9 ms·

Chromebooks are the only small, portable, sub $500 PCs that don't completely suck. No wonder they sell. Everyone else is trying to charge $800+ even though lapt

Chromebooks are the only small, portable, sub $500 PCs that don't completely suck. No wonder they sell. Everyone else is trying to charge $800+ even though laptops are perceived as something that should be cheap because they have a high risk of being stolen, getting damaged, or quickly going obsolete. It's like Google understood what the Netbook wanted to be, while everyone else dreamed of being Apple (without the least bit of ability to actually be Apple).

pkulak 13y ago
A friend of mine recently bought some ~$500 laptop with Windows 8 on it. Buying a new toy like that should be fun, but when that thing showed up he just spent a week being frustrated with it. And I was very little help. I don't even understand Windows 8. I've recommend Chromebooks to people, at half that cost, and when they get it they immediately love it.
Pxtl 13y ago
Yup. Probably the only other OS you could use to pull this kind of platform off would be Win8RT, but nobody wants to sell win8RT devices because they're scared of users freaking out when they find out their new Windows notebook doesn't actually run real Windows. Chrome and Win8RT are the only OSes that are good for an ARM-based notebook form-factor, and the ARM chip is necessary to make this device not suck at this end of the cost spectrum. That and frankly, I think we're all sick of supporting Grandma's windows machine, so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great. I won't buy one, I don't need one, but I can see the niches it fills.
- tomsaffell 13y ago
  >so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great. I recently replaced my wife's aging MacBook Air with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook - she much prefers it. It doesn't overheat, nor require frequent restarts. But she has a Masters in CS, and works from the command line, so let's add to, "computer-illiterate people" , "..and people who dont want to spend time nursing their computer".
  - bsimpson 13y ago
    I haven't used my Air since getting a Pixel. When I need to build something, I fire up Sublime in VT3.
    - randall 13y ago
      What's VT3?
      - bsimpson 13y ago
        Virtual Terminal 3. If you press Ctrl-Alt-F2 (forward arrow), you'll get to VT2. You can install crouton and run xinit, which will start a window manager in VT3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3/Reload). I've got my setup scripted here: https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev
      - banjomonster 13y ago
        I think he means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console
    - hayksaakian 13y ago
      I would also like to know what vt3 is
    - kunai 13y ago
      Don't have one yet, but are there any window managers with high-resolution support out yet? I may just get a Pixel if there are. I know Unity hasn't, and Gnome 3 (my favorite) has pixel-doubling support on the way, but if there are any others or if you've been able to optimize an X WM to be readable and polished.
      - bsimpson 13y ago
        I've been using Openbox with no complaints. My setup is documented here: https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev All I use it for is Sublime Text, so things more-or-less look great for me. The problem with Linux is that there are multiple ways of doing any one thing. So, just because Openbox and Sublime can handle high DPI doesn't mean your run-of-the-mill KDE/GTK app will.
freehunter 13y ago
The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. They're netbooks, but far too often they weren't powerful enough to even run a modern browser with the weight of the OS hanging off of it. A Chromebook is really the only true netbook that's ever existed.
- makomk 13y ago
  That doesn't explain why companies killed netbooks though. A lot of the low-end full sized laptops are now running netbook-class hardware at netbook-level prices, with all the performance issues that goes along with it. You just can't get anything smaller than 15" anymore without either shelling out for an Utrabook or Macbook or buying a Chromebook.
  - fpgeek 13y ago
    To be fair, OEMs didn't kill netbooks. Microsoft and Intel did - by stopping the OS and processor deals that made netbooks possible in the first place.
  - Glyptodon 13y ago
    This is pretty much why I haven't bought a new laptop in 4ish years.
- antitrust 13y ago
  > The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. I didn't have a problem with my Acer netbook. It's slow, but not horribly slow. The main laggard factor is the 1gb RAM, which is too little for a Windows 7 install. However, I had to remove all the crapware first. If they didn't ship with those installed, they wouldn't make money from all those juicy contracts.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Same setup here. While I got a newer laptop a year ago, when I really need mobility, the Acer netbook is the first to go into my backpack. It runs Ubuntu, Unity, Emacs and my choice of Django/Flask/App Engine stacks. Mine has 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and I'm considering giving it a small SSD drive. The slow disk seems to be the worst performance bottleneck.
tharrold 13y ago
Wonder how this jibes with this report. http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromebooks-sold-in-last-two-years http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromeb... I also wonder if Chromebooks are priced to make even an operating profit.
- michaelbuckbee 13y ago
  It's all in how you draw the lines: "Sub $300 laptops" is a very distinct (and I would think small) category of total laptop sales.
  - tharrold 13y ago
    If the numbers were really good, Google would announce it themselves, after all they know the real numbers. They instead touted nebulous metrics like top on Amazon lists at I/O.
leephillips 13y ago
Maybe, but a used Thinkpad might be a better deal overall : http://lee-phillips.org/x31/ http://lee-phillips.org/x31/
jdf 13y ago
I feel like the Chromebook is actually a better experience than a laptop. As a programmer, I honestly only use 2 windows: browser and shell. Running crouton to create chroot Ubuntu "images" I can have my normal full (text-based) dev environment, and alt-tab back and forth with the browser. Honestly it feels easier to use than Ubuntu - I don't use any of the builtin Google services (e.g. Drive), but they manage to stay out of the way. It's pretty cheap, looks pretty reasonable, and comes in at a pretty low weight. The screen's not the greatest, but I'm not doing anything where that matters. So all in all a great dev machine. Only caveat for me is that Dropbox doesn't have an installable app for ARM. I need to find something else that does a good job of seamlessly syncing my workspaces and NFS, rsync, etc don't fit as nicely as Dropbox.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  What are you actually building that will run on this hardware? Are are you ssh'ing into a different machine? I just can't see it possible to run anything that relies on the weight of the JVM or relies on external apps (Redis, etc). What web app can live without some sort of a data store (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)? Let's not even get into if you need to compile anything. (Even if you're not working in C, compilation is sometimes necessary with gems/npm/etc) The default answer seems to be just ssh into a dev machine, using the Chromebook as a dumb terminal. While it works, that destroys a classic workflow used by many, relies on Internet access, and adds additional cost (especially if you're a consultant). Even a cheap VPS adds at least $300 a year in cost. Am I incorrect about running a full dev environment on the Chromebook? I'd love to hear others' experiences.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    I can't answer for jdf, but, in my case, I've built a lot of applications using Django and Google App Engine on very frugal hardware, probably less than a more recent Chromebook. On both cases, the development environment is very light and defaults to store data in SQLite. Working with Python allows me to skip compiling stuff most of the time. Of course, a JVM is off the table, as is using Eclipse for your IDE. This machine is one of the reasons I went back to Emacs.
thezilch 13y ago
$800, hahaha; my co-worker paid that much to simply repair his MBAir after being on the receiving end of a beer. They resale for more, so it wasn't a bad choice, but the idea of paying the original cost and then such a repair cost floored me. If there is innovations to be had with laptops, it is resistance to common desk issues like spilt drinks. The device being cheap is parallel with these needs. Making something thinner and more proprietary and glued together is the wrong direction for me.
- gcr 13y ago
  Some high-end laptops do take those issues into account. Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video: http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk Here's a video of a Thinkpad taking lightning bolts from a pair of Van de Graff generators for a whole minute without any problems: http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk Resistance to common household wear and tear such as spilled drinks or being struck by lightning is certainly a rare quality in a machine, but it's not unheard of.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > "Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video" I'm a fan of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ujtrHvOTk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ujtrHvOTk Two guys (doing a promo spot for Lenovo) jumping on a trampoline with thinkpads and water balloons, then pouring water into one, all in glorious slow motion.
okaram 13y ago
Sort-of, but you still have netbooks; I have an old netbook as my developer computer ! it has an Atom, which is slow, 2GB RAM, and an SSD; I dual-boot windows and Linux; can run Visual Studio Express, and of course, all Linux stuff (I even run Unity on Ubuntu). You can get an Acer netbook for about the same price of an Acer chromebook. Also, we've just bought an Acer V5, 12.1" with touch screen, 4GB Ram, and an A6 processor; really nice, for $429 ; it's a sub $500 laptop that doesn't suck; basically, a slightly nicer netbook :) Chromebooks are nice, especially for simple stuff, but there are nice cheap laptops too :)
kunai 13y ago
I beg to differ. http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B009F1I16K%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-z-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB009F1I16K http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black... With Haswell, the Asus could really hit it big. Ubuntu, I strongly think, has its future as the sort of super-Chromebook. More advanced, but still manageable.
- bitL 13y ago
  I have one of these since February and it's far better than any Chromebook - x64, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, extremely portable, and runs Ubuntu 12.04 LTS by default. No weird ChromeOS limitations, no push to cloud storage by all means etc. Just the keyboard could be better...
  - graue 13y ago
    How is it for speed? On my old low-end Dell netbook and desktop, I would get frustrated every time I did an "apt-get upgrade" or install as I waited what seemed like 10-15 seconds just for the "Reading package lists..." step to complete. On my MacBook Air this step is instant, which I attribute mostly to the SSD. I'm suspicious of regular hard drives now (though on the flip side I now only have a tiny amount of space).
    - bitL 13y ago
      Both CPU and HDD are bottlenecks, it's not a speed king. HDD is a regular 5400rpm one, the Celeron 847 1.1GHz is also rather slow. I used it for some Java + Scala compiling and it took significantly longer than on MBP (10 vs 2 minutes). Also, I was able to run FL Studio under Wine and it was capable of recording my MIDI playing in realtime for arpeggiated sounds, though it had problems with 4+ simultaneous channels. Keyboard is really bad. Otherwise for the price it's currently unbeatable in my opinion. For my purposes a large HDD was more important as I make a lot of photos and hence need a lot of storage. I use it while traveling in "less safe" countries, such as those in Latin America - I don't really care about losing it.
- 13y ago

pkulak 13y ago

A friend of mine recently bought some ~$500 laptop with Windows 8 on it. Buying a new toy like that should be fun, but when that thing showed up he just spent a week being frustrated with it. And I was very little help. I don't even understand Windows 8. I've recommend Chromebooks to people, at half that cost, and when they get it they immediately love it.

Pxtl 13y ago

Yup. Probably the only other OS you could use to pull this kind of platform off would be Win8RT, but nobody wants to sell win8RT devices because they're scared of users freaking out when they find out their new Windows notebook doesn't actually run real Windows. Chrome and Win8RT are the only OSes that are good for an ARM-based notebook form-factor, and the ARM chip is necessary to make this device not suck at this end of the cost spectrum. That and frankly, I think we're all sick of supporting Grandma's windows machine, so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great. I won't buy one, I don't need one, but I can see the niches it fills.

tomsaffell 13y ago
>so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great. I recently replaced my wife's aging MacBook Air with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook - she much prefers it. It doesn't overheat, nor require frequent restarts. But she has a Masters in CS, and works from the command line, so let's add to, "computer-illiterate people" , "..and people who dont want to spend time nursing their computer".
- bsimpson 13y ago
  I haven't used my Air since getting a Pixel. When I need to build something, I fire up Sublime in VT3.
  - randall 13y ago
    What's VT3?
    - bsimpson 13y ago
      Virtual Terminal 3. If you press Ctrl-Alt-F2 (forward arrow), you'll get to VT2. You can install crouton and run xinit, which will start a window manager in VT3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3/Reload). I've got my setup scripted here: https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev
    - banjomonster 13y ago
      I think he means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    I would also like to know what vt3 is
  - kunai 13y ago
    Don't have one yet, but are there any window managers with high-resolution support out yet? I may just get a Pixel if there are. I know Unity hasn't, and Gnome 3 (my favorite) has pixel-doubling support on the way, but if there are any others or if you've been able to optimize an X WM to be readable and polished.
    - bsimpson 13y ago
      I've been using Openbox with no complaints. My setup is documented here: https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev All I use it for is Sublime Text, so things more-or-less look great for me. The problem with Linux is that there are multiple ways of doing any one thing. So, just because Openbox and Sublime can handle high DPI doesn't mean your run-of-the-mill KDE/GTK app will.

freehunter 13y ago

The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. They're netbooks, but far too often they weren't powerful enough to even run a modern browser with the weight of the OS hanging off of it. A Chromebook is really the only true netbook that's ever existed.

makomk 13y ago
That doesn't explain why companies killed netbooks though. A lot of the low-end full sized laptops are now running netbook-class hardware at netbook-level prices, with all the performance issues that goes along with it. You just can't get anything smaller than 15" anymore without either shelling out for an Utrabook or Macbook or buying a Chromebook.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  To be fair, OEMs didn't kill netbooks. Microsoft and Intel did - by stopping the OS and processor deals that made netbooks possible in the first place.
- Glyptodon 13y ago
  This is pretty much why I haven't bought a new laptop in 4ish years.
antitrust 13y ago
> The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. I didn't have a problem with my Acer netbook. It's slow, but not horribly slow. The main laggard factor is the 1gb RAM, which is too little for a Windows 7 install. However, I had to remove all the crapware first. If they didn't ship with those installed, they wouldn't make money from all those juicy contracts.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Same setup here. While I got a newer laptop a year ago, when I really need mobility, the Acer netbook is the first to go into my backpack. It runs Ubuntu, Unity, Emacs and my choice of Django/Flask/App Engine stacks. Mine has 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and I'm considering giving it a small SSD drive. The slow disk seems to be the worst performance bottleneck.

tharrold 13y ago

Wonder how this jibes with this report. http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromebooks-sold-in-last-two-years http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromeb... I also wonder if Chromebooks are priced to make even an operating profit.

michaelbuckbee 13y ago
It's all in how you draw the lines: "Sub $300 laptops" is a very distinct (and I would think small) category of total laptop sales.
- tharrold 13y ago
  If the numbers were really good, Google would announce it themselves, after all they know the real numbers. They instead touted nebulous metrics like top on Amazon lists at I/O.

leephillips 13y ago

Maybe, but a used Thinkpad might be a better deal overall : http://lee-phillips.org/x31/ http://lee-phillips.org/x31/

jdf 13y ago

I feel like the Chromebook is actually a better experience than a laptop. As a programmer, I honestly only use 2 windows: browser and shell. Running crouton to create chroot Ubuntu "images" I can have my normal full (text-based) dev environment, and alt-tab back and forth with the browser. Honestly it feels easier to use than Ubuntu - I don't use any of the builtin Google services (e.g. Drive), but they manage to stay out of the way. It's pretty cheap, looks pretty reasonable, and comes in at a pretty low weight. The screen's not the greatest, but I'm not doing anything where that matters. So all in all a great dev machine. Only caveat for me is that Dropbox doesn't have an installable app for ARM. I need to find something else that does a good job of seamlessly syncing my workspaces and NFS, rsync, etc don't fit as nicely as Dropbox.

bdcravens 13y ago
What are you actually building that will run on this hardware? Are are you ssh'ing into a different machine? I just can't see it possible to run anything that relies on the weight of the JVM or relies on external apps (Redis, etc). What web app can live without some sort of a data store (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)? Let's not even get into if you need to compile anything. (Even if you're not working in C, compilation is sometimes necessary with gems/npm/etc) The default answer seems to be just ssh into a dev machine, using the Chromebook as a dumb terminal. While it works, that destroys a classic workflow used by many, relies on Internet access, and adds additional cost (especially if you're a consultant). Even a cheap VPS adds at least $300 a year in cost. Am I incorrect about running a full dev environment on the Chromebook? I'd love to hear others' experiences.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  I can't answer for jdf, but, in my case, I've built a lot of applications using Django and Google App Engine on very frugal hardware, probably less than a more recent Chromebook. On both cases, the development environment is very light and defaults to store data in SQLite. Working with Python allows me to skip compiling stuff most of the time. Of course, a JVM is off the table, as is using Eclipse for your IDE. This machine is one of the reasons I went back to Emacs.

thezilch 13y ago

$800, hahaha; my co-worker paid that much to simply repair his MBAir after being on the receiving end of a beer. They resale for more, so it wasn't a bad choice, but the idea of paying the original cost and then such a repair cost floored me. If there is innovations to be had with laptops, it is resistance to common desk issues like spilt drinks. The device being cheap is parallel with these needs. Making something thinner and more proprietary and glued together is the wrong direction for me.

gcr 13y ago
Some high-end laptops do take those issues into account. Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video: http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk Here's a video of a Thinkpad taking lightning bolts from a pair of Van de Graff generators for a whole minute without any problems: http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk Resistance to common household wear and tear such as spilled drinks or being struck by lightning is certainly a rare quality in a machine, but it's not unheard of.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > "Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video" I'm a fan of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ujtrHvOTk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ujtrHvOTk Two guys (doing a promo spot for Lenovo) jumping on a trampoline with thinkpads and water balloons, then pouring water into one, all in glorious slow motion.

okaram 13y ago

Sort-of, but you still have netbooks; I have an old netbook as my developer computer ! it has an Atom, which is slow, 2GB RAM, and an SSD; I dual-boot windows and Linux; can run Visual Studio Express, and of course, all Linux stuff (I even run Unity on Ubuntu). You can get an Acer netbook for about the same price of an Acer chromebook. Also, we've just bought an Acer V5, 12.1" with touch screen, 4GB Ram, and an A6 processor; really nice, for $429 ; it's a sub $500 laptop that doesn't suck; basically, a slightly nicer netbook :) Chromebooks are nice, especially for simple stuff, but there are nice cheap laptops too :)

kunai 13y ago

I beg to differ. http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B009F1I16K%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-z-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB009F1I16K http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black... With Haswell, the Asus could really hit it big. Ubuntu, I strongly think, has its future as the sort of super-Chromebook. More advanced, but still manageable.

bitL 13y ago
I have one of these since February and it's far better than any Chromebook - x64, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, extremely portable, and runs Ubuntu 12.04 LTS by default. No weird ChromeOS limitations, no push to cloud storage by all means etc. Just the keyboard could be better...
- graue 13y ago
  How is it for speed? On my old low-end Dell netbook and desktop, I would get frustrated every time I did an "apt-get upgrade" or install as I waited what seemed like 10-15 seconds just for the "Reading package lists..." step to complete. On my MacBook Air this step is instant, which I attribute mostly to the SSD. I'm suspicious of regular hard drives now (though on the flip side I now only have a tiny amount of space).
  - bitL 13y ago
    Both CPU and HDD are bottlenecks, it's not a speed king. HDD is a regular 5400rpm one, the Celeron 847 1.1GHz is also rather slow. I used it for some Java + Scala compiling and it took significantly longer than on MBP (10 vs 2 minutes). Also, I was able to run FL Studio under Wine and it was capable of recording my MIDI playing in realtime for arpeggiated sounds, though it had problems with 4+ simultaneous channels. Keyboard is really bad. Otherwise for the price it's currently unbeatable in my opinion. For my purposes a large HDD was more important as I make a lot of photos and hence need a lot of storage. I use it while traveling in "less safe" countries, such as those in Latin America - I don't really care about losing it.
13y ago