Chromebook questions

tuna said:
If there is one thing Google has, its corporate money. Also, remember the first Macbook Air? Pretty crappy and expensive. Now? Very desirable and good value for money.
Click to expand...

Sorta true. At least it was still running OSX and thus could, in theory, run anything a person could run on their Mac desktop, iBook, or MacBook.

This, "thing?" Well, you can browse the web and run web apps. Woohoo, for 1300-1500 USD. One of the biggest tech rip-offs currently in existence, IMO.

Regards,
SB
 
zed said:
true, though the screen will be worse.
Click to expand...
Of course it will, but you don't really need $1400's worth of screen just to surf the web and do some basic fiddling in web-based programs do you? Put the price difference in some more important hole such as the house mortgage, or invest it in a retirement fund perhaps. It'll be better spent there than in a very expensive laptop that has a calculated life expectancy of only 3 years.
 
To be fair it doesn't have a life expectancy of 3 years. It's just that after 3 years you'll have to pay Google money yearly in order to keep the amount of storage that it comes with for those first 3 years.

Regards,
SB
 
Grall said:
Of course it will, but you don't really need $1400's worth of screen just to surf the web and do some basic fiddling in web-based programs do you?
Click to expand...

I do not need it, but I want it. Also, you can install your favorite Linux distro if you do not like Chrome.
 
Like he said, it's meant for people with too much money.

Chromeos on a 250$ machine is great. On a 1300$ machine it's a liability.

You can install a real distro on a rMBP as well. You'll get much better hw for the same price.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
You can still get a far far more capable MacBook Pro for a similar amount of money. I'm assuming you can stick a Linux distro on it.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd actually recommend a MacBook Pro. :p

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

Not with cloud saves. And not with the same format screen.
 
Er, yeah, I noted that previously. 2560x1600 versus 2560x1700.

Silent_Buddha said:
For almost the same price (1499 USD versus 1449 USD) you can get a 13" MacBook Pro with...

2560x1600 display compared to 2560x1700 on the Chromebook.
2.5 GHz Core i5 versus a 1.8 GHz Core i5.
8 GB of memory compared to 4 GB
128 GB SSD compared to 64 GB of SSD? soldered on Flash? EMMC?
7 hours claimed battery life compared to 5 hours claimed battery life.
Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports compared to USB 2.0 ports.
--snip bit about OS since we're talking about putting Linux on it--

On the plus side the Chromebook at that price level comes with LTE. :p

I never though I'd ever see something that makes a Mac look like a bargain, but Google has gone out and made a MacBook Pro look affordable. :p

The 15" MB Pro is more expensive but then you also get even better stuff. More resolution, better CPU, more SSD space, etc.

Of course, you could always save 150 USD by dropping down to 32 GB of flash memory and no LTE on the Chromebook. But that still doesn't make it a better deal than just getting a MacBook Pro, IMO.
Click to expand...

Then again, perhaps the faster CPU, more memory, more storage space, better battery life, and USB 3.0 aren't worth that extra 6.25% screen space?

Regards,
SB
 
I know slashdot geeks are constantly bitching about laptop resolutions.
Hardware specs are totally irrelevant when you want to display a lot of text, code, or read PDF, schematics, and running many terminals on multiple remote machines plus the local one.

So I think this Chromebook will be a huge hit actually and the wrong thing with it (high price) is easily understood if you consider the display is maybe half the cost.
If I have to bitch about it, it's for copying things that are wrong on Apple laptops. Missing keys on the keyboard, and no wired ethernet make it a less useful laptop (if you run it from a place that has a fibre net connection, you may run into your wifi bandwith being lower than your internet bandwith. and slower than fast NAS storage)

I'm also not pleased by the reviews I've read so far (including the long one from engadget) as they don't mention hardware except what you can experience on the surface and what specs from a press release would already tell you. Can you add a stick of memory? Is the SSD an mSATA one, trivially swapped? (or even removed). Is there a mini PCIe slot, so you can add a modem back in or something else? Is the battery user serviceable, even unofficially?
 
I don't really see the point of having a high spec hardware when you are supposed to run everything from a browser, leaving you with a huge brick if you see yourself without internet connection.

What i don't really understand is why Google has not tested the waters with some kind of Android Laptop, considering that the OS is highly customizable, is highly functional if you don't have internet access, and there are thousands of apps out there that would work natively, even though they would look atrocious considering the screen resolution for which those apps where originally designed for.
 
You've left javascript from your list, it's the worst offender. Streaming video can be decoded by a hardware DSP and java is actually quite fast (when you're not waiting for the VM to load), this leaves flash as a CPU pig, and javascript + html5 + CSS is the same or worse - it's funny how it's easier to play Quake 3 at 150 fps than to run a javascript Doom at 30fps.
 
Angelcurio said:
I don't really see the point of having a high spec hardware when you are supposed to run everything from a browser, leaving you with a huge brick if you see yourself without internet connection.

What i don't really understand is why Google has not tested the waters with some kind of Android Laptop, considering that the OS is highly customizable, is highly functional if you don't have internet access, and there are thousands of apps out there that would work natively, even though they would look atrocious considering the screen resolution for which those apps where originally designed for.
Click to expand...

Have you tested a Chromebook?
 
It's just a PC, feel free to run Mint or PC-BSD 9.1 or whatever.
There's Android-x86 too but it feels like a work in progress (with images for specific computers because it seems Android is meant to be baked with a specific device in mind - kernel, drivers etc. each time?)

That's if you want to run a cell phone OS on a laptop. I have no idea why you would want to do that. The only use case for a laptop I know of is an outdated version for ultra slow ARM netbooks with a 7" display and 128MB memory / 2GB flash, because it beats an old Windows CE with no apps. Have fun running your fart apps with a trackpad.
 
@ angelcuro - I don't know if you're aware but with chrome and I assume chrome os u don't need internet access when you've installed an app. Eg one PC of mine hasn't been connected to the internet in over a year. But all the apps work. Try it yourself. Download chrome & install some programs disable internet
 
"Naysayers be damned: Why I bought a Chromebook Pixel"

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/28/naysayers-be-damned-why-i-bought-a-chromebook-pixel/

Very interesting review. I see myself buying a Chromebook before too long after a bit of experience with my wife's new 15" HP Win8 laptop. I'm so used to running Chromium & Joli OS on my laptop that I don' think I could ever go back to Windows. Windows just feels so bloated & slow. This is coming from somebody that actually likes the Metro design.

Anyway, what was interesting about the review was finding out that somebody has created some scripts that allow you to run Linux simultaneously with ChromeOS & it's just a keyboard shortcut away. No dual booting & all native. Pretty damn cool. Check out the video here...

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/05/video-chromebook-pixel-running-chrome-os-and-linux-simultaneously/

BTW, I can understand some the elitism in this forum toward a browser OS, but I personally don't think any of you have seriously tried to run it as your only OS. I have & I can't ever see myself going back to Windows. Maybe we should have say a monthly challenge where you run everything from a browser either via ChromeOS/ChromiumOS, Joli OS or whatever browser of your choice. I bet many of you would be surprised at what you'll discover.

Tommy McClain
 
I'd buy a MacBook pro with retina display before I'd buy the Chromebook Pixel. And put Linux on it. Well, that's assuming anyone could convince me to ever run Linux again. After trying it again for the 10th time a couple years back, I swore never to let myself go into that world of pain again.

Regards,
SB
 
AzBat said:
I bet many of you would be surprised at what you'll discover.
Click to expand...
Yeah surprised, if all one needs to do for an entire month is simple office-type jobs, text editing, maybe basic photo editing, PDF creation maybe and so on.

Also, last I checked, most serious (IE, non-facebook-type) games except Doom and Unreal Tournament don't run in a browser. Bit of a bummer that, considering the hardware in a chromebook pixel.

Has anyone experimented with trying to install another OS on a pixel yet, is it even possible or is the firmware too custom for that to work?
 
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