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Hard to believe it was only a little over ten years ago that the first Chromebook Pixel came out with its generous 4GB of RAM. It's a shame the battery life on

Hard to believe it was only a little over ten years ago that the first Chromebook Pixel came out with its generous 4GB of RAM. It's a shame the battery life on it was only about 4 hours on anything other than ChromeOS (which got maybe closer to 6), because I absolutely loved the form-factor of that first model.

mrguyorama 2y ago
It was utterly useless though. It significantly predates all the valuable features that came to chromeOS later, like running any android app. I bought one used and it was impossible to troubleshoot any of it's problems because "just a normal linux distro" has always been a lie. Linux is as much the stuff built on top of the Kernel as it is just the kernel. All that stuff was basically impenetrable unless you were a Google ChromeOS dev. By the time ChromeOS was actually useful, that machine could barely run a single YouTube tab. Screen was super nice though. It was never worth $1000
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
  I paid $800 for a barley-used one off Craigslist. True, it lacked the Android features (which even the 2015 model might have had? Certainly the successor Pixelbook did), but it was perfectly serviceable for my uses with crouton on it. And when it eventually went out of support, I removed the write-protect screw and loaded a standard BIOS onto it so that I could then install Linux Mint. It was a capable machine for several more years, marred primarily by that poor battery life.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    I got one in 2018 for $200 and it was okay as a netflix and Youtube machine, and nothing more. The Linux features were harder to activate and use than just buying a used Thinkpad for also $200, with a way better processor and twice as much memory, so I eventually did that to replace it and should have done that first. It aged like raw meat for being a "premium" product. Mine in particular died a slow and painful death. The thermal paste had aged out, and the fan died, though was cheap and easy to replace, but even after, it still was nonfunctional, as it would die after being on for just a few minutes. Because it was running Linux with weird userland stuff like Crouton, it was devilishly hard to debug. I also just do not know how to debug Linux nearly as well as I understand Windows "internals". It's too bad because it was a pretty laptop with a very nice screen.
trog 2y ago
A bunch of the models still only ship with 4GB RAM today! 8GB is just recently more common I'd say, but still plenty of 4GB ones out there you can buy brand new. We have a few in the office and they are surprisingly OK. Let down more by the weaker processor (i3 instead of i5) but workable for a lot of things.

mrguyorama 2y ago

It was utterly useless though. It significantly predates all the valuable features that came to chromeOS later, like running any android app. I bought one used and it was impossible to troubleshoot any of it's problems because "just a normal linux distro" has always been a lie. Linux is as much the stuff built on top of the Kernel as it is just the kernel. All that stuff was basically impenetrable unless you were a Google ChromeOS dev. By the time ChromeOS was actually useful, that machine could barely run a single YouTube tab. Screen was super nice though. It was never worth $1000

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
I paid $800 for a barley-used one off Craigslist. True, it lacked the Android features (which even the 2015 model might have had? Certainly the successor Pixelbook did), but it was perfectly serviceable for my uses with crouton on it. And when it eventually went out of support, I removed the write-protect screw and loaded a standard BIOS onto it so that I could then install Linux Mint. It was a capable machine for several more years, marred primarily by that poor battery life.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  I got one in 2018 for $200 and it was okay as a netflix and Youtube machine, and nothing more. The Linux features were harder to activate and use than just buying a used Thinkpad for also $200, with a way better processor and twice as much memory, so I eventually did that to replace it and should have done that first. It aged like raw meat for being a "premium" product. Mine in particular died a slow and painful death. The thermal paste had aged out, and the fan died, though was cheap and easy to replace, but even after, it still was nonfunctional, as it would die after being on for just a few minutes. Because it was running Linux with weird userland stuff like Crouton, it was devilishly hard to debug. I also just do not know how to debug Linux nearly as well as I understand Windows "internals". It's too bad because it was a pretty laptop with a very nice screen.

trog 2y ago

A bunch of the models still only ship with 4GB RAM today! 8GB is just recently more common I'd say, but still plenty of 4GB ones out there you can buy brand new. We have a few in the office and they are surprisingly OK. Let down more by the weaker processor (i3 instead of i5) but workable for a lot of things.