7 ms·

Chromebook (Exynos 5, 2GB) Takes Top Place In Laptop Sales On Amazon

82 points by 6ren 14y ago

chayesfss 14y ago
I'm a little surprised it's happened so early but I'd attribute it to the fact that it's actually cheaper than an iPad. I've got the Acer c710 and actually like working with it even though it seems like the processor is a little slower than my old cr-48.
- mtgx 14y ago
  The price probably played a role, but I also think they address pretty different markets. Not everyone wants to hold a tablet in their hands all day, while others would rather use a tablet than a normal laptop.
juusto 14y ago
Would love to get one of these babies and install Ubuntu. Is it possible to install Java+Eclipse+Android SDK on it?
- yogeshgirdhar 14y ago
  Check this link out: http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/arm-chrubuntu-1204-alpha-1-now.html http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/arm-chrubuntu-12...
- osivertsson 14y ago
  Even if possible, for me I think this setup would be a very painful experience with a slower CPU, low resolution display, and only 2GB RAM compared to what at least I'm used to, which is a Dell M4500 i7 with 8GB RAM, granted it did cost five times as much a couple of years back.
  - orik 14y ago
    I'm running ubuntu on my ARM Chromebook; it runs well. (Or at lesst, better than an atom will)
  - bitwize 14y ago
    If he ditched eclipse, it could actually work. Developing Android apps with Emacs and the command line tools is really quite feasible, especially since there's no enterprise shit-ola which is what people rely heavily on IDEs to generate for them. But I don't think the Android SDK is available in anything but x86... so, maybe if he used qemu emulation?
- jxi 14y ago
  I've always been interested in having a cheap, replaceable and portable laptop like this as a dev machine, but the more I think about it the more I realize this is more like an iPad (i.e. for media consumption) than a dev machine. That is until we have some solid browser-based "cloud" IDE's.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Chromebooks make excellent portable SSH terminals (see [0]) thanks to having decent keyboards (esp. for the price range) and great battery life. http://c9.io http://c9.io shows some promise as well, though IMHO it still doesn't beat good old-fashioned tmux. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
    - ISL 14y ago
      Is there any indication that they'll ever add windowed (not full-screen) X-forwarding? When I'm working from afar, ssh with tunneled X is all I need.
    - Thrymr 14y ago
      If you spend any time at all without net connectivity, you need to be able to work with native tools on a cloned code repo. The machine is more than powerful enough for plenty of local dev tasks, it's really a shame you can't work locally.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I run Ubuntu on mine. I haven't tried running Eclipse. Oracle recently released an Early Access version of Java 8 with hardfp support to cash in on the Raspberry Pi fever, presumably that build would work on the ARM/Chromebook running Ubuntu (though it wouldn't be totally optimized for it) but I haven't tried it to be sure. If I were doing Android development on this system I'd probably stick with ant based builds and use emacs or gedit (I wish Sublime Text 2 had an ARM build, the fact that it doesn't is kind of killing it as a useful editor for me these days). Eclipse is already a bit slower than I would like on my desktop, I'd imagine using it wouldn't be that great on the Chromebook.
duck 14y ago
What is crazy is they have been sold out since early December (or maybe even before that).
tedunangst 14y ago
How many people buy laptops through Amazon? I always found the selection impossible to sort through, let alone figuring out if I'm getting this year's model or last year's model.
- brown 14y ago
  I do. I do research elsewhere, and then go to Amazon for price shopping. Asus in particular was best on Amazon.
wes-exp 14y ago
Never underestimate the selling power of cheap crap.
- dannyr 14y ago
  This crap happens to have a 4-star rating from the people who used/owns it.
- EwanToo 14y ago
  It's far from crap, it's my standard day to day laptop now, has been since November. I still have my lenovo laptop for when I need it, but that's pretty rare
  - Cowen 14y ago
    It's now my primary laptop as well. I've gotten 95% of my development tools working properly on it. Granted, most of those tools are command-line based (i.e. vim, git, python, etc.), so it's not really a surprise. The only barriers keeping this from becoming my only computer are things that I never expected it to conquer in the first place. I didn't get it with the expectation it could run IntelliJ/Arduino, so no hard feelings there. I now reach for the Chromebook far more often than I do my (older generation) Macbook Air.
    - wes-exp 14y ago
      What is it about the Chromebook that you prefer over the Air?
      - dman 14y ago
        Price.
      - edtechdev 14y ago
        It's 4x cheaper ($250 vs. $1000), for one. If you realize you are spending 90% of your time doing work (or not) in the Chrome browser, why not just get a Chromebook then? A lot of people are arguing that Chromebooks are better for school kids, too, than more expensive desktops, laptops, or even ipads. I have a mac laptop at work, which I only keep around for video editing, but you can even do basic video editing in the browser nowadays, with sites such as WeVideo and Pixorial.
batgaijin 14y ago
I wish I could install arch-arm to the internal drive.
- Inufu 14y ago
  If it's like the other chromebooks, you can if you enable Dev mode.
habosa 14y ago
Interesting because for me it is showing up as $324 and not the famous $250 price. I am definitely buying one of these when it comes back in stock. I think I'll replace my Asus Transformer with a Chrome book and a Nexus 7
- dannyr 14y ago
  It's because it's from another seller. If you look on the right side, you'll see $250 from Amazon but it's out of stock.
kjhughes 14y ago
The success of the Chromebook contrasts curiously with the death (?) of the netbook: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-dead-2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-de... I never bought a "netbook" -- always had top-end notebooks for travel and desktops for home/office, so there never was a reason to consider a netbook for myself. However, I just bought three Chromebooks for family members this Christmas because, compared with tablets, Chromebooks are nearly as good for content consumption and far better for content creation. Tablets, combined with popular online destinations and SaaS offerings, appear to have changed the market potential for newer netbooks such as the Chromebook.
- lmm 14y ago
  Netbooks were great for travel where you didn't want to lug around a big laptop, and I'd argue that ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks. Even full-size desktop-replacement laptops have got a lot thinner (and with better battery life) than they were five years ago. So I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed into the wider laptop market.
  - drcube 14y ago
    My girlfriend got a netbook for $199 in 2009. Where's the ultrabook in that price range?
  - muuh-gnu 14y ago
    > ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks. The raison d'être of netbooks was not portability, it was the ridiculously low price. > I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed No. Netbooks were new, trendy, selling well and overall successful. Everybody and their dog had them, bought them and would have kept buying replacements if they werent panically removed from the market and replaced with subnotebooks/ultrabooks at 2-4 times the initial netbook price.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Smart phones had a significant impact. The original eee pc 701 had a small keyboard; a small (but I think nice) display and limited soldered in SSD storage. (4 gb). This was released 2007. That's the same year the first iPhone was released. While netbooks are useful for some people a lot of people just need to read email, noodle about on the web, and play games. I agree that it's really annoying that really cheap, portable, limited function machines are not available. Chromebooks are probably the closest, but the cloud thing is a bit of a worry for me.
joezydeco 14y ago
I tried one at Best Buy earlier this month, since nobody else has one that you can actually put your hands on. They were sold out but they had a live demo model working in a display. The keyboard just felt...odd. I don't know if it was because the keys were slightly larger and spaced farther apart than a similar low-profile Mac keyboard, or if it was the different placement of keys (no Alt key, but a large "search" key in it's place) Anyone else have some opinions of the keyboard?
- autotravis 14y ago
  > "The keyboard just felt...odd." My opinion is that all keyboards feel odd compared to what I use on a daily basis. If I use any keyboard for 2-3 days straight, it will stop feeling odd. It's all a matter of what you're accustomed to using.
- saljam 14y ago
  The Samsung ARM Chromebook I have has 2 normally located Alt keys. The Search key replaces Caps Lock (Good riddance!) Are you sure you weren't using one of the Intel ones? Maybe it's the British/American difference...
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    Maybe I'm getting mixed up with the Acer C7 model, which was also on display.
- alexhawdon 14y ago
  Yes, I agree - I'm pretty sure the key placement/spacing isn't 100% standard. That said, I still really love the device as a very portable, long-battery-life second computer. Recommended my girlfriend get one (she's going to be getting a desktop soon as her main comp) and she's really happy with it... ...when she gets to use it ;)
samstave 14y ago
My mom was recently diagnosed with cancer, shortly thereafter her house was burgled and someone stole her laptop and phone. I bought her the chromebook off amazon and brought it to her. I had to create a gmail account for her as she was required to have one for this machine. While the price was right, I was REALLY disappointed that the farking camera doesn't work in these yet! Neither does chrome Remote Desktop. My mom has a tracheotomy right now and cannot speak, so doing Skype/FaceTime/video calls is important for her to see my kids. Overall, I'd rate this machine a 4/10 based on the limited functionality, the limited storage and apps and the rather clunky UX. The physical form-factor is really nice, but the thing, at half the cost of an iPad has maybe 1/100th the functionality. I can browse the web and create a google doc. That's it.
- subway 14y ago
  The camera works just fine... I've used mine regularly for meetings via Google Hangouts since I picked it up a month after release. As for storage, what exactly are you trying to store on the device? It really seems to only be intended for use as a dumb terminal to Google services, and in the current iteration I've yet to find a reason to use the local storage. My biggest beef is the inability to locally cache music and video from Google Play. I think if this functionality existed, I would agree that the local storage is inadequate.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    I think you also get 100 GB of Google Drive storage with the new Chromebooks.
    - dnu 14y ago
      But it's limited for 1 or 2 years. After that you have to pay if you want that extra storage.
- mtgx 14y ago
  What do you mean the camera doesn't work? Is it defective? Or do you mean you can't use Skype with it? And did you honestly expect Facetime to work on it? I suggest you use Google Talk or Google+ Hangouts. If you care that much about using Skype, I think you can use https://imo.im https://imo.im. I know you can login with Skype, but I've never checked to see if video-calling works.
cake 14y ago
Nowadays I'm very douptfull about those rankings, I've seen a seller that we set up with Amazon in the top 3 in a category despite having done no sales.
- huxley 14y ago
  They aren't straight rankings. They have a complex algorithm that has several weightings and probably include some velocity variables that affect placement. There's been lots of speculation but Amazon rarely gives more than hints about how they calculate their best seller lists: "We base rankings on all-time sales, as well as recent sales that are weighted more heavily than older sales, so that our lists are timely and aren't always dominated by all-time best-sellers like Harry Potter." - Amazon Spokeswoman Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business-us_business/t/secrets-amazon-best-seller-list/#.UORW7KUshn8 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business-us_business...
saljam 14y ago
A few commenters are asking about running their favourite distro on these. I've installed a Debian chroot on mine. I've been using it as my main machine for almost 2 months now. I'm quite happy with it, but I mostly use it as a terminal to bigger machines at the university. To get X I hacked together a Chrome App[0] VNC client, based on noVNC. It's a bit laggy sometimes, but does the job for my purposes. Ron Minnich (of Coreboot fame) wrote a guide for doing the same with Arch[1]. And there's Crouton[2] for Ubuntu, but I'm not sure whether it does ARM or not. [0] https://bitbucket.org/saljam/vnc https://bitbucket.org/saljam/vnc [1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7YhA_mXdpThG2UIZsYOCgU/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7Yh... [2] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Worth pointing out that CrOS's "secure boot" is somewhat unique among mainstream OSes in that it still respects the user's wishes by design[0] (aka developer mode), unlike iOS, WinRT, and (with some exceptions) Android devices. [0] http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/firmware-boot-and-recovery http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/f...
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  New HTC, Motorola and Samsung devices have unlocked bootloaders, not to mention the generally superior Nexus brand anyway. The "exception" is locked bootloaders and that's pretty much a Verizon thing these days.
archangel_one 14y ago
As much as I'm pleased* to see this, I don't think "without a major advertising campaign" is fair. There are no end of Google ads in the Underground at the moment, featuring Chromebooks front and centre, and I assume that's not the only place. *disclaimer: I work for Google, so I may not be totally unbiased on this point.
arikrak 14y ago
Windows laptops have many different brands and models, and even Macbooks have been around long enough that there's different types, but there's basically just 2 Chromebooks. This means they might only be a tiny fraction of PC sales, but still out come as the #1 specific product.
mtgx 14y ago
Has Portable NaCl arrived on the ARM Chromebook yet? Google promised it by the end of the year: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-low-budget-arm-based-chromebook/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-l...
cooldeal 14y ago
A few thoughts: Is it sustainable as a business? Anyone know if Google is subsidizing these or if there is a profit margin, however small? I think it's all about attracting people to Google Apps for Business but if a lot of folks just load Ubuntu on it, Google might have second thoughts on it. I think it is meant as mostly a bundle with Google Apps for Enterprise to attract companies with cheap and/or rented hardware. Also, being on the Amazon bestseller list is not a very good indicator of popularity. Since Google is very unlikely to release the real numbers we will have to rely on things like StatCounter, Net Applications or even popular web sites run by HN'ers to get more data on sales. Will RMS consider this more or less free than Windows/Apple machines? On one hand you have multiple OEMs, dev mode to boot alternative OSes, compability with Web etc. but on the other hand you need a Google account to even use it, and it's tied heavily to Google cloud services, no native API, no chance of Firefox for it etc. i.e It can be seen as taking consumers even more away from independent offline usage to being at the mercy of the cloud providers. What happens if your Google account gets locked?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Raphael 14y ago
  The majority of people will use the default OS.
cheriot 14y ago
OS of Best Sellers in Laptop Computers 1 Chrome 2 OSX 3 Windows 7 4 OSX 5 Windows 7 6 Windows 8 7 Windows 8 8 Windows 8 9 Windows 7 10 Windows 8 11 Chrome
- aidenn0 14y ago
  And #2,4,10 are the only 3 over $500
aidenn0 14y ago
More interestingly to me is that Apple has all but one of the top-10 laptops that is selling for over $500.
serverascode 14y ago
Anyone know where I could get one around Santa Clara? As a Canadian I don't think I can buy one in Canada. But I have to go to Santa Clara for the Open Compute summit. I checked the nearest best buys but nothing.

82 points by 6ren 14y ago

I'm a little surprised it's happened so early but I'd attribute it to the fact that it's actually cheaper than an iPad. I've got the Acer c710 and actually like working with it even though it seems like the processor is a little slower than my old cr-48.

mtgx 14y ago
The price probably played a role, but I also think they address pretty different markets. Not everyone wants to hold a tablet in their hands all day, while others would rather use a tablet than a normal laptop.

juusto 14y ago

Would love to get one of these babies and install Ubuntu. Is it possible to install Java+Eclipse+Android SDK on it?

yogeshgirdhar 14y ago
Check this link out: http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/arm-chrubuntu-1204-alpha-1-now.html http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/arm-chrubuntu-12...
osivertsson 14y ago
Even if possible, for me I think this setup would be a very painful experience with a slower CPU, low resolution display, and only 2GB RAM compared to what at least I'm used to, which is a Dell M4500 i7 with 8GB RAM, granted it did cost five times as much a couple of years back.
- orik 14y ago
  I'm running ubuntu on my ARM Chromebook; it runs well. (Or at lesst, better than an atom will)
- bitwize 14y ago
  If he ditched eclipse, it could actually work. Developing Android apps with Emacs and the command line tools is really quite feasible, especially since there's no enterprise shit-ola which is what people rely heavily on IDEs to generate for them. But I don't think the Android SDK is available in anything but x86... so, maybe if he used qemu emulation?
jxi 14y ago
I've always been interested in having a cheap, replaceable and portable laptop like this as a dev machine, but the more I think about it the more I realize this is more like an iPad (i.e. for media consumption) than a dev machine. That is until we have some solid browser-based "cloud" IDE's.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Chromebooks make excellent portable SSH terminals (see [0]) thanks to having decent keyboards (esp. for the price range) and great battery life. http://c9.io http://c9.io shows some promise as well, though IMHO it still doesn't beat good old-fashioned tmux. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
  - ISL 14y ago
    Is there any indication that they'll ever add windowed (not full-screen) X-forwarding? When I'm working from afar, ssh with tunneled X is all I need.
  - Thrymr 14y ago
    If you spend any time at all without net connectivity, you need to be able to work with native tools on a cloned code repo. The machine is more than powerful enough for plenty of local dev tasks, it's really a shame you can't work locally.
georgemcbay 14y ago
I run Ubuntu on mine. I haven't tried running Eclipse. Oracle recently released an Early Access version of Java 8 with hardfp support to cash in on the Raspberry Pi fever, presumably that build would work on the ARM/Chromebook running Ubuntu (though it wouldn't be totally optimized for it) but I haven't tried it to be sure. If I were doing Android development on this system I'd probably stick with ant based builds and use emacs or gedit (I wish Sublime Text 2 had an ARM build, the fact that it doesn't is kind of killing it as a useful editor for me these days). Eclipse is already a bit slower than I would like on my desktop, I'd imagine using it wouldn't be that great on the Chromebook.

duck 14y ago

What is crazy is they have been sold out since early December (or maybe even before that).

tedunangst 14y ago

How many people buy laptops through Amazon? I always found the selection impossible to sort through, let alone figuring out if I'm getting this year's model or last year's model.

brown 14y ago
I do. I do research elsewhere, and then go to Amazon for price shopping. Asus in particular was best on Amazon.

wes-exp 14y ago

Never underestimate the selling power of cheap crap.

dannyr 14y ago
This crap happens to have a 4-star rating from the people who used/owns it.
EwanToo 14y ago
It's far from crap, it's my standard day to day laptop now, has been since November. I still have my lenovo laptop for when I need it, but that's pretty rare
- Cowen 14y ago
  It's now my primary laptop as well. I've gotten 95% of my development tools working properly on it. Granted, most of those tools are command-line based (i.e. vim, git, python, etc.), so it's not really a surprise. The only barriers keeping this from becoming my only computer are things that I never expected it to conquer in the first place. I didn't get it with the expectation it could run IntelliJ/Arduino, so no hard feelings there. I now reach for the Chromebook far more often than I do my (older generation) Macbook Air.
  - wes-exp 14y ago
    What is it about the Chromebook that you prefer over the Air?
    - dman 14y ago
      Price.
    - edtechdev 14y ago
      It's 4x cheaper ($250 vs. $1000), for one. If you realize you are spending 90% of your time doing work (or not) in the Chrome browser, why not just get a Chromebook then? A lot of people are arguing that Chromebooks are better for school kids, too, than more expensive desktops, laptops, or even ipads. I have a mac laptop at work, which I only keep around for video editing, but you can even do basic video editing in the browser nowadays, with sites such as WeVideo and Pixorial.

batgaijin 14y ago

I wish I could install arch-arm to the internal drive.

Inufu 14y ago
If it's like the other chromebooks, you can if you enable Dev mode.

habosa 14y ago

Interesting because for me it is showing up as $324 and not the famous $250 price. I am definitely buying one of these when it comes back in stock. I think I'll replace my Asus Transformer with a Chrome book and a Nexus 7

dannyr 14y ago
It's because it's from another seller. If you look on the right side, you'll see $250 from Amazon but it's out of stock.

kjhughes 14y ago

The success of the Chromebook contrasts curiously with the death (?) of the netbook: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-dead-2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-de... I never bought a "netbook" -- always had top-end notebooks for travel and desktops for home/office, so there never was a reason to consider a netbook for myself. However, I just bought three Chromebooks for family members this Christmas because, compared with tablets, Chromebooks are nearly as good for content consumption and far better for content creation. Tablets, combined with popular online destinations and SaaS offerings, appear to have changed the market potential for newer netbooks such as the Chromebook.

lmm 14y ago
Netbooks were great for travel where you didn't want to lug around a big laptop, and I'd argue that ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks. Even full-size desktop-replacement laptops have got a lot thinner (and with better battery life) than they were five years ago. So I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed into the wider laptop market.
- drcube 14y ago
  My girlfriend got a netbook for $199 in 2009. Where's the ultrabook in that price range?
- muuh-gnu 14y ago
  > ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks. The raison d'être of netbooks was not portability, it was the ridiculously low price. > I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed No. Netbooks were new, trendy, selling well and overall successful. Everybody and their dog had them, bought them and would have kept buying replacements if they werent panically removed from the market and replaced with subnotebooks/ultrabooks at 2-4 times the initial netbook price.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Smart phones had a significant impact. The original eee pc 701 had a small keyboard; a small (but I think nice) display and limited soldered in SSD storage. (4 gb). This was released 2007. That's the same year the first iPhone was released. While netbooks are useful for some people a lot of people just need to read email, noodle about on the web, and play games. I agree that it's really annoying that really cheap, portable, limited function machines are not available. Chromebooks are probably the closest, but the cloud thing is a bit of a worry for me.

joezydeco 14y ago

I tried one at Best Buy earlier this month, since nobody else has one that you can actually put your hands on. They were sold out but they had a live demo model working in a display. The keyboard just felt...odd. I don't know if it was because the keys were slightly larger and spaced farther apart than a similar low-profile Mac keyboard, or if it was the different placement of keys (no Alt key, but a large "search" key in it's place) Anyone else have some opinions of the keyboard?

autotravis 14y ago
> "The keyboard just felt...odd." My opinion is that all keyboards feel odd compared to what I use on a daily basis. If I use any keyboard for 2-3 days straight, it will stop feeling odd. It's all a matter of what you're accustomed to using.
saljam 14y ago
The Samsung ARM Chromebook I have has 2 normally located Alt keys. The Search key replaces Caps Lock (Good riddance!) Are you sure you weren't using one of the Intel ones? Maybe it's the British/American difference...
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Maybe I'm getting mixed up with the Acer C7 model, which was also on display.
alexhawdon 14y ago
Yes, I agree - I'm pretty sure the key placement/spacing isn't 100% standard. That said, I still really love the device as a very portable, long-battery-life second computer. Recommended my girlfriend get one (she's going to be getting a desktop soon as her main comp) and she's really happy with it... ...when she gets to use it ;)

samstave 14y ago

My mom was recently diagnosed with cancer, shortly thereafter her house was burgled and someone stole her laptop and phone. I bought her the chromebook off amazon and brought it to her. I had to create a gmail account for her as she was required to have one for this machine. While the price was right, I was REALLY disappointed that the farking camera doesn't work in these yet! Neither does chrome Remote Desktop. My mom has a tracheotomy right now and cannot speak, so doing Skype/FaceTime/video calls is important for her to see my kids. Overall, I'd rate this machine a 4/10 based on the limited functionality, the limited storage and apps and the rather clunky UX. The physical form-factor is really nice, but the thing, at half the cost of an iPad has maybe 1/100th the functionality. I can browse the web and create a google doc. That's it.

subway 14y ago
The camera works just fine... I've used mine regularly for meetings via Google Hangouts since I picked it up a month after release. As for storage, what exactly are you trying to store on the device? It really seems to only be intended for use as a dumb terminal to Google services, and in the current iteration I've yet to find a reason to use the local storage. My biggest beef is the inability to locally cache music and video from Google Play. I think if this functionality existed, I would agree that the local storage is inadequate.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I think you also get 100 GB of Google Drive storage with the new Chromebooks.
  - dnu 14y ago
    But it's limited for 1 or 2 years. After that you have to pay if you want that extra storage.
mtgx 14y ago
What do you mean the camera doesn't work? Is it defective? Or do you mean you can't use Skype with it? And did you honestly expect Facetime to work on it? I suggest you use Google Talk or Google+ Hangouts. If you care that much about using Skype, I think you can use https://imo.im https://imo.im. I know you can login with Skype, but I've never checked to see if video-calling works.

cake 14y ago

Nowadays I'm very douptfull about those rankings, I've seen a seller that we set up with Amazon in the top 3 in a category despite having done no sales.

huxley 14y ago
They aren't straight rankings. They have a complex algorithm that has several weightings and probably include some velocity variables that affect placement. There's been lots of speculation but Amazon rarely gives more than hints about how they calculate their best seller lists: "We base rankings on all-time sales, as well as recent sales that are weighted more heavily than older sales, so that our lists are timely and aren't always dominated by all-time best-sellers like Harry Potter." - Amazon Spokeswoman Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business-us_business/t/secrets-amazon-best-seller-list/#.UORW7KUshn8 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business-us_business...

saljam 14y ago

A few commenters are asking about running their favourite distro on these. I've installed a Debian chroot on mine. I've been using it as my main machine for almost 2 months now. I'm quite happy with it, but I mostly use it as a terminal to bigger machines at the university. To get X I hacked together a Chrome App[0] VNC client, based on noVNC. It's a bit laggy sometimes, but does the job for my purposes. Ron Minnich (of Coreboot fame) wrote a guide for doing the same with Arch[1]. And there's Crouton[2] for Ubuntu, but I'm not sure whether it does ARM or not. [0] https://bitbucket.org/saljam/vnc https://bitbucket.org/saljam/vnc [1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7YhA_mXdpThG2UIZsYOCgU/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7Yh... [2] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

ConstantineXVI 14y ago

Worth pointing out that CrOS's "secure boot" is somewhat unique among mainstream OSes in that it still respects the user's wishes by design[0] (aka developer mode), unlike iOS, WinRT, and (with some exceptions) Android devices. [0] http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/firmware-boot-and-recovery http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/f...

drivebyacct2 14y ago
New HTC, Motorola and Samsung devices have unlocked bootloaders, not to mention the generally superior Nexus brand anyway. The "exception" is locked bootloaders and that's pretty much a Verizon thing these days.

archangel_one 14y ago

As much as I'm pleased* to see this, I don't think "without a major advertising campaign" is fair. There are no end of Google ads in the Underground at the moment, featuring Chromebooks front and centre, and I assume that's not the only place. *disclaimer: I work for Google, so I may not be totally unbiased on this point.

arikrak 14y ago

Windows laptops have many different brands and models, and even Macbooks have been around long enough that there's different types, but there's basically just 2 Chromebooks. This means they might only be a tiny fraction of PC sales, but still out come as the #1 specific product.

mtgx 14y ago

Has Portable NaCl arrived on the ARM Chromebook yet? Google promised it by the end of the year: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-low-budget-arm-based-chromebook/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-l...

cooldeal 14y ago

A few thoughts: Is it sustainable as a business? Anyone know if Google is subsidizing these or if there is a profit margin, however small? I think it's all about attracting people to Google Apps for Business but if a lot of folks just load Ubuntu on it, Google might have second thoughts on it. I think it is meant as mostly a bundle with Google Apps for Enterprise to attract companies with cheap and/or rented hardware. Also, being on the Amazon bestseller list is not a very good indicator of popularity. Since Google is very unlikely to release the real numbers we will have to rely on things like StatCounter, Net Applications or even popular web sites run by HN'ers to get more data on sales. Will RMS consider this more or less free than Windows/Apple machines? On one hand you have multiple OEMs, dev mode to boot alternative OSes, compability with Web etc. but on the other hand you need a Google account to even use it, and it's tied heavily to Google cloud services, no native API, no chance of Firefox for it etc. i.e It can be seen as taking consumers even more away from independent offline usage to being at the mercy of the cloud providers. What happens if your Google account gets locked?

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Raphael 14y ago
The majority of people will use the default OS.

cheriot 14y ago

OS of Best Sellers in Laptop Computers 1 Chrome 2 OSX 3 Windows 7 4 OSX 5 Windows 7 6 Windows 8 7 Windows 8 8 Windows 8 9 Windows 7 10 Windows 8 11 Chrome

aidenn0 14y ago
And #2,4,10 are the only 3 over $500

aidenn0 14y ago

More interestingly to me is that Apple has all but one of the top-10 laptops that is selling for over $500.

serverascode 14y ago

Anyone know where I could get one around Santa Clara? As a Canadian I don't think I can buy one in Canada. But I have to go to Santa Clara for the Open Compute summit. I checked the nearest best buys but nothing.