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Friday, September 20, 2013

Is the Chromebook the new little tramp?

Do many remember the disdainful way IBM "branded" its PC upon its initial entry into the giant firm's product line? It's Apple II killer machine? This image:

photo credit

Related Stuff: here and here.

It took DEC down, Ken Olson saying as his ship sank, that going down with it he would not "obsolete" the VAX.

The thin appliance, the cloud access device, SUN had that imagination, but did not sell it cheap enough with a known consumer image and presence, technology and the market being what it was.

The IBM PC. Powered by an 8-bit Intel chip while Motorola had a 16-bit chip that it marketed differently than aiming for the desktop. The 286, and 386. Microsoft getting lucky by getting the product's OS, reasons now being murky and mired in history of a time when IBM was so big it had antitrust dyspepsia. Stories abound about Gates' gateway to nation's wealthiest, being as widely circulated as his speeding mugshot.

Well, Intel is Intel, and Wintel was an invented word, without any single firm so named.

Now, e.g., this, this, this and this.

Google has its Android presence in the smartphone arena, and its Chrome browser, now distanced from WebKit. And the Chrome OS, a stripped down Linux powering its line of low price Chromebooks.

Will it sell? Same question as with the IBM PC. Perhaps. Perhaps not.