All verizon iphones are unlocked by default, the rest of the carriers in the US can be unlocked, but they need to unlock it for you..

You are far more technical than most, and know proper procedures on what to do, and how to save your data. I've fixed way too many computers that crashed from something they installed, and they just lost 10 years of data and photos because they did not know what they are doing, this is where chrome shines, those users will no longer lose the photos of their kids growing up, or notes, you would be the 10% of users.

Gsuite has pivot tables, and works the same on any computer, so if someone wants to work at home, they install chrome, sign in and are on. Microsoft, bit more complex, and does not change if they have a mac or windows, and works the same, unlike office, where macros usually do not work on mac, and also excel is not multi-threaded on macos, so it is slower, then if one opens the file on a iphone or android, then there is a good chance it will screw it up, plus end up using a lot more data, plus with google once I kill the account they lose access to the data, office with one drive, usually keeps a copy on the computer, heck even with drive file stream (which is something m$ should have done first) it doesn't make a copy that can be access without the login for a period of time, which helps with data control

Feature parity is also different, so the desktop of 2016 supports different stuff than 2013, or 2010, or the web, or mobile.. Just across the board not sure what will work or what won't work.. At least with google I know it will work the same no matter what they are on.

So the biggest drawback for corporate users is really just learning how to do something a little differently, which is usually the biggest challenge.

Going the google way has given my company a advantage that others do not have, and has helped with growth beyond what any of us expected, my construction workers can use the stuff easily, if they trash it, it isn't 3 hours of re-setup, and their kids can't install all their crap on them. Simple, and easy, now to the point that the guy that can push the power switch, has more information available to them than the builders that are using the m$ solutions which end up being way more complex than turn on and search.

Using the right tool for the job, and not the tool that everyone else uses out of old habits, can be a good thing.

Big boy stuff? lol like what? 90% of people use it for lists, then there is 10% of users that use it as a front end to avoid learning how to make a real program to do the job right, then cross compatibility with other devices. usually dies once they leave the office, unless using rdp, but even then still sucks unless they have a solid internet connection, and ends up being 5-7 steps to login to the network from there, which is great for network admins and more advanced users, but for most it becomes too complicated and they end up just bringing paper with them, and if that doesn't kill the functionality of excel or word, the next update will.

Chrome is clearly a joke, it is in most schools, 60% of people use it in the world, this joke of a laptop is now becoming a thorn in m$ side.. Clearly it's dumb.

And just how many times does windows call home to let them know what the user is doing? Privacy is dead. want privacy, run linux, even then, if one lives in society and does anything normal, then they are being tracked somehow.. Sadly a piece of tape over the camera won't make it go away.

My cdw rep has told me that people are jumping ship from office 365 to gsuite in droves,, they are tired of not being able to use outlook for a week at a time, so the enterprise is going way too.

if i had the mod points I'd raise you.. This.. you get it..

Freedom is amazing for those that know what it is, unfortunately most do not, or linux would be king of the desktop, sadly most people are challenged by copy and paste, so something like chromeos while simple, becomes an appliance for them like a blender, turn it on, make a smoothie and turn it off, they don't care about all the small details, just that they can check their banking, email and facebook.

No one can screw up as much as microsoft, they've lost almost every market that they started.

No one likes windows or trust microsoft, they tolerate it and use it because it's what the habit is, but overall, windows sucks, and is the old man that just won't die. Microsoft knows this, google knows this, and apple knows this. That's why microsoft is doubling down on subscriptions for every stupid thing, keep the money coming in as long as they can, and developing for other platforms, it may take another decade, but windows is on the way out for the home user, and the corporate world after that.

Want to go see why, head to a store, and you will find at least 1 windows computer with some warning about anti-virus, firewall, or some upsell, back in the day when computers were just for techs that was fine, but now they need to be a appliance, who would buy a car that came with a big warning sign on it.

Go to amazon read the chromebook reviews, then read the windows reviews.. It goes something like this, chromebook- turned it on and went to work.. Windows goes like this, after I got it, I spent a hour uninstalling a bunch of crap, then had to free up some space since someone thought 32gb was enough for it, after that, bought office, then a anti-virus, and after about 3 hours and 200 bucks more, ready to use the machine, just to find out it isn't fast, and runs facebook games slow, but hey it's better than chrome somehow?

Look at windows 10, every update breaks something, the UI is a mix of new stuff and stuff from windows 3.1. hell there are 2 control panels, and a people app that is totally useless for the most part.

Office 365 is heavy, onedrive sucks, does foreground syncs of files coming from onedrive, which takes 20-40 seconds on even the best hardware and internet, messes up excel files 25% of the time, sharepoint is down almost every day, and for some reason in the day of more data, they are the only one that for some reason reduces the amount of space people can get.

Oh then they go through and do a microsoft sam assessment every 2 years which isn't a audit, its more of a shake down to make sure that everything is purchased which is fine I guess, but when one is spending 40-50k a year like my company does with them, then get audited like dude.. F off, it really pushes me to go with alternatives which I already have, I am tired of having to pay for a product 2-3x (licencing plus cals, plus other hidden charges)

Microsoft is the only tech company that I've ever seen start off with some amazing products, were the first with most, but because they love to add 1000 features without polishing any of them, end up losing. For some reason they seem to think that having tons of features is more important than the user experience. I loved the spot watch, used one of their first mobile phones, they lost both markets, I saw the surface table at ces which I thought was amazing, then they come out with some small tablet, with the cheapest ssd they could buy (I had the highest of the surface book pro's and the ssd sucks) and then the cloth that they put on on the surface pro, that looks nice but ends up being dirty as poop, make a great ergonomic keyboard that is bluetooth only so if one is not in the os, then i need to plug in another keyboard just to get past the push f1 to boot.

Windows is like taking a 18 wheeler to 7-11 for milk, chromeos is like taking a car with a automatic transmission.. People just want to get on do their thing, turn it off and go, not mess with updates and a bunch of other crap for 2 hours.

Chromeos is the future, and now with linux support and having all the kids coming out of school into the workforce trained on it, will ensure that each and every chromebook is a threat to microsoft, there will be fringe cases, maybe 10% of people still holding onto one, but even now, I read somewhere that if one took all the smartphones, tablets and any other devices that connect to the internet in consideration windows is around 13% of the market. It just works..

Much like radio stations that now have censorship, no one is forcing anyone to use google, if you do not like them, change your service.

If you are so afraid that some data may get out there, don't use it.. Roll your own servers, and provide your own stuff. Anything and everything that google does is optional to use. There are plenty of other video sites, they may not have as much as youtube, but they are out there.

The amount of money needed to keep a company like google going is huge. Hell just the other day 8 million people watched live a video online in HD for almost 3 hours. Name another site on the net that could do that kind of traffic? Gmail has almost 500 million users.

Google provides a great product, and they are unifying everything across the board, I for one love all the unification. Why fragment everything?

If google burns me, somehow, then I can go switch to other services, run a maemo phone, start developing my own stuff and there you go.

Both microsoft and apple also have similar privacy policies, so if you are going with the big 3, and have privacy concerns then you will be missing out on what is going on in the world today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3PGbF87hNw

They nailed this one.

Part of the issue is apple charges so much more for their hardware, but sells it at the same price as the android OEM pricepoint. The carrier data costing more is just pure greed from the carries, the subsidizing of hardware is a apple being greedy issue.

Apple probably does what they do with everything else, which is, if you want to sell to our customers, then you the (carrier, developer, book publisher) whomever are going to take the hit, and like it, you cannot sell our product higher than your competitor, even if they aren't asking for their cut. Ex a app on the ios market cannot cost more than android, even though apple is taking more of the developers cut. The same thing happens with the phone. Apple is charging the carrier lets say 400-600 bucks for the phone, where samsung, htc, motorola, or whomever is charging them 100-300 (using rough numbers), but the carrier is selling them both at $199 or $299, so the carrier is covering a larger part of apple's chunk and not passing the difference off to the consumers, then raising everyone's price to pay for apple's bank account padding, then tells the carrier, if you want our phone, it can't be priced more than the phone that you are buying for 1/2 the price, or we won't sell to you, hence the bullying.