Google revives ‘network computer’ with dual-OS assault on MS

Not sure it will work

I can see Android fondle slabs overtaking the iPad in market share at some point and carving their own niche in the market. At home they will function as the giant iPod touches they essentially are, and the larger screen will mean more use for video, web-browsing, and possibly ebooks. Though with ebooks, I think they will be used in situations where greater interactivity is required or beneficial rather than as dead-tree replacement ebooks from the iBooks / Kindle store or similar.

I can also see Android tablets replace rugged laptops in many mobile worker applications, such as the laptop car repair people plug into your car to see what the engine management system is reporting or engineers use to control complex machinery or to take survey measurements.

For netbooks, people generally expect to get an ultra-portable laptop that does everything a normal sized computer can do. You can of course get such a thing if you are prepared to pay, but as technology moves on, the c£300 price point machines will get ever closer to that ideal. For anyone who doesn't want to play games, edit photos or do anything with videos, your average netbook is already there, and it is getting closer to managing those other things as well. For that reason, I don't think Crome OS will manage to replace Windows XP or Windows 7 in the netbook market.

many friends are migrating their parents to Macs

supporting Windows for the parental units is a constant battle and I'm seeing many upgrade to Macs and are surprised their parents are so good at adapting. Couple this kind of thinking with the supposed ease of use of Chrome OS and the low cost of Chrome OS devices and it's a good start.

Speaking of low cost, one of the BIG feature bullet points for the NC(Network Computer) was it's $500 cost. At the time, most computers were costing $800 and up so a stripped down but functional $500 computer seemed like a great idea and reduced maintenance was supposed to help sales further.

What Larry and Scott missed was how quickly Intel and Microsoft would react and how quickly cheap $500 Windows PCs would show up on the market. The same kind of thing occurred with the netbook when they first hit the market. Prices were typically less than $300, Linux based and with flash storage and still generally good low end GP usage. Along comes Microsoft with dirt cheap Windows XP licensing combined with marketing program payoffs and the hardware got more costly, got hard disks, and in many cases, the Linux models got more expensive too for whatever reason. The threat was mitigated and thereby diffused.

What's interesting about the Chrome OS devices is that they can and will run on ARM along with x86. Microsoft will have to attack the manufacturers to prevent ARM devices from getting produced but this time there's Google money involved too. They will not stand still and let Chrome OS devices have a shot without doing what they do best, stop production and make sure Windows is sold on the devices one way or another. But seeing what Windows Phone 7 turned out to be, I don't think Microsoft has the same ability to fight off Chrome OS, Android, and iOS devices and get anywhere.

Maybe the NC v2 will have a chance to find a market or at least let consumers decide.

Do not want

@El, not really true. X does support telling the X server (i.e. thin client) to update the mouse cursor based on location, to sent events to the remote program just when the mouse crosses certain boundaries, etc. But it's up to the app to use this properly instead of polling mouse position, and some don't. Also, the 3270 *was* a thin client for it's time, albeit a specialized one -- instead of the significant (at least in the 80s) overhead of every keystroke going from the terminal to the server, the server would send the layout for a form, and all keystrokes (arrow keys, backspace, etc.) were handled on the terminal until the form was fully filled out, then just the contents of the filled-in form was sent to the server.

That said, I think network computers are a fail from the start, quite simply having some local storage these days costs almost nothing. Second, even while the cost per byte of PROVIDING services drops, providers are increasing costs (Verizon has gone from $60 for unlimited to $60 for 5GB in the last few years, or $30 for unlimited on phones. AT&T is even worse, going from $30 unlimited on phones to $25 for 2GB (and then STILL charging extra to tether with those same 2GB). All these wired ISPs keep talking about instituting unreasonble limits too. And instead of a throttle at the cap, it's cash charges at the cap. And so on.) If you avoid Windows like the plague there just aren't these rampant security problems.

@Titus Technophobe, yes in my view this is Microsoft being Microsoft. They entirely and utterly failed at anything resembling true "cloud computing" so they figure they'll dilute the term until it's completely meaningless. It's just as they did with netbooks -- "If we can't have the market, nobody else can either" (they essentially destroyed the netbook market by having netbook makers -- that were making nice Linux netbooks -- increase specs more and more to accomodate Windows bloat until what should have been a $200 netbook cost over $400 -- which just makes it a mini notebook). (Cloud computing already was pretty much a hype term, but seemed to involve using virtualization or sandboxing on a data center or computing cluster to provide services to customers -- what was called utility computing 20 or 30 years ago. To Microsoft it seems to be anything involving Microsoft products.)