Chromebook

I'm intrigued by these. Google is showing some dedication continuing to iterate and refine the chromebook lineup with these periodic releases.

It'd be a great solution for a budget-minded college student or tech-challenged family member. Kind of like an iPad that can actually be used for getting things done, simplicity.

And if not, just install linux.
 
Ah, Chrome OS; the project which never fails to fill me with...what's midway between disappointment and rage?

Disappointment, because it brings nothing to the table which couldn't be done just as well by any other, more fully-featured OS -- and at a lower price point, thanks to sales volume. Because, in the absence of a network connection, it's largely a brick.

Rage, because every man-hour spent on this could have been spent polishing the suck off of Android instead. I'm convinced that if the devs hadn't been split between these projects, Android could have had decent platform-differentiated UIs (phone/tablet/notebook) a year before the Honeycomb cul-de-sac fiasco. Chrome could have been ported to ARM much earlier, as well.

This is the project that proves to me that Google is a disorganized collection of teams of geeks, rather than a well-managed company. (Thus, why I give them so much benefit of the doubt when it comes to privacy screwups.) Otherwise, management would have given Chrome OS the axe, given relative market penetration. We're getting 1.3 million Android activations a day; by contrast, I've never actually seen a Chromebook in the wild.

As for this specific hardware, I'm not impressed. With the exception of the specific SoC, we should have had this back in 2009. I pined for ARM-based netbooks back when Intel's Atom was an under-performing power-sink. Now...meh. Atoms are TDP-competitive with mobile SoCs, and the netbook -- as a distinct platform -- is dead. And: only 6.5 hours of battery life? Why? A well-designed ARM mainboard can be barely bigger than a stick of gum. The base of that thing should be nothing but battery.

The only thing that interests me is how Samsung managed to squeeze a 2-year, 100mb/month plan out Verizon for roughly $60. Samsung must have convinced them that most would upgrade to more costly data plans -- kudos to them for that bit of slight of hand.
 
It's meant for the cloud. The cloud is nice. The cloud is useful. The cloud isn't where I'm going to keep things. I'll merely store copies there, making the Chromebook ineffective for me as someone that prefers the cloud for backups more than anything.

My phone and tablet have better offline capabilities.
 
XenIneX said:
Ah, Chrome OS; the project which never fails to fill me with...what's midway between disappointment and rage?

Disappointment, because it brings nothing to the table which couldn't be done just as well by any other, more fully-featured OS -- and at a lower price point, thanks to sales volume. Because, in the absence of a network connection, it's largely a brick.
Click to expand...

And Android tablet with keyboard will run you about $550 (ASUS TF300 with keyboard dock). You can find Windows laptops for $250, but they are usually fat chunky sucky machines with terrible batteries. If you desire something light, portable, well built for $250, I doubt much is going to compare with this.

XenIneX said:
Rage, because every man-hour spent on this could have been spent polishing the suck off of Android instead. I'm convinced that if the devs hadn't been split between these projects, Android could have had decent platform-differentiated UIs (phone/tablet/notebook) a year before the Honeycomb cul-de-sac fiasco. Chrome could have been ported to ARM much earlier, as well.
Click to expand...

I don't think Android's development is being held back by a lack of resources at Google.

XenIneX said:
This is the project that proves to me that Google is a disorganized collection of teams of geeks, rather than a well-managed company. (Thus, why I give them so much benefit of the doubt when it comes to privacy screwups.) Otherwise, management would have given Chrome OS the axe, given relative market penetration. We're getting 1.3 million Android activations a day; by contrast, I've never actually seen a Chromebook in the wild.
Click to expand...

I like that Google tries new things and takes risks.

XenIneX said:
As for this specific hardware, I'm not impressed. With the exception of the specific SoC, we should have had this back in 2009. I pined for ARM-based netbooks back when Intel's Atom was an under-performing power-sink. Now...meh. Atoms are TDP-competitive with mobile SoCs, and the netbook -- as a distinct platform -- is dead. And: only 6.5 hours of battery life? Why? A well-designed ARM mainboard can be barely bigger than a stick of gum. The base of that thing should be nothing but battery.
Click to expand...

This thing is almost and light as a 11 inch Macbook Air, hands on reviews say the build quality is pretty good, and it only costs $250. The 6.5 hour battery is slightly disappointing, but I imagine keeping it light was thin was the goal. I saw the netbooks from 2 years ago, this looks way better.

XenIneX said:
The only thing that interests me is how Samsung managed to squeeze a 2-year, 100mb/month plan out Verizon for roughly $60. Samsung must have convinced them that most would upgrade to more costly data plans -- kudos to them for that bit of slight of hand.
Click to expand...

It's okay, 2.4GB of data (over the 2 years) for $60 isn't really great. Doubt they had to twist Verizon's arm to hard for that deal.


I think this is a very interesting laptop for someone that is okay with a cloud based OS. I admit I'm kinda uncertain about why Chrome OS exists when their is Android. But the hardware looks pretty nice, I particularly like the thin and light size of it. For only $250 I'm considering picking one up and seeing if Chrome OS is worth it.

I think using the RDP client and remoteing to my desktop from this light laptop might be a good use for it.
 
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These look really cool may have to pick one up

Any1 have experience with chrome os?

And do you think you can boot windows 7 on it?
 
I think for someone that wants an inexpensive, simple device for general internet use at home this is pretty cool.
 
Mike Hawk said:
Any1 have experience with chrome os?
Click to expand...

I still have my CR-48 that Google sent me ages ago. When I first got the thing, it was great. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was basically just the Chrome web browser, a handful of web apps, and thats it. It was quick for what it was meant to do... and the battery lasted for about 9 hours, which was pretty damn nice.

Then, a few months ago, Google pushed an update to my device that changed everything. This update came with Aura... which comes with a task bar, app launcher, etc... basically a neutered desktop. Honestly, I don't even understand it. I mean, every single "app" is a web app, so every single icon does the same thing... it launches Chrome. But now you've got windows and shit like that, where as before it was just one instance of Chrome and that was that. Now you've got all this bullshit running behind the scenes.

Now, maybe it was just that this update wasn't really properly tested on the CR-48, but it basically rendered the thing unusable. It made it so unbelievably slow that you could barely accomplish anything. That is... on the handful of times I can actually get the thing to boot. Usually it gets stuck at the boot screen, or the stupid sad face, or whatever. I've even run the recovery, twice now... works for a day or two then all goes to shit again.

So... bottom line is... ChromeOS was awesome until they decided to make it more windows like. YMMV, the hardware I'm using likely plays a big roll, but still... with the experience I had, it's not something I'd sink money into.
 
^^ sounds like your chromebook is broken. Don't blame chromeos for that
 
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