6 ms·

Chrome has a wonderful SSH client [0], and with a $5/mo Digital Ocean [1] (or other [2]) VPS for all your UNIX work, it's a perfectly capable dev machine. [0]:

by Kerrick 14y ago

Chrome has a wonderful SSH client [0], and with a $5/mo Digital Ocean [1] (or other [2]) VPS for all your UNIX work, it's a perfectly capable dev machine. [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo?utm_source=chrome-ntp-launcher https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec... [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/ [2]: http://www.lowendbox.com/ http://www.lowendbox.com/

rayiner 14y ago
So you pay $1,300 to log into a $5/month remote box with 20GB of storage and 512MB of RAM?
- elarkin 14y ago
  Well, you probably would not get this chromebook if you were only going to use SSH. You'd buy the $250 one.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    Unless you wanted the gorgeous 2560x1700 display... Many people have paid close to the whole computer's price just for the screen (I'm typing this on a 2560x1440 screen that I paid $999 for).
    - Gormo 14y ago
      Is your 2560x1440 screen only 13" though? I don't see the point of having a pixel density that high; almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that, and enough people have poor enough eyesight that they won't be able to read text on software that doesn't scale its fonts properly. That resolution is appropriate for a monitor with twice the diagonal size. Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd.
      - Zak 14y ago
        almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina[0]. It does need some help from software to not cause usability problems like font scaling and tiny images, but we've had the hardware capability to do this for a while. It's past time we improved on this. Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd. If I had to guess, I bet a lot of the people involved in bringing this machine to market wanted 4:3, but someone in marketing and/or a focus group said that would be perceived as old-fashioned, so they got as close as they felt they could get away with. I'd really like to see a writeup on the reasoning from someone involved though. [0] I believe the accuracy of said claim is disputed.
        Gormo 14y ago
        > That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina. But the resolution doesn't need to be any higher than the maximum resolution of a human retina. By definition, you'd be unable to see the difference; you're just left with the scaling problems of an extremely high resolution on a very small display.
        Zak 14y ago
        But the resolution doesn't need to be any higher than the maximum resolution of a human retina. As I mentioned, the claim that the resolutions sold are higher than the human retina are disputed. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp Apple's successive retina devices have decreased in pixels per inch, but have increased in pixels per degree at their intended viewing distance as larger high-PPI devices were introduced. Of course, sometimes people use devices at distances other than those the manufacturer intended, and some people have better eyes than others. The point is, current high-PPI screens haven't actually banished the pixel from human perception just yet. There are still gains to be made, but they aren't nearly as significant as quadrupling pixel counts over previous devices.
- oskarth 14y ago
  This and similar arguments in this thread are eerily similar to the arguments made against the first iPhone by the ./ crowd.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    You mean the iPad? I remember the iPhone having a very positive reaction. As a general rule, most of the time when people say "this is going to be a failure" they are right. The iPad is the exception, not the rule. And Apple has market-making ability that Google can only dream of.
    - incongruity 14y ago
      Well, I mean, given that most new product launches and most new business ventures fail, of course the naysayers will be right more often. That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. So, that having been said and because this is the internet, I'll rush in with my probably foolish and ill-advised explanation for with this won't be a game changer: In this case, I think the price vs. capabilities will make people compare this unfavorably with other ultrabooks/macbook airs. For the price, there isn't much here that can't be copied, easily, and quickly – and if I really want the cloud connectivity, I can get that on my ultrabook. What's the unique value proposition in this product? I just don't see it being compelling – except that it's not an Apple product (don't get me wrong, I'm typing this on a Macbook, but I recognize that some people don't like the fruit vendor).
      - rayiner 14y ago
        > That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. I think it's gut reaction: I wouldn't use this product or recommend it to my friends. I think most of the time, that gut reaction is on point. Sometimes it's wrong, like the iPad, because you don't see the use for it until you try it, but that's the exception.
      - bostonvaulter2 14y ago
        >Well, I mean, given that most new product launches and most new business ventures fail, of course the naysayers will be right more often. That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. Here's a great article on that subject "How to be right 90% of the time, and why I'd rather be wrong": http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-of-time-and-why-id.html http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-...
- Kerrick 14y ago
  Plenty of people already do this with the $250 Chromebook, and even iPad. The $1,299 isn't for the 32GB SSD. It's for the 239ppi 2:3 multitouch Gorilla Glass display. It's for the 4GB of RAM. It's for the dual core Intel i5. It's for the impressively made aluminum chassis. It's for the 1TB of cloud storage. It's for everything a high-end cloud device should be.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    If you're logging on to a remote server to do development,you're not taking advantage of the dual core i5 or 4GB of RAM. You're logged into an image that's giving you maybe 1 GHz of CPU and 512MB of RAM. You're buying a $1,300 machine to do development on a $300 machine, over a shitty internet connection.
    - codeka 14y ago
      It depends what you're working on. If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL) then a beefy client is preferable to a beefy server. I agree though that I probably wouldn't buy this for development work. But I do think that browser's are still better on beefy hardware than on gimped hardware.
      - wvenable 14y ago
        > If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL) Really? If you're the one person in the world doing heavy WebGL this might be the product for you.
      - kevingadd 14y ago
        Sorry, but if you're doing WebGL development, the last thing you want is a laptop with one of Intel's awful integrated GPUs.
        iso-8859-1 14y ago
        Please qualify your claims with a statement saying that you actually developed on the Intel HD series. Intel graphics are not what they used to be.
- zmmmmm 14y ago
  I think it might work reverse to this. You don't buy your think client and then figure out how to live with it. Rather, Google is betting that in the future people will be using thin clients and cloud services because of all the other reasons they are attractive. Once you've already decided you want to live in the cloud, then your question becomes, what is the best possible device I could buy for doing that? And that is what the Pixel is for.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Thin client, thick client, cloud, local, etc, these are all only relevant to technical people. Focus on use-cases. What does the Pixel let you do that a Macbook Pro does not? Have access to all your documents from anywhere (over internet connections of various levels of unreliability?) No, because you can do all that on a Macbook Pro. Does taking away the ability to do things locally improve the user experience in some other way? Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use. Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?
    - zmmmmm 14y ago
      > Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use When your entire OS is cloud based, I think you get some synergies - you can reliably sit down at any computer and everything "just works" with all your state exactly how you left when you got up from the previous one. So yes, you could purchase a Mac Pro, but because it's not cloud based from the ground up there are massive gobs of local state such that you continually need to worry about sync'ing things here there and everywhere, installing apps everywhere, etc. So in world where the default thinking for every application is to store local state, removing the capability for local state is necessary to achieve a true thin client. > Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? I think that's not really the selling point of this high end machine. This is Google's statement that cloud based computing is better even for people who do demanding, complex tasks (I'm not saying they are right, but I think it's what they believe). > Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad? As I said, you're underestimating Google's ambition for what can be done with a thin client. An iPad is not suitable for highly intensive desktop tasks at all. A chromebook has all the physical features of a high end professional laptop, but is 100% cloud based, and thus can be used as a real computer for real tasks.
criley 14y ago
These are really cool tools that I didn't realize existed! I think I may take advantage of one of them! However as the other reply said, it seems silly to buy a big powerful incredible machine just to do all of your actual work on a virtual server. Why not just buy a cheap machine and an expensive server instead of vice versa? I want good performance and it feels wrong to buy a beefy, sexy machine and gimp it with a 1 core 512MB development bottleneck. AKA lesson learned: the pixel is not for cost-conscious developers.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  If you're doing CPU/GPU intensive web development this would come in handy. WebGL is pretty much a no-go on the ARM based Chromebooks but would perform fine here.
paul_f 14y ago
2560 x 1700 display is a big deal for devs, but I think I'd find the extra $200 and get a Macbook pro.
- Evbn 14y ago
  On a 13" display, those specs are a gimmick, MAYBE useful for examining professional photos.
  - jfb 14y ago
    Not even remotely true. Super high pixel density screens are an unalloyed win. Everything you do on one looks better, most particularly, text rendering, which is absolutely superb on my rMBP. I would expect Google's screen to be comparable.
  - Zak 14y ago
    I spend 12 hours a day looking at screens. Sharpness makes that more pleasant. So does a wide viewing angle, good contrast ratio, accurate color reproduction and adequate brightness. This screen likely does pretty well on all of those factors. Considering how much time programmers spend interfacing with screens and keyboards, it might make sense to spend a couple days' pay on good ones. Many of us consider this screen's aspect ratio a big improvement over the 16:9 of most PCs for working with code/text as well.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Text sharpness on a retina screen is amazing. You know how lots of people turn of anti-aliasing for code because they don't like the blurriness it introduces? Anti-aliasing on a 250 dpi screen looks as sharp as your 1-pixel thick coding fonts at 72 DPI used to.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Apple Store has a refurbed MacBook Pro for $1,269: Originally released October 2012 13.3-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2560-by-1600 (227 dpi) 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM 128GB Flash Storage
alec 14y ago
I regularly use the SSH client. I wouldn't call it wonderful; it works, but that's about it. Highlight a wrapped line? GNOME Terminal will Do The Right Thing, Chrome's SSH client won't and gives you a newline. See a URL? GNOME Terminal will let you click to open; Chrome's SSH client won't.
chris_mahan 14y ago
I got a cr-48 in november 2010. The new chromeOS remaps ctrl-o to "open window" even when in crosh, so you can't save files in nano or pico. I stopped using it altogether. It's gathering dust.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  I'll give you $50 for it!
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- joestringer 14y ago
  crosh is being deprecated in favour of a newer ssh client: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo?hl=en-GB https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
- nbouscal 14y ago
  I'm still using mine (got it December 2010), but I replaced the ChromeOS with a Linux. It actually works great, especially for a free laptop that's over two years old. I agree that the last several updates to ChromeOS made things worse rather than better, though.
tutysara 14y ago
I guess you are talking about the $250 chromebook, I am using a lenovo x120, having all my dev setup in digitalocean 1GB server. Do you use X or just fine with command line/emacs? Just curious to know how other people are using ec2/linode/digitalocean for development.

by Kerrick 14y ago

rayiner 14y ago

So you pay $1,300 to log into a $5/month remote box with 20GB of storage and 512MB of RAM?

elarkin 14y ago
Well, you probably would not get this chromebook if you were only going to use SSH. You'd buy the $250 one.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Unless you wanted the gorgeous 2560x1700 display... Many people have paid close to the whole computer's price just for the screen (I'm typing this on a 2560x1440 screen that I paid $999 for).
  - Gormo 14y ago
    Is your 2560x1440 screen only 13" though? I don't see the point of having a pixel density that high; almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that, and enough people have poor enough eyesight that they won't be able to read text on software that doesn't scale its fonts properly. That resolution is appropriate for a monitor with twice the diagonal size. Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd.
    - Zak 14y ago
      almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina[0]. It does need some help from software to not cause usability problems like font scaling and tiny images, but we've had the hardware capability to do this for a while. It's past time we improved on this. Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd. If I had to guess, I bet a lot of the people involved in bringing this machine to market wanted 4:3, but someone in marketing and/or a focus group said that would be perceived as old-fashioned, so they got as close as they felt they could get away with. I'd really like to see a writeup on the reasoning from someone involved though. [0] I believe the accuracy of said claim is disputed.
      - Gormo 14y ago
        > That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina. But the resolution doesn't need to be any higher than the maximum resolution of a human retina. By definition, you'd be unable to see the difference; you're just left with the scaling problems of an extremely high resolution on a very small display.
        Zak 14y ago
        But the resolution doesn't need to be any higher than the maximum resolution of a human retina. As I mentioned, the claim that the resolutions sold are higher than the human retina are disputed. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp Apple's successive retina devices have decreased in pixels per inch, but have increased in pixels per degree at their intended viewing distance as larger high-PPI devices were introduced. Of course, sometimes people use devices at distances other than those the manufacturer intended, and some people have better eyes than others. The point is, current high-PPI screens haven't actually banished the pixel from human perception just yet. There are still gains to be made, but they aren't nearly as significant as quadrupling pixel counts over previous devices.
oskarth 14y ago
This and similar arguments in this thread are eerily similar to the arguments made against the first iPhone by the ./ crowd.
- rayiner 14y ago
  You mean the iPad? I remember the iPhone having a very positive reaction. As a general rule, most of the time when people say "this is going to be a failure" they are right. The iPad is the exception, not the rule. And Apple has market-making ability that Google can only dream of.
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Well, I mean, given that most new product launches and most new business ventures fail, of course the naysayers will be right more often. That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. So, that having been said and because this is the internet, I'll rush in with my probably foolish and ill-advised explanation for with this won't be a game changer: In this case, I think the price vs. capabilities will make people compare this unfavorably with other ultrabooks/macbook airs. For the price, there isn't much here that can't be copied, easily, and quickly – and if I really want the cloud connectivity, I can get that on my ultrabook. What's the unique value proposition in this product? I just don't see it being compelling – except that it's not an Apple product (don't get me wrong, I'm typing this on a Macbook, but I recognize that some people don't like the fruit vendor).
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. I think it's gut reaction: I wouldn't use this product or recommend it to my friends. I think most of the time, that gut reaction is on point. Sometimes it's wrong, like the iPad, because you don't see the use for it until you try it, but that's the exception.
    - bostonvaulter2 14y ago
      >Well, I mean, given that most new product launches and most new business ventures fail, of course the naysayers will be right more often. That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. Here's a great article on that subject "How to be right 90% of the time, and why I'd rather be wrong": http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-of-time-and-why-id.html http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-...
Kerrick 14y ago
Plenty of people already do this with the $250 Chromebook, and even iPad. The $1,299 isn't for the 32GB SSD. It's for the 239ppi 2:3 multitouch Gorilla Glass display. It's for the 4GB of RAM. It's for the dual core Intel i5. It's for the impressively made aluminum chassis. It's for the 1TB of cloud storage. It's for everything a high-end cloud device should be.
- rayiner 14y ago
  If you're logging on to a remote server to do development,you're not taking advantage of the dual core i5 or 4GB of RAM. You're logged into an image that's giving you maybe 1 GHz of CPU and 512MB of RAM. You're buying a $1,300 machine to do development on a $300 machine, over a shitty internet connection.
  - codeka 14y ago
    It depends what you're working on. If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL) then a beefy client is preferable to a beefy server. I agree though that I probably wouldn't buy this for development work. But I do think that browser's are still better on beefy hardware than on gimped hardware.
    - wvenable 14y ago
      > If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL) Really? If you're the one person in the world doing heavy WebGL this might be the product for you.
    - kevingadd 14y ago
      Sorry, but if you're doing WebGL development, the last thing you want is a laptop with one of Intel's awful integrated GPUs.
      - iso-8859-1 14y ago
        Please qualify your claims with a statement saying that you actually developed on the Intel HD series. Intel graphics are not what they used to be.
zmmmmm 14y ago
I think it might work reverse to this. You don't buy your think client and then figure out how to live with it. Rather, Google is betting that in the future people will be using thin clients and cloud services because of all the other reasons they are attractive. Once you've already decided you want to live in the cloud, then your question becomes, what is the best possible device I could buy for doing that? And that is what the Pixel is for.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Thin client, thick client, cloud, local, etc, these are all only relevant to technical people. Focus on use-cases. What does the Pixel let you do that a Macbook Pro does not? Have access to all your documents from anywhere (over internet connections of various levels of unreliability?) No, because you can do all that on a Macbook Pro. Does taking away the ability to do things locally improve the user experience in some other way? Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use. Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?
  - zmmmmm 14y ago
    > Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use When your entire OS is cloud based, I think you get some synergies - you can reliably sit down at any computer and everything "just works" with all your state exactly how you left when you got up from the previous one. So yes, you could purchase a Mac Pro, but because it's not cloud based from the ground up there are massive gobs of local state such that you continually need to worry about sync'ing things here there and everywhere, installing apps everywhere, etc. So in world where the default thinking for every application is to store local state, removing the capability for local state is necessary to achieve a true thin client. > Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? I think that's not really the selling point of this high end machine. This is Google's statement that cloud based computing is better even for people who do demanding, complex tasks (I'm not saying they are right, but I think it's what they believe). > Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad? As I said, you're underestimating Google's ambition for what can be done with a thin client. An iPad is not suitable for highly intensive desktop tasks at all. A chromebook has all the physical features of a high end professional laptop, but is 100% cloud based, and thus can be used as a real computer for real tasks.

criley 14y ago

These are really cool tools that I didn't realize existed! I think I may take advantage of one of them! However as the other reply said, it seems silly to buy a big powerful incredible machine just to do all of your actual work on a virtual server. Why not just buy a cheap machine and an expensive server instead of vice versa? I want good performance and it feels wrong to buy a beefy, sexy machine and gimp it with a 1 core 512MB development bottleneck. AKA lesson learned: the pixel is not for cost-conscious developers.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
If you're doing CPU/GPU intensive web development this would come in handy. WebGL is pretty much a no-go on the ARM based Chromebooks but would perform fine here.

paul_f 14y ago

2560 x 1700 display is a big deal for devs, but I think I'd find the extra $200 and get a Macbook pro.

Evbn 14y ago
On a 13" display, those specs are a gimmick, MAYBE useful for examining professional photos.
- jfb 14y ago
  Not even remotely true. Super high pixel density screens are an unalloyed win. Everything you do on one looks better, most particularly, text rendering, which is absolutely superb on my rMBP. I would expect Google's screen to be comparable.
- Zak 14y ago
  I spend 12 hours a day looking at screens. Sharpness makes that more pleasant. So does a wide viewing angle, good contrast ratio, accurate color reproduction and adequate brightness. This screen likely does pretty well on all of those factors. Considering how much time programmers spend interfacing with screens and keyboards, it might make sense to spend a couple days' pay on good ones. Many of us consider this screen's aspect ratio a big improvement over the 16:9 of most PCs for working with code/text as well.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Text sharpness on a retina screen is amazing. You know how lots of people turn of anti-aliasing for code because they don't like the blurriness it introduces? Anti-aliasing on a 250 dpi screen looks as sharp as your 1-pixel thick coding fonts at 72 DPI used to.
joezydeco 14y ago
Apple Store has a refurbed MacBook Pro for $1,269: Originally released October 2012 13.3-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2560-by-1600 (227 dpi) 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM 128GB Flash Storage

alec 14y ago

I regularly use the SSH client. I wouldn't call it wonderful; it works, but that's about it. Highlight a wrapped line? GNOME Terminal will Do The Right Thing, Chrome's SSH client won't and gives you a newline. See a URL? GNOME Terminal will let you click to open; Chrome's SSH client won't.

chris_mahan 14y ago

I got a cr-48 in november 2010. The new chromeOS remaps ctrl-o to "open window" even when in crosh, so you can't save files in nano or pico. I stopped using it altogether. It's gathering dust.

joezydeco 14y ago
I'll give you $50 for it!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
joestringer 14y ago
crosh is being deprecated in favour of a newer ssh client: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo?hl=en-GB https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
nbouscal 14y ago
I'm still using mine (got it December 2010), but I replaced the ChromeOS with a Linux. It actually works great, especially for a free laptop that's over two years old. I agree that the last several updates to ChromeOS made things worse rather than better, though.

tutysara 14y ago

I guess you are talking about the $250 chromebook, I am using a lenovo x120, having all my dev setup in digitalocean 1GB server. Do you use X or just fine with command line/emacs? Just curious to know how other people are using ec2/linode/digitalocean for development.