Murphy's Law: Can Chrome OS Beat Windows? Can Anyone?
Murphy's Law: Can Chrome OS Beat Windows? Can Anyone?
Posted 03/18/2010 at 11:23am
| by David Murphy
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"Why don't more people use Chrome OS?"
It was an innocuous question, part of a grander lunchtime chat about life, the Internet, and The Future Way of Things. My coworker was curious about the benefits of open-source--specifically those advantages with a dollar sign preceding them--and naturally thought that the upstart Google operating system could someday attract a huge portion of Microsoft Windows's market share.
Why wouldn't enterprise businesses love the Google solution? The amount of money they would be able to save from the reduced desktop licensing requirements would be large enough to transform a CFO's eyes into saucers, Roger Rabbit-style. Similarly, entities that rely on a variety of customized programs and applications to conduct business could weave these elements into the open-source architecture of Chrome OS.
Given that Chrome OS is going to be heavily focused toward a Web-based platform for applications and file hosting, it's only fitting that it find a new home in the world of the enterprise--where one doesn't have a desktop PC so much as a virtualized environment that can be accessed using any piece of hardware in the office. A hard drive crash doesn't much matter if your data is sourced on the cloud.
So let's roll out the red carpet and prep the TV hosts for the big unveiling of Chrome OS in big busin... or not. There's one reason, and one reason only, why an open-source desktop isn't going to succeed in the consumer or enterprise markets: Microsoft was there first.
It's a funny state of affairs: When it comes to technology, we see big-name companies ping-pong between crippling failure and extraordinary success all the time. Nintendo? Completely screwed the pooch with the Gamecube--an absolutely horrendous system that was beaten back by the market faster than you can say "Luigi's Mansion." Yet, up comes the company from the bowels of its R&D labs to produce the Wii, otherwise known as, "the best-selling console of 2009."
Not a gamer? Consider Apple, then--a company that suffered setback after setback in the late 1990s after the relative success of its early hardware launches. Yet, one iMac later, and Apple revolutionized its product lines with a focus on aesthetics to become a significant market driver. Not in computing, per se--at least, not compared to Windows machines--but in its slew of i-themed devices that all borrowed the same design concepts of its initial iMac.
Yet, here sits Windows: untouched. It's arguable that Linux and OSX, and even Chrome OS, all offer features that outpace those found on Microsoft's operating systems--especially less-than-impressive revisions like Vista, which practically require a service pack before they're truly ready for desktop use. But I'm just speaking from the standpoint of someone who sits in front of the keyboard. For the person behind the ledger, it's clear that open-source is the de facto winner.
The issue is that Windows has reached, and blown apart, the critical mass it needs to ensure its own longevity regardless of the competition. Interestingly enough, it's even superseded Microsoft's own revisions to the software--a number of businesses will still use Windows XP even though two iterations of the operating system have taken place over the last four years.
How has this happened? Complacency, mixed with a touch of costs. Businesses in today's economy are a bit loathe to spend the required money upgrading systems (both in licenses and labor) when there's no prevailing reason to do so beyond security concerns. And even then, depending on the nature of the use, even a Windows XP workstation can be locked down to all but essential business functions.
As for complacency, there are enough mission-critical Windows systems that "just plain work" as to make a business uncomfortable to consider jumping even to an upgrade of Windows itself. I don't even want to fathom the potential compatibility issues and internal restructuring that would come up should a large enterprise business try to readjust itself to a cloud-based platform like Chrome OS. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't think IT decision makers will consider it a possibility.
It's kind of a killer catch-22: For a new operating system to gain a significant share of the market, it has to reach enough popularity to warrant an investigation (or a switch) toward porting software. But to reach this critical mass, the software has to be available and working in order to give a person or a business a reason to cross the threshold. No matter its software faults, Microsoft holds the ace: Windows is the best solution for enterprise environments because it's always been.
What is Chrome OS (or Linux, or OSX) going to do?
David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software.
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radioactiveyoshi55
April 07, 2010 at 6:30pm
i realize that the point made about nintendos gamecube was a side note but i must say that, although it may have bombed on the market, i find it to be one of the best systems. It stands up to more use and abuse than any other system I've found.
Lycopersicon
March 19, 2010 at 9:43am
They include a free copy of Windows with every PC purchase: Dell. And corporations like buying volume from them...
Mr_Histamine
March 19, 2010 at 8:29am
I agree with most of your points, and would add another; most of these open-source OSs aren't focused enough. That is, they tend to hop from one new functionality to another without honing what's already there (or sometimes, it could take forever). IMO, Linux doesn't "feel" as solid as Windows and OS X - but that might be because they aren't being paid to deliver a polished product.
If Chrome OS is to beat Windows, I think they need to shift their definition of the Cloud. Instead of developing a system entirely dependent on an internet connection and server stamina, they need a system in which you can sync your data across all your hardware; the cloud would serve as a backup and syncing system - not a mission-critical one. I think many people would be much more interested in an OS that can automatically sync all their programs and data, each time they upgrade their computer or its hardware.
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nHeroGo
March 18, 2010 at 4:20pm
ChromeOS is identical to Win7 in almost every way, so the question "Can ChromeOS beat Windows?" is a good question. We just have to define at what things are supposed to beat other things. For example. Can an orange beat an apple. The answer is "yes, absolutely."
gendoikari1
March 18, 2010 at 4:01pm
1) Hardware support even MORE restrictive than Mac OS (SSDs only? Sure, when I get the 400 mortgages to buy one and have more than 4 bytes of space)
2) Clouds are bull (I prefer to be able to use my computer and NOT have all my data stored in some random server instead of in the hard drive in the computer and backed up onto an external hard drive every few days)
Oh yeah, and that bit about one hard drive crash not bringing the cloud down? What if the cloud's storage fails? Then, you have a bunch of unusable machines instead of all of them save the one with a failed HDD usable. Redundant drive arrays and frequent backup fix that problem.Honorary Family Member:
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naxself
March 18, 2010 at 3:38pm
As others have mentioned, it's unlikely that a business will ever truly convert to the cloud full-time, because of security and all. Which means the cloud has limited application. As far as I know, the cloud is Chrome's selling point (or one of them anyway).
Baer
March 18, 2010 at 2:55pm
On a one to one comparison, anything open sorce is much lower cost but if there is something that you can not do that you are used to doing or something that does not work the cost factor goes out the widow (sic). Not being able to acomplish a mission critical task, something that you always used to be able to do makes you want to through that free or cheap software or even that Mac out the proverbial WIndow. I know, I have been there.
lhatten
March 18, 2010 at 2:34pm
OK, I am not sure where you are going with this. As you have stated in the past, Chrome OS is not really an Operating System, it is really a modified browser. There is no Operating System to handle and attached peripherals, so no attached printer, disk drive etc. It looks like they have positioned this as a phone/tablet/netbook OS, not a replacement for a desktop. Can you imagine a business that would agree to have no local storage, just storage on the internet, with no control over their data at all? If you can, can you imagine how long they would last when there is an DOS attack, or internet outage.
The world as I see it is divided into 2 camps. One camp uses a computer for "real" work most of the time. This could be at work or at home. The other camp uses a computer for "play" and seldom if ever does any "real" work using a computer. The latter is where Chrome OS is applicable. I don't know the numbers, but if you have need to do ""real" work, Chrome OS, or anything like it, will never work. A real OS will always be necessary.
compnovo
March 19, 2010 at 9:49am
The world as I see it is divided into 2 camps.
You are overlooking the 3rd camp, those like myself who use PCs extensively at work for work AND at home for play. I'll bet I'm not the only one.
sanravel
March 18, 2010 at 1:59pm
2 cents from an non IT guy.
My company switched all 12,000 of us to Google Docs over the last year. We still have to have MS Office for most files created outside of Google Docs because Google docs has issues with some files for some reason. We use Gmail across the board and it is better than the Lotus Notes we had before, but when it goes down, and it does, you can't access your emails because they aren't stored on your harddrive. Google Chrome browser doesn't work with any of our HR, support, or CRM sites, so we have to use Firefox or IE8 for those.
It just seems that most things from Google are in a prolonged beta stage. The seem to jump from one thing to another. I was looking at a Droid from Motorola and it was decent, but I am still going to wait a bit longer and hope that iphone comes to Verizon.
The best things from Google are the search engine(although I find myself using Bing more and more) and Google Earth.
aviaggio
March 18, 2010 at 1:50pm
A few big issues come to mind.
1.) Training. If you're going to switch operating systems you need to retrain your employees on how to use it. Until they learn expect productivity to plummet.
2.) Software. The biggest reason why companies stick with Windows is because that's the platform their software runs on. Switch the OS and you have to switch software. Which brings us back to #1. Not to mention the time, energy, and cost of converting existing files.
3.) The Cloud. I would be uneasy about having my entire office running on a cloud. Not only would it put a real strain on the Internet connection, what happens if the network or net goes down? Everything comes to a grinding halt for everyone.
JohnP
March 18, 2010 at 1:48pm
Before Windows, even before the IBM PC, there was chos. Everybody who built a computer had its own operating system, its own software, and its own hardware that was not compatible with anybody else's. And they were expensive!
Never knock the Wintel platform as it has brought the computer to the home, to work, and to the world for 30 years. Can Chrome OS say the same? Let's give it another 30 years and see who is still around...
dullthud
March 19, 2010 at 8:53am
Absolutely! Not to mention the fact that even today a lot of proprietary business software will only run on Windows.
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