or how the future is being 'Windows Proofed'

The one thing that you really need when teaching something to a group of children, students, adults, whoever, is to ensure that they are 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. Put less metaphorically, they all need to be accessing the same text book or work sheet during the lesson. If not chaos is sure to follow. Any teacher who has blithely asked a group to 'turn to page 22' only to find there are two versions of the text book in the class will know what I mean. If in an ICT context for example you are demonstrating the use of formulae in a spreadsheet or mail merge in a word processor/database with the aim of transferring these skills to the class, then this means everyone needs to be able to continue using the same spreadsheet/word processor.

And at this stage in the process I mean the very same product and the same version of that product. It does not matter in terms of teaching the principles of spreadsheet formulae which software you are using.

For most school-work on, say spreadsheets, MS Excel, OpenOffice Calc, or Gnumeric will do the job equally well, but it really does matter for any teaching or training scenario that everyone is using the same software. The need for the 'same hymn sheet' for teaching/training purposes simply will not go away... so it is the notion of the standard desktop that forms the basis of this post.

A Windows-Proofed Future, so no standard desktop there then..

Desktop PC sales have stalled world-wide, in schools they have more or less stopped the only area of real growth in any area but especially schools are sales of the new netbooks or mini-laptops.

A quick survey of current netbooks however reveals just how diverse is this early part of their evolution.

The list below sets the scene. All computers here have their own custom Linux OSes installed; some better than others.

EeePC:x86 CPU;
Dell Mini:Intel Atom CPU; 
InkMedia:Via C7 CPU;
HP mini:Via C7;
Elonex ONEt:32 bit RISC CPU;
Dium-Mandriva:64bit MIPS CPU.

You might get Windows XP working on a few these devices but in effect the future has been proofed against MS's products.

I mean, good grief, such a range would tax even the Debian nuts who are obsessed with platform compliance...Win CE anyone?

Why bring this up now? Well, way back when, thanks to Microsoft for a while we almost arrived at a standard, albeit a de facto standard, desktop in schools and this was of course good old Win 2000/XP -Office 2000-2003.

During this time (as it happened) most examination syllabuses were also created. Now understand this: schools would be very happy if stuff simply did not change. They had 'done' computing like they had 'done' chemistry (mostly late 19th century if you want to know) so small changes could be tolerated as 'modern' but not big ones. Schools now had ICT suites with standard desktops (thank you Norton Ghost), all was well.

Unfortunately IT business models require an upgrade cycle. Stuff cannot remain the same if vendors are to stay in business. If desktops PCs are not in vogue let's promote laptops as the future (so goes the marketing rhetoric). Thus.. no surprise..

The decline of the ICT suite

Recently that icon of modernity, the network room, has fallen out of popularity and many schools prefer to use laptops in the classroom (fools, you can't see what they are doing behind the 17” screens). The move to student laptops presents its own problems not least when schools want to specify which computers the students are allowed to use (sorry, BUY) and what software they run.

Thus the ICT suite standard is superseded by the personal laptop equivalent and which because you have started off down this route, will be superseded by the personal very cheap mini laptop. It's equivalent to letting a genie out of a bottle. The mini-linux laptops will destroy the de-facto XP desktop.

Baby with the Bathwater?

A desktop that can be standardised for corporate or pedagogical use remains not only desirable but in many cases essential. Therefore the question is 'how is this to be done in the future?'

There are ways to provide a standard desktop experience for the user, independent (within reason) of their hardware.

In order of ease of ease of achieving a standard:

1. The Web-Top desktop via a browser. A consistency no-brainer: Google Docs for example looks and feel much the same whether using a browser on any PC or netbook and don't get me started on Chrome.
2. PXE boot the user's computer to a server which will provide the desktop environment. Cooler than you think when you see 3D apps running on an EeePC acting as a thin-client.
3. External Boot (USB/CD/SDFlash) the computers into a standard desktop provided by the school. Hardware recognition magic as espoused by Mandriva's USB boot distros mean one key unlocks multiple hardware platforms with a consistent desktop experience.

So there are ways of getting a standard desktop other than going back to the brief reign of XP. To summarise the issues:

• Corporations and educational institutions have legitimate business and teaching imperatives that require a uniform desktop for its users.
• The days of the Win 2000/XP quasi standard are past and are not set to resume with Vista or Windows 7.
• A standard multi-platform UI will surely evolve to meet a real need. Cross-platform free, Open Source applications are set to dominate the 'local' software and Chrome mediated free 'web-tops' will dominate online. Pick your favorite technology from the three contenders.

One things is sure the existing model has to change. The meteor has struck.

I have become increasingly interested in what can only be described as the Windows XP effect. My previous two posts focussed on the idea that XP is, in the user's mind, the end of the upgrade journey and that even mighty Microsoft is struggling to budge them away from XP onto bigger and 'better' things.

I assert, and would expect little dissention, that change away from XP (voluntary change that is) wherein most users reside deep in their comfort zone, would need a really powerful driver. For arch conservative schools and public sector workplaces it will have to be a very good reason indeed.

This driving force will come from the Open Source community for one simple reason and that is here we find diversity. The winning strategy is lurking in the open source primordial soup waiting to reproduce rapidly and burst onto the scene we just don't know which it is yet. Corporate proprietary software programs, despite having access to huge talents and huge budgets, have 'strategic visions' and 'road-maps'. In short they plan and they fund accordingly; for them diversity is expensive, wasteful and often futile.

The Open Source community by virtue of its very core being has no plan!

Individual projects within the pantheon of Open Source software do of course have a plan. The OpenOffice project knows where it is going (for a while at least) as does, I presume, MySQL and even Java (is it Open Source now or not? I lose track). I have admittedly been a little disingenuous with my choices as all three above have one rather vast corporation in the background. Enterprise-level Open Source operating systems also have a plan just like any large corporate product, Novell's Suse and Red Hat Enterprise being obvious examples.

However, non-enterprise Open Source projects number in their thousands and reflect the interests and passions of their developer or group of developers. Projects start in one direction and may fork in another. Some die out others flourish. Taken in the round though no statement can be made about their 'direction'.

The above brings me to the point of this article, and that point the great corporation known as Google. Google has, as is well known, always fished in the Open Source pond. They have it seems followed a natural selection model assiduously. They feed the fish randomly it seems using their vast wealth and then select promising and sometimes unexpected products. As a result they now have a suite of very impressive online and offline applications the latest is the Open Source application, the browser called Chrome.

Google's Chrome Plated Genius

As discussed above, a driver for change will have to be found to wean off the XP users who after all are in the vast majority of computer users.

If it were to be a new computer to bring about change, this machine most manufacturers seem to agree, would be nicer looking, quieter, less power hungry, and a lot faster at everything than the machines they are asking the consumer to replace. I happen to think that the latter point is very significant and that Open Source software has the means to speed up computing. The basket of changes above may be enough to encourage users to move from XP and their old desktops but Google has had a better idea.

Chrome is a very fast browser as I suppose most readers know full well by now. Fast is obvious and desirable and a good enough reason to slip Chrome onto your Windows desktop, it only takes a few seconds. Don't be afraid.

But the real cleverness follows.

Chrome allows you to create menu icons for online applications which look and behave like regular apps, no sign of the browser shell. It is better to think of Chrome as a shell OS. Install Chrome on your user-comfort zone XP computer and let it take over. With a decent Internet connection you'll soon be using a faster machine that is really an Open Source computer sitting on top of a slave OS. Google have borrowed from biology again this time it's looking at the parasite strategy.

This parasite is smart too. Chrome helpfully tells Google (in confidence of course) what kind of things you like so it can be improved and because it is Open Source anyone can help improve it too. This is truly new. Chrome will rapidly evolve and adapt to its user, hosted by an increasing vestigial operating system. That is really clever, maybe I should have called the post 'Chrome eats Windows'. Chrome will put a shiny hard coat on rusting mild steel Windows, one day all that will be left is the coat.

As a strategy for change this I think is breathtaking. What then is left for Linux (or Mac) , does the same fate await Linux on the desktop? I think so, at least for the big beasts, all the computer will want is an ultra light, ultra fast operating system with a few choice offline applications that can sync with online when needed to. Maybe this is what happened to the dinosaurs.