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A comment on Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then locks the server. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by matthewfcarlson on Monday March 02, 2026 @03:24PM (#47223563)
It's interesting to me as well as an ex-microsofter who worked on surface devices. Leadership (at least below the VP level) knew they were getting killed by Chromebooks and tried a few times to get a low cost device (Surface Go 1/2 for example) that ran a slimmed down version of windows (Windows S?). It tries to be more like chrome OS (hard to mess up, easy to flatten and restore a fresh OS on) but kind of just throws away the things you would pick windows for in the first place (legacy app compatibility) to be not bad at the thing Chromebooks are good at.

That said, I don't believe the Chromebook lock-in. It's just chrome and the web, which you can get on literally almost every laptop/pc sold today. Should Microsoft be concerned that you don't need windows as more and more things move onto the web? Absolutely. They should be doubling down hard on the gaming ecosystem (which atm still requires windows for certain games) as their hold is eroding week by week.

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Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by medi8r on Monday March 02, 2026 @03:55PM (#47223929)
I think Windows was a pretty good desktop environment circa. Windows 7. Hardware compatability and just working are huge. If they can get an independent M4 competitor from AMD etc. you would have a compelling reason to switch from Mac (for Joe Average user).

Step 1 get rid of adware

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Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by Manuel_D on Monday March 02, 2026 @07:46PM (#47226414)
There's a growing set of ARM windows laptops that might bite into the Chromebook market. The surface laptop 7 is pretty nice and comes in both large(ish) 15 inch and small 13.8 inch form factors.
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Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by hypercube33 on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @06:06AM (#47230776)
All of the ARM laptops are priced as premium business models in the $900-1700 range and kind of fall down in that space - Qualcomm until recently even refused to release any drivers to anyone not a developer partner and it's honestly still not even close to consumer/business friendly. The hardware is capable of doing what people need the culture around it is just not aligned.

Also it's a joke to run OpenGL on Windows ARM (it fully works just no one makes it anything easy)

My x13s laptop can almost run A tier games without a fan which is impressive but it really feels disconnected and unsupported from all parties making these laptops.

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Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by wasfgwp on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @08:53AM (#47232317)
I think there is almost zero overlap between the premium laptop market (Surface laptop) and Chromebooks.
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Re:Microsoft bans the word "Microslop" on its Discord, then ... by lproven on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @07:28AM (#47231372)
> kind of just throws away the things you would pick windows for in the first place

I'd be interested to see a legacy-free Windows, stripped out like LTSC, with no 32-bit binary support. Especially an Arm64 version with no x86 binary support.

How lean and mean could it be in the 2020s?

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