
Two words really
Cargo cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
The base tech specs for Microsoft's Windows 10 Cloud laptops have leaked out ahead of a rumored launch next month, giving you an idea of their target market. Clue: Google-powered Chromebooks in education. Windows 10 Cloud will be a cutdown version of Redmond's latest operating system, and is designed to be run on cheap kit. …
Thanks for the new term! Fascinating. Here's the line that grabbed my attention:
"However, many of these practitioners actually focus on the importance of sustaining and creating new social relationships, with material relations being secondary."
So, for Microsoft's part, their marketing department will get millions of school-aged sales leads, and then their goal of shoehorning all these "new customers" into the Windows Cloud Economy. And the people will get hardware that is a step below the already basement value of a Chromebook. And the kids will get a lesser OS and tools that will frustrate them more than help. Great. Apple was very big on the education market as well in the 1990s. Offering discounted h/w and s/w to schools. Now Google and the Chromebook are the platform to beat. I don't think they are up to the task. Look at how they fumbled the acquisition of Nokia and the total failure that was Windows Phone. And the Zune. And the Slate. And open SMB services on the open net. But I kid low-level admins of crap systems.
Microsoft is good at one thing; coming late to the party and pretending they were in the bathroom whenever we didn't see them earlier. I guess innovation is something you have to buy, if you develop in Redmond. SatNad should rebrand as MeeTooSoft.
"Now Google and the Chromebook are the platform to beat."
...and judging by the slide in the article, MS aspirations are to equal only 1/3rd of the match points and not try so hard on the other 2/3rds. If that's their attitude, Windows Cloud sounds about as useful as Windows Phone!
Interesting, not come accross that before. An interesting parallel with trumpism and devaluation in local influence with rise of 'big man' promissing a return to local power / potency.
"A serious problem with the name is its pejorative connotation of backwardness, since it imputes a goal (cargo) obtained through the wrong means (cult); the actual goal is not so much obtaining material goods as creating and renewing social relationships under threat. Martha Kaplan thus argues we should erase the term altogether."
Cracking term. You learn something new everyday.
So what you are saying is that because of lack of education you can be sucked into a cult but the cult can also suck you into a lack of education.
It reminds me of the time I tried to teach my dog to catch a new ball.
My dog was good at catching balls, he was a champ. We spent many a summer catching balls.
Then along came a new ball, the new ball was completely different and to be honest the dog felt deflated at the prospect of catching the new ball so after a while he stopped trying. In fact, he became quite upset at the new ball, it didn't work like his last ball at all.
I tried but it just didn't work so I got his trusted ball back out and things went back to normal. Though one day I will have to replace the ball which is not a problem as there are lots of different balls out there.
I think Microsoft need to learn that you can't force balls into mouths. Puppies are not stupid either these days.
Zune, Band... Some of these products are never a success, because they never try and sell the darned things!
I waited 2 years for the MS Band to come to market, but it never did, it never made it outside of the USA. In the end I went with a FitBit.
But thereagain, Chromebooks seem to be a US only thing, or at least mainly USA. Over here, Germany, they peaked at place 47 in the top 50 notebooks on Amazon and it is hardly surprising, considering you could buy a better specced Windows notebook for a couple of hundred Euros less. The ARM based Samsung, which was, I believe, $199 in the USA was priced around $600 over here!
It will never be competitive on anything other than fat, modern Intel architectures. Their disdain for customers with less-than-cutting-edge hardware is abhorrent.
Fuck them and their resting on their laurels. And fuck their less than half-arsed efforts at a "modern UI".
I'm not convinced that it will ever be the "year of linux on the desktop" but bloody hell MS seem to have a corporate myopia that is the most likely catalyst to make it happen.
Agreed. I've got a $180 Windows tablet (Atom processor) that came with Win 8 and that I upgraded to Win 10. Works fine as long as you don't try to keep too many programs open at one time. Kind of nice to have a 10 inch tablet for under $200 that can run any Windows program.
I don't use it much anymore, as my Samsung tablet is newer and much nicer. But I certainly can't complain about it in terms of usability for the price.
The HoloLens is a unique offering; it doesn't seek to replicate an existing competitor, and offers something of value for a variety of industrial applications. I guess the Magic Leap will be the main competitor but right now you can buy a HoloLens evaluation kit, you can't buy a Magic Leap anything.
given the inbuilt "monitoring" in Win10, would clued educators want school work to be data mined ? I believe some countries have laws against stalking children and a few may even enforce them. There is also the minor detail of budget strapped schools getting fed up with huge data upload fees and network capacity exhaustion. Unless M$ can demonstrated its' spyware is removed, getting any mind share may be difficult. If done for the school OS, it would then raise the question of why it can't be done for ordinary users. <snark> Perhaps Windows 95 with Outlook express and internet exploder removed might do job ? For cynics, win98lite had a free script to do this effectively. </snark>
In meantime, is there any interest in the open source version of QNX ? Linux bloat is getting me down. Seems crazy that modern OS require so many resources to produce the same level of user functionality that 20 year old HW and SW gave.
Foxnews link is one of many reporting the article, and more detailed than most.
This one by theregister.co.uk is more interesting and factual quoting 'Google' regarding Google Cloud Services.
www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/14
/google_cloud_users_have_no_legitimate_expectation_of_privacy/
Office is the sole reason for having Windows, but most people use 10% of its functionalities, they can be well served by other office suites just fine.
Windows is changing to a 6 months release cycle, with that comes a full OS replacement and re-install of all apps, with major downtime.
Windows mobile was handled so badly that all kids have an Android phone, they want the same apps on their desktop.
At school my kids are mostly online (even run their little programs online), the only offline stuff I see them use is Office and Inkscape.
ChromeOS does al of the above right, I bet that as soon that a free good Office contender appears in the android store, most people, at home, will dump Windows for good, it will be a niche OS for the ones that need programs that only exist/run on Windows.
"ChromeOS does al of the above right, I bet that as soon that a free good Office contender appears in the android store, most people, at home, will dump Windows for good, it will be a niche OS for the ones that need programs that only exist/run on Windows."
Keep dreaming.
Most People don't know what an OS is, they think it's the computer.
For full transparency:
Who is paying for the travel?
Who is paying for other expenses?
Will Microsoft or any of their shill companies be gifting anything or providing either of the above as freebies?
Given that the Dear Leader Donald has cut cap that gave a ceiling in costs for the poorest schools and non-profits to get on the Internet. This Cloudy thing needs an internet connection. No internet because their provider has hiked prices by 500%...
You go figure.
All those shiny-shiny MS devices will be gathering dust.
You couldn't make this up as a plot.
perhaps this is a gentle nudge in the direction of HP and Dell etc who still seem to think that a screen with a resolution of 1366x768 is good enough in 2017. It is not even full HD for heavens sakes.
I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 circa 2003ish that had a screen resolution of 1600x1200.
Then you have mobile devices with screens approaching QHD in terms of resolution. It is almost as if the makers of laptops etc have decided that there is no future/money to be made in anything better.
Shame on them and shame on the businesses that foist these things on their employees.
Quad-core (Celeron or better) processor
4GB of RAM
32GB of storage (64GB for 64-bit)
A battery larger than 40 WHr
Fast eMMC or solid state drive (SSD) for storage technology
Pen and touch (optional).
My current Windows 10 tablet has an Atom processor, 2GB RAM and was available with 32GB eMMC (I took 64GB), so the Cloud version will actually need a better processor, more memory and the same minimum storage as normal Windows 10?
I thought that too. I currently run a surface (not pro) 3 and a Lenovo thinkpad 8 inch tablet for various uses. Both of these run Win 10 pretty well and have lower specs (in terms of processor) than listed there. Looks like they are just trying to rule out Atom to me. That makes sense.