SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 x64

paulfo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:11:24 GMT

I’m just completing the installation of a standalone development environment for SharePoint 2010 Beta on my Windows 7 x64 netbook. There are a few gotchas to doing this which I wanted to share with you, it turns out that they are all well documented by...(read more)

A Web browser OS? What’s the point?

paulfo — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:24:31 GMT

I had an hilarious time reading the commentary of Google’s blog post yesterday. The hyped expectations – I was almost crying with laughter. Our thoughts in the office; a nicely timed marketing exercise – the product is still vapourware, and how exciting could ‘a Linux kernel with a browser UI’ really be? Its non-news, but with all the hype I wanted to state some sane observations.

First. What is the point of a web browser OS?

I mean, have you noticed how pathetic the UK’s broadband and cellular coverage is? As soon as you move out of a very significant centre of population – ie a city - you don’t have 3G coverage, you don’t have loads of WiFi hotspots, in a lot of places you don’t have broadband!

What is the point of a web browser OS when you don’t have a web to browse?

Clearly, any successful OS is going to have to have significant client side functionality, to at least mask the absence of the network and allow you to keep on working when the web isn’t.

How rich is that client side functionality going to be? Or rather, how much rich client side functionality are you willing to loose in your Web browser OS? Because lets be clear, the criticism here is that Windows is ‘big and bloated’ and a web browser OS will be small and faster – because all the applications will be ‘running in the cloud’.

LOL – I love that one, cracks me up every time someone says it.

Take a look at netbook sales. The volume of Linux version returns was apparently extremely high – because they didn’t have much functionality and the people in the high street couldn’t do the stuff they expect/wanted to do with them. That is why netbooks are selling with Windows XP on them (96% of netbooks use Windows) – they let you do what you want to do, when you want to do it.

Quite simply, Windows has a lot of functionality in it and applications built for Windows add even more functionality which is really cool, because these applications can take advantage of the web when it is there, and still keep working with all their non-network functionality when it isn’t.

Alternatively, you could say; applications on Windows give you the choice – do you want to pay for web connectivity to use your computer, or would you prefer not to use the web when you’re out and about, and just ‘sync’ when you’re home or in the office?

Second. I love this idea that this Web browser OS is an innovation! Using the free evaluation version of Windows Embedded platform builder toolkit, I can configure a minimal installation of Windows XP Embedded which just has IE as its user interface. The complete Windows install will likely be smaller then 150mb, and will be able to run from a USB stick. I’ll be able to add a Flash player and Silverlight of course – I could even add the complete .Net Framework which would allow full function Windows applications to deploy through the browser and run in a browser window! When was Windows XP Embedded released – oh yeah November 2001.

Why don’t people use a Windows Web Browser OS? Well, many do in the form of those pay per hour web browser kiosks that litter our airport departure lounges, and provide tourist information in high streets. But these are what we used to call ‘task oriented’ installations – they only do one thing, but that one thing well. For most of us, a computer needs to do more than one thing and do them all well.

Third. The Google ‘announcement’ was a blog post. The OS is vapourware – otherwise Vic would have shown it off at the conference. Even when the OS does release; its just a browser strapped to a Linux kernel – whoopee. The past years netbook sales already provide the writing on the wall for that one.

As for me, well I’m lucky. I have the Windows 7 RC build on my netbook – an Aspire One with only 1.5GB of RAM, and a 120gb disk. I can do all my office stuff on it, I can browse the web, I can even watch telly on it via the Windows Media Centre (built into some Windows 7 versions) if I use a tuner card of some form (I have an HDHomeRun dual tuner on my home network which means any two of my Windows machines can be watching telly at a time, anywhere on my wireless network). It runs for typically six hours on the extended battery.

I made a video of my netbook’s performance a while back:

Granted I’d like it to boot from cold quicker, but if I use sleep it boots in a moment which is perfect.

So do I care about a web browser OS? You must be joking, I couldn’t live with the limitations and missing functionality. Roll on Windows 7 - a platform I can to ANYTHING FROM, ANYWHERE AND AT ANYTIME.

wotudo : netbook

SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 x64

A Web browser OS? What’s the point?