CNN Money: Microsoft's next big headache: The Google Chromebook

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/13/technology/google-chromebooks/index.html

From a non-tech site, this is an interesting read.

Late last year, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) launched a seemingly random, preemptive campaign against Chromebooks in a series of TV commercials. The ads attacked Chromebooks' lack of functionality and compatibility compared to Windows.

At the time, the ads seemed unnecessary: About 90% of the world's PCs run Windows. But fast forward six months, and it's becoming clearer why Microsoft is trying to nip this threat in the bud.
Chromebooks accounted for 21% of U.S. notebook sales last year, according to Nomura

Securities.Lenovo (LNVGF) and HP (HPQ, Fortune 500), two of the biggest PC makers, have added Chromebooks to their laptop lineups over the past year, joining Samsung (SSNLF) and Acer. Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Chrome OS itself continues to grow more and more functional by the day.

And at the beginning of March, Samsung released its 13-inch Chromebook 2, which aspires to be more than just an entry-level, bargain laptop. Equipped with a 1080p high-definition display and Samsung's top mobile processor, Samsung is confident its Chromebook can go toe-to-toe with a comparable Intel (INTC, Fortune 500)-powered device.

That said, overall market share for Chromebooks is still small. Chromebook sales for 2013 represented somewhere around 1% of total global notebook sales last year, according to Nomura. But they're obviously catching on in the United States, and some analysts, including Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund, only expect that figure to grow.

Since the PC industry's growth has gone flatter than a map drawn in the Dark Ages, any faint trace of momentum is promising -- or terrifying, if you're Microsoft.

Samsung says consumers are starting to embrace and understand Chromebooks, which essentially only run the Web. The company says it has noticed a drop-off in retail returns of Chromebooks, which Samsung attributes to Google's improving Chrome OS software and the Chromebook hardware being more usable for the average person.

But there's a larger shift at play as well. Smartphones and tablets are becoming more powerful, and the PC is becoming less important for our daily needs. Outside of what we do at work, most of what we actually need a laptop for is what a Chromebook is limited to: Web browsing.

We are fast approaching a reality where the Internet is omnipresent and devices use the cloud -- and not USB cables -- to talk to one another. Even the few offline tasks -- word processing, spreadsheets, and media consumption -- can be carried out on a Chromebook nearly as well as on a PC.

Chromebooks haven't become objectively better than Windows PCs, and they're not selling by the truckload. But Chromebooks are ready for mainstream adoption. They're starting to make many of us realize how non-essential a $1000 laptop is becoming. And they can compete with most of the cheaper laptops.

That's probably what scares Microsoft most.


Here's something else to discuss> http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/12/5501322/watch-unreal-engine-4-running-in-firefox

Epic Games and Mozilla released a video today showing Unreal Engine 4 running in the Firefox web browser, demonstrating "the power of the Web as a platform for gaming" in a post on the Mozilla blog.

The video above shows Epic's "Soul" and "Swing Ninja" Unreal Engine 4 demos running at near-native speeds in Firefox. This is also the first showcase of Unreal Engine 4 running on a web browser without plugins. According to the post, the engine is being designed to scale between consoles, mobile devices, PC and the web.

"This technology has reached a point where games users can jump into via a Web link are now almost indistinguishable from ones they might have had to wait to download and install," Mozilla's CTO and senior vice president of engineering Brendan Eich wrote.

When I last had a Chromebook, the Samsung XE303, the first generation Samsung CB, Exynos 5 based, it was still a very young platform with many rough edges. The hardware was slow, you were limited to 2 or 3 tabs, at most, before the machine just ran out of RAM. Everything was sluggish, Chrome Web Apps were almost non-existent, etc. I ended up selling off the XE303 and buying an Acer V5 122P subnotebook to replace it. But, with these Chromebooks now getting quality screens, sufficiently powerful CPUs(Intel 2955U/Exynos 5 Octa) and 4GBs of RAM, I honestly wonder if I might be buying a Chromebook next time I'm up for a new laptop.
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
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I thought that the Chromebook has been a thorn in Microsoft's side for over a year now.

It would explain that lame Chromebook attack ad with the Pawn Stars bozos last year, and why they now offer $15 Windows 8.1 licenses for sub $200 systems.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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I have to admit they look nice in the stores, the price is right, and they are thin and light.

I just think eventually one will want to run some windows app, and wish they had bought a "real" laptop. At least that is me. I occasionally want to run excel or word, and dont want to use one of the free web apps. I also dont like being so tied to the web.

That quote from CNN money is also misleading in that final paragraph about a 1000.00 laptop. A 350 or 400 dollar laptop is much more powerful than a chromebook and gives the ability to run windows apps to boot. If the price difference really was several hundred dollars between a chromebook and a laptop, then I could see a better case for the chromebook, but in reality the price difference is not that much.
 
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ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
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Microsoft is always trying to make a big deal that Chromebooks (or the iPad) do not run Office, but ya know what? I don't really use Office all that much outside of work.

For the few times that I do, Google Docs or LibreOffice are good enough for what I need.

Besides, anyone spending less than $400 on a PC probably isn't going to pony up for the full version of Office anyway.
 

CuriousMike

Diamond Member
Feb 22, 2001
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I've had mine for about two weeks now, using it docked to my normal PC keyboard/mouse/24" monitor.

I've turned my 2500k desktop on about 2-3 times to do some Lightroom Photo edits.
The Chromebook simply does 90% of what I care about, at 6.5w.
:)
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
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Microsoft is always trying to make a big deal that Chromebooks (or the iPad) do not run Office, but ya know what? I don't really use Office all that much outside of work.

For the few times that I do, Google Docs or LibreOffice are good enough for what I need.

Besides, anyone spending less than $400 on a PC probably isn't going to pony up for the full version of Office anyway.

My thoughts as well. I use MS Office at work because we're forced to. I used MS Office during some school classes because the instructor required MS Office formats and actually took away points if there were any formatting oddities. Since then, I've pretty much used G-Docs or LibreOffice. And honestly, even for most work stuff, Google Docs will do the job. Its only when idiots get to using 200MB+ Excel spread sheets loaded with interconnected formulas that problems arise.

If you're not development or not gaming, than I'm really thinking a Chromebook can do 90% of what 90% needs a laptop for.

Even with a Windows laptop at ~400 dollars, a Chromebook can be had for 200. And the CB will have a better screen and battery life at that price. The ~400 dollar Windows laptops using use the lowest grade TN displays, 720p at 15.6in, with an AMD E-450 or E-1200 powering it, with the cheapest plastic chassis possible. The 200 dollar Acer C720 doesn't really like an uber cheap device. And the incoming Samsung Chromebook 2's both look and are spec'd decidedly high end.
 

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
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Microsoft is such an inept company that they actually cant even highlight the superiority of their own product. I could make a 2 minute video of the two OSes side by side that would utterly destroy the chrome OS, making it blow up and fail in every way possible. But then it would like like I was in favor of microsoft, which I'm clearly not.
 

crashtestdummy

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2010
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Microsoft is such an inept company that they actually cant even highlight the superiority of their own product. I could make a 2 minute video of the two OSes side by side that would utterly destroy the chrome OS, making it blow up and fail in every way possible. But then it would like like I was in favor of microsoft, which I'm clearly not.

I don't think even Google would claim that a Chromebook is equally capable to a Windows laptop, but the truth of the matter is that for the vast majority of users, computers are consumption machines, not productivity devices. If my grandparents needed a new computer, I'd probably recommend they get a Chromebook, because all they really need is access to their email and the news.
 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
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I don't think even Google would claim that a Chromebook is equally capable to a Windows laptop, but the truth of the matter is that for the vast majority of users, computers are Internet terminal

Why else that these devices are shipped with little local storage? You feel you always have to be connected to use these devices (cloud/FTP or streaming otherwise), with little offline capability on the software side to take advantage of the hardware (which is pretty decent) of these "limited Android" laptop [horrible term, but that is my mindset].

And on the software side, it is no difference than (for me) making that jump to Linux (maybe less so if I jumped to OSX - at least some capable, solid, and proven programs exist there without additional software concerns).

Pretty soon, those same consumers would want to see more out of their bought laptops software wise, of which some would buy a license for a more capable OS and an inexpensive drive to increase storage (and if Microsoft is good about it, would cut new licenses down). If anything, it is some concern, but Microsoft's main area is more of the enterprise levels (from small to large scale) and would include consumers for an end level computing access.

Those that argue that there are alternatives to Office, they are right. However, an off example of alternatives I have tried not related to Office involve GIMP, Paint.NET, Inkscape, and Blender. None of those software suites are on my system now.

GIMP has many windowed elements of UI and their tools are not as finessed as Photoshop Pro, Paint.NET easily can be a default Paint program but it has (at the time I used it) some software stability issues. Inkscape also falls in the same boat as Paint.NET when it comes to very complex, numerous nodes and conversions. Blender, the whole interface is written for someone that only considers themselves and a small group of amateur mesh manipulators rather than following industrial conventions (and not to mention, at the time I was trying to use it as it was never intended to be - a good solid 3D modeler - Blender is a mesh 3D modeler).

Another example I would draw on, is machinery tools. You can "get by" with cheap tools, but their limitations definitely show soon or later. A drill press that I currently have and in the process of replacing was $99 at Lowes. It served me well, but for Forstner bits, I definitely have to take my time (regardless of the belt). The table is very small and featureless (no fence). But hey at least it has a bulb replaceable light?

The newer bench drill press I now will have, comes at a much higher drilling height capacity, a larger table, and a much powerful motor. The price discrepancy is definitely more than the average weekend warrior would be willing to pay, but for more work that pushes the limits - the added capability is appreciated.

And this goes back to the whole computing segment. Up until the past few years, the low budget areas were mainly limited netbooks and $500 laptops (at best). Chromebooks (my opinion) are at best much improved netbooks (with regards to screen and keyboard) but still are just that - "net"books - meaning all you will ever do is mostly connect to the Internet to achieve what you want. But these expand the "everyman" options.

There ALWAYS will be a professional market, and in my opinion there should not be ever a loss of sight of it. This is why despite many detractors saying the desktop will go away and the post-PC world, I beg to differ. Tablets may decrease and quicken pointing and interaction times - at the trade off of screen information density to accommodate average hands and their interactions to accommodating for the obscuring hand for the screen interactions. That is why there is still a need for the traditional pointing device (pen, mouse, trackball otherwise) alongside screen size to viewing distance to density of information.

And Chromebooks, Windows PCs, Macbooks, etc all satisfy an inherent need that people always have - quick, instant, and reliable communication vehicles and quick, instant, and reliable information sending and receiving vehicles. Some of us have additional computing needs, some of us do not. I do though, and always would given my software tool sets - that are proven and solidly supported. As long as there is a laid out requirement for a certain time, determining need, then in some cases Chromebooks are viable (cost/intended device lifetime).

But if one does buy a Chromebook, do not come crying if certain things do not operate as other computers would operate. You get what you paid for (monetary or effort wise - yours or another's).
 

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
Mar 19, 2001
7,740
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I bought a refurb Acer c720 off ebay for $170 and couldn't be happier. I wanted something for mobile web with a physical KB and its the perfect replacement for my HP Touchpad.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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I just think eventually one will want to run some windows app, and wish they had bought a "real" laptop. At least that is me. I occasionally want to run excel or word, and dont want to use one of the free web apps. I also dont like being so tied to the web.
If you need to run Excel or Word, you need a real laptop, and to pay the cost of Windows, plus the cost of Office. That's like half the cost of a Chromebook.

Wanting to run Excel or Word just seems weird, at least to me. Even at work, I only grudgingly do because of exceptional formatting errors with LibreOffice, when using the XML-based Office formats, which are, of course, the default ones used by everybody else.

If the price difference really was several hundred dollars between a chromebook and a laptop, then I could see a better case for the chromebook, but in reality the price difference is not that much.
They're about $150, lightly used, on eBay. Throw a real OS on there (*buntus have good support for popular models), and off you go. They can support HDDs or SSDs up to 1TB, and at least 8GB, if not 16GB, of RAM. Even newm if you don't need anything from Windows, the price isn't bad...it's just not great, either.
 
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HitAnyKey

Senior member
Oct 4, 2013
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Business class laptops are still king for what they do. Chromebook is really a stepping stone between a real laptop and tablet.

Maybe in a few years when bandwidth limits are not a problem and cloud is really robust. Until then, Chromebook will do little more than offer a cheaper option for casual laptop users.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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If you need to run Excel or Word, you need a real laptop, and to pay the cost of Windows, plus the cost of Office. That's like half the cost of a Chromebook.

Wanting to run Excel or Word just seems weird, at least to me. Even at work, I only grudgingly do because of exceptional formatting errors with LibreOffice, when using the XML-based Office formats, which are, of course, the default ones used by everybody else.

They're about $150, lightly used, on eBay. Throw a real OS on there (*buntus have good support for popular models), and off you go. They can support HDDs or SSDs up to 1TB, and at least 8GB, if not 16GB, of RAM. Even newm if you don't need anything from Windows, the price isn't bad...it's just not great, either.

Perhaps "want" is not the correct term. But I use access data base, excel for tabulating spreadsheets containing thousands of lines of data, and word for editing and publishing scientific journal articles. I certainly would not want to use a free office suite and risk introducing errors or an incompatible format that would give inaccurate results for thousands of data points collected over a 5 year study. Rightly or wrongly, or whether one may "like" it or not, using full office is the best way to ensure compatibility over a wide range of computers and analysis packages.
 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Perhaps "want" is not the correct term. But I use access data base, excel for tabulating spreadsheets containing thousands of lines of data, and word for editing and publishing scientific journal articles. I certainly would not want to use a free office suite and risk introducing errors or an incompatible format that would give inaccurate results for thousands of data points collected over a 5 year study. Rightly or wrongly, or whether one may "like" it or not, using full office is the best way to ensure compatibility over a wide range of computers and analysis packages.

Would agree on this point. Office, has the time, continual effort, and resources to become as proven as it is now. I would use it to ensure that I eliminate any risk or issues and if those things do show, then there is a solid dedicated support base and knowledge base.

Computers, are not a fashion contest (software and hardware). It is picking the best capable and enabling solution over a course of the lifetime use of the device. If it was, I would be of the Apple mindset (functionally, the ONLY good thing would be their trackpads - but I loathe any trackpads due to size of implementation - and it isn't enough of a pro to completely change virtually everything else of the computing environment - boot camp or VM would still host their own issues).

Personal computers are not something I would like to think of back then with the terminal/mainframe concept (which some are vouching for again with the tablet,chrombook,netbook/cloud). I very much would like to be just as capable off and online.

I stayed with Windows, because it is a proven platform with major solid support across the applications I use and can throw at it, without having to expend the time/effort to do nearly 80% of the same thing on other platforms.

IF I do, then it is not difficult to analyze the problem (up until 7 and onwards, the OS as a whole is VERY SOLID). The only blue screens I have, well on a hardware driver issue level, which pretty much over the course of several years have been negligible to non existent.
 

bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
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Microsoft is always trying to make a big deal that Chromebooks (or the iPad) do not run Office, but ya know what? I don't really use Office all that much outside of work.

For the few times that I do, Google Docs or LibreOffice are good enough for what I need.

Besides, anyone spending less than $400 on a PC probably isn't going to pony up for the full version of Office anyway.

they do that because one of the biggest consumers of chromebooks are grade-schools/grade-school students/families, who are preparing to enter the working world...and the student version of Office is very affordable...
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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And this goes back to the whole computing segment. Up until the past few years, the low budget areas were mainly limited netbooks and $500 laptops (at best). Chromebooks (my opinion) are at best much improved netbooks (with regards to screen and keyboard) but still are just that - "net"books - meaning all you will ever do is mostly connect to the Internet to achieve what you want. But these expand the "everyman" options.

This is an important point. MS and Intel had a hit on their hands with Netbooks, at least initially. But unfortunately, the fact that Intel + MS were SO AFRAID of losing revenue from pricier laptops, gimped the Netbook specs to something terrible, that provided a poor experience, that was soon obsoleted.

Had Intel + MS not gimped them so much, they might be selling them today.

But along comes Google, and Samsung, and they introduce "The NEW Netbook" - the ChromeBook. NOT horribly gimped in the hardware dept.

Small wonder, it's a hit, for the consumption crowd. Intel + MS GAVE Google this market.
 

KeithP

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2000
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That report seems a bit suspect given that these huge sales increases haven't been accompanied by large increases in web browsing market share.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/comput...les-surge-wheres-chrome-os-usage-beef/#!z9nZp

I am guessing this is another case where they are actually counting shipments to the channel and not actual sales or some other such nonsense.

Anything you can do on a Chromebook can be done on a tablet or phone which tends to be a more mobile/convenient package. My guess would be Chromebooks will be somewhat more successful then netbooks for businesses and education (which is all this report actually tracked) but will continue to fall flat with most consumers.

-KeithP
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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But along comes Google, and Samsung, and they introduce "The NEW Netbook" - the ChromeBook. NOT horribly gimped in the hardware dept.
But, horribly gimped in the software department. If you're not willing to load Linux on a compatible one yourself, you're pretty limited by ChromeOS.
 
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But, horribly gimped in the software department. If you're not willing to load Linux on a compatible one yourself, you're pretty limited by ChromeOS.

Exactly. There was a big net book craze, but then they died out because of crappy hardware. One has to wonder if the same thing will happen to chrome books because of the limited usability.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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Not as much, I don't think, because you do have other options, but there's definitely room for implosion. I'm looking at used Chromebooks right now, FI, and have no intention of leaving ChromeOS on there. I want a laptop I can throw around, and if it dies, I won't be out anything of import, but I also don't want it to be Atom-slow, and being 2x+ the speed of Babocat/Jaguar-powered notebooks (similarly cheap, and would suit my wants just as well, were Intel not selling these Celerons at such low costs), what's not to like? There is also value, as seen by school-driven purchasing, in having that limited software.

But, it's definitely a stop-gap kind of product. It fills the niche of the dead netbook, for users that just used them for web surfing, but if an OEM were to preload Linux on them, or MS to offer a cheap Windows (that doesn't suck like Starter) for OEMs making them, I think they'd die off quickly, at least as Chromebooks (in the same way netbooks died, yet AMD couldn't produce enough Zacate chips for the non-limited netbook-like machines).

There's more potential to [some of] them than there seems to be at first glance, but not that any mainstream users will be able to take advantage of, or for that matter, maybe even know about.
 
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AViking

Platinum Member
Sep 12, 2013
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A chromebook fits a specific niche. The netbook niche. I had a netbook and they sucked and are really not very practical. You're better off getting a cheap tablet. Microsoft could potentially eliminate that niche by not releasing a crummy OS like Win8. I don't have Win 8.1, and can't upgrade my enterprise version to it, so maybe that's better but it seems to me that Microsoft could break the back of any cheap chromebooks by just releasing a good cheap OS or allowing manufactures to install a free or nearly free copy of Win7 on sub $300 machines.

You get what you pay for. These chromebooks aren't special. Plus you need to be on the net which makes them very impractical for what they're probably optimal for and that's travel.
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
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but it seems to me that Microsoft could break the back of any cheap chromebooks by just releasing a good cheap OS or allowing manufactures to install a free or nearly free copy of Win7 on sub $300 machines.

You get what you pay for. These chromebooks aren't special. Plus you need to be on the net which makes them very impractical for what they're probably optimal for and that's travel.

For starters, Windows 7 running on the same hardware as a Chromebook isn't going to be a very pleasant experience. It will be slow, sluggish, and have very poor battery life. Windows XP, the OS of choice for the old EeePX netbooks, ran like a dog on the Atom N270s. Given the choice between a Chromebook, a tablet, or stripped down W7 'netbook', the choice would come down to the CB and the tablet depending on the customer's needs.

Second, while a Chromebook is at its best when connected to the Internet, it is still a functional machine offline. You still have access to the Google Apps, can create and edit local documents, etc, they just won't sync to Drive until you reconnect. There's a number of Chrome apps that function fine offline as well. A Chromebook is not a complete paperweight when offline, despite what Microsoft tried to portray in their Scroogled campaign.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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For starters, Windows 7 running on the same hardware as a Chromebook isn't going to be a very pleasant experience. It will be slow, sluggish, and have very poor battery life. Windows XP, the OS of choice for the old EeePX netbooks, ran like a dog on the Atom N270s. Given the choice between a Chromebook, a tablet, or stripped down W7 'netbook', the choice would come down to the CB and the tablet depending on the customer's needs.
What will make it sluggish? Core 2 Duos handle the job fine. Not handled, but present tense, handle. For that matter, Athlon64 X2s handle Windows 7 just fine, today, too. Are not Haswell Celerons comparable?
 

AViking

Platinum Member
Sep 12, 2013
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Win7 Starter on a netbook atom processor was pretty slow. I do have to grant him that. However I think the whole computer was slow so I'm not sure it's really fair. Nothing ran fast on it.