I think MS should probably just abandon the "Windows" moniker for this OS... call it XBox Laptop, hell "Surface Lite" would be a better name. No windows name as part of it at all. People have expectations with Windows, that it will run all their stuff... different brand would make it easier.
This article is missing one of ChromeOS's main advantages. Ease of management (provisioning, updating, installing software, group policy like configuration, etc). If MS doesn't address that then this will flop as bad as RT and S.
I've seen Windows shops with entire teams dedicated to managing the Windows environment (not including break/fix) and I've seen environments with thousands of Chromebooks that are managed by one person (and that's not even a full time job).
MS is making some progress with Azue AD and InTune, but it's not there yet. Hopefully, by time this comes out they will have those other pieces better refined so it can all come together.
Apart from the stupid clickbait title, this is an interesting article. Not sure what it's like in other countries but here in NZ Chromebooks have become the de-facto education laptop/platform. But the underlying OS is almost the unimportant bit - the key is the Google Apps Education platform and how well it works for both students and teachers. Even if (and that's a big if) this Windows Lite OS was successful and managed to replace Chrome OS, I can't see how Microsoft will get schools to stop using Google Apps?
The Ministry of Education and Microsoft have an arrangement whereby all public schools have free access to Office 365 for Education, including online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint; Teams as a replacement for Classroom; Forms as a replacement for … well, forms; PowerApps and Flow as a replacement for App Maker; and five free licences per student for the desktop and mobile versions of Office.
To sweeten the deal, the revised deal that started this year also grants all schools free licences for Minecraft: Education Edition. This is pretty huge at the moment, since the zeitgeist is calling for learning through play, and Minecraft: Education Edition also includes some programming tools, useful for implementing the new Digital Technologies curriculum introduced this year and mandatory by 2020.
Microsoft also provides free professional development to schools, including staff members and IT administrators. Schools that have always used Active Directory to store staff and student user credentials are supported in moving to Azure Active Directory, providing easier integration between user credentials and Office 365.
So full, free replacements for G Suite; free Minecraft: Education Edition; free professional development, and the online version of Office 365 is just as usable on existing Chromebooks as any other device. On top of that, a lot of schools are moving to iPads, and the Office apps for iOS beat the Google Docs apps.
Microsoft has a few tricks up its sleeves, to say the least.
Ah - interesting. I'm curious to know how well the core apps stack up from the kids' perspectives. I watch my kids collaborating on slide decks with other kids and am amazed at what they come up with. My understanding is that the Office apps aren't as good for online collaboration, but perhaps the Education ones are more optimised for that?
Can't speak from a kid's perspective... but as an adult O365, and the related apps (MS Teams in particular) are leaps and bounds better than the Google options.
Yeah, I use Office 365 extensively and have used Google Apps extensively in the past. Office 365 is definitely more suited to corporate-type work and I personally prefer Office 365, but I just feel like the Google Apps interface and features work better for kids. And the Google Apps realtime collaboration features still beat the Office 365 apps hand down.
The online collab's fairly solid. The education edition is the same as the regular one, it's just a question of what features come with the licence. The education licence is actually pretty darn good, it has pretty much everything except business analytics. Certainly more than the home licences.
For the uninitiated this basically cranked your ability to uninstall windows components up to 11, allowing you to strip out IE and and get windows humming along quite well on antiquated hardware.
Apple's A, S, T, and W processors represent a significant competitive advantage (performance per watt, energy efficiency) in the mobile space; there'll be chilled water in Hell before Apple cedes that to anybody else, least of all Microsoft.
I mean desktop, not mobile, Windows Mobile is dead. MS is not hardware company, so why not make money on good product? And stick it to both, Quallcomm and Intel, they got bit nasty with their 3G and LTE patents :)
Apple's business isn't selling chips, it's selling devices. If they're putting competitors' software on their chips, what advantage does that offer their own devices? None, aside from the OS, and that's never been Apple's value proposition; rather, it's the integration of hardware and software only possible by doing as much of both as possible, not by licensing.
Therefore, "Agree to disagree" doesn't apply. It simply doesn't follow. Apple isn't a chip vendor; it makes chips as a form of competitive advantage. This isn't a matter of opinion.
