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HP Unveils Premium Chromebook: 3K Display, Intel Core M, 16 GB of RAM and USB-C
- rocky1138 11y agoThis hardware looks great and the specs are bang on. How well would this run Kubuntu?
- dyladan 11y agoI would guess it would run it fine. My C720 has significantly reduced specs from this and I don't notice any problems with ubuntu mate
- blinkingled 11y agoNow you can run 16 Chrome tabs at once! Joke aside if Google get the ChromeOS Android merge or more desktopification of ChromeOS done soon this will be a good to have Chromebook.
- jdeibele 11y agoRun lots of tabs with https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende... I saw this extension recommended on another thread and it's worked out very well for me. It suspends tabs that aren't being used after X amount of time, normally 1 hour. Activity Monitor on my Mac showed a huge difference in CPU activity.
- DiabloD3 11y agoThey're working on enabling tab discarding (from mobile Chrome) on the desktop. Check out the tab discard experiment, but it doesn't have automatic discarding yet, just manual through chrome://discard. They want to add dom state serialization before they enable automatic discarding.
- mtgx 11y agoEh, I wouldn't go crazy. It's only a dual-core Core M processor after all.
- manaskarekar 11y agoDoes anyone know what is the possibility/progress of having full fledged compilers and interpreters running on Chrome OS in the future? Or is that never going to be reality, because of the goals of ChromeOS? It is a great OS, but very light on software development options. I know there is always Crouton or a native linux install, but out of the box support would be awesome.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoWell, seeing as how these are designed for always on internet connections, I'm guessing people will simply remote into a box at home or work to do the compiling.
- mozumder 11y agoWouldn't you just install Linux on it instead?
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoMe personally? No, I don't mind remoting into my server.
- aeroevan 11y agoThis is what I do on my chromebook pixel (2), but sadly the audio driver (really just the changes needed in the rt5677 codec) never got mainlined: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=573776 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=573776 While you would expect linux to just run out of the box on these machines, sometimes even with it running some variant of a linux kernel from the OEM things aren't always so nice.
- canuckintime 11y agoThere are decent Android IDEs available if ChromeOS does get the Google Play store as recently rumored.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
- malkia 11y agoEverytime I've got 3200x1800 laptop, I wanna go back to 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.. Why well, personally, it's not worth going more than that. There is VRAM being wasted, gpu, cpu cycles, etc. and then software is not perfect - some of it would scale well, some others won't... Bought for my son Windows 10 laptop with 3200x1800 - lots of Qt applications would not scale properly, the minecraft launcher too. Maybe it'll be better on linux, chrome, and surely it was solved problem on OSX, but I still don't see the point. The big thing was moving from 1024x768 to 1920x1080, and 4K displays are great - but when they are big, not for laptop.
- lmm 11y agoI recently switched to the 3000x2000 Surface Book. Worrying about capacity being "wasted" is nonsense - how would it be better to not have that capacity? Some software looks bad, but I'm sure that'll be fixed as time goes by. Games look great, text looks even better, particularly if you read a lot.
- usefulcat 11y agoI think at least part of the implied tradeoff is resolution vs. battery life. More pixels == more GPU computation == more power required.
- lmm 11y agoAIUI the backlight dominates the power consumption, so more pixels at the same physical size makes very little difference. But sure, that's a lot more concrete. So are you unhappy with the battery life on this device? Does the laptop the grandparent was talking about have worse battery life than comparable models? Certainly I'm very happy with the battery life of my Surface Book (which is a lot better than that of the laptop it replace), so to my mind it's not a problem in practice.
- tracker1 11y agomore pixels requires more light, even on the same size display... So a 4K display the same size as a 1080p display will require 2-3x the light behind the display... I don't recall the exact amount extra, but it's not insignificant.. let alone the processing power to push those extra pixels.
- jamespo 11y agoI run crouton on my chromebook but really if you intend to run desktop linux don't get a chromebook, even at boot waiting for the "developer mode" beeps are annoying besides the other compromises (small native storage etc).
- fpoling 11y agoWith Chromebooks I typically do not need to worry about hardware compatibility. Besides, with Crouton I can have full-fledged development environment under CromeOS while still being able to give the notebook to guests or children for Internet access.
- mixedmath 11y agoAn undocumented (as far as I can tell) way to avoid the annoying beeps is to press ctrl-d on boot. This avoids the developer mode beeps. [source: I'm also a crouton+chromebook user].
- jdeibele 11y agoI bought a 2013 Chromebook Pixel from somebody. One of his reasons for selling it was that he had enabled developer mode and his child hit the space bar on boot up. That wiped all of his work. He was going back to a laptop.
- jessaustin 11y agoDid you tell him about DVCS?
- rbanffy 11y agoI got myself an Acer ES1-111, snapped out the 2G DDR3L module and put in a 4G one. It's priced like a Chromebook but has a full keyboard (a lot of my Emacs stuff uses the "super" key). Sure the eMMC space is not large and you won't see me lugging my music collection in it (or crunching large datasets), but for light development (I do mostly Python/Django) it's just fine. And for USD 200, I won't be devastated if it's damaged. Not really comparable to a high-spec Chromebook, but does the job.
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- woodcut 11y agoWhat i would love is a 11-12" chromebook that has ~8GB of ram and an expandable SSD option, a good screen and is military spec so it can take a beating when i go travelling. My current macbook has a very narrow operating environment (10-35 degrees centigrade) and can't withstand being taken camping on the beach.
- rch 11y agoHow is a Core M considered premium?
- bitL 11y agoBest CPU that doesn't require fans? I love my Core M-based ultrabook with 3k screen and zero noise while compiling (and performance is on par with Ivy Bridge 3517U).
- jsmith0295 11y agoIt's faster than you'd expect, despite the very low TDP. I have the base model 2nd gen 12" MacBook, and I haven't had any issues with anything feeling slow on it.
- artimaeis 11y agoI've been looking at the 12" Macbook line since it released and I'm curious how it performs dev work - do you run XCode on it? How's the form factor working for you overall? Sorry to derail the topic - just genuinely interested in the thoughts on that hardware!
- jsmith0295 11y agoI primarily use Atom and do JavaScript + Laravel development (with a Homestead VM always running!) and for that it performs quite well. I haven't tried running XCode yet, but from what I read before I bought it, I doubt it will be much of an issue.
- imtringued 11y agoI'd honestly rather have slower compilation time than hearing the sound of a jet engine.
- Retr0spectrum 11y agoI'm writing this on a Core M. It really doesn't feel like 800MHz. Compiling stuff might be a bit slower, but the main performance bottleneck in most modern PCs seems to be disk IO anyway, rather than raw processing speed. If you're doing video rendering, or using a bloaty IDE etc. then you might need something more powerful. For general use though, a Core M is completely fine.
- andmarios 11y ago16GB of RAM for running Chrome. Sounds about right!
- nv-vn 11y agoStill no more info on storage? I'd buy the $499 model in a heartbeat if it had a 32GB SSD (or if it was upgradeable). The fact that they haven't released those details yet makes me think the number will be rather unimpressive.
- bitL 11y agoLikely eMMC :-( Otherwise they would have stated SSD/M.2
- tomku 11y agoAccording to the Ars article[1] I read, all models have a 32gb eMMC storage drive. [1]: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/hp-and-google-are-making-a-premium-13-inch-chromebook-for-499/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/hp-and-google-are-mak...
- itg 11y agoFrom the title, I thought it was going to have only a single usb-c port like the macbook, thankfully it has 2 usb-c ports and a usb-a port.
- bitL 11y agoCan you completely strip Chrome OS from these Chromebooks? Including BIOS-specific stuff like automatic rewriting of modified base system? So that you could boot straight into Linux without worrying your OS will be gone if you forget to press some key upon boot? BTW, flash-based storage (likely eMMC) for >$1k is just eek.
- VonGuard 11y agoThe last premium Chromebook, the Pixel, yes you could install Linux and just boot into it. Problem was, Linux... Debian was not ready for this device, especially the high res screen, which made the UI in Linux super duper tiny. Debian saw the screen as a giant regular resolution screen... Lots of edge cases like this, especially with touch screens.
- zxcvcxz 11y agofedora and ubuntu have worked really well for me on high dpi screens. Unity and GNOME didn't require any tweaking.
- bitL 11y agoThanks! I was asking because I would like to have a dedicated "retro" machine for running all 8-bit/16-bit and console emulators and a Pentium 4405Y would be capable of running all of them smoothly (Baytrail/Braswell are too slow); 32GB eMMC would be sufficient as well.
- VonGuard 11y agoFrankly, if yer looking for a portable way to play emulated games and old computer stuff, the nVidia Shield Portable is amazing. It's like someone at nVidia saw all these GP32's and weird handheld emulation devices and said," geez, we could make that actually work." Alternately, an Intel NUC or a compute stick works, too. As do Raspberry Pi. I would caution against making this kinda device into an emulator box. You want generic hardware.
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- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoSo is this designed to supplant the Pixel line, or just provide a "premium" Chromebook designed for businesses, rather than developers?
- joelthelion 11y agoHow good is GNU/linux support on chrome books?
- akhilcacharya 11y agoMy biggest problem with these Chromebooks is actually the limited local storage - this hardware with more local storage would be a killer linux machine.
- giaour 11y agoIn a lot of chromebooks, the storage is replaceable. It's just a normal-sized SSD that happens to have a very low capacity.
- rrego 11y agoMost chromebooks don't have replaceable storage. Acer seems to be the only one making new chromebooks with replaceable storage. Also, eMMC isn't an SSD https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chrome_OS_devices/Chromebook https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chrome_OS_devices/Chrom...
- akhilcacharya 11y agoSure, but the Pixel last year did not have a replaceable SSD, only some of the cheaper/slower models did. I don't know if this one does.
- tdicola 11y agoNot anymore, almost all of them today are based on Intel's SoC architecture that can use embedded eMMC memory (basically a SD card on a chip) instead of a SATA SSD that you can replace. It's a cost cutting thing.
- ansible 11y agoSome of them have SD card slots too.
- awqrre 11y agoYes, they are just trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible by forcing you to use the cloud... the storage specs on these chromebooks feel like the 90s to me.
- mrmondo 11y agoCore M? That's 2015 tech, using selling points such as 16gb of ram is weak as 16 Gb is so common these days, why are they talking about '3k' rather than PPI or another volumetric measurement of density. Just feels a bit old news?
- tammer 11y agoThe news is how badly HP is gasping for air.
- kayoone 11y ago16GB RAM is not really common in laptops, especially Chromebooks. The new Macbook had 4GB last year and 8GB this year. For the price it is a pretty good offering if you fit into the (probably small) customer base.
- mrmondo 11y agoWhat? My 2011 MBP shipping with 16GB, yes I chose it over the 8GB option but it shipped with it! My desktops both have 32GB because... RAM is really cheap and it really makes a difference when you're running a lot of VMs / Containers etc... or you know, any of the web browsers available in 2016 that are all awful thanks to javascript and friends
- Sanddancer 11y agoCore m. The case is a big difference. Big M was Broadwell, little m is Skylake. So these procs are on a modern node.
- Taylor_OD 11y agoIt's so hard for me to suggest people get a chromebook. I've had mine for close to two years and still find myself avoiding using it at all costs. It's fine for writing on but that's really it.
- ktamura 11y agoReally? Do you code for a living? I ask because I am a technical marketer at a startup (i.e., I have to read some code, but mostly my work is done inside Gmail and Google Docs) and could totally work fine on a low-end Chromebook when my Thinkpad was out for a week in repair.
- Taylor_OD 11y agoI'm not a developer. The most frustrating part of the chromebook is having to be connected to the internet to do almost anything. I have desktops for everywhere I'm usually working but laptops for me are mobile devices. Sometimes/often I dont have wifi but still need to get work done. Sure google docs kinda works offline but its not great.
- oldgun 11y agoLooks like really decent hardware for a Linux laptop though.
- jzymbaluk 11y agoI'm looking at getting a new laptop this summer, and I've been leaning towards a Dell XPS 13, but this chromebook is intriguing to me. I had a an Acer c720 chromebook for a while and I had a really good experience running Chromeos and Ubuntu through Crouton. Having 16 gb of RAM is an important feature to me, and I'm disappointed the non-touch XPS 13 doesn't offer it. I'm probably also all right with having limited on-device storage because usb 3 is fast and external storage is cheap. How capable is the Core m7? Is it hefty enough to drive a KDE desktop smoothly? What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings?
- nacs 11y ago> What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings? It uses an integrated Intel graphics chip -- it won't be able to do any decent gaming. At the 16GB price point of this thing ($1k), you could get a more conventional laptop instead of Google Chrome/Pixel OS systems and get a lot more power and flexibility out of it.
- honua 11y agoI think you missed that they used Ubuntu on their previous Chromebook (I do too) and so would probably do the same with this one
- stordoff 11y ago> > What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings? > It uses an integrated Intel graphics chip -- it won't be able to do any decent gaming. Depending what you mean by decent gaming. I've played Civilization V on Intel Graphics (HD4000 OSX & HD4400 Windows), and it runs fine on the lower end settings. Not ideal by any means, but the newer Intel Graphics chips are OK for some games.
- jpetso 11y agoThe new ThinkPad 13 might be worth a consideration if you're not set on a top screen or aluminum case.
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- DiabloD3 11y agoDear industry: I want a 7" tablet that has 2GB to 4GB of RAM, and costs $99. I do not care about battery life (will always be tethered to charger), storage (so 16GB for Android or 32GB for Windows is fine; the absolute minimum either can realistically not choke the tablet to death with), and CPU/GPU is I only partly care about (Cherry Trail era x86 SoCs used in some Windows 7" tablets are fine, and they go for $99 to $199). The reason why I ask for that? $99 gets me 1GB + 16GB usually, I have to go the whole way up to $199 or more to get 2GB. Modern OSes just are not really suitable for 1GB, I don't know why these devices even exist, they can't actually be used.
- FreakyT 11y agoMy Amazon Fire works pretty well flashed to stock Android, certainly worth the $35. Once you get rid of the Amazon bloat it runs swimmingly, even with only 1gb of RAM.
- agumonkey 11y agoI've read a few reports of sluggishness ? are you a frugal user , or are amazon apps sucking cpu ticks ?
- DiabloD3 11y agoI have an original generation Kindle Fire, with the 512mb of RAM. Yes, even back then, I forcibly reflashed it with a community build of CyanogenMod (started with 4.0 when Amazon's was based on 2.3, now running 6.0) because of how bad Amazon's default ROM murdered performance, even before I ran anything.
- agumonkey 11y agoInteresting, the actual model might really be worth 50$.
- tdicola 11y agoYou want one of the myriad of super cheap tablets from China: http://techtablets.com/ http://techtablets.com/
- chatmasta 11y agoI wanted to make the cheapest possible development machine I could, assuming I did all my work on a remote server. So I bought a Lenovo 100s for $80 from Amazon (ok, it was $160, but I signed up for the Amazon credit card for the discount). It's one of the lowest end chromebooks you can get. But it's awesome. The google docs/sheets/etc features are nice, and it's perfectly capable of web browsing. For development, if you work in the cloud, using Vim on a remote server, all you need is an SSH client. For fun, I put Kali linux onto an SD card and I can use crouton to switch to the Kali chroot. So I can literally plug in an SD card and have a totally fresh "development machine" for $80. It's great for traveling in developing countries because if it gets stolen, I'm out $80, not $1500.
- ksou32 11y agoYou don't even need the SD card, I got a 300$ Chromebook that I run Ubuntu on, even got High Level Assembly to run
- chatmasta 11y agoThe SD card is 3x the size of the chromebook's hard drive! ;-)
- slackstation 11y agoI thought "High Level Assembly" was a joke about getting the GDC or LLVM to run but, found out it's actually a language.
- roymurdock 11y agoIs there really any other use case for a chromebook given how cheap a decently-spec'd laptop is these days? I'm confused as to HPs strategy of making an upscale chromebook - who is the target market?
- lallysingh 11y agoMaintenance. Why maintain a copy of Windows when all you use is the web? Antivirus, security, app and driver updates, bloatware shipped preinstalled, etc. Here you just pull it out of the box, log in, and it's good to go until the battery or other hardware wear out.
- mtgx 11y agoI wonder what a 3k display will do to I assume the rather weak GPU on the Core M. It was only 2 or 3 years ago that Core i5's integrated GPU could barely handle the retina Macbook.
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- devereaux 11y ago3K display?? If only the keyboard had IBM style page up/page down keys next to the arrows, at this low price I would buy it right now. All I want is something I can use to SSH, with a great screen and keyboard. Bonus points if it has LTE, a stylus, or is between 12 and 9 inches. I can't shake some learned habits, so I decide on the keyboard first. The closest thing I could find was the latitude 13, but the price is a bit high. For that much, I might as well get a Lenovo Yoga 13 with the AMOLED display when it becomes available. But then it gets too big. The best laptop is the one that follows me around. At the moment, my eyes are on the Ideapad miix 310. Looks like it has a great keyboard, and LTE. But no 3k. And no 16G option. (and no upgrade possible). 16Gb of RAM would let me do the crazy things I sometimes do on the side...
- dave2000 11y agoI want a chromebook but all the ones I've seen are the price of a good laptop, or crap. Why can't I pay £200 for a good one? What about £300 then? Nice screen, 6 or 8 gigs of ram, a cpu more powerful than in the average phone? They seem very expensive for what they are (a midrange phone in a laptop body, as far a I can tell).
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- williesleg 11y agoTim Cook needs to be fired over this one.
- gohrt 11y agoIt was unveiled last week, and anandtech cited sources: http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/28/hp-chromebook-13/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/28/hp-chromebook-13/
- djfergus 11y ago>> HP offers its Elite USB-C Docking Station ($149), which plugs in to a USB-C port on the PC and enables to connect up two Full HD displays, Gigabit Ethernet as well as multiple USB Type-A devices, such as keyboards or mice. Good to see high quality USB-C docking stations coming thick and fast. Wonder how much testing they have done on the Macbooks for compatibility...
- kingosticks 11y agoI'm a bit surprised the dock isn't generating more interest at the stated price point. You'd pay a lot more for the non-thunderbolt USB 3 Dell dock so it seems like a good alternative. I've no experience in these docks/adapters, won't they be compatible and just work (with an Xps 13, for example)?
- Osiris 11y agoNow, if I could only get a normal laptop with those specs. PC laptops are so hard to find with resolutions >= 1080p, let alone a decent SSD.