back to article Base specs leak for Windows 10 Cloud – Microsoft's wannabe ChromeOS assassin

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. …

  1. John Sanders
    Trollface

    Two words really

    Cargo cult.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Two words really

      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.

      1. handleoclast
        Flame

        Re: Two words really

        "So, for Microsoft's part, their marketing department will get millions of school-aged sales leads"

        They've learned from the tobacco companies. Get them started young and they're hooked on your product for life.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Two words really

        "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!

    2. lnLog

      Re: Two words really

      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."

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Two words really

      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.

      1. danR2

        Very old term

        "Cargo cult" was something of a topic in the 60s. There were documentiaries. I thought they simply petered out, and were no longer a thing.

        1. Naselus

          Re: Very old term

          " I thought they simply petered out, and were no longer a thing."

          I believe the one based on worshiping Lyndon B Johnson is still a thing, despite Johnson himself not being.

  2. kain preacher

    Just say no. Hey I like Windows but I';ll be damned if I'll use and OS that I don't own, have no control over.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Zune. Windows phone. When will these guys ever learn that they are horrible at jumping into established markets.

      1. big_D Silver badge

        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!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thin client sucks. That low-end machine is vastly more powerful than my desktop 10 years ago, so there's no excuse for not running a fullfat OS.

    Except the whole shift to renting commodity software.

    1. P. Lee

      >hat low-end machine is vastly more powerful than my desktop 10 years ago, so there's no excuse for not running a fullfat OS.

      And did I read the spec's correctly, the 64 bit version gets double the RAM?

      That implies it's 32bit by default!

  4. getHandle

    Windows is a bloated, legacy-laden POS

    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.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Windows is a bloated, legacy-laden POS

      Odd, seems to run just fine on my £150 Dell laptop. The keyboard's not bad either. Only crap bit is the mousepad, but easy to use a proper mouse (£10)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Windows is a bloated, legacy-laden POS

        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.

  5. ColonelDare

    Me Too! (?)

    Sounds like M$ shouting 'ME TOO' yet again. [cf Netbooks, Tablets,Search, Maps, VoIP etc etc].

    When was the last time they were leading the way, rather than just touting refurbished stuff as catch-up? <yawn>

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Me Too! (?)

      Probably never lead, always refurbished, sixth rate garbage as their base.

      1. N2

        Re: Me Too! (?)

        The MS wheel mouse isnt bad, but probably copied from Logitech

    2. ThomH

      Re: Me Too! (?)

      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.

  6. Planty Bronze badge
    Stop

    Not price

    Chrome OS has bulletproof security. Windows is security dogshite.

    1. Daggerchild Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Not price

      Come now, are young schoolchildren really a security risk Microsoft can't handle in this day and age?

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26879185

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not price

        That is just embarassing. 4 Free Games? Pittance.

        Seems more like a deliberate flaw.

        1. Planty Bronze badge

          Re: Not price

          Enter wrong password, fill retry with spaces. What???? For real???? This is why Microsoft are a joke these days

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Not price

      Well, ChromeOS doesn't currently win on price, over here, it is generally at least 20% more than an equivalent Windows notebook.

      Probably why they don't sell well.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Probably why they don't sell well.

        I think you'll find most of the 'sales' to schools in the US are a dodgy scheme whereby a company gives money to schools who have to use it to buy certain products.

  7. Denarius
    Meh

    Elephant in room ?

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Elephant in room ?

      Google are no better in this regard

      http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/12/02/google-accused-invading-student-privacy-via-chromebook-computers.html

      1. Planty Bronze badge
        FAIL

        Re: Elephant in room ?

        Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) & Fox News, about as credible as my cat.

        1. Updraft102

          Re: Elephant in room ?

          You must have a very credible cat.

        2. Timmy B

          Re: Elephant in room ?

          > Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) & Fox News, about as credible as my cat.

          And the BBC are any better?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Elephant in room ?

            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/

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Elephant in room ?

      In Education we get volume licences and Enterprise editions of 10 so the whole slurp thing isn't a concern.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Elephant in room ?

        Just the malware infestation problems of windows dogshite security then....

        Or you can get Chromebooks, same price, bulletproof security and no maintenance costs...

        1. d3vy

          Re: Elephant in room ?

          @annon

          "no maintenance costs"

          I call bullshit.

          1. Planty Bronze badge

            Re: Elephant in room ?

            I will chip and and back that up, you have Chromebooks you would know this to be absolutely true. It just works, no bullshit at all. It's hassle free, secure and suitable for the vast majority of people that think they need a pc or Mac

    3. Diogenes

      Re: Elephant in room ?

      Slurp is turned off for educational skus.

    4. Updraft102

      Re: Elephant in room ?

      "Perhaps Windows 95 with Outlook express and internet exploder removed might do job ? For cynics, win98lite had a free script to do this effectively."

      Windows 95 (original release) didn't have IE or Outlook.

  8. TRT Silver badge

    Well there's...

    not a mention about the OS licensing costs. I can save a pretty packet on my hardware just by ticking the "No OS" option.

  9. davidp231

    You mean to say it's not 'cloud reliant' already?

  10. the Jim bloke
    Devil

    Educated people make better decisions

    I see this as Microsoft trying to protect its market share - by sabotaging education and promoting a larger generation of semi-literate consumers.

  11. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    I wonder if this hardware

    will allow replacement of the OS? I'm not holding my breath...

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I wonder if this hardware

      It'll almost certainly be a locked down UEFI secureboot with no other boot keys present or option to add. Remember WindowsRT?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "ChromeOS does al of the above right,"

      ...and from talking to people who do school IT, the Chromebook management portal is pretty good and mature. Those with experience of both seem to prefer Chromebooks to Apple in schools these days (Speaking about the UK here)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "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.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Register will be attending the New York launch, and will bring you live coverage of the event.

    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?

  14. ColonelClaw
    Facepalm

    Blimey, this is a real change of attitude from from Microsoft. Normally they're out there leading the market, and not releasing late-to-the-party copies that will obviously bomb.

    Right?

  15. stephanh

    competition

    I am glad to hear there is coming some competition in the space of locked-down, dumbed-down, data-slurping OSes I would never consider buying.

  16. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    WTF?

    How is this gonna play

    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.

  17. ilmari

    What's noteworthy to me is how the hardware specs are higher than those of most "normal" Windows 10 laptops people buy.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Hardware specs

      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.

  18. Toastan Buttar

    "When you're not connected, it's pretty much a brick."

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/28/microsoft_scroogled_campaign_shifts_into_new_gear/

  19. big_D Silver badge
    Facepalm

    TLDR: So, you need a MacBook or an iPad to run it?

    Looking at the photo...

  20. big_D Silver badge

    Interesting specifications:

    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?

    1. Timmy B

      Re: Interesting specifications:

      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.

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