Will Chromebooks Someday Threaten Windows? (itworld.com) 219
"There are signs that Chromebooks are a bigger long-term threat to Microsoft than you might imagine," reports ITWorld, arguing that "long term, they'll likely be a serious competitor."
The reason? Chromebooks sell big in education. They've unseated the Mac in schools. Two years ago, for the first time, Chromebooks outsold Macs in schools. Schools are a great market for Google, but Chromebooks are also Trojan horses. Children and teens use them for schoolwork and more. And when they get Chromebooks, they also get free subscriptions to Google's G suite of apps. If kids grow up using G Suite and Chromebooks, there's a reasonable chance they'll use them when they get older.
Where I live, in Cambridge, Mass., the public Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School gives out free Chromebooks to every one of the more than 2,000 teens in the school, in a bid to close the digital divide between families who can afford to buy computers for their children and those who can't... Cambridge isn't unique. According to a 2017 article in The New York Times, "More than half the nation's primary- and secondary-school students -- more than 30 million children -- use Google education apps like Gmail and Docs... And Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops that initially struggled to find a purpose, are now a powerhouse in America's schools. Today they account for more than half the mobile devices shipped to schools...."
When students graduate, Google makes it easy for them to move all their mail and documents from their school accounts to their personal accounts. And schools sometimes even act as inadvertent salespeople for Google. The Times reports that some schools tell graduating seniors to move all their documents from their school to their personal accounts... The upshot of all this? Windows hardware continues to rule in enterprises. But Chromebooks may one day prove a serious competitor, as students make their way into the workforce.
Where I live, in Cambridge, Mass., the public Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School gives out free Chromebooks to every one of the more than 2,000 teens in the school, in a bid to close the digital divide between families who can afford to buy computers for their children and those who can't... Cambridge isn't unique. According to a 2017 article in The New York Times, "More than half the nation's primary- and secondary-school students -- more than 30 million children -- use Google education apps like Gmail and Docs... And Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops that initially struggled to find a purpose, are now a powerhouse in America's schools. Today they account for more than half the mobile devices shipped to schools...."
When students graduate, Google makes it easy for them to move all their mail and documents from their school accounts to their personal accounts. And schools sometimes even act as inadvertent salespeople for Google. The Times reports that some schools tell graduating seniors to move all their documents from their school to their personal accounts... The upshot of all this? Windows hardware continues to rule in enterprises. But Chromebooks may one day prove a serious competitor, as students make their way into the workforce.
Missing something here (Score:5, Insightful)
As if kids fresh out of school have any power to challenge the status quo of corporate IT
Re:Missing something here (Score:4, Insightful)
As if kids fresh out of school have any power to challenge the status quo of corporate IT
They do, over time.
Their ideas have certainly taken over HR fast enough.
Re: (Score:2)
In the 3D media creation content world, Maya by Autodesk is still number one
And incidentally, runs on Linux because Hollywood requires it to.
Higher Education is what is Missing (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It's also worth noting that STEM has traditionally been a stronghold of UNIX and Linux - most important stuff, both legacy and cutting-edge, considers 'NIX to the primary target platform, with Windows usually having a ported version. If Chromebooks embrace their Linux inheritance, they will get native compatibility with that ecosystem and its vast practical software library. Coupled with being able to run the vast Android app ecosystem for popular "light" software? That might actually be a potent combina
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps not biology so much, but chemistry, engineering, physics - any field that does a lot of simulation or other computational work will probably be using 'NIX in the back rooms. Perhaps not on their desktops, but Windows starts showing its weaknesses (and getting expensive) when you're running it on hundreds or thousands of compute nodes.
Re:Missing something here (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the iPhones and Android phones took over the corporate market from BlackBerry in a very short period of time shows that employees can force change on their employers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Missing something here (Score:5, Interesting)
If enough people -- especially in management -- use chromebooks -- corporate IT will eventually find a way to wedge them into their network. Easier to adapt than to try to deal with a constant deluge of questions about why what works at home or in school doesn't work at work. Training people is harder than training chihuahuas. (Our chihuahua flunked puppy school ... twice).
And if chromebook based IT eventually turns out to be say $25 per seat cheaper than MS based IT, you can bet management will want to switch.
As far as individual users are concerned, I'm not a big Google fan and I dislike both Chrome and most Google stuff other than the excellent search engine, but I can't see that it makes a lot of difference whether one is being spied on by Google or Microsoft. Assuming roughly equal capability, I'd go with whichever is cheaper.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most people only use 3 applications: web browser, word processor and email. For a lot, they don't create anything so a word processor is not needed and they also use some sort of web-mail - so the only application that they use is a web browser.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
...Windows will be about as popular as Hillary.
So it'll still be the choice of the majority? SAD.
False: Hillary did not earn a majority (Score:4, Informative)
Hillary Clinton did NOT earn a majority of popular votes in 2016; she earned a plurality, namely 48.2% of the vote [wikipedia.org].
Libertarian Gary Johnson earned 3.28% of the vote, and Green Jill Stein earned 1.07%, among the major third party candidates.
Math matters.
Please Bring Back Rich Clients (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a offices that is transitioning to "Cloud based apps". Read Google Docs and dropbox style filesharing.
It can take upwords of a minute for a 20 page document to "load". You dare not load more than a few at once lets the browser eat so much memory it heads out to virtual. At that point, you may as well re-start the machine.
The "features" available on such software -- on most apps, web or mobile in general -- would have been a miserable excuse of a featureset back in 1998, let alone 2018.
What exactly was wrong with a fast, fully featured, files on your drive executable I will never understand. Maybe in a decade or so a new generation will get tired of javascript black holes and unresponsive, lag ridden cloud-based "software" and actually think about going back to the idea of a PC as a fast, responsive, personal computer on which powerful software can actually be run.
Rich clients are OS-specific (Score:2)
Maybe in a decade or so a new generation will get tired of javascript black holes and unresponsive, lag ridden cloud-based "software" and actually think about going back to the idea of a PC as a fast, responsive, personal computer on which powerful software can actually be run.
Does this also imply a return to development that is specific to one desktop or mobile operating system, probably the primary operating system of the lead developer's device? Because right now, to reach all users, a developer of a native application must build, test, and distribute at least six different binary packages, one each for Windows, macOS, X11/Linux (.deb), X11/Linux (.rpm), iOS, and Android. This is true even if the application's source code uses a portability layer such that all six applications
Re: (Score:3)
As opposed to the "Code Once, Screw Up Everywhere" philosophy of the cloud? You'll have to excuse me. I've just wasted a number of hours determining that my simple Javascript that almost worked is never going work right because the API I'm invoking appears to be broken. I'll now revert to the local workaround that I should have used in the first place. And the last three web sites I've tried to use to do different simple stuff are all broken in multiple browsers.
I'm not in an especially good mood.
Re: (Score:2)
That's still four, which is greater than one and requires a lot of recurring purchases, particularly for the macOS and iOS side.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly was wrong with a fast, fully featured, files on your drive executable I will never understand.
Exactly one thing: They can't charge you rent if you own the software. (Yes, I know, you don't really own the software. It's licensed....blah, blah, blah. Tell that to my 90's copy of Paint Shop Pro that still does most of what I need in graphic editing. Even at Adobe's rock-bottom sale price, renting Photoshop would have cost me about $2,400 by now. New features are important, you say? Not nearly as much as marketers would have you believe.)
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with a rich client is that it increases the attack surface. If the web browser were essentially like the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or Windows Common Language Runtime (CLR), on which remote sites could run arbitrary code, it would be instant pwnage for everyone connected to the Internet. Yes, we could get Microsoft Office levels of usability and functionality, but at quite a cost.
Right now, Google Apps run within the browser, which is deeply embedded in the local PC, but it also designed to prot
Re: (Score:2)
I often tell people that Google Docs is the feature set of 1990s MSFT Office at 1980s speed (eg Microsoft Multiplan on a TI-99/4A). I suppose Google is trying to mask how horrible their stuff is by raising a generation of people who’ve never used anything else and don’t know how much better things can be (ie, ignorance is bliss).
Simplified UI über alles. (Score:2)
Maybe what I need to do is install Word '97 on a processor from 2017, and pretend I'm using an RTOS, but I suspect that will be difficult, and I'm pretty sure that nobody else will be able to open those documents any more. But you won't be able to beat that responsiveness with a stick!
Re: (Score:2)
Other people will be able to open your Word '97 .doc files no problem. However you won't be able to open their .docx, and .odt files. Microsoft's compatibility addon for .docx wasn't released for versions older than 2000.
The prime selling point of webapps ... (Score:2)
... is zero-fuss rollout in a large organisation. That's what webapps are really good for. If you can build it as a webapp without compromising performance and responsiveness and you expect pushback from internal IT, web is the way to go.
Other than that, custom rich clients are always the better solution. As a professional web application developer I totally agree on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Please Bring Back Rich Clients (Score:5, Interesting)
Collaborative editing has its uses but I wouldn't call that a killer feature. Which is probably why non cloudy variants haven't taken off yet, because it's not the architecture that is stopping it.
Collaborative editing is the killer feature, especially in the workplace. Actually, perhaps that's the second killer feature, right behind the ability to have a single copy of a doc that is accessible from all devices, by all interested people.
I was converted years ago (shortly after joining Google, actually, though the same events could have happened anywhere) during a design review meeting. I presented my design for the implementation of a new software feature to a group of other engineers. They shredded it, in a good way, providing many significant improvements and simplifications. Normally, this would have meant that I'd have left the room with a lot of work I needed to do, to document all of the changes. But during the meeting, eight people were simultaneously editing my design doc so by the time I left the only thing I had to do was to clean up some inconsistencies and polish the language a bit. What would have taken hours took less than 10 minutes.
In the years since, I've come to rely so heavily on collaborative editing that I cannot imagine going back. Even though the "collaborative" part is often sequential, having a single shared, cloud-based copy of the doc to pass around between people is fantastically better than emailing copies, tracking the most recent version and perhaps integrating changes from multiple copies. And not just at work, but at home as well. Whether it's kids wanting my thoughts on their school papers (I never edit directly, only add comments), my wife wanting me to edit the annual Christmas letter, a shared spreadsheet I built to track the distribution of my father in law's estate (my wife was the executor)... it's unbelievably better to have a shared document in the cloud. In every case. I can't think of a single time in my personal or professional life that I'd have preferred to keep separate versions.
I said I can't imagine what it's like to go back, but that isn't actually true. I don't have to imagine it. I recently joined a couple of international standards committees that still exchange documents the old way. Even with a shared document repository (iso.org web portal) it is still so painful to handle document sharing and versioning. We end up with dozens -- and I'm sure eventually hundreds -- of separate files that represent stages in the draft standard, not to mention an order of magnitude more documents containing comments and suggested changes from all of the participants. Also, because documents are too non-interactive for discussion, there are volumes of separate email threads about all of the above documents. It would be dramatically more efficient to have a single shared doc that allowed collaborative editing and in-doc comment and discussion threads. Google docs retains full version history so important "checkpoint" versions can be labeled for posterity, and of course all of the discussion on comments is retained.
Even for documents that I create on my own with no collaboration of any sort (though that's actually really rare) I prefer cloud-based docs, because then they're always available on all of my devices, or any other device I might use. I enable offline editing on all of my devices as well, so that's not a problem either -- though I'm really not often offline. Overseas flights and camping in the mountains are about the only times I don't have a network connection.
Yeah, there are a few features that office software packages have that their cloud-based versions lack, but none of them are remotely worth giving up having a single copy accessible on all devices and by all relevant people.
Re: (Score:2)
I am currently editing a grant proposal and will load the final version into OO in order to polish it. Google Docs is not able to even do proper hyphenation - this and much more will be left to OO. There is no online replacement wich can compete on features, let alone response speed.
And don't get me started on the qualities of Office 365. In my installation,
Re: (Score:2)
As much as I agree with your opinion on shared documents - they are a complement to the tools available on rich clients, not a replacement for them.
For me they're a replacement. I am happy to do without a few obscure features in order to have the benefits I described.
I am currently editing a grant proposal and will load the final version into OO in order to polish it. Google Docs is not able to even do proper hyphenation - this and much more will be left to OO.
OO doesn't do proper hyphenation either, though I'll grant it's a little better than Google Docs. If you really need polished output there's basically no alternative to LaTeX.
Re: (Score:2)
none of them are remotely worth giving up having a single copy accessible on all devices and by all relevant people.
single copy editing is lame. If you work as a software developer at Google how can you not know about version control systems? They are far more powerful than simple collaborative editing of shared files. This has been a solved problem in software development for decades now. If collaborative editing was all you needed then nobody would be using version control systems like Perforce or Git.
Obviously I use VCSs all the time for software development, and I have been experimenting with an approach for using a DVCS for management of legal codes (legislative bills are just patches, and a branch-and-pull approach would provide a nice origin and edit history) and similar. However, typical document editing has a different sort of workflow, less formal, with different needs. The editing process needs to be lightweight and synchronization automatic; I think DVCS is an anti-pattern for this. I have us
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't version control a solved problem?
Not in Microsoft Office. Or any of its competitors.
Re: (Score:3)
Google Docs are in fact, fantastic for editing documents. Sending a link to a doc in email, and telling people "click on this link to edit the document for the meeting Tuesday" works very well. As opposed to trading it via email. Or even putting it on a shared drive, because that requires non-computer types to navigate to that directory, as opposed to just clicking on a link.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah sort of like Office 365 except without all the usefulness of Office.
If Office 365 provides the cloud repository and collaborative editing features of Google Docs plus the richness and power of Office, it is indeed the best possible solution. I've never used Office 365 so I can't comment on whether it does.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah sort of like Office 365 except without all the usefulness of Office.
If Office 365 provides the cloud repository and collaborative editing features of Google Docs plus the richness and power of Office, it is indeed the best possible solution. I've never used Office 365 so I can't comment on whether it does.
Oh, one caveat: To be the "best possible solution", you also need solid cross-platform support, including on mobile devices. Not sure what Office 365 provides there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If itâ(TM)s not made by google it must suck amirite
Not at all. Competition is good.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh. I decided to create a OneDrive account (I have an Office license for the ISO committee work I'm doing) and give it a try. First doc I uploaded and tried to view/edit in a browser, I get an error "Sorry, this document can't be opened for editing." The view mode looks fine, though it took a long time to load. I suppose browser-based editing is probably a second-class citizen given that most people use a desktop Office install, so maybe that's understandable. Not a good first look, though. If it worke
Re: (Score:2)
When a OneNote document does not exceed the single digit GBs, it is an excellent collaboration tool. Unfortunately, syncing larger notebooks reveals where OneNote comes up short. Triple digit GB OneNote notebooks are largely unusable, despite the highly dynamic UI being very popular.
It would be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:2)
But most people have moved on to tiny screens with very high resolutions already. A docking station clamshell [*] might outsell both.
It really irks me almost all the sites have gone to optimizing their site for the 5 inch screen. I visit banking sites and they show the same minimal, flat, inscrutable icons (plus inside a circle, pencil, matrix, ham sandwich, kebab) without any indication or explanati
Re:It would be a Pyrrhic victory (Score:4, Insightful)
Manufacturers have been trying this for years. The ASUS PadFone is probably the craziest combination... a phone that docks to a tablet which can then slot into a keyboard docking station. I'm sure Acer's been trying something as well, although they might not be crazy enough to actually market it.
They... don't seem to outsell anything.
I'm inclined to think that the root of the problem is that nobody has quite nailed down the secret sauce to make a mobile phone operating system work well enough in laptop form factor to get people to spend the extra money on a proprietary dock.
Re: (Score:3)
The docking clamshell should let the phone be docked where the trackpad is and allow it to be used as a touch interface.
Re: (Score:2)
It could have been the exact thing you're talking about, as well as bringing your phone's fat data plan to your laptop without carrier support for tethering, or ugly hacks.
By the same logic, Macs should now be big (Score:2)
Sorry, but what graphics software your kid makes doodles in isn't going to replace Photoshop.
Are students being prepared? (Score:3)
I work in higher ed (community/state college with only a few 4yr programs) and we were discussing G vs MS the other day. K-12 in my area also uses G and Chromebooks. We are a MS shop with no G usage other than installing Chrome on PCs. How do we best prepare our students in general? (not specific majors or trade programs)
Do we stick with MS to compliment their G suite knowledge gained in K-12? Do we switch to G to match what they are learning in K-12. Do we let the students use both and decide? Do we try to match what the universities are using to prepare transferring students?
More and more about companies choosing the GSuite over Microsoft. It is big companies as well as small. My stance was that we should at least offer some chrome devices in labs and public areas to gauge student interest.
Re: (Score:3)
we were discussing G vs MS the other day.
Why either of those? How about: regular laptops with Linux. This way you get a full-featured (not cloud-centric) desktop OS that is not subject to either megacorporation's whims and has a ton of available software.
Re: (Score:2)
Because as I previously stated, we are currently a MS shop seeing most of our students coming in from K-12 which is a G suite environment. This is a public 2 yr college. We don't provide students with devices to take home and we weren't discussion specific programs that may have specific needs. We are trying to prepare the average student for their next school or job.
The discussion had nothing to do with our own personal viewpoints on choosing an OS or computing "ecosystem".
Re:Are students being prepared? (Score:5, Insightful)
You should be preparing students by showing them a range of different technologies, showing them how to get their work done using whatever tools are available and how to pick the best tool for a given task for a range of options.
Getting tied to a particular technology is a bad idea, because by the time these kids enter the workforce whatever they learned in school will be obsolete and have been replaced with something else. Teach them how to adapt, embrace change and get things done regardless of what tools are given to them.
Re: (Score:2)
I think teaching people to learn is huge. I also see the longer impact of teaching versus training.
Although I may personally agree with most, if not all, of what you are saying I am not a teacher so I have no impact on curriculum officially.
IT staff discusses and proposes ideas conversationally to the academics. On the staff side of things we have some influence.
Re: (Score:2)
I work in higher ed (community/state college with only a few 4yr programs) and we were discussing G vs MS the other day.
How about: regular laptops with Linux.
Taxpayers might call buying laptops designed to run GNU/Linux a waste of money if the Linux driver NDA exception tax exceeds the Windows tax, as Shikaku mentioned [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:2)
That's specific to one vendor and the choices it's made. There are plenty of ubiquitous and cheaper hardware options that will work with any of several Linux distros that are available gratis.
Re: (Score:2)
Which other "ubiquitous and cheaper hardware options" for fully GNU/Linux-compatible laptops are any good, so that a city school system or a community college can compare their prices? Buying a Windows laptop just to wipe it and install GNU/Linux still involves paying the Windows tax. Nor does the maker of a Windows laptop offer guarantee that accelerated graphics, audio, WLAN, Bluetooth, backlight brightness, and suspend will work under GNU/Linux. See, for example, everything that's broken or missing on AS [debian.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, schools should buy Chromebooks, for standardization if for no other reasons. That's why schools are buying Chromebooks.
Re: (Score:3)
...if the Linux driver NDA exception tax exceeds the Windows tax, as Shikaku mentioned [slashdot.org].
Your friend Shikaku likes to post utter bullshit. Whether its Intel or AMD, Linux just works on modern laptops, including wifi, chipset power management, sound, GPU, nearly every USB device you can think of and even custom keyboard buttons for most popular laptops. Not drivers to install, it all just comes bundled as loadable modules. Unlike Windows driver madness, where you are sure to be orphaned sooner or later when the vendor doesn't provide a driver for Microsoft's latest incompatible spyware.
If you d
Re: Are students being prepared? (Score:2)
Yeah, and they should teach them Klingon in their international business studies course.
Re:Are students being prepared? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in higher ed (community/state college with only a few 4yr programs) and we were discussing G vs MS the other day. K-12 in my area also uses G and Chromebooks. [...] How do we best prepare our students in general?
At least for me personally, I think the best thing that can be done is to try and teach conceptual computing by abstracting the principles from the products. Skilled, educated students should be able to be able to compose a document with basic formatting in pretty much anything from Word to Docs to WordPerfect to Writer to AbiWord. It stopped shocking me that people don't understand how files and folders work; many think files are "in Word" because the only way they know to access their documents is using the File->Open command...and don't get me started with the wizardry that they ascribe to knowing Ctrl+O, Ctrl+S, and Ctrl+X/C/V.
Essentially, I think you're asking the wrong question, because you're debating which product to teach. Don't teach Docs or Word, teach word processing. Don't teach Sheets or Excel, teach spreadsheets. Don't teach Windows or Linux, teach file management. Don't teach Chrome or Firefox, teach web browsers. Part of the 'higher' part of 'higher education' is being exposed to lots of different things, and learning to problem solve. Most of the students who are entering the freshman year are simply not taught these skills.
Part of the problem is that tech in K-12 is a train wreck. Boards and superintendents implement products based on shiny pamphlets and demo sessions, and computer teachers who are skilled at both computers and teaching are rare (so students are either taught correct information poorly or taught well but incorrect or limited information).
By the time information gets to kids, they're generally better off with Youtube tutorials or self-motivated exploration of Sourceforge...except they can't do those things at school since computers can't run applications IT doesn't approve, and at home, the aging desktop is probably either a magnet for "don't touch that" or a malware-ridden train wreck of uselessness.
In conclusion, obviously a rando Slashdot commenter is not going to be a reason for the powers that be to turn around their feelings on the matter...but for whatever it's worth, teaching 'computing' rather than 'G-Suite' or 'MS Office' is what I really feel will benefit the kids the most.
Re: (Score:3)
Although I may personally agree with most, if not all, of what you are saying I am not a teacher so I have no impact on curriculum officially.
IT staff discusses and proposes ideas conversationally to the academics. On the staff side of things we have some influence.
Re: (Score:2)
This is my approach to programming. Often the class is to teach Java/C#/etc but I try to teach first thinking critically about how you want the program to work, then how to write it in the current language. Doesn't work with everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
We're talking about a community college here. The students don't want to know about concepts; they want to know how to put a word in comic sans because when they go for a job interview they aren't going to be asked about concepts. They're going to be asked if they know how to put a word in comic sans.
Re: (Score:2)
We're talking about a community college here. The students don't want to know about concepts; they want to know how to put a word in comic sans because when they go for a job interview they aren't going to be asked about concepts. They're going to be asked if they know how to put a word in comic sans.
Doesn't matter what they want to learn, if they can't adapt over time to new skills necessary to the job they wont have a career that lasts more than a few years.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't teach Docs or Word, teach word processing. Don't teach Sheets or Excel, teach spreadsheets. Don't teach Windows or Linux, teach file management. Don't teach Chrome or Firefox, teach web browsers. Part of the 'higher' part of 'higher education' is being exposed to lots of different things, and learning to problem solve
I think this is the right approach. Younger people are more adaptable, and should be able to apply the fundamentals to a different product. Plus there's no guarantee it will be the same products in 10-20 years time anyways. I did elementary school with Apple II / DOS computers, middle school and high school with Macs, university with Windows PCs. Switching platforms didn't harm me.
Re: (Score:2)
My local university went full-on GSuite a few years ago. Maybe a little because that's what students are used to, but mostly because it's more productive for staff and easier for the university to manage. Oh, and I'm told it's much, much cheaper, too.
Caught between a stone and a hard place (Score:4, Insightful)
Without good legislation these large (US) companies will only increase their snooping, especially children that have no choice need to be protected against any harvesting of their data.
See my sig.
There's more to life than Office (Score:3)
Remember when it was the Mac that was going to threaten Microsoft Windows dominance because they were often found in schools? Yeah. Well, it didn't exactly happen. Macs made some gains, from about 4% to 12% today, but it was more from being good computers not OS addictions.
The major fallacy is that there is more to business computing than just Microsoft Office. In fact, there is a lot more. Most jobs require their employees to learn and utilize a small host of different applications. Many of those are developed in-house. Many, many of those applications simply don't exist on other platforms, or at least not nearly to the same quality. If your software that you use doesn't exist on a rival platform, or you would have to spend lots and lots of money training and migrating over to another program, then why would you do that?
I mean, for gawd sake, companies -lots and lots of companies- are still using Oricle. You think they are going to switch to Chromebooks? You are insane.
Re: There's more to life than Office (Score:2)
The difference today is that more and more of those non office applications are web-based or have a web interface. Fewer and fewer require applications to run on specific computer platform. Combine that with vdi and you have a Chrome solution.
Re:There's more to life than Office (Score:5, Interesting)
Macs were not successful primarily because of the cost, Apple do not make cheap lowend desktops to compete with the machines that the average corporation buys thousands of to throw on everyone's desks.
ChromeOS devices on the other hand are available cheaply and from several suppliers.
Chrome lacks the biggest disadvantage of apple (price), while offering many significant advantages over windows for a corporate environment.
When it comes to custom applications, especially in-house ones, many of these are now web based and the market is heading that way. The client does not matter when the custom apps are web based. Those few remaining (and declining numbers) apps which are not web based can usually be handled via rdp or telnet/ssh clients with the apps running on a remote host.
In most of the offices i see, what the majority of users are doing could easily be performed on a chromebook, and switching to chromebooks would result in significant cost savings and security benefits.
Re: (Score:2)
And then the cost factors became reality, making Chromebooks an easy choice for most schools.
Re: There's more to life than Office (Score:2)
iPads aren't good for anything except going kids to shut up and watch Netflix.
Re: (Score:2)
I-Pads make decent paperweights, then you put your coffee cup on top.
Re: (Score:2)
it's I-Pad. Because you are so bothered by it.
I like that. Adopted :)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the custom applications used where I work are web applications. But a Chromebook would still not work so well because everyone seems to have one exception. One is Excel, as one of our suppliers encourages us to use the macro-driven Excel workbook that it supplies to pre-validate product feeds before we upload them. Another is Photoshop, used to touch up product images before uploading them. I doubt that Wine in Crostini is the answer.
Re: (Score:2)
one of our suppliers encourages us to use the macro-driven Excel workbook that it supplies to pre-validate product feeds before we upload them
Wow, must suck to work where you work. Just find a company capable of using Web technologies, it's more likely to survive.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as Amazon isn't fully "capable of using Web technologies", any company that sells on Amazon isn't either.
You don't see Chrome Workstations (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
High end is a niche... Although what you really mean are "high end desktops", since the ultimate high end (supercomputers) are actually dominated by linux already.
Most corporate desktops are lowend machines doing mundane tasks, chromeos can perform the vast majority of these mundane tasks with less cost, less maintenance overhead and less security risks than windows.
Re: You don't see Chrome Workstations (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, Google's cloud products seem to support HIPAA compliance now, so long as the customer holds up their end of the bargain.
Re: (Score:2)
Most employees don't need workstations, they just need a desktop to get a better monitor and keyboard. An USB-C dock suffices for that.
Sure it will! (Score:2)
As soon as Microsoft will fail.
Business market is the key (Score:2)
Get the business market and get the majority market share.
If you don't get the business market, then you won't get majority market share.
iPad (Score:2)
"Will Chromebook completely remove iPad from education?"
When it's free, you're the product (Score:2)
Does MS spy on you? Sure, no doubt they do to an extent. Though, when it is anything too overt, the folks here and in the media go ape shit.
You give MS money, and they give you an OS. You give Apple a dump-truck full of money and they give you a hard-ward platform which can run MacOS.
Funds paid, services rendered. Fine.
Google on the other hand gives the OS for free. They want you to use their free web-apps as well. Store your data on their free cloud drives. Maybe pay a bit to upgrade the storage.
So.. all y
Two ad brands (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Indirectly, yes (Score:2)
We can already see services being pushed into the cloud. Even Microsoft sees this and is adapting to that. What we are not likely to repeat is a locked down platform. Even if your business is using Office365 or whatever, you'll still access other services simultaneously. Microsoft's control of the platform is slipping from their grasp. In the end we'll see a multitude of players unless someone figures out how to monopolize deploying applications.
Will the future platform be Chromebooks? I highly doubt it. Wi
Riiiight... (Score:3)
Quite possibly... (Score:2)
I work in a school in the UK. I'm currently having arguments over exactly this subject: the powers that be want to roll out Google quickly (having already wasted *lots* of money on some iPads a few years ago, and Asus eeePCs before that). Apparently I'm the only IT guy across the multi-academy Trust who's been kicking up a stink, the rest have just rolled over and moved to Google, Chromebooks and all.
We presently have just under 1000 PCs and laptops running Windows 10 and Office 2016 / Office 365 (the latte
Sure they are (Score:2)
Nice business you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it.
Didn't work for Apple ... (Score:2)
... which was/is a no-show in the business market.
FTFS:
If kids grow up using G Suite and Chromebooks, there's a reasonable chance they'll use them when they get older.
Maybe, but not for that reason (Score:2)
Chromebooks taking over schools don't present a credible threat to Microsoft. Test by: Apple has long ruled the schools, going clear back to those weirdly shaped translucent all-in-one CRT macs in designer colors. And although one could argue that this has almost certainly increased the popularity of Apple among young adults, and made Apple extremely profitable, the most used OS on the desktop remains firmly Microsoft.
Chrome taking over in the schools doesn't change that equation. If a large footprint i
No and hereâ(TM)s why. (Score:2)
Microsoft will release office apps on chrome and Linux and may entirely rewrite their desktop OS to run on top of Linux. WSL is the bridge.
What do you mean, some day? (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean, some day? Windows PCs gain share in K-12 in the US, but Chromebooks still dominate [zdnet.com]
Not if it won't run photoshop (Score:2)
Without question, yes (Score:2)
Eventually.
'The cloud' which many of us don't like here, is /generally/ proving to be good enough for base users. While you and I might bemoan the performance of Google Sheets vs Excel (or alt) when doing a heap of work on a massive spreadsheet. Most 'normies' are finding it good enough.
Same goes for web browsing, document writing and what have you. Especially as you go up the chain to middle and upper management where 2/3 of the job is emails, graphs, documents.
Then there's web based tools to do the wo
yeah right! (Score:2)
sarcasm aside I think schools are highly overrated for their influence here, especially nowadays when the difference between a windows and chromebook user from a school perspectivie is basically ZERO, both of them you open a browser for the majority of your work, the rest is all down to individual apps/
answer is in the intro (Score:2)
Will Chromebooks challenge MS Windows?
"They've unseated the Mac in schools. ... Chromebooks are also Trojan horses. Children and teens use them for schoolwork and more. ... If kids grow up using G Suite and Chromebooks, there's a reasonable chance they'll use them when they get older."
you mean, like those Mac's they have replaced? those were never a challenge to MS Windows either.
Re: ewaste of the future (Score:2)
Plus, being big in education wasn't enough to push Mac beyond windows. What makes anyone think that strategy will work now when it hasn't before?
Windows rules when you "grow up" because of its enterprise manageability and work-focused apps. Quick books for Mac is a joke, and was never on par with the Windows versions. Same thing goes for other titles like Sage MAS titles, Autocad, and so, so many others.
Chrome books won't fix it either.
Re: ewaste of the future (Score:4, Interesting)
Alphabet's Chromebook and Android platforms are geared towards this low cost entry level market, and have great potential for success.
Microsoft's dominance began because it was easy to program for. Start with QBasic, then DOS, then
Currently, Microsoft is still prevalent enough that its market dominance is not under any serious short-term threat. However, a long-term strategy of weaning the world off of Microsoft may be quite effective by starting with grade school students. Just because Apple undermined its own success, doesn't mean that the strategy itself is invalid. If children can make it to adulthood without needing any Microsoft products, then they will have no inclination to recommend Microsoft products to startups, and would be ill equipped to support Microsoft products among their peers or co-workers. This would result in a dissatisfaction in the quality of Microsoft products, and a shift in the products purchased. Furthermore, Microsoft's push around Windows 10 to a less stable platform, in the Debian definition of stable, to something that changes every six months or so, makes the many of the concerns of changing platforms largely moot. Microsoft could find itself becoming an Apple like niche premium product. If so, then one wonders what would provide Microsoft with staying power beyond Google/Alphabet? Why switch to Microsoft if a small company has survived entirely on Alphabet products? If nobody is developing software for Microsoft, then what is going to keep the costs down and the platform affordable, either programmer salary wise, or software catalog wise? What happens to the scalability and competitive market of the platform?
Re: ewaste of the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is still prevalent enough that its market dominance is not under any serious short-term threat.
You mean, after losing roughly 100% of the phone market and HPC market and major chunks of other markets? You bet Microsoft is threatened, there is a reason they are hiring Linux devs and shifting major parts of their business to Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the lack of freedom which is the problem, it's the lack of privacy. Most people don't want freedom, they want security, including against user error. They don't want the freedom to be able to shoot themselves in the foot in a million ways. They'll even sacrifice privacy for that kind of security.
The development and user model of chromebooks is the shining example of the only way Linux can be successful for computing for the general population. A very limited core set of software AND hardware config
Re: (Score:2)
Could it be that stronger privacy laws in the EU are why you never see Chrome Books there? Remember, these are devices from a company that thrives on selling out its users to any advertiser who will pay them enough.