5 ms·

I'm so frustrated by these chromebooks. On one hand, the form factor and aesthetics are great. The price/power engineering is great. The mission/concept is fan

by netcan 13y ago

I'm so frustrated by these chromebooks. On one hand, the form factor and aesthetics are great. The price/power engineering is great. The mission/concept is fantastic. On the other hand, we've learned something from Android/IOS. We need apps and they do not necessarily lead to a computer that cannot be managed by a below average user. Even the average 'your mother' has some needs that aren't well met by this machine. Skype. Fill out this (Word) form and email it back to me. I really want android/ios-like (ideally iOS simplicity with chromebook prices/hardware) computers to come out and solve computing for the many many people poorly served by cheap clunky windows laptops.

omni 13y ago
Skype has a competitor called Google Hangouts that works just fine in the browser. Word has a competitor called Google Docs that works just fine in the browser. Desktop-only apps need to adapt or get left behind.
- jmduke 13y ago
  There are a great number of non-trivial use cases for which Google Docs is inferior compared to Word.
  - eddiedunn 13y ago
    A number? What are these exactly? I keep hearing people say this, but I can't think of any reasons where I would really need MS Office. I haven't used Word since Word 97, and I have never come across a use case that Open/LibreOffice, Google docs or Latex couldn't solve for me. I would imagine that the same would apply for most people. On the other hand, I remember collaborating on many reports using Google docs because that was the only application featuring decent real time multi user editing.
    - pa5tabear 13y ago
      Technical document preparation. When you're dealing with stuff like tables, graphs, footnotes, appendices... Word makes it easier. I know there's probably a way to reproduce everything in Google Docs, but it's not as easy/automatic.
      - eddiedunn 13y ago
        Heh. I remember the problems I had with moving around graphs, tables and pictures in MS Word. Man that sucked. Doing references and placing images in Latex, on the other hand, was a breeze once I got a hang of its programmatic behavior. Maybe it's better in Word now though. As I said, it's been a while since I seriously used it.
    - davidgerard 13y ago
      Serious spreadsheet users - the sort who run overnight calculations. For that job, Excel is simply the best there is. These people then make damn sure everyone else has MS Office too. LibreOffice Calc sucks, but LO know it, and Kohei Yoshida is working very hard to make it not suck. LO 4.2 will be much faster. Then they just need to recreate VBA ...
      - Mikeb85 13y ago
        Gnumeric is better...
        davidgerard 13y ago
        Than LO? I'm sure there's stuff it does faster. Does it do Excel sheets more compatibly? Or do you mean better than Excel? If it's better than Excel at the sort of sheet I mean, that's important news for the people who run such sheets - they'd be moving to Linux yesterday.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        Gnumeric is better than LO and Excel for calculations. You can use several scripting languages (you can use Python, I use a functional, dynamic, term-rewriting language called Pure), it has more statistical functions built in, and is more accurate than Excel. Regardless, it shouldn't matter what OS. Gnumeric runs on Windows, and I've had Excel running on Linux w/ Wine...
        davidgerard 13y ago
        How is it as a replacement for Excel, though? By which I mean, shove in an OOXML spreadsheet with VBA in it. That is the use case that counts as a "substitute" for Excel for the users I'm talking about.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        I personally think it's ridiculous that those are the terms people think in. If it's not exactly the same it's not as good, never mind the actual merits. Thankfully the world is changing, MS products are no longer as essential as they once were. Excel really is the last holdout...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - notatoad 13y ago
    yes, people who need their collection of macros or advanced mail merge are going to have trouble adapting to google docs. but the original argument in this thread was that chromebooks couldn't do things that "your mother" needed to do. Google docs can't replace all the power-user features of MS Office. but that doesn't make a chromebook unsuitable for everybody.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    I agree, but it doesn't make Chromebooks useless. Your average user just wants to be able to type and set a few basic formatting options in a WYSIWYG editor, which Google Docs easily provides. Chromebooks are fine "Mom Machines" most of the time, or fine laptops to stash in your car in case of unanticipated need. My opinion is that people need to stop attempting to conflate the market of true casuals, served by phones on the low end, tablets on the middle end, and netbooks like the Chromebook on the high end, with the market of serious users needing real desktop operating systems and applications, using laptops on the low end and high-powered desktops on the high end. They are separate use cases, and we're best served if each segment focuses on itself instead of trying to be all things to all people. Manufacturers seem scared that if they don't provide it all, they'll be obsoleted, but I believe it's just the opposite; there's enough overlap in these markets to share (for instance, I have a smartphone, a tablet, a Chromebook, a real laptop, and multiple big huge desktops; certainly atypical, but normal people are fairly likely to have a smartphone, tablet or Chromebook, and a real laptop, and that's not going to change anytime soon). The paranoia is wasting a lot of our time.
- nine_k 13y ago
  Office360 should work well on a chromebook, too, fully supporting Word format.
- karangoeluw 13y ago
  Gave you ever tried printing something from GDoc?
  - bergie 13y ago
    I don't recall printing anything else than boarding passes in years. Documents nowadays are written on a computer, and also shared and consumed on a computer. And even those only when flying outside of Europe, as here we can use QR Codes on smartphone screen at the gate.
guizzy 13y ago
Google has come very far making webapps more and more like desktop applications. http://www.google.com/intl/fr/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html http://www.google.com/intl/fr/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html
- netcan 13y ago
  They've come far. They've done a great job. I don't think they've replaced the desktop though. I don't think the average user can go chrome only yet. At some point an estate agent will send them a word doc and ask them to fill in some details and email it back. You and I can figure out how to get this going in google docs but the intended audience might have trouble. Google docs will encourage them to save it to the cloud and share instead of attaching which will confuse the estate agent. That doesn't mean Google's way is wrong, but in this scenario it does mean its harder and defeats the whole purpose. Same problem with skype. If your friends/kids use skype, you will not be happy with a computer that can't do skype. Basically, chrome needs to be compatible with the PC world and the way people are used to doing things. Compromise.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Big up for this. I use Google Keep all the time, a desktop version is awesome :-)
clauretano 13y ago
Even if you're really that set on using Microsoft Word, you can use Office Web Apps with Skydrive. On the Skype front, until WebRTC is mature enough (soon), Microsoft is stuck using browser plugins if they release a Skype Web App. I'd say chances are near zero that they'd have a Chromebook compatible plugin. Complaining that Skype doesn't work on ChromeOS is like complaining that there's no Google Hangouts app for Windows Phone. The market share is too small to be worth the effort, unfortunately. Now if Google would only open up Hangouts to video bridging solutions like www.bluejeans.com, www.vidyo.com (which.. is the tech powering google hangouts video), etc.
Mikeb85 13y ago
I think you missed the point... First of all, Google Hangouts replaces Skype, WebRTC eventually will too, and Google Docs or MS Office 365 are both perfectly good Office suites. Second, the idea is simplicity. Anyone can maintain an up to date Chrome OS system. Anyone's grandmother could have an up to date, virus-free Chrome OS laptop. Native apps? Chrome has Native Client. It's up to developers to make use of it. Not to mention technologies like Emscripten - again, up to developers. Anyone, what's out there on the web already is enough for most people. If it's not enough, you can turn on developer mode, and run regular Linux apps (install with Portage), or install Ubuntu with Crouton. Anyhow, Chrome OS solves 80% of use cases out of the box, and the rest with a little effort.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Google Hangouts is nice, but most/all of my clients use Skype and cant be bothered to switch. So while in theory not a big deal, in practice it kind of is. Even running Skype in a Linux enviroment is kind of a pain im afraid.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    While the ubiquity of Skype is nice, I remember a time when people used other things. That might change someday as well. Either way, that's out of Google's hands, it's up to MS. I've always found getting Skype running on Linux to be easy though (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Arch are all trivial)...

by netcan 13y ago

omni 13y ago

Skype has a competitor called Google Hangouts that works just fine in the browser. Word has a competitor called Google Docs that works just fine in the browser. Desktop-only apps need to adapt or get left behind.

jmduke 13y ago
There are a great number of non-trivial use cases for which Google Docs is inferior compared to Word.
- eddiedunn 13y ago
  A number? What are these exactly? I keep hearing people say this, but I can't think of any reasons where I would really need MS Office. I haven't used Word since Word 97, and I have never come across a use case that Open/LibreOffice, Google docs or Latex couldn't solve for me. I would imagine that the same would apply for most people. On the other hand, I remember collaborating on many reports using Google docs because that was the only application featuring decent real time multi user editing.
  - pa5tabear 13y ago
    Technical document preparation. When you're dealing with stuff like tables, graphs, footnotes, appendices... Word makes it easier. I know there's probably a way to reproduce everything in Google Docs, but it's not as easy/automatic.
    - eddiedunn 13y ago
      Heh. I remember the problems I had with moving around graphs, tables and pictures in MS Word. Man that sucked. Doing references and placing images in Latex, on the other hand, was a breeze once I got a hang of its programmatic behavior. Maybe it's better in Word now though. As I said, it's been a while since I seriously used it.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    Serious spreadsheet users - the sort who run overnight calculations. For that job, Excel is simply the best there is. These people then make damn sure everyone else has MS Office too. LibreOffice Calc sucks, but LO know it, and Kohei Yoshida is working very hard to make it not suck. LO 4.2 will be much faster. Then they just need to recreate VBA ...
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      Gnumeric is better...
      - davidgerard 13y ago
        Than LO? I'm sure there's stuff it does faster. Does it do Excel sheets more compatibly? Or do you mean better than Excel? If it's better than Excel at the sort of sheet I mean, that's important news for the people who run such sheets - they'd be moving to Linux yesterday.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        Gnumeric is better than LO and Excel for calculations. You can use several scripting languages (you can use Python, I use a functional, dynamic, term-rewriting language called Pure), it has more statistical functions built in, and is more accurate than Excel. Regardless, it shouldn't matter what OS. Gnumeric runs on Windows, and I've had Excel running on Linux w/ Wine...
        davidgerard 13y ago
        How is it as a replacement for Excel, though? By which I mean, shove in an OOXML spreadsheet with VBA in it. That is the use case that counts as a "substitute" for Excel for the users I'm talking about.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        I personally think it's ridiculous that those are the terms people think in. If it's not exactly the same it's not as good, never mind the actual merits. Thankfully the world is changing, MS products are no longer as essential as they once were. Excel really is the last holdout...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- notatoad 13y ago
  yes, people who need their collection of macros or advanced mail merge are going to have trouble adapting to google docs. but the original argument in this thread was that chromebooks couldn't do things that "your mother" needed to do. Google docs can't replace all the power-user features of MS Office. but that doesn't make a chromebook unsuitable for everybody.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  I agree, but it doesn't make Chromebooks useless. Your average user just wants to be able to type and set a few basic formatting options in a WYSIWYG editor, which Google Docs easily provides. Chromebooks are fine "Mom Machines" most of the time, or fine laptops to stash in your car in case of unanticipated need. My opinion is that people need to stop attempting to conflate the market of true casuals, served by phones on the low end, tablets on the middle end, and netbooks like the Chromebook on the high end, with the market of serious users needing real desktop operating systems and applications, using laptops on the low end and high-powered desktops on the high end. They are separate use cases, and we're best served if each segment focuses on itself instead of trying to be all things to all people. Manufacturers seem scared that if they don't provide it all, they'll be obsoleted, but I believe it's just the opposite; there's enough overlap in these markets to share (for instance, I have a smartphone, a tablet, a Chromebook, a real laptop, and multiple big huge desktops; certainly atypical, but normal people are fairly likely to have a smartphone, tablet or Chromebook, and a real laptop, and that's not going to change anytime soon). The paranoia is wasting a lot of our time.
nine_k 13y ago
Office360 should work well on a chromebook, too, fully supporting Word format.
karangoeluw 13y ago
Gave you ever tried printing something from GDoc?
- bergie 13y ago
  I don't recall printing anything else than boarding passes in years. Documents nowadays are written on a computer, and also shared and consumed on a computer. And even those only when flying outside of Europe, as here we can use QR Codes on smartphone screen at the gate.

guizzy 13y ago

Google has come very far making webapps more and more like desktop applications. http://www.google.com/intl/fr/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html http://www.google.com/intl/fr/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html

netcan 13y ago
They've come far. They've done a great job. I don't think they've replaced the desktop though. I don't think the average user can go chrome only yet. At some point an estate agent will send them a word doc and ask them to fill in some details and email it back. You and I can figure out how to get this going in google docs but the intended audience might have trouble. Google docs will encourage them to save it to the cloud and share instead of attaching which will confuse the estate agent. That doesn't mean Google's way is wrong, but in this scenario it does mean its harder and defeats the whole purpose. Same problem with skype. If your friends/kids use skype, you will not be happy with a computer that can't do skype. Basically, chrome needs to be compatible with the PC world and the way people are used to doing things. Compromise.
Mikeb85 13y ago
Big up for this. I use Google Keep all the time, a desktop version is awesome :-)

clauretano 13y ago

Even if you're really that set on using Microsoft Word, you can use Office Web Apps with Skydrive. On the Skype front, until WebRTC is mature enough (soon), Microsoft is stuck using browser plugins if they release a Skype Web App. I'd say chances are near zero that they'd have a Chromebook compatible plugin. Complaining that Skype doesn't work on ChromeOS is like complaining that there's no Google Hangouts app for Windows Phone. The market share is too small to be worth the effort, unfortunately. Now if Google would only open up Hangouts to video bridging solutions like www.bluejeans.com, www.vidyo.com (which.. is the tech powering google hangouts video), etc.

Mikeb85 13y ago

I think you missed the point... First of all, Google Hangouts replaces Skype, WebRTC eventually will too, and Google Docs or MS Office 365 are both perfectly good Office suites. Second, the idea is simplicity. Anyone can maintain an up to date Chrome OS system. Anyone's grandmother could have an up to date, virus-free Chrome OS laptop. Native apps? Chrome has Native Client. It's up to developers to make use of it. Not to mention technologies like Emscripten - again, up to developers. Anyone, what's out there on the web already is enough for most people. If it's not enough, you can turn on developer mode, and run regular Linux apps (install with Portage), or install Ubuntu with Crouton. Anyhow, Chrome OS solves 80% of use cases out of the box, and the rest with a little effort.

kayoone 13y ago
Google Hangouts is nice, but most/all of my clients use Skype and cant be bothered to switch. So while in theory not a big deal, in practice it kind of is. Even running Skype in a Linux enviroment is kind of a pain im afraid.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  While the ubiquity of Skype is nice, I remember a time when people used other things. That might change someday as well. Either way, that's out of Google's hands, it's up to MS. I've always found getting Skype running on Linux to be easy though (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Arch are all trivial)...