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Comment by podperson | Hacker News Reader

I think the more germane comparison is:

Microsoft Surface with Keyboard: $600. Chromebook: $249

And the Chromebook is more capable. With the current state of Microsoft's marketplace, there is literally zero compelling reason to buy into the WinRT ecosystem.

You know very well you won't be able to make the same claim in a couple months so I think this argument easily falls flat.

Did you just miss the words "Current state" or..?

We don't know whether we will be able to make that claim or not. It's unclear how many vendors will port their software to the ARM version of Windows at this point. Even if they do, I suspect it will be more like 6-8 months, since a lot of people will be waiting to see how big the market is before supporting it.

And in case you are wondering, all my paychecks at the moment rely on Windows, and I have 0 involvement with anything related to the ARM version, nor do I hear about it. Anecdotal at one company, but I don't think it's unusual. Mobile support on the other hand, seems to be a big deal.

The software in Metro for Windows 8 and Windows RT is the same. You don't have to do any porting.

Sorry, right. We aren't sure how many people are porting to the Windows Runtime (Metro) environment from the Win32 APIs.

While it might have a high number of entries, I just don't think we know how well supported it will be 2 months from now.

The PC market is in decline but still huge. Windows 8/RT will have more total users than Android tablets within a few month. The idea that companies aren't going to build for the default interface is silly.

But how dedicated to the default interface are they really going to be? I imagine there is going to be a lot of developers who decide that if they have to re-write their app anyways, it makes more sense to port it to the web than to port it to metro.

Really doubt it (about Win8/RT having more users than Android, ever), Smartphones are already selling more than PCs. Windows 7 took 2 years to reach 500 millions, and Android is already on that many hands (counting only OHA devices, ignoring Amazon/Nook/China Androids), will be on 1 billion by middle next year.

OP said Android tablets, which excludes phones.

Rubbish. Two concepts to consider: office and the fact that the surface device works entirely offline.

I've got a chromebook in the office as a test machine and its a fancy brick without a network connection.

There will be more offline capability with the new chromebook, and the updates to the old versions. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57467667-1/hands-on-offl...

That's a bit of an unfair comparison. The surface works entirely offline, if you're using it for offline tasks. The Chromebook also works offline if you're using it for offline tasks.

The number of offline apps available for chrome is pretty limited, but so is the total number of apps available for winRT. as far as i can tell, both of these devices are basically just a web browser plus potential.

Can I downloads a movie to watch later? Edit a document?

Won't the Surface tablets be able to run Chrome just as well as a Chromebook, in addition to apps that aren't Chrome?

>Won't the Surface tablets be able to run Chrome just as well as a Chromebook, in addition to apps that aren't Chrome?

That depends entirely on the good graces of Microsoft.

On a less snarky note, the WinRT based tablets (the ones coming out in a week or so) can only run metro apps. Unless Chrome puts a version of the browser in Microsoft's marketplace, it won't be available for use.

If the Metro APIs include anything capable of running binary code, Chrome will probably be developed for it. Given Microsoft's recent history of being careful to display monopolistic behavior, I'm sure they'd allow Google to distribute Chrome through the Windows app marketplace.

Chromebooks just run a browser. Windows runs a browser and other things. Even if there aren't that many other things, your comment is fundamentally wrong.

Except that browser also has apps:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home

I love how the most prominent app on the official store's homepage is a blatantly copyright-infringing Sonic the Hedgehog game.

http://grab.by/gRs8

You can run Chrome (and all Chrome webapps) on Win8.

but can it on Surface/Windows RT? I haven't checked back in on that for a few months, but my understanding is that they still won't let you run JIT compiled code unless you're built into the system -- aka Internet Explorer 10 or the CLR.

Firefox and Chrome will have Metro versions on x86, but will have to interpret JavaScript under Windows RT, and V8 doesn't have an interpreted mode.

Too bad the Surface currently for pre-order is ARM and thus runs Windows RT. An x86 version with Windows 8 should come later, but will likely be more expensive. Chrome won't run on RT unless it is in the Microsoft store.

On WinRT you can't. Microsoft won't let the JavaScript interpreter do JIT on it.

So you can run them they'll just be slow? And could Chrome Frame be modified to run Chrome apps in IE at full speed?

Edit: just to be clear, without VirtualAlloc() and VirtualProtect(), you can't really run any JIT. No LuaJIT, no PyPy, no Java. No Scala, Clojure, or jRuby either.

It may be possible, Google may opt to release Chrome on it (or someone may port Chromium) but the lack of an optimizing runtime will probably make it suck when compared to IE.

Yeah, V8 doesn't do that. Meaning the effort to support Windows 8 RT will/would be large and possibly with little reward.

Chrome could use the IE10 JavaScript engine presumably (depending on how easy it is to hook native APIs back into the rendering engine from JavaScript).

I never said you couldn't? The point is that to call Chrome "just a browser" is misleading.

The comment you replied to said "Chromebooks just run a browser. Windows runs a browser and other things." The fact that Chrome (and Firefox) can run apps doesn't change that.

It doesn't change that distinction, but it does render it pretty meaningless.

$250 for a browser, with a metal/plastic shell.

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