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back to article Death knell for Windows with Bing, licences carved up

Microsoft is effectively killing off the Windows with Bing notebook market less than a year after it was created. The low-cost portables released last summer were Redmond’s competitive response to Google’s Chromebook, giving PC OEMs the Windows OS licence at a heavily discounted rate, and consumers responded positively. …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Google has not been able to replicate the US success over here, partly because Wi-Fi access in UK schools is not as widely available."

    And partly because Brits are not generally as gullible as the typical colonies punter, and no doubt mostly realise that you can get a proper Windows laptop for similar money....

    7 17 Reply
    1. big_D Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Pricing is another factor. I don't know what UK prices were like, but the ARM based Chromebook (Samsung) was a lot more expensive than an Intel Celeron based Windows notebook here in Germany.

      If these "stripped to the bone" machines are more expensive than a "with frills" machine and still cost more, then nobody is going to buy them - and that was before Windows Bing came on the scene.

      11 0 Reply
      1. Craigness
        Reply Icon

        But

        ...a "stripped to the bone" machine for £250 is going to be a heck of a lot faster than a "with frills" machine for £200 and anything the Chromebook can't do, you wouldn't want to do on a £200 Windows machine. And you can get a Chromebook for <£200 in the UK anyway.

        4 5 Reply
        1. big_D Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: But

          The first sub 300€ Chromebooks are starting to appear. When I first looked, I could get a Celeron Windows notebook for around 200€ - 250€, the ARM based Samsung was over 450€, that has now come down in price, but why would you fork out over twice as much money for a lesser product? Just stick the Chrome browser on the Windows PC and save 50% over the Chromebook.

          That is why the Chromebooks haven't taken off over here.

          1 0 Reply
          1. Craigness
            Reply Icon

            Re: But

            "Just stick the Chrome browser on the Windows PC and save 50% over the Chromebook"

            Chrome OS is far superior to Chrome on Windows. You only have to reboot Chrome OS when there is an update available, rebooting takes about 7 seconds (including installing the update), sleep/resume is infinitely trustworthy and is very fast, the computer doesn't slow down over time. And Chrome is Chrome, but it is ready to use as soon as you click the icon. Mine cost me about £150 2nd hand (the replacement model can be bought new for £180), so you'll not save 50% by buying a Windows machine.

            My 11" Windows laptop was quick when I got it, but now it's practically unusable for 5 minutes after I turn it on because it's just so slow at starting things up and checking for updates. I reinstalled Windows last summer and it took a day to complete all the updates, after which it was as slow as before the reinstall. I've learned not to trust it to resume from sleep, or at least to reboot daily if I want to have any expectation of Resume working. I only use it for Word and Excel. Buying a new fast Windows laptop just because I need those programs would be far more expensive than getting a Chromebook of similar speed and reliability, and I would expect it to slow down in a matter of months. So I use a Chromebook for almost everything but when I do my quarterly .xls spreadsheet I boot Windows and make a cup of tea.

            I wouldn't consider Chrome OS a replacement for a PC, but when a PC gets too old and slow I recommend keeping it for specific tasks and getting a Chromebook for daily use. Unless you need those specific things daily, why bother with Windows?

            1 0 Reply
            1. big_D Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: But

              Chrome OS is far superior to Chrome on Windows. You only have to reboot Chrome OS when there is an update available, rebooting takes about 7 seconds (including installing the update), sleep/resume is infinitely trustworthy and is very fast, the computer doesn't slow down over time.

              Is it really worth 200€ more than Chrome on Windows? That was the problem.

              Likewise, my Windows tablet gets rebooted once a month, takes around 15-20 seconds. Sleep/resume is infitely trustworthy and is fast enough for web browsing, the computer doesn't slow down over time - the Samsung is 2 years old now and hasn't slowed down yet - although I haven't filled it up with crap.

              The Surface Pro 3 is even quicker, but we are in a different price and performance league.

              (the replacement model can be bought new for £180), so you'll not save 50% by buying a Windows machine.

              Maybe given time. In December, they were still much more expensive thant Windows equivalents. In January the prices seem to be finally been coming down to near US levels. That is what is needed, until now the Chromebook was just an over priced curiosity. The question is, is it too late?

              My 11" Windows laptop was quick when I got it, but now it's practically unusable for 5 minutes after I turn it on because it's just so slow at starting things up and checking for updates.

              My old Sony Vaio is a 2010 model and with Windows 8 (installed at release), it still boots in around 30 seconds and is usable straight away - Firefox is loaded and usable in under a minute, including me entering my password to log on to Windows.

              1 0 Reply
              1. Craigness
                Reply Icon

                Re: But

                My Chromebook is a C720, which is available from Amazon.de for EUR185, or £137, and still has nearly 4 years' support.

                Waiting a minute to get online seems like an eternity these days! I just booted up my other Windows laptop (mid 2011, Win7) and it took 2 minutes 30 to get to firefox. I bought the 11" one a year later because the first is bulky (15") and the fan is loud so it's not great for carrying round the house, using in bed etc. But the smaller one is not powerful enough so I moved to tablets - initially, one with a keyboard. But the workflow on a tablet is not suited to the things which benefit from having a keyboard so I got a smaller tablet instead, which was my go-to device for a while but the workflow is still annoying at times. Eventually I got a Chromebook and the tablet is reduced to playing music, games and a little bit of browsing. If an app has a website (IMDb, Google Maps, Twitter, etc), I reach for my Chromebook rather than the tablet.

                At least you can't say I've not experimented! Perfection for me is a small tablet and Chromebook for the lounge, and a desktop PC for the study (currently Ubuntu). I like what MS is doing with dockable tablets etc, especially with Windows 10 improvements, but ideal tablet/laptop screen sizes are different for each device type, and I'm not sure I can rely on Windows. If I can get a great setup for less than the price of a Surface there's no need to risk Windows anyway!

                0 0 Reply
                1. big_D Silver badge
                  Reply Icon

                  Re: But

                  Waiting a minute to get online seems like an eternity these days!

                  Indeed. With my Samsung Windows tablet (Atom), I was online in under 4 seconds (including entering unlock pattern). I can't remember the last time I turned it off, it goes into sleep mode and wakes up in under a second. It can stay in stand-by for the best part of a week.

                  My Chromebook is a C720, which is available from Amazon.de for EUR185, or £137, and still has nearly 4 years' support.

                  As I said, the prices seem to have come down in January. That thing was damned expensive last year.

                  0 0 Reply
            2. Wayland Sothcott 1
              Reply Icon
              Devil

              Computing is becoming both easier and more difficult

              You are totally right.

              Windows is known for getting slower and slower over months and years. The solution which always worked was format and re-install but in the last few years as you just said the computer is just as slow having done the updates.

              I envy the people who just unlock their fondle slab and instantly start doing stuff. Windows should be like that. It never was but it's further from that than ever. No one who has first used a tablet will ever take to a PC. People who use PCs will migrate to a tablet once there is no reason to cling to a PC.

              The computer industry is like a fast flowing river, you can hold your position or even paddle upstream but everyone including your parents are swept along with the technological flow. They are not using cloud services because they know more about computers than you do, it's because their new computer came like that or a button popped up and they pressed it.

              Computing is becoming both easier and more difficult. It's easier for those who are clueless and harder for those who know what they are doing.

              1 0 Reply
              1. big_D Silver badge
                Reply Icon

                Re: Computing is becoming both easier and more difficult

                A tablet isn't the answer to a desktop.

                For work that needs to be done at a desk and required the entry of vast amounts of data, a tablet is an incredibly poor solution. The same for research. I spend a lot of my time doing research and that usually means having two or three reference windows open on one screen, with my data collation or report writing application (generally OneNote or Evernote and Word/Excel/Powerpoint) on the other.

                When I am on the move and need to quickly reference something, then a tablet is a good solution.

                The PC isn't necessarily better than a tablet and a tablet isn't necessarily better than a PC, they accomplish different tasks, with some overlap.

                Chose the best one for the job. For me that means a PC most of the time, with a tablet some of the time - or in my case, a Surface Pro 3 with a desktop dock and 2 external monitors.

                2 0 Reply
  2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Price Samsung chromebook in US = $200

    Price Samsung chromebook in UK £200

    For some smarter consumers, less capable is good. I've had to reboot it about twice in 2 years.

    3 0 Reply
    1. big_D Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Just checked, the Samsung cost 300€ just now.

      Although there is an HP for 199€, which is a low price.

      I must say, I've never seen a Chromebook break into the top 50 best sellers at Amazon.de

      0 0 Reply
  3. Craigness

    "Death nell" not so much

    There are few if any Chromebooks over 14" and the market share there is tiny (even by Chromebook standards), so MS scrapping licenses for WWB on machines over 14" shows they are using WWB to attack the Chromebook market, not that they are killing WWB.

    I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole though.

    Sent from my Chromebook.

    p.s. has anyone seen the HP Steam Mini - a Chromebox competitor? Like a NUC but preconfigured. It comes with WWB.

    1 1 Reply
    1. frank ly
      Reply Icon

      Re: "Death nell" not so much

      That would be the poisoned oranges. You have to watch her all the time.

      2 0 Reply
  4. RyokuMas
    Facepalm

    Another fine mess...

    So Microsoft are killing off something that consumers have allegedly "responded positively" to in response to finding out that the product they are attempting to compete with isn't proving as much of a threat as they thought...?

    'Nuff said

    5 1 Reply
    1. Craigness
      Reply Icon

      Re: Another fine mess...

      No.

      0 0 Reply
  5. 0laf

    The Data Protection Act makes using cloud based thingies like Chromebooks that bit trickier than sticking with windows.

    4 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Until you find folk are using MS cloudy features having been pressured at set-up in to creating a MS account...

      In any case, if its used mostly for browsing, it hardly matters as they will almost certainly be using Google for search anyway, as the alternatives all seem to suck more in terms of getting useful results.

      4 5 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        "as the alternatives all seem to suck more in terms of getting useful results."

        Try Bing / DuckDuckGo. Both just as good as Google in most cases. And are generally less full of SEO spam.

        4 3 Reply
        1. fishman
          Reply Icon

          I try Bing every one in a while, and I find that for what I search for it still isn't as good as Google.

          4 0 Reply

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    wouldn't want to rely on google

    I recall google discontinuing Google Checkout with 6 months notice or so. I bought a Gnex and then they decided not to deliver Android 4.4 to that. They also seem to prune back their service offerings from time to time quite ruthlessly. Not sure I'd want to by a laptop that is pretty much a brick without their web based services without some kind of guarantee what they'll keep running or for how long.

    I would guess the Windows Bing machine will at least have some deal of local functionality that doesn't rely on remote servers, and pretty sure I'd not have to worry for a long time about whether MS would ship OS updates to me.

    2 4 Reply
    1. Craigness
      Reply Icon

      Re: wouldn't want to rely on google

      Yo don't need a google account to use a chromebook. You don't need a google account to install apps, even on the chrome web store. You don't have to use any google services on your chromebook, including bookmark syncing and web search. They have a new API so you can (when providers catch up) use something like Dropbox or One Drive instead of Google Drive as the default offline storage. You can use a chromebook relying solely on local functionality.

      Google guarantees to support Chromebooks with updates for at least 5 years.

      2 1 Reply
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: wouldn't want to rely on google

    Having really wanted to go chrome and been disappointed....

    it is 5 years from first product release on the shelves - so most of what u see for sale has a 3-4 year life there are already a few that have EOL dates - Acer AC700 is a paperweight in August 2016 as just the first example on the list.

    it is also an extra £90 or so for a device management licence from google - which let's face it is the whole point of a 'semi-thin managed device'. and a few more £s for year per user for an external company to provide extra value add options (login restriction by IP for certain users for example) and then you need backup and archiving services from yet another company.

    also for you admins out there you either have a live full price user or the data is deleted - no 'inactive' status with a reduced cost based on disk storage.

    additionally and probably most importantly gmail totally sucks for anything more than casual use - seriously - no sorting by subject or sender (people want to filter and then sort for example).

    Your mileage will vary of course however google tends to have a short term pump and dump attitude to projects and a dictatorial attitude to features. Look at the new version of maps as example they are not listening to their users.

    1 4 Reply
    1. Richard Plinston
      Reply Icon

      Re: wouldn't want to rely on google

      > Acer AC700 is a paperweight in August 2016

      So you are saying that it will stop working on that day, exactly like all the XP machines stopped working last year ?

      0 0 Reply
      1. Craigness
        Reply Icon

        Re: wouldn't want to rely on google

        It will work but would you want to use it online? 4-5 years seems quite a good life span for a computer these days though, and the Power Wash functionality means it's really easy to sell fresh 2nd hand models, which means you can pick something up with 3-4 years of support for a bargain.

        1 0 Reply
  9. Joe Harrison

    Windows With Bing is great

    The zero license fee means lower price, for example the insanely good value Linx 8 tablets. Decent hardware, Windows 8.1, a year's Office 365, and 1TB of cloud storage for 70-90 quid, no wonder they have been flying off the shelves.

    1 1 Reply
  10. James Pickett

    Windows with Bing

    Isn't that the worst of all possible worlds..?

    2 0 Reply
  11. jason 7
    Unhappy

    The race to the bottom.

    The Windows with Bing has brought another issue thats been a pain.

    When you bought a sub £400 laptop a couple of years ago you were assured of getting at least a proper Pentium or Athlon level dual core laptop CPU. Nothing amazing but perfectly acceptable and pleasant for general use.

    However, the past 18 months or so has seen a huge influx of rebranded low power CPUs that barely give tablet/Atom level performance in this sector. It's been a nightmare with customers bringing these AMD E1 etc.CPU laptops that appear to have the same user experience I haven't seen since using a 1999 spec laptop in 2002. Putting in a SSD makes them almost tolerable so you may as well have spent the £60 extra in the first place.

    I now have to check carefully the CPU specs to make sure I'm getting a proper CPU for the money.

    0 0 Reply

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