HP Continuing To Flee Windows Reservation With Android Tablet 124
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the we're-outta-here dept.
from the we're-outta-here dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Hewlett-Packard seems more determined than ever to flee the Windows reservation, unveiling a $170 Android tablet, the HP Slate 7. It runs Google Android 4.1, the first version of the 'Jelly Bean' build, which has been ever so slightly outdated by the recent release of Android 4.2. This isn't the first time in recent memory that HP's opted for a Google product over one offered by longtime partner Microsoft. As it helpfully pointed out in a press release, HP has produced a Chromebook running Google's Chrome OS, a largely cloud-dependent operating system for laptops and notebooks. Built around Google services such as Gmail, Chrome OS also offers access to the Chrome Web Store, an online storefront for apps. If HP and other manufacturers increasingly adopt Google's offerings over Windows, it could cause some consternation among Microsoft executives. Microsoft, of course, is pushing Windows 8, which is meant to run on tablets and traditional PCs with equal facility. If it wants the Windows division to continue as a cash cow, it needs manufacturers to adopt that operating system in massive numbers. Android and Chrome OS could make that strategy a lot more difficult."
I would hardly call it Fleeing!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sensationalism at its best. Almost everyone makes android tablets. I am no MS fan but I am even less a fan of sensationalism just to get some people to read your bogus stories. Just read the title and felt I had to comment.
Surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:UEFI and Windows 8 strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
It would only work by bribing all the vendors... and that would likely cost more than even MS pockets can stand.
Besides, MS has already insulted the Asian manufacturers, so why would they go out of their way to help MS?
Sensationalism in /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sensationalism at its best. Almost everyone makes android tablets. I am no MS fan but I am even less a fan of sensationalism just to get some people to read your bogus stories
As a long time visitor to /. I have to concur with what you have said
What is the most unfortunate is that the editors seem to agree with this type of unhealthy yellow-journalism
HP is merely making another attempt into producing Android tablets. It's only a business decision, that's all !
a drowning man will grasp at straws (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense to Google; I like their products.
HP is going to need to do a lot more than market a Chromebook and an Android tablet to get out of the ditch.
addressing wrong problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod up. Now, if Libreoffice or, more probably Google, could get "good enough" compatibility with MS Office docs, (including Excel macros, weird PPT presentations and fonts) then this could really go somewhere...
Casual PC users (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an interesting term here. Guesses:
- Light-duty (email, read-heavy web): Best served by Chromebook & tablets:
They're cheaper & easier to maintain.
- Upgraders wanting things like before: Likely to defect to the above group.
- Businesses: Bound to their software, & likely can hold-out until next version
May try moving to HTML5 cloud software for less administration, but gain OS choices.
Re:UEFI and Windows 8 strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot help but wonder if UEFI is now Microsoft's backup plan to force casual PC users into Windows 8. There seems to be some resistance (the degree of which is debatable) to Windows 8 adoption. Perhaps users will, in the end, still be forced into Windows 8 if they lack the know-how to use alternate OSes?
How is that be any different to the way things are now?
It's also about what people want and don't want (Score:5, Insightful)
People want to keep using their computers, at the very least, in the way they have grown accustomed. Microsoft has a winner in the present day Windows 7. (Hilarious that I would even say that, but I did.) The last thing Microsoft should do right now is attempt to take that away from its customers and yet that's clearly Microsoft's aim.
People don't want change. They don't want it forced on them and yet if they want a new computer, guess what is most likely to come on it? And most of those people don't have the skill to put Windows 7 on it so they are pretty much stuck with whatever comes with it. So increasingly, they are resisting the need to even buy new computers. This doesn't sit well with computer sellers.
ASUS has shown the buying public is interested in tablets but they don't "need" Windows. The Google Nexus 7 has proven itself well. HP, a starving PC maker just wants a piece of that action. How long before Dell does the same? I know Dell has played in that field already... they inexplicably [my opinion] pulled out. Every attempt at supporting Linux was half-hearted enough to make me believe they did it to "prove" that Linux is not a viable alternative to Windows. Just a theory...
But Microsoft stopped caring long ago about what people want and what they don't want. They have demonstrated their contempt for the public numerous times. People have somewhere else to go now... and we are seeing them go.
Re:UEFI and Windows 8 strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot help but wonder if UEFI is now Microsoft's backup plan to force casual PC users into Windows 8. There seems to be some resistance (the degree of which is debatable) to Windows 8 adoption. Perhaps users will, in the end, still be forced into Windows 8 if they lack the know-how to use alternate OSes?
How is that be any different to the way things are now?
More telling is the fact that to the casual observer (e.g. drooling idiot user), Windows 8 already is an "alternate OS". Which sort of leaves them between a rock and a hard place.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
but I think it's giving them, mostly, the facility to lock out competitors on MS 'subsidized' devices like Surface.
I suspect that if that were the case then they would have prevented SecureBoot from being turned off on the Surface Pro, but they didn't, you can turn it off and install Linux on it if you want.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
but they didn't
Yet.
This is the extend phase.
Re:I would hardly call it Fleeing!! (Score:4, Insightful)
> Sensationalism at its best. Almost everyone makes android tablets.
So you're basically agreeing with the "sensationalist" headline.
PC vendors are finally straying from Microsoft.
It doesn't matter how you try to spin it. It still comes out the same. Microsoft's grip on consumers as computer users is waning. It took something that looks nothing like a PC, but it finally happened.