Does Windows 10X Solve the Chromebook Problem? (Premium)

With Windows 10X on the horizon, I’m wondering again whether Microsoft has solved the Chromebook problem. Does Windows 10X meet the needs of what we used to think of as an EdgeBook?

As you may recall, when Windows 10X was still called Windows Lite, it was thought to be a purely web-based platform, one that would be built on the new Chromium-based Edge, much in that way that Chrome OS is built on Google Chrome. The use of the word Windows in its name should have been a clue that that wasn’t the case, I guess. But there was a lot of evidence suggesting otherwise, including its user interface, which is very much modeled after the simpler Chrome OS, and not traditional Windows versions.

“Let’s think for a moment about what I’m calling the EdgeBook, a Chromebook-like laptop that is based on the new Edge,” I wrote almost a year ago. “With the new Chromium-based Edge, ... Microsoft has the basis of a system that can compete in the same part of the market in which Chromebooks are now seeing great success.”

That market is often misunderstood to include only education. But simpler personal computing platforms, especially Chrome OS, which provides a familiar desktop environment, can and should be successful across a wide spectrum of customers, including businesses and individuals. Who doesn’t like simpler?

Windows 10X answers the need for simpler, I think. The interface is crisp and concise, and it eliminates rarely used distractions and replaces the borderline useless Windows 10 Start menu with a more useful version that includes access to recent and most-often-used applications and documents. That’s smart and is long-overdue on “big” Windows, too.

Of course, the big advantage of Windows is compatibility. This should have been obvious, but Microsoft had to learn this lesson across a long string of failures that include Windows RT, Windows 10 S/S-mode, and Windows 10 on ARM. And so Windows 10X will provide (nearly) full compatibility with the applications and utilities (often provided as part of hardware peripheral driver packages) that its customers expect.

In this way, Windows 10X exceeds the capabilities of any Chromebook (or mythical EdgeBook) because it’s not just limited to web apps. Yes, Chromebooks can run Android apps, and that’s a plus. But it’s also a complexity because of application duplication and can be sub-optimal and because, with rare exceptions, there are no good Android applications tailored for larger-screen devices like tablets and Chromebooks. There was some thought that perhaps EdgeBook would run UWP apps in addition to web apps. But Windows 10X is even better.

Or, more properly, it should be. It’s not possible today to truly understand how good the compatibility and performance of Windows 10X is using just an emulator. That emulator inhibits performance, of course---honestly, it’s pretty terrible---but it also prevents you from signing-in to a Microsoft account and trying...