Microsoft is Creating Windows Lite For dual-screen and Chromebook-like Devices, Report Says (theverge.com)

Microsoft is working on a new lightweight version of Windows to power dual-screen devices and Chromebook competitors, according to a new report. The Verge: Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the software maker is stripping back its Windows user interface with dual screens in mind. This new hardware could launch as early as later this year, depending on chip and PC maker readiness. "Windows Lite," as it's codenamed internally, is a more stripped-down version of Windows that is initially being prioritized for dual-screen devices. Intel has been pushing OEMs to create this new hardware category, and machines could appear much like Microsoft's Courier concept, dual-screen laptops, or even foldable displays in the future. Either way, Microsoft wants Windows to be ready for PC makers to take advantage of it.

Comments

App store only? limited hardware drivers? IE only?

[Joe_Dragon]

App store only? limited hardware drivers? IE only?

How are they going to do this

[DarkRookie2]

The interface has been stripped down already. What more are you going to do, bring back the start screen?

Re: How are they going to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Text only. But Cortana continuously describing everything you would be seeing on the full version.

Re:How are they going to do this

[TheRealMindChild]

The UI isn't exactly what makes Windows heavyweight. The numerous API platforms and their supporting services are. Likely, just like Windows CE/Mobile wasn't quite Windows, this won't be either. If I had to wager a guess, it would be almost entirely a .NET system

Re:How are they going to do this

[Joce640k]

You can bet none of the "telemetry" has been removed.

sounds like WIndows Phone

[spywhere]

...have they ever tried anything like that?

Re:sounds like WIndows Phone

[slickwillie]

Also sounds like Windows Compact Edition, aka Wince.

Re:sounds like WIndows Phone

[spywhere]

I had a Wince phone. I still wake up screaming.

Re:sounds like WIndows Phone

[squiggleslash]

It doesn't sound like that at all. They're not talking about stripping down the underlying OS, just the UI. WINCE was the opposite, it was a lightweight OS that had a full GUI, which in some editions was more or less the same as Windows 95.

ChromeBook

[darkain]

For those curious, this isn't intended to be a desktop/laptop replacement, it is intended to be a ChromeBook competitor in the low-end, cheap, managed device department for schools. For those claiming "i want control", just look at the success of Google's ChromeBook. Microsoft isn't ditching the traditional OS, this is just for an alternative market sector.

Re:ChromeBook

[MightyMartian]

In other words, it's to operating systems what Zune was to MP3 players.

Re:ChromeBook

[DarkRookie2]

But Chromebooks are laptop replacements. Or the way they proposition them.
They are used in schools because they only cost ~$200 and not because they are good. Or useful.
Price first. Usability last.

Re:ChromeBook

[youngone]

Now you're going to get a whole bunch of replies about how great the Zune was and how much better than the iPod it was and it should have won.
Yeah, I know.

Re:ChromeBook

[Junta]

It's goofy if it is indeed linked to 'two screen' devices.

To the extent chromebooks succeed in practice, it is because they are cheap laptop-alikes, with screens and keyboards.

A dual screen device would not have a keyboard, and would further cost more because a second screen is more expensive than a keyboard.

It doesn't make sense to try to conflate 'intel wants to drive a new form factor' and 'microsoft wants to compete with chromebooks' into one thing.

Re:ChromeBook

[Crash Dummy Redux]

Oh, hell no. Forget the specs. We're still bitching about Zune Brown!

Re:ChromeBook

[Junta]

Of course, schools also like the whole 'can't do crap locally' so that the device state can't be screwed up by a student. Though if they had to pay a single penny more for that, then they wouldn't do it.

Re:ChromeBook

[DontBeAMoran]

On the low-end part of the spectrum, however, we're getting things like the 5$USD Raspberry Pi Zero.

Re:ChromeBook

[squiggleslash]

The odd thing is they're doing it at the same time as Google is going in the opposite direction with ChromeOS. I'm running LibreOffice and Atom on my Chromebook, having installed them myself, without needing to put the device in developers mode, thanks to Crostini.

Something tells me this "light GUI" version of Windows isn't going to let you spin up a sandboxed fully integrated Windows VM to run whatever applications you want.

Re:ChromeBook

[CohibaVancouver]

They are used in schools because they only cost ~$200 and not because they are good.

In schools they are inexpensive and good enough. My daughter is 11 and uses Chromebooks at her school. They're perfectly fine for collaboration, document creation and e-learning. Virtually all of the education content they consume is online - All their apps are web apps.

By contrast, the "netbooks" schools were buying a decade ago were not "good enough" and they died a painful death.

Re:ChromeBook

[roc97007]

But it's way too late to compete with ChromeBooks now. Microsoft should have started years ago.

Come to think of it, they did. Several times, never successfully.

Re:ChromeBook

[exomondo]

But if you want a computer... one that does what you tell it to do, not what the platform manager tells it to do, well, that's gonna cost you.

What makes you think that? Chromebooks are a Linux system and you have full access to it, general purpose computing is cheaper than ever with a huge range of products like the Raspberry PI and even - despite all of the panicking about SecureBoot - Microsoft's own Surface products that have been released over the past 6 years and Apple's line of Mac products still have the ability to install alternative operating systems. It's also not like we haven't had locked down computers in the past either, products like Blackberry and Windows smartphones or various gaming consoles were around long ago and didn't affect the general purpose computer market in any significant way.

Re:ChromeBook

[youngone]

Zune Brown? Doesn't he play for the Green Bay Packers?

Re:ChromeBook

[exomondo]

But it's way too late to compete with ChromeBooks now.

What can you do on a Chromebook that you can't do on just about any other personal computing device? Does it have some exclusive functionality to compete with? Some catalog of programs that only run on it?

It's too late to compete with platforms like Android and iOS that have vast libraries of native applications that you simply cannot replicate with a new entry to that established market but does ChromeOS have that as well?

Re:ChromeBook

[CohibaVancouver]

You make a good point Anonymous Coward. Unfortunately, in the English language there isn't (yet) one good word that describes a) reading content on an electronic device, b) listening to content on that device, c) watching still images on that device, d) watching moving images on that device and e) doing one or more combinations of all four on that electronic device (game-playing on the device is also weaved into there somehow). Until they come up with a better word, rightly or wrongly, "consuming" content is the one that becoming cemented in language.

Re:ChromeBook

[roc97007]

> What can you do on a Chromebook that you can't do on just about any other personal computing device?

Do it for $200 new in box.

> Does it have some exclusive functionality to compete with?

Beats me. But it doesn't matter much, because.

Re:ChromeBook

[exomondo]

> What can you do on a Chromebook that you can't do on just about any other personal computing device?

Do it for $200 new in box.

So the answer is no, there's nothing unique about what you can do on a Chromebook.

Beats me. But it doesn't matter much, because.

That's exactly my point. It has no unique functionality.

Re:ChromeBook

[roc97007]

> What can you do on a Chromebook that you can't do on just about any other personal computing device?

Do it for $200 new in box.

So the answer is no, there's nothing unique about what you can do on a Chromebook.

Beats me. But it doesn't matter much, because.

That's exactly my point. It has no unique functionality.

The point, sorry *my* point, is that it's a concept that's very difficult for Microsoft to compete against. A cheap enough OS to provide a $200 (retail) computing device that's at all useful, is simply not part of Microsoft's business model. As previously said by many here, they've tried before, and failed.

Now, part of that failure is expectations previously set. When people found that their Windows CE or R or whatever they were calling it at the time, would not run Microsoft apps, that was often a deal killer. Whereas practically anything with a browser will run the Google suite. The Chromebook is an admission that you just don't need much in the way of local apps to be productive. And that's a space where Microsoft has a very difficult time playing.

Re:ChromeBook

[exomondo]

The point, sorry *my* point, is that it's a concept that's very difficult for Microsoft to compete against. A cheap enough OS to provide a $200 (retail) computing device that's at all useful, is simply not part of Microsoft's business model.

Not part of their previous business model, but if you've been following along you'll notice that cloud services are really Microsoft's focus now and an operating system that treats their services as a first-class citizen (like Google's platforms do with its services) is important for that business.

Re:ChromeBook

[squiggleslash]

I suppose you can upgrade it to 10 Pro as with every 10 Home or 10 S product yet.

That's not evident in the article, but we can hope. That said, that generally costs money, and that's kinda the point. If you have to pay $100 to "unlock" your laptop, then it's still a closed laptop by default. You can unlock, for free, the bootloader on a Chromebook and install anything, including Ubuntu (if the hardware is compatible), but it's not a pleasant process.

Or even get the full 10 Home desktop just by clicking in the right control panel. They don't have a really strong incentive to cripple it more than they do already.

Well, they do. Right now anyone can go into any store, online or brick and mortar or mail order, and buy any software they want and install it. This means two issues: Microsoft is stuck having to support software they have no control over (boohoo, shouldn't havbeen so monopolistic in the 1990s) and Microsoft doesn't get a cut of sales of software.

Microsoft has a solution to that, it's the Microsoft Store. If they can produce a version of the OS that doesn't provide anything other than web and Microsoft Store apps, then they can get a cut of everything and their required level of support drops as they can sandbox more stuff and prevent arbitrary apps from, say, overwriting the registry.

So they do, alas, currently have an incentive to produce a stripped down, locked down, version of Windows, which I believe is what 'S' is intended to be, but this seems to be the missing bit.

Re:ChromeBook

[pnutjam]

Ipads aren't good enough, but they still seem to be sticking around.. :'(

Better be able to run everything Windows does..

[kimgkimg]

Please don't be another Windows RT/Windows Phone.

Re:Better be able to run everything Windows does..

[4wdloop]

No, no worry. They just remove wordpad, outlook and notepad and add a link to office360.

Re:Better be able to run everything Windows does..

[roc97007]

...but hey, that saves a couple gigabytes of ram right there!

Re:Yikes

[jfdavis668]

More like Crystal Pepsi

EdgeBooks.

[xack]

Chromebooks, but with Edge. Since we already Tried Windows RT, Windows 8, Windows 10 in S mode and Windows XP Tablet edition yet another gimmick OS is needed. Meanwhile Enterprises and China stay on Windows 7 and even XP.

Re:EdgeBooks.

[Heir Of The Mess]

So that would be a Chromebook then because Microsoft will use Chrome as the engine for Edge

Re:For PC games?

[DontBeAMoran]

We sort of need a "Windows Gaming Edition", because I suspect even their "Lite" edition will waste ressources on social media integration and data gathering features.

Options?

[GerryHattrick]

Several old laptops here would benefit from much less Win10 bloat. Will they offer me the option on a build upgrade?

Sneak peek

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I have seen this actually. It's a combination of several things:

The lightweight nature of Windows CE
The user friendliness of Windows ME
The stability of Windows NT.

The name of it is taken from all three:
Windows CEMENT
 

Microsoft don't do small Windows

[shanen]

This branch reminded me of my first so-called smartphone, though I don't even remember what the flavor of that year was. Not smart, but at least I've recovered from the nightmares.

My theory is that Microsoft got over-biased to YUGE during the period when they were planning ahead for next year's hardware. At that early stage, there really were large functional improvements at a Moore's-Law pace, so it was a competitive advantage to think big, but Microsoft was never able to learn about thinking small. If there is such a thing as corporate DNA, then small is not part of Microsoft's.

Just finishing The Four now, where Scott Galloway gives some pages to Microsoft's successes and failures. He still considers Microsoft as a possible 5th (in Chapter 9), but mostly dismisses them. I think he's just being polite and showing his age. He even mentioned IBM a few times without being completely dismissive.

Bringing your old machines to life?

[shanen]

Several old laptops here would benefit from much less Win10 bloat. Will they offer me the option on a build upgrade?

You seem to be talking about my Linux boxen? Mostly started life as XPers.

Re:For PC games?

[DarkRookie2]

The 'Gaming Edition' would only allow you to run games from their Store.
No Steam. No GoG. No Origin. No uPlay. No games really. Unless you like GoW or Forza I guess.

Oh great

[DrXym]

Another utterly useless version of Windows inbound.

not again...

[roc97007]

Microsoft keeps trying to play in this space, and it never works out well for them.

Don't call it Windows

[joncombe]

We've already had Windows RT (locked down, only apps from an app store). The public thought they were getting full Windows, not a deliberately crippled cut down one So return rates were high which meant shops didn't want them either. So it failed. Similar story for Windows 10S, locked down to only apps from the "Microsoft Store", only Edge and only Bing. Guess what, the public didn't want it and it failed. So if Microsoft want to try again they need to call it something other than Windows. Because as soon as you put Windows in the name the public thinks it will be the same version of Windows they have on their PC and when they find it is deliberately crippled or cut down they don't want it and return it.

Windows lite?

[Tough Love]

Windows lite, isn't that a tautology like "a little bit pregnant?"

Re: Windows lite?

[Tough Love]

Right, oxymoron, like "Windows reliability."

Re: Windows lite?

[Tough Love]

Or "Microsoft trustworthiness."