5 ms·

But a Chromebook with the specs should at least be much much cheaper than this, shouldn’t it? And remember I bought that Chromebook for $150 off. https://www.

• I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Not really, because most people aren't buying it for the hardware, they are buying it because it's a Chromebook. Maybe their kids need it for school, so the price is that high because it's a guaranteed supported and has the correct version of ChromeOS the school requires. As long as it can run whatever webapps the school needs, it doesn't matter what the underlying hardware is. So basically, the incentives are lined up differently. I can take a real laptop and install whatever I want on it, but the same is not true for a Chromebook. That is by design because they also don't need to be powerful to run webapps for kids at school.
  • Podgajski 3y ago
    You’re still missing the point. Why can’t they build a Chromebook with the same internals as the Lenovo laptop I posted? That would be 1000 times faster than the Chromebook I picked up.
    • I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      1. The Chromebook doesn't need that much performance. That would be like putting a V12 engine in a golf cart and limiting it to 5 MPH. ChromeOS is very limited. 2. That eliminates the budget-friendly aspect of the Chromebook which schools love. You are complaining that a product meant for a different purpose and different users doesn't meet your expectations. You are not the target audience for the device.
      • Podgajski 3y ago
        ? Then why are they selling it for a price that is so much faster and 3 years older?
        • I_Am_Nous 3y ago
          You are seeing the retail price. The price schools get through vendors are much lower. Sure, you can find laptops used on eBay and reformat them as needed. That's a terrible way to run a school's IT department with modern 1 Chromebook per child policies. You couldn't reliably source enough cheap laptops to endlessly have to work on them to get them provisioned for students while also repairing the 2-3 broken Chromebooks per week because kids are hard on them. Volume discount Chromebooks are the de facto way schools run because they can basically get them at cost. The only profit is when people pay retail prices, which as you pointed out is not a reasonable price for the pure performance of the hardware. But again, they are really designed for schools by definition so they are very limited and can't do much general computing. As a result they do not need performance parity with anything but ChromeOS and any web apps that might get installed. The final thing I'd like to point out is that we have been gaining less raw performance in CPUs each year and moving toward better performance per watt instead. Laptops especially don't need huge, hot, power hungry CPUs anymore. So instead of making them faster and faster for minimal end-user benefit they chose to make battery life the priority because that really does give much more benefit to the end user. Most devices are now aimed at media consumption rather than more power hungry media creation. We've reached "good enough" performance that the N100 can consume YouTube videos and run web apps while still having a battery that lasts all day (or close). That's all schools need for a basic computing device. You seem like a power user who needs more than a basic computing device. The Chromebook is not designed for your needs :)
          • Podgajski 3y ago
            > Most devices are now aimed at media consumption rather than more power hungry media creation. We've reached "good enough" performance that the N100 can consume YouTube videos and run web apps while still having a battery that lasts all day (or close). That's all schools need for a basic computing device. Then they should be much much cheaper that a three years old laptop that can do so much more!