Microsoft sparks new war with Google with, er, $999+ lappies for kids It's a warm day in New York City and Microsoft is holding a large press event that is expected to be the debut for its plans to take over some of Chromebooks' market share. The Redmond event is focused on education, an area where Google has been eating Microsoft for breakfast, particularly with ChromeOS-powered computers. Over …
>It used to be pay once, yours for life. When did they do this?
Pretty soon after they paid $2.5 Billion for it - Notch is welcome to the money, but that was an insane price and MS clearly had no idea what they were buying - dreadful spinoffs which entirely miss the point (like Story Mode) only underline it.
It's Realms that needs the subscription (the idea predates MS - pricing is all them though). For my kids at least, third party servers are pretty much where it's at and are much cheaper - many are free.
They bought aQuantive to get ad-tech and become the next Google. $6.2bn written off, nothing to show for it.
They bought Nokia, to get phone-tech and become the next Google. Eventually $11bn written off nothing to show for it.
They built OneDrive to get a cloud storage offer and become the next Google, and after who knows how much money, Google Drive still works better on Windows than Skydrive.
They built Bing to get search tech and become the next Google. I suspect it now washes its face, but taking a decade to break even on all cash flows, and having a circa 3% global market share...hardly worth it.
Now we see them attempt to make a Chromebook-a-like out of Windows to become the next Google. What's the expectations?
"Is it 2014 again? Now it's OneDrive."
Still stuck in my head after their paid product placements on NCIS LA,
"I put the file on Skydrive"
Next episode "I put the file on Skydrive"
Third episode in a row "I put the file on MICROSOFT Skydrive"
After that, I gave up watching NCIS LA.
To this day, I've never used Skydrive/Onedrive/whatever they rebrand it as next to get the numbers up when people still can't be bothered to use it.
When I learned that Skydrive and Skydrive Pro were completely different products based on completely different technology, and Skydrive Pro had more limitations, I had a hard time not laughing out loud.
What, you mean like Skype and Skype for Business are two completely different things? Or like Windows Phone and Windows and Windows RT are totally different things? Or like Active Directory and Azure Active Directory are totally different things?
Microsoft's strategy:
- "hey, consumer seems to like product X!"
- "great, let's call this completely different product X as well, so we can capitalise on the good will!"
- "what happens when a user buys the new X thinking it's the old X, but finds it can't do what the old X can do?"
- "doesn't matter - by then we've got their cash and there's nothing they can do about it"
Telemetry is switched off for the education skus
No, it's not. <looks at Win 10 for Education, http://onthehub.com/download/free-software/windows-10-education-for-students/ obtained directly from Microsoft Dreamspark, now Imagine, for free. Notes attempts by it to escape the network-less VM it's confined in. Laughs manically.>
Sure, when you come back with one that needs very little maintenance, support and training with plenty of mainstream applications, then feel free.
Teachers are NOT techies.
The reason Chromebooks are doing well are the fact it's simple to use, requires little training and in the event of a "issue" with the laptop, you quickly re-image it.
"Slurpbooks are not doing so well outside the US schools market..."
People are still saying the Microsoft propaganda line of "slurp"? That was created by Ballmer's ad agencies... as everyone really likes Google and no one, aside from the many Windows' admins, like MSFT.
Regardless, Microsoft grabs as much if not more data as Google in Windows 10... and, make no mistake, Microsoft would have done it all along if they could have built the software. And Microsoft still charges you for the privilege. A total double dip. Google puts ads on their products... and then gives away everything at no cost to the end user. That's the deal. Now Microsoft wants to grab ad placement data, and still wants to charge billions to buy the software.
Flexibility is not a desirable feature in an educational environment with the exception of CS (even that only from a particular point onwards).
You want it to do exactly what it says on the tin and you do not want any work on it to be lost if the student sits on it, it is hit by a ball because the bag where it is was being used as a football goalpoast or is plain forgotten somewhere. From the teachers' perspective a stripped down cloud-backed device has considerable educational appeal. They will prefer it to a "proper OS" every time and it is difficult to blame them for that.
"That Horrid shade of green is off-putting as Hell!"
They're selling something kids will want, not you. When I bought one as a present I'd have preferred the grey but couldn't get it. It turned out that the acid green was just what the recipient wanted. I think we have to accept that they know their market.
"shade of green is off-putting"
To adults, yes. To kids, no. You've probably seen kid toys, and plenty use distinctive colors. This is an approach to distract and attract kids as they are still curious about the environment.
It is also a psychological effect that kids are more likely to stare at a distinctive color when it is very different from the surrounding.
I just VNC into my Pi3B (running 24/7) from my Chromebook when I want to use LibreOffice, Thunderbird, GIMP etc. It works so well that, more-often-than-not, I don't bother to power up my desktop machine. The Pi also prints/scans via my Wifi printer ('tho a bit slowly).
When mobile the Pi runs off the Chromebook USB power output quite nicely - a sort of PiDongle if you like.
"It works so well that, more-often-than-not, I don't bother to power up my desktop machine."
For those who doubt this I've just run remotely a test spreadsheet I use (via X) on a Pi3 in my garage. via a weakish wifi signal. The recalculation of 400000 sines took 6 seconds. Now on this i7 laptop it takes ~1 sec but it shows that running some software even on a Pi remotely can be quite usable.
Using it with a direct ethernet connection with the laptop powering the pi is much better of course esp. for interactive use with graphics as might be expected
One of the main reasons Google is grabbing up students away from Apple is that their offer is way cheaper. You can argue that software quality/convenience also plays a role, and Microsoft might be able to compete with Google on that; but if the price is $999 per laptop, they might just as well pack up and go home.
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