misconfiguration, viruses, or malware. While you could "unfreeze" a small area of the drive for personal documents, or store your data in the cloud.
And of course, you get a full operating system, not one designed to use you as a product and exploit your personal data, especially in the case of Google.
That kind of thing has been around forever - in the early 90s my college ran their computer lab with dual partitions on the hard drives: a write protected system partition and a user partition that was cleared every night.
But Chromebooks are still easier to manage - if they turn on at all, you know they are good to go. No set up at all, no drive images, nothing - just turn it on and go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
...not more cloud shit...Can they not make a computer with the same specs as the one I got that's a decade old and not be cloud based, or are Window$ sales that bad? Micro$oft can't standardize a new architecture fast enough to force device sales, so they get you with a platform they have complete control over ($$$). $400 (just guessing) for 4 GB of RAM, 16-32GB is hard drive, and 1.2 Gz is not worth it in 2017. You're better off making a desktop, maybe a laptop (it'd be big), from a Raspberry Pi cluster. http://www.instructables.com/i...
They "leak" them on purpose to see what the public opinion is rather than just being honest about it so they can claim "it's not true" when things look bad and Apple and Google patent hunters don't get more ammunition against them. Heaven forbid they taste their own medicine.
Are we talking theoretically, or are we talking practically? Because practically there are many choices out there for a cheap laptop that is capable of running arbitrary code.
Cheap : yes.
But cheap isn't the only characteristic that attract people to chromebooks.
The form factor is also another reason.
And most of the "run arbitrary code, and easily install Linux on them" devices tend to be heavy clunky workstation-class laptops
(again for obious market reasons : most linux users tend to be developers, its best to concentrate effort to create pro-laptops catering to them)
Chrome books tend to be extremely light and thin.
If you're on the market of a machine which doesn't break your back, and for which you hope to get supported drivers you best bets are in order : ChromeBooks then Windows ultraportable.
Usually, forget about MacBook Air, their weird embed controller won't get driver support quickly.
And that's for ulta-thin portable.
Then there are smartphone.
There it's very hard to find device allowing end-users to install arbitrary code. Usually you'll find it only on special hobbyist-oriented platforms, which tend to be expensive and with lower hardware specs (due to smaller production runs) like OpenMoko/GoldeDelicious FreeRunner/GTA04, like Pyra handheld console, etc.
There are a few consumer-oriented platforms that can optionally allow you to run arbitrary code : the above mentionned Jolla 1 by the former sacked R&D team of Nokia, Palm / HP's Pre (and the tendency has now halted, after switching hands to LG), etc.
And in between (still a smaller production run and a bit expensive for not-stellar specs. But more consumer-oriented than hobbyist oriented) : Fairphone 2.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]