4 ms·

If I were HP, Acer, Asus or Toshiba, I'd release one with enough storage and ram, and easy boot to Ubuntu/Mint.

rodolphoarruda 13y ago
...and without any form of preinstalled crapware those vendors insist to push on us.
msoad 13y ago
My friend's mom has a ChromeBook. She doesn't know what is an OS or even what is a browser. They are actual ChromeBook customers. At least for now.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  When I used ChromeOS for a weekend I concluded that I couldn't recommend it to my mother because support for playing (arbitrary format) videos and browsing pictures off portable harddrives was really lacking (in the case of pictures, it could do it obviously, but with a worse user experience than windows by far). Probably 25% of what my mother does with her computer is hook it up to her cameras and show her friends her pictures. I think that Google has been neglecting the non-intensive tasks that people still perform on their computers locally, not through a webbrowser. Not supporting Crysis, SolidWorks, Microsoft Office, or Eclipse... that is all fine, regular users don't really need that sort of stuff. Not supporting something with the functionality of VLC or a good image browser seems like a big oversight. Those sorts of tasks could be done well with ChromeOS, with their programming model and in that form-factor, but from what I have seen that stuff just isn't ready.
  - notatoad 13y ago
    that use-case specifically contradicts the whole motivation for chromeOS though. you shouldn't be opening a file browser to play things off a hard drive. if you want to share a video with friends, you should upload it to google+. in fact, chromeOS does this automatically for you - install the google+ photos app, and it will copy any photos off an inserted SD card to your private "ready to share" google+ storage.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      It may go against the "idea" or motivation of ChromeOS, but my mother ain't uploading several GB of photos and videos so that she can sit on a couch with her friends and chat about that crap over a bottle of wine. Whether or not it fits with the motivation of the OS, it is what the OS needs if it wants to be something I can recommend to anybody. They are making an OS for people that, as far as I can tell, do not exist: technically inclined and willing users who have very restricted requirements. I know, I know, "most people do nothing but Facebook". That is the standard justification of ChromeOS, I've heard that all before... In my experience however those people still perform some (really quite minimal) non-intensive local tasks that ChromeOS falls flat on. I'll sooner tell those people to get an iPad than a Chromebook. And to be clear, ChromeOS does let you browse images locally, so that is already something they have consigned themselves to doing. ChromeOS isn't saying "this isn't something that you can't or shouldn't do". The problem is that they do it poorly; the UI is shoddy.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Uploading gigabytes of photos so that I can then download them to view them is insane. Especially with the lousy lousy internet connection that I have. I haven't seen a Chromebook's handling of locally stored photos, but it's a shame if it can't handle it nicely. The only thing stopping me from getting a Chromebook now is the lack of functionality without an internet connection (I'd install a Linux, but that feels like a weird solution).
ameoba 13y ago
That's why you're not HP, Acer, Asus or Toshiba. They're not interested in marketing or supporting these things as computers, they're consumer electronics, much the way that phones and tablets are. The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price point, somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because they can't run Office (or some other arbitrary Windows software on it). Word gets out, it gets distorted until everyone thinks that the hardware is useless/broken/worthless and you end up with a repeat of MSFT's Surface/Windows RT debacle. Google has very carefully positioned this platform in the market. They've been very clear that a Chromebook is not just another laptop & buyers should not expect them to be one. The few additional sales they'd get from Linux geeks are not remotely worth the brand dilution that would occur from selling them as anything else.
- ja27 13y ago
  There's an endcap at my local Sam's Club with Chromebooks. It's amazing to see them lined up like they're an impulse buy. I think they're actually in the boxes and not just a stack of empty boxes to claim the real device from a security cage. That's about as commodity as you can get.
- dingaling 13y ago
  > The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price point somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because they can't run Office Why are they even providing a support line? I'm not sure why a laptop should qualify for support when a tablet doesn't. When you buy a new car there isn't a Hyundai Support Line to call.

...and without any form of preinstalled crapware those vendors insist to push on us.

msoad 13y ago

My friend's mom has a ChromeBook. She doesn't know what is an OS or even what is a browser. They are actual ChromeBook customers. At least for now.

jlgreco 13y ago
When I used ChromeOS for a weekend I concluded that I couldn't recommend it to my mother because support for playing (arbitrary format) videos and browsing pictures off portable harddrives was really lacking (in the case of pictures, it could do it obviously, but with a worse user experience than windows by far). Probably 25% of what my mother does with her computer is hook it up to her cameras and show her friends her pictures. I think that Google has been neglecting the non-intensive tasks that people still perform on their computers locally, not through a webbrowser. Not supporting Crysis, SolidWorks, Microsoft Office, or Eclipse... that is all fine, regular users don't really need that sort of stuff. Not supporting something with the functionality of VLC or a good image browser seems like a big oversight. Those sorts of tasks could be done well with ChromeOS, with their programming model and in that form-factor, but from what I have seen that stuff just isn't ready.
- notatoad 13y ago
  that use-case specifically contradicts the whole motivation for chromeOS though. you shouldn't be opening a file browser to play things off a hard drive. if you want to share a video with friends, you should upload it to google+. in fact, chromeOS does this automatically for you - install the google+ photos app, and it will copy any photos off an inserted SD card to your private "ready to share" google+ storage.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    It may go against the "idea" or motivation of ChromeOS, but my mother ain't uploading several GB of photos and videos so that she can sit on a couch with her friends and chat about that crap over a bottle of wine. Whether or not it fits with the motivation of the OS, it is what the OS needs if it wants to be something I can recommend to anybody. They are making an OS for people that, as far as I can tell, do not exist: technically inclined and willing users who have very restricted requirements. I know, I know, "most people do nothing but Facebook". That is the standard justification of ChromeOS, I've heard that all before... In my experience however those people still perform some (really quite minimal) non-intensive local tasks that ChromeOS falls flat on. I'll sooner tell those people to get an iPad than a Chromebook. And to be clear, ChromeOS does let you browse images locally, so that is already something they have consigned themselves to doing. ChromeOS isn't saying "this isn't something that you can't or shouldn't do". The problem is that they do it poorly; the UI is shoddy.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Uploading gigabytes of photos so that I can then download them to view them is insane. Especially with the lousy lousy internet connection that I have. I haven't seen a Chromebook's handling of locally stored photos, but it's a shame if it can't handle it nicely. The only thing stopping me from getting a Chromebook now is the lack of functionality without an internet connection (I'd install a Linux, but that feels like a weird solution).

ameoba 13y ago

That's why you're not HP, Acer, Asus or Toshiba. They're not interested in marketing or supporting these things as computers, they're consumer electronics, much the way that phones and tablets are. The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price point, somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because they can't run Office (or some other arbitrary Windows software on it). Word gets out, it gets distorted until everyone thinks that the hardware is useless/broken/worthless and you end up with a repeat of MSFT's Surface/Windows RT debacle. Google has very carefully positioned this platform in the market. They've been very clear that a Chromebook is not just another laptop & buyers should not expect them to be one. The few additional sales they'd get from Linux geeks are not remotely worth the brand dilution that would occur from selling them as anything else.

ja27 13y ago
There's an endcap at my local Sam's Club with Chromebooks. It's amazing to see them lined up like they're an impulse buy. I think they're actually in the boxes and not just a stack of empty boxes to claim the real device from a security cage. That's about as commodity as you can get.
dingaling 13y ago
> The moment you start to market these things as real computers at a low price point somebody's grandmother buys one and starts calling support because they can't run Office Why are they even providing a support line? I'm not sure why a laptop should qualify for support when a tablet doesn't. When you buy a new car there isn't a Hyundai Support Line to call.