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Comment by madjam002 | Hacker News Reader

Seriously considering trying this with some of my family members. Windows 10 is such a user hostile OS especially to non-techie people that every time I look at their PC their documents have moved to some new OneDrive location or Edge has reinstalled itself.

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> Windows 10 is such a user hostile OS

That's a bit ironic. Microsoft is only trying desperately to do what Google has already succeeded at with ChromeOS - an OS with no browser choice designed solely to funnel user data to them for data mining and to promote their own services. At least Google are up front about it while Microsoft is trying to dark-pattern their way to the same position.

I think the problem here is expectations—with Windows, you know you’re getting a heavyweight legacy OS with backwards compatibility for everything. With Chrome OS, you have few expectations and assume it’s largely “just for browsing the web.”

I mean, exactly. Google are pretty up front about it, and actually for family members the last thing I want is browser choice. I just want to install an OS for them and forget about it, no nagware, no "it's been a while since you've used your device, do you want to refresh your settings" (I'm looking at you Firefox), no "we've just installed an update, here's 500 new settings to choose from", just turn it on and it works.

My dad picked one (edit: a Chromebook, that is) up a couple years ago, which I thought was great because most of their market is kids and old people (isn't it?) so it'd surely have great accessibility features, and as you note Windows has been getting more and more hostile since at least Win10 (which tricked one of my uncles into paying for OneDrive without even knowing what it was ["something I need to use the computer, I think?"], leaving him confused about where files were going).

Nope. Dunno if ChromeOS is subpar, or if Apple's just so far ahead that it's spoiled me, but Chrome OS' accessibility settings seemed pretty poor, and some of what they did have didn't work very well.

I tried chromebooks a while back and while the cost factor was significantly in favor of them, they fall down in a lot of areas.

With Apple Silicon 2020 MBAs they seem to support everything, are significantly faster/quieter/long battery and with discounts are reasonably priced - I'm recommending those for family and so far everyone has loved theirs.

I expect the hardware to last a long time - much like the 2010 MBA which lasted my dad 7+ years.

The target market for Chromebooks is as far as it can get for the privileged who can buy their kids and close ones latest macbooks, it's like suggesting some sort of sportscar instead of wolkswagen saying with good financing they are not that expensive to keep up.

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