Hacker News Reader

Comment by ShabbyDoo | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this sort of thing the perfect hardware for ChromeOS? Why run Windows CE?

Or android. The Acer Aspire netbook boots instantly into Android, then asks if you want to start Windows.

Coz then they wouldn't have been to do the demo as it wasn't connected.

Seriously I see these to be more popular in 3rd world countries like India where purchasing power is not as high as the western world. Also as Wifi or internet connectivity isn't as pervasive as US/Europe and people are more familiar with Windows (possibly due to rampant piracy) there I see Win CE as good platform to market there for a company in ultra low cost net books.

and I think everyone underestimates the demand for dirt cheap computers that can browse the internet. go to any library, university media center, or other place with publicly available internet and you'll see hundreds of potential customers for this sort of thing.

yes that is true in the US not in India... public libraries are not that common (I recall New Delhi having 3 or 4 good ones and they have paid membership of about $30-50/year) and not all have internet.

I want to throw that in my kitchen, and run my web app on it. (look in my profile for more details, still a wip)

I really like the concept. Have you looked into doing an iPad app? It seems like a perfect form factor for a kitchen-centric computing device, it just needs the right software.

I have not looked into an ipad specifically, but one of my goals before release is to have a REST API or SOAP API. So in theory making an ipad app should be fairly straight forward. But thanks for the suggestion, its a great idea.

That's a common myth. HTML5 supports many features that let you run "web apps" offline. There is no technical reason why you would need an internet connection for Chrome OS but not for Windows CE.

The initial load of the necessary resources still requires a connection; it's not like offline Gmail just comes preinstalled with a cache of your messages...

Right, and neither does Windows CE. :) Chrome OS certainly does ship with apps preinstalled, just like Windows.

The point, though, is that a network connection is required to get the initial files and data to use for offline work. If you don't have that capability to do the initial load, you still can't demo an offline web app.

Just like you can't demo an iPhone app without having an internet connection to download it first! However, the iPhone, Windows CE, and Chrome OS ship with a number of apps preinstalled. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com