#IE9 on #WP7 is code complete, but is Mango done?

I don't often get to write one of those stories that gets picked up everywhere because I don't often break news, but sometimes it happens and this is one of them: at Teched, Joe Marini of the IE on Windows Phone team told me IE9 for WP7 is code complete and I covered the details for TechRadar: It's faster and it's almost finished - but it still won't have Flash. I've been under the weather with a cold and back problems (I coughed so hard I put my back out; it's almost funny except it hurts) and Maker Faire meetings, so it was a surprise when @sbisson mentioned that my story was getting referenced on lots of sites. Scoop! ;-)

Several of them use it as evidence to speculate that whatever gets announced at the Mango press conference tomorrow, it won't be shipping finished code. I completely agree; not only did Marini tell me they're working on debug and performance. but in an interview I did with Paul Bryan about the business features in Mango that will be on ZDNet UK soon he mentioned that both the Lync features and the UI for conversation view were still under development last week. The Windows Phone team code fast - but not that fast. My opinion? Mango is feature locked and we'll get details of everything in it, dates for the rollout of updates to operators and a beta SDK for dvelopers with an emulator that gets updated once the code is more finished.

Why firms will take a shine to Chromebooks - or not

I'm fascinated by the reactions to Google's Chromebooks: lots of people who would scream blue murder if you put a thin client on their desk are delighted at the idea of an even thinner client as long as it looks like a laptop and lets them browse the Web (wait till their IT team locks down the sites they can browse with the usual firewall controls to see if they're still keen). I've already said that Chromebooks are a wakeup call to the Windows team to remove complexity, and my interview with Google's Rajen Sheth is up on ZDNet now and getting lots of comments. I've blogged some extra details on Chromebooks for business there too (like - can I cancel after six months?).

I'm not going to reprise my thoughts that the cheaper TCO Google claims also applies to Windows when you do the same desktop management or that adding another platform with no third-party integrated management tools doesn't necessarily reduce management costs overall (now you have users in both Chrome config and Active Directory to deal with separately). Instead I'll speculate wildly about why the Chromebooks are Atom and not ARM processors. Obviously Intel loves it - it emboldened Renee James to make some wildly inaccurate attacks on Windows 8 on ARM that Microsoft shot out of the sky - and I suspect you need the Intel processors to get Flash running at a decent speed along with the rest of Chrome. But mainly it means Samsung and Acer don't have to eat the cost of tooling to set up a new line to make boxes that may or not sell; they can just bang out a standard PC motherboard and laptop chassis and let Google worry about drivers and making a true netbook not look like a chocolate teapot when you don't have the bandwidth or battery to be online (on ARM tablets it's the screen that uses the majority of power, on a PC the Wi-Fi is a bigger consumer - I've yet to discover what uses most power on a Chromebook). Until every Web app I want to use works offline, Chromebooks won't be useful disconnected, so everyone should finally get offline Gmail.

My tweets

• Tue, 00:56: RT @DavidBrin1: The only way our civilization has ever matured is by taking on the challenges of grown-up responsibility.
• Tue, 05:03: Found radio stations full of Glee songs sorry oldies for the drive to Santa Barbara, plus cherries, iced latte and @sbisson awesome brownies
• Tue, 08:04: interesting - and very practical, down to earth - view of working at Microsoft, Google and then Microsoft http://bit.ly/iLlhD9
• Tue, 08:45: #IE9 on #WP7 is code complete, but is Mango done? http://j.mp/jqifrI
• Tue, 09:20: Why firms will take a shine to Chromebooks - or not http://j.mp/jh2J4h
• Tue, 10:44: Chromebooks for business: more details http://bit.ly/mzs9Zs #zdnetuk