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ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions. It's far from usele

ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions. It's far from useless. The update system on Chrome is wonderful, in that it just happens. No strange dialog boxes, popup messages or confusing options for the computer-illiterate. It just goes ahead and does it. A power user might not like that, but it is a great system for a huge userbase. How many insecure ChromeOS devices are there out there? Very few, I'd expect. Not many other operating systems can claim this.

zensavona 11y ago
Why doesn't anyone buy them then?
- mehrdada 11y ago
  In the last couple years at least, Chromebooks have often topped Amazon best-sellers. Technically, a lot of people buy them. It's just that compared to mobile devices, laptops as a whole are a small category. Admittedly, most Chromebooks are bought because they are inexpensive (what virtually no one buys is Chromebook Pixel, which I have never seen outside Google except the ones folks got for free at I/O).
  - scholia 11y ago
    I suspect that's a factor of there being very few models. A Windows laptop that sells millions is probably available in 20 versions, each of which is counted separately. Try searching for the current Amazon.com best seller in laptops, the Toshiba Satellite C55.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    That is an US phenomenon. The only place I saw them in Europe was garage/discount sales trying to get rid of them.
- yoran 11y ago
  They're very popular in education (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2015/05/sixty_percent_of_us_chromebook_sales_are_for_education.html http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2015/05/sixty_...). Mainly because they are inexpensive, a lot more versatile and better suited than iPads, the previous hype in education (see for instance the LA iPad debacle http://www.wired.com/2015/05/los-angeles-edtech/ http://www.wired.com/2015/05/los-angeles-edtech/). Also, many schools are already using Google services: Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and now Google Classroom is becoming huge.
  - MattSteelblade 11y ago
    Not that I agree with their use in education, but "a lot more versatile"? I can't think of anything that a chromebook can do that the iPad can't but I can vice versa. The only advantage I see to a chromebook is a built-in keyboard (and price)
    - kps 11y ago
      Apparently (I don't work in that space) it's very useful to system administrators that Chromebooks are essentially stateless and fungible.
    - mintplant 11y ago
      A built-in keyboard is huge for the classroom. Chromebooks in classrooms end up being used largely for written work (typing long essays, creating presentations, etc.) that an iPad is less amenable to than a laptop.
      - nsgi 11y ago
        iPads can use external keyboards, though.
        npunt 11y ago
        Another thing to break or to lose, and to charge, and it adds to the cost. A $200 chromebook blows away a $600 ipad+keyboard combo for majority of education purposes. Google also has much better deployment & operations for devices & apps. Source: I know lots of people who deploy and manage these in schools.
- irascible 11y ago
  I have a 150$ chrome book and it fucking rocks. Does everything I need to do on the web, and I can do javascript/webgl dev on the road.. battery lasts FORever... really amazing machines. I made a computer illiterate friend get one because I was sick of doing tech support for his windows Lappie and he loves it, and has had zero probs with it.. the only time he's called me with a problem with it was when he was trying to some fucking exe to win a free ipod. CHROME os rocks.
  - ohitsdom 11y ago
    What application(s) do you use for development on the Chromebook?
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      This is all you need: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
    - geofft 11y ago
      For me? SSH and a VPS. I don't need whatever random crap I decide to `wget && tar x && ./configure` to have any risk of infecting my browser session. And I can keep my VPS up-to-date just by getting a new one from The Cloud every so often, and it comes out way cheaper than buying a beefy developer laptop periodically. I've had the same, low-end Chromebook for almost two years now and barely feel any need to upgrade it.
      - voltagex_ 11y ago
        I did this for a while, except my thin client was an X1 Carbon (!) Have you calculated how much it's costing you? I ended up scripting up a way to find the cheapest Spot Instance price from Amazon for whatever workload I needed - if I was doing builds I wanted the 8 core machines (c4.2xlarge?). They're ~11c an hour as a Spot Instance, although it's 3x the amount for a Windows instance, and I'd be pushed out of the market if everyone started doing this. I think I was averaging a couple of dollars a day, so I suppose it comes out in favour of using AWS all the time.
- irascible 11y ago
  People don't buy them because people are fucking stupid. Hell, in honor of this thread I'm gonna go buy another chrome book TODAY.
- joosters 11y ago
  Amazon's best-selling laptop is currently a chromebook.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    I think most of what that means is that Amazon isn't a first-party seller of MacBooks. (You can buy MacBooks on Amazon but I believe those are all third-party sellers.)
    - h1940624 11y ago
      And other laptop companies release tons of slightly differing models.
cwyers 11y ago
> ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. That's damning with faint praise, isn't it? It can, at this point, do MOST of what an everyday Internet user might want? It's that whole 80/20 thing that everyone thought would let somebody overthrow Microsoft Office -- 80% of users only use 20% of the features. Well that's true and all, but it's not the same 20% for everyone, and you only have to miss one feature to make a Chromebook an untenable alternative to a Windows machine. There was a brief window where Chromebooks were significantly cheaper than a comparable Windows laptop but Intel took the ARM threat seriously, Microsoft took the licensing seriously and now the base Chromebook price from a name manufacturer isn't significantly cheaper than the HP Stream or what have you. "Most" is not going to cut it now that the price advantage is gone. > There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions. This is really only true in that we live on a planet with many, many lots of people, and so you can find lots of people for which almost anything holds true if you funnel it down. ChromeOS market share is a rounding error at this point, and if there were any signs that this was turning around, Google apparently decided they weren't enough for them to continue.
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  Agreed. About a month and a half ago, my grandfather asked me for recommendations on a new computer. I asked him what he needed to do on his computer, and it was looking like a Chromebook (or in his case, more likely a Chromebox) would be perfect, until he mentioned that he runs Quicken. And my mother (an accountant) was emphatic that Quicken Online was no substitute.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Also in agreement. 1% of the use can make 99% of the difference.
    - sireat 11y ago
      And the worst part is that last 1% is different for 99% of people. ;) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
skoocda 11y ago
Well there is a huge oversight in the fact that enabling developer mode options (namely for crouton- running ubuntu in parallel) completely nixes any promise of security. I love ChromeOS, and I agree with all the above sentiments, but I wish they had better support for securely running virtual Linux distros!
DominikR 11y ago
> ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. Sure, if you say so it must be true. > How many insecure ChromeOS devices are there out there? How many ChromeOS devices in absolute numbers are out there and what is the target audience of 200$ laptops? If I were a hacker, I would certainly not target this platform.
nickbauman 11y ago
Nobody I know kept their chromebook as their main computer for very long because it wasn't able to do the things they wanted to do with their computer. The only people I know who have kept using it wiped it and installed Ubuntu.
- haylem 11y ago
  Representative sample concerns aside... I've had one for 2 years and am still very actively using it and considering chromeboxes to replace aging PCs at my place and for some of my relatives (come being on the tech illiterate side of the spectrum, while others ran IT departments in their days). I use it for my kids (3 and 6 yo at the moment) and they use it way more than the tablets (not useful enough for them) or the "real" PCs (yet too unapproachable for them without supervision except for basic workflows). It's not my "main" computer though, but that was never the problem raised in this thread. The fact is, chromebooks and Chrom{e,ium}OS are very decent platforms for all kinds of users, and they are indeed pretty safe to run. And I often do as others said: I ssh from the chromebook to my other PCs in other rooms, or remote servers, etc... It's also a great device when travelling if you have a 4G phone providing connectivity or you stop in hotels or conferences with WiFi (I wonder if there's been attempts to bring one to a DefCon or pwn conference to see how it holds... haven't checked). Sure I find that it hads plenty of shortcomings. But most of them are stuff that are shortcomings for me, professional CS/IT dev/tester/consultant/trainer/teacher/etc... Lots of other user groups will also probably fine shortcomings (like the "elderly" person mentioned requiring Quicken), but it doesn't mean you can't work around the issue (substitute it, use quicken from another machine, etc...). It surely isn't all-purpose or perfect, but it's still great. I wholeheartedly agree that I'd be deeply sad to see it sank, way more than I'd have been to see it merged the other way around. That being said, as recently Android Apps were starting to be available on ChromeOS via the Chrome Web Store and worked decently for the most part, I'm curious to see what the actual integration/folding will be. Because it may be largely marketing-oriented to make Android the prominent part (or just the prominent brand) as it's way more popular in terms of user and device share (billions vs probably a few millions, if even that). EDIT: And Pichai's quote does not worry me too much until I see something happening: "mobile as a computing paradigm is eventually going to blend with what we think of as desktop today." In fact, the article seems mostly unsubstantiated, so as long as I don't see an announcement from Google I think I'm not letting go of my chromebook and ChromeOS. :)
ballsohardy 11y ago
power users just run chrooted linux on it and boom, fully functioning $200 computer
- Kurtz79 11y ago
  Or you could just buy a fully functioning $200 computer.
  - iso8859-1 11y ago
    The hardware of $200 non-ChromeOS computers is worse; and with ChromeOS you were sure it ran Linux properly.
    - Kurtz79 11y ago
      There is not a huge gap in difference, in terms of HW quality between a Chromebook and a normal cheap laptop (in my experience). Can you provide an example ? I planned to buy a Chromebook a while ago and do exactly as the parent suggested, but got to the conclusion that it's just not worth the hassle (also, Chromebooks tend to have minimal storage, which is definitely not ideal in a normal laptop). In general, Chrome OS or not, the HW (touchpad, screen and keyboard even more than raw power) in a 200$ laptop is BAD.
      - superbaconman 11y ago
        How about the Ctrl and Alt keys, minus windows key? Fucking beautiful for emacs users. This story makes me sad. :(
      - jordanthoms 11y ago
        The Toshiba Chromebook 2 ( http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-CB35-B3340-Chromebook-Celeron-HD-Screen/dp/B00N99FXIS http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-CB35-B3340-Chromebook-Celeron-... ) has a great 1080p IPS screen, 9 hours of battery life, and, from what I can remember when I played with it, a good keyboard and trackpad along with decent build quality, for $290. It's got a decent Bay Trail 8W Celeron processor, and 4gb RAM (there are also models with faster processors). There are Windows laptops around that price range also, but AFAIK none with that combination of hardware quality and specs.

zensavona 11y ago

Why doesn't anyone buy them then?

mehrdada 11y ago
In the last couple years at least, Chromebooks have often topped Amazon best-sellers. Technically, a lot of people buy them. It's just that compared to mobile devices, laptops as a whole are a small category. Admittedly, most Chromebooks are bought because they are inexpensive (what virtually no one buys is Chromebook Pixel, which I have never seen outside Google except the ones folks got for free at I/O).
- scholia 11y ago
  I suspect that's a factor of there being very few models. A Windows laptop that sells millions is probably available in 20 versions, each of which is counted separately. Try searching for the current Amazon.com best seller in laptops, the Toshiba Satellite C55.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  That is an US phenomenon. The only place I saw them in Europe was garage/discount sales trying to get rid of them.
yoran 11y ago
They're very popular in education (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2015/05/sixty_percent_of_us_chromebook_sales_are_for_education.html http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2015/05/sixty_...). Mainly because they are inexpensive, a lot more versatile and better suited than iPads, the previous hype in education (see for instance the LA iPad debacle http://www.wired.com/2015/05/los-angeles-edtech/ http://www.wired.com/2015/05/los-angeles-edtech/). Also, many schools are already using Google services: Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and now Google Classroom is becoming huge.
- MattSteelblade 11y ago
  Not that I agree with their use in education, but "a lot more versatile"? I can't think of anything that a chromebook can do that the iPad can't but I can vice versa. The only advantage I see to a chromebook is a built-in keyboard (and price)
  - kps 11y ago
    Apparently (I don't work in that space) it's very useful to system administrators that Chromebooks are essentially stateless and fungible.
  - mintplant 11y ago
    A built-in keyboard is huge for the classroom. Chromebooks in classrooms end up being used largely for written work (typing long essays, creating presentations, etc.) that an iPad is less amenable to than a laptop.
    - nsgi 11y ago
      iPads can use external keyboards, though.
      - npunt 11y ago
        Another thing to break or to lose, and to charge, and it adds to the cost. A $200 chromebook blows away a $600 ipad+keyboard combo for majority of education purposes. Google also has much better deployment & operations for devices & apps. Source: I know lots of people who deploy and manage these in schools.
irascible 11y ago
I have a 150$ chrome book and it fucking rocks. Does everything I need to do on the web, and I can do javascript/webgl dev on the road.. battery lasts FORever... really amazing machines. I made a computer illiterate friend get one because I was sick of doing tech support for his windows Lappie and he loves it, and has had zero probs with it.. the only time he's called me with a problem with it was when he was trying to some fucking exe to win a free ipod. CHROME os rocks.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  What application(s) do you use for development on the Chromebook?
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    This is all you need: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
  - geofft 11y ago
    For me? SSH and a VPS. I don't need whatever random crap I decide to `wget && tar x && ./configure` to have any risk of infecting my browser session. And I can keep my VPS up-to-date just by getting a new one from The Cloud every so often, and it comes out way cheaper than buying a beefy developer laptop periodically. I've had the same, low-end Chromebook for almost two years now and barely feel any need to upgrade it.
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      I did this for a while, except my thin client was an X1 Carbon (!) Have you calculated how much it's costing you? I ended up scripting up a way to find the cheapest Spot Instance price from Amazon for whatever workload I needed - if I was doing builds I wanted the 8 core machines (c4.2xlarge?). They're ~11c an hour as a Spot Instance, although it's 3x the amount for a Windows instance, and I'd be pushed out of the market if everyone started doing this. I think I was averaging a couple of dollars a day, so I suppose it comes out in favour of using AWS all the time.
irascible 11y ago
People don't buy them because people are fucking stupid. Hell, in honor of this thread I'm gonna go buy another chrome book TODAY.
joosters 11y ago
Amazon's best-selling laptop is currently a chromebook.
- cwyers 11y ago
  I think most of what that means is that Amazon isn't a first-party seller of MacBooks. (You can buy MacBooks on Amazon but I believe those are all third-party sellers.)
  - h1940624 11y ago
    And other laptop companies release tons of slightly differing models.

cwyers 11y ago

> ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. That's damning with faint praise, isn't it? It can, at this point, do MOST of what an everyday Internet user might want? It's that whole 80/20 thing that everyone thought would let somebody overthrow Microsoft Office -- 80% of users only use 20% of the features. Well that's true and all, but it's not the same 20% for everyone, and you only have to miss one feature to make a Chromebook an untenable alternative to a Windows machine. There was a brief window where Chromebooks were significantly cheaper than a comparable Windows laptop but Intel took the ARM threat seriously, Microsoft took the licensing seriously and now the base Chromebook price from a name manufacturer isn't significantly cheaper than the HP Stream or what have you. "Most" is not going to cut it now that the price advantage is gone. > There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions. This is really only true in that we live on a planet with many, many lots of people, and so you can find lots of people for which almost anything holds true if you funnel it down. ChromeOS market share is a rounding error at this point, and if there were any signs that this was turning around, Google apparently decided they weren't enough for them to continue.

mwcampbell 11y ago
Agreed. About a month and a half ago, my grandfather asked me for recommendations on a new computer. I asked him what he needed to do on his computer, and it was looking like a Chromebook (or in his case, more likely a Chromebox) would be perfect, until he mentioned that he runs Quicken. And my mother (an accountant) was emphatic that Quicken Online was no substitute.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Also in agreement. 1% of the use can make 99% of the difference.
  - sireat 11y ago
    And the worst part is that last 1% is different for 99% of people. ;) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

skoocda 11y ago

Well there is a huge oversight in the fact that enabling developer mode options (namely for crouton- running ubuntu in parallel) completely nixes any promise of security. I love ChromeOS, and I agree with all the above sentiments, but I wish they had better support for securely running virtual Linux distros!

DominikR 11y ago

> ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. Sure, if you say so it must be true. > How many insecure ChromeOS devices are there out there? How many ChromeOS devices in absolute numbers are out there and what is the target audience of 200$ laptops? If I were a hacker, I would certainly not target this platform.

nickbauman 11y ago

Nobody I know kept their chromebook as their main computer for very long because it wasn't able to do the things they wanted to do with their computer. The only people I know who have kept using it wiped it and installed Ubuntu.

haylem 11y ago
Representative sample concerns aside... I've had one for 2 years and am still very actively using it and considering chromeboxes to replace aging PCs at my place and for some of my relatives (come being on the tech illiterate side of the spectrum, while others ran IT departments in their days). I use it for my kids (3 and 6 yo at the moment) and they use it way more than the tablets (not useful enough for them) or the "real" PCs (yet too unapproachable for them without supervision except for basic workflows). It's not my "main" computer though, but that was never the problem raised in this thread. The fact is, chromebooks and Chrom{e,ium}OS are very decent platforms for all kinds of users, and they are indeed pretty safe to run. And I often do as others said: I ssh from the chromebook to my other PCs in other rooms, or remote servers, etc... It's also a great device when travelling if you have a 4G phone providing connectivity or you stop in hotels or conferences with WiFi (I wonder if there's been attempts to bring one to a DefCon or pwn conference to see how it holds... haven't checked). Sure I find that it hads plenty of shortcomings. But most of them are stuff that are shortcomings for me, professional CS/IT dev/tester/consultant/trainer/teacher/etc... Lots of other user groups will also probably fine shortcomings (like the "elderly" person mentioned requiring Quicken), but it doesn't mean you can't work around the issue (substitute it, use quicken from another machine, etc...). It surely isn't all-purpose or perfect, but it's still great. I wholeheartedly agree that I'd be deeply sad to see it sank, way more than I'd have been to see it merged the other way around. That being said, as recently Android Apps were starting to be available on ChromeOS via the Chrome Web Store and worked decently for the most part, I'm curious to see what the actual integration/folding will be. Because it may be largely marketing-oriented to make Android the prominent part (or just the prominent brand) as it's way more popular in terms of user and device share (billions vs probably a few millions, if even that). EDIT: And Pichai's quote does not worry me too much until I see something happening: "mobile as a computing paradigm is eventually going to blend with what we think of as desktop today." In fact, the article seems mostly unsubstantiated, so as long as I don't see an announcement from Google I think I'm not letting go of my chromebook and ChromeOS. :)

ballsohardy 11y ago

power users just run chrooted linux on it and boom, fully functioning $200 computer

Kurtz79 11y ago
Or you could just buy a fully functioning $200 computer.
- iso8859-1 11y ago
  The hardware of $200 non-ChromeOS computers is worse; and with ChromeOS you were sure it ran Linux properly.
  - Kurtz79 11y ago
    There is not a huge gap in difference, in terms of HW quality between a Chromebook and a normal cheap laptop (in my experience). Can you provide an example ? I planned to buy a Chromebook a while ago and do exactly as the parent suggested, but got to the conclusion that it's just not worth the hassle (also, Chromebooks tend to have minimal storage, which is definitely not ideal in a normal laptop). In general, Chrome OS or not, the HW (touchpad, screen and keyboard even more than raw power) in a 200$ laptop is BAD.
    - superbaconman 11y ago
      How about the Ctrl and Alt keys, minus windows key? Fucking beautiful for emacs users. This story makes me sad. :(
    - jordanthoms 11y ago
      The Toshiba Chromebook 2 ( http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-CB35-B3340-Chromebook-Celeron-HD-Screen/dp/B00N99FXIS http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-CB35-B3340-Chromebook-Celeron-... ) has a great 1080p IPS screen, 9 hours of battery life, and, from what I can remember when I played with it, a good keyboard and trackpad along with decent build quality, for $290. It's got a decent Bay Trail 8W Celeron processor, and 4gb RAM (there are also models with faster processors). There are Windows laptops around that price range also, but AFAIK none with that combination of hardware quality and specs.