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I believe Chromebooks should be seriously looked at for almost any circumstance. For businesses, it is a cheap enough to be a "throw away" and I would rather m

I believe Chromebooks should be seriously looked at for almost any circumstance. For businesses, it is a cheap enough to be a "throw away" and I would rather manage a Terminal Server (RDS nowadays) or cloud apps than many individual laptops. Centralizing the support of laptops alone could save huge amounts of time and money. For education, the normal alternative is MacBooks. But would it not be more financially responsible to the tax payers to buy Chromebooks instead? Again, they are throw away devices due to the price and it should be assumed students will damage the laptops they are give. Finally, centralized control and management yet again. For individuals, I see almost no reason not to use a Chromebook. Yes, some people prefer legacy apps and need some beefy hardware to encode videos, but most users are the target market: web browsers who write a document once in a while. Obviously, each of these circumstances proves more difficult if constant internet access is not possible. But given the world today this should only be an issue for a very small selection of buyers.

lotharbot 12y ago
My elementary school bought 30 iPads last year. For about the same price, they bought 85 chromebooks this year. We can check out iPads to one classroom, or chromebooks to an entire grade level. With similar capabilities, this seems like a no-brainer. On the other hand, there are a lot more exceptions than you describe. Many end users need beefy hardware, not just to encode video, but to run games or to crunch data or to compile code. For people whose main use case is web browsers and documents, sure, chromebooks (or tablet-dock combos like the ASUS Transformer line) are a great fit.
IBM 12y ago
Chromebooks aren't just competing with laptops, they also have to compete with tablets. Consumers/education/business are much more likely to buy iPads over Chromebooks because of the much better software ecosystem. Most of Google's services have apps on iOS so I can't really think of why someone would choose a Chromebook over an iPad unless they were completely price sensitive (the cheapest iPad is $300, the HP Chromebook 11 is $280). I think the success of touchscreen smartphones shows that it's not going to be the hardware keyboard that drives people to it.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Half of the people I see using tablets in public have (bluetooth) keyboards attached. I think that Chromebooks have quite an opportunity to displace tablets for those actually trying to get work done.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Only if they offer native apps.
    - lucid00 12y ago
      They do. https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview
      - pjmlp 12y ago
        Which no one uses, given its ActiveX feeling.
Wilya 12y ago
If you categorize all desktop apps ever made as "legacy", sure, it's hard to see why people wouldn't use a Chromebook. On the other hand, non-technical users are happily torrenting shows and movies, playing 3D-intensive games on Steam, making somewhat decent-looking documents with Word, making gifs with a pirate copy of Photoshop, etc. A Chromebook offers (generally inferior) alternatives for some of these tasks, but not even all of them.
- j2kun 12y ago
  If your standard is "gifs in photoshop" and "somewhat decent documents in Word" then you clearly haven't seen the web alternatives to "all desktop apps ever made." Saying you need Photoshop to make gifs is like saying you need the US nuclear stockpile for mall security. I have a Chromebook and regularly use it to write beautiful LaTeX documents, decent documents/spreadsheets in Drive, wonderful charts on plot.ly, on-the-go programming in any language I need, and all photo editing I've ever needed in the browser. They even have javascript torrent apps these days.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    When the network connection is available...
    - j2kun 12y ago
      That's true, but a lot of new Chromebooks these days ship with "lifetime" 3g or 4g, right?
      - pjmlp 12y ago
        Still no coverage in many places outside big cities.
- lucid00 12y ago
  I wouldn't call people that torrent shows and movies, pirate copies of Photoshop and play 3D-intensive games on Steam "non-technical users". That's clearly not the target audience.
chestnut-tree 12y ago
I would never use or recommend a Chromebook for one main reason: ChromeOS tracks everything you do online. Does Google disable online tracking for school users? If not, Google must be rubbing their hands with glee at all the data they're collecting. Yes, I know that Google doesn't do nefarious things with the data they collect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinise the way they track online behaviour so relentlessly. Even printing to your desktop printer in ChromeOS is recorded by Google because all print jobs go through Google's cloud print service. If people thought their Linux, Windows or Mac Operating System was constantly logging their actions and sending back the details to the OS vendor, they'd be angry. When companies ask for app usage data they do so on the promise that it's anonymous and they tell you what they are recording and why. Google tell you nothing and you're not even anonymous (you have to sign in with a Google account to use Chrome OS. A guest account gives you limited access and even that's probably being tracked). How does Google get such a free ride on such matters? The response from the tech community generally seems to be "meh - it's a non-issue, I'm fine with Google collecting my data". I find it pretty depressing.
- lucid00 12y ago
  Chrome OS tracks what you do as much as Chrome does, which isn't as much as it's hyped up to be and is optional. Plus Windows 8 somewhat does the same thing (built in Microsoft accounts, OneDrive integration, bookmark syncing, crash reporting, etc...).
  - chestnut-tree 12y ago
    What's optional? You can't use ChromeOS without signing into your Google account. You can still use Chrome in incognito mode, but you can't use Google apps without signing in. I don't have to sign in with an online account to use a word processor on Windows, Mac or Linux. And if I want to save to the cloud, there are plenty of online storage providers that give me better privacy. In the case of Windows 8, it's easy to bypass their email sign in and avoid their online tools. The fact that Microsoft are following Google's lead is not an argument in favour of online tracking. If Chrome's tracking is not as much as it's hyped up to be, then why don't Google clearly and unambiguosly state what they record and track while you use their operating system and for how long they keep this data? (Their lengthy, but vaguely-worded privacy policy tells you very little.)

lotharbot 12y ago

My elementary school bought 30 iPads last year. For about the same price, they bought 85 chromebooks this year. We can check out iPads to one classroom, or chromebooks to an entire grade level. With similar capabilities, this seems like a no-brainer. On the other hand, there are a lot more exceptions than you describe. Many end users need beefy hardware, not just to encode video, but to run games or to crunch data or to compile code. For people whose main use case is web browsers and documents, sure, chromebooks (or tablet-dock combos like the ASUS Transformer line) are a great fit.

IBM 12y ago

Chromebooks aren't just competing with laptops, they also have to compete with tablets. Consumers/education/business are much more likely to buy iPads over Chromebooks because of the much better software ecosystem. Most of Google's services have apps on iOS so I can't really think of why someone would choose a Chromebook over an iPad unless they were completely price sensitive (the cheapest iPad is $300, the HP Chromebook 11 is $280). I think the success of touchscreen smartphones shows that it's not going to be the hardware keyboard that drives people to it.

dublinben 12y ago
Half of the people I see using tablets in public have (bluetooth) keyboards attached. I think that Chromebooks have quite an opportunity to displace tablets for those actually trying to get work done.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Only if they offer native apps.
  - lucid00 12y ago
    They do. https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Which no one uses, given its ActiveX feeling.

Wilya 12y ago

If you categorize all desktop apps ever made as "legacy", sure, it's hard to see why people wouldn't use a Chromebook. On the other hand, non-technical users are happily torrenting shows and movies, playing 3D-intensive games on Steam, making somewhat decent-looking documents with Word, making gifs with a pirate copy of Photoshop, etc. A Chromebook offers (generally inferior) alternatives for some of these tasks, but not even all of them.

j2kun 12y ago
If your standard is "gifs in photoshop" and "somewhat decent documents in Word" then you clearly haven't seen the web alternatives to "all desktop apps ever made." Saying you need Photoshop to make gifs is like saying you need the US nuclear stockpile for mall security. I have a Chromebook and regularly use it to write beautiful LaTeX documents, decent documents/spreadsheets in Drive, wonderful charts on plot.ly, on-the-go programming in any language I need, and all photo editing I've ever needed in the browser. They even have javascript torrent apps these days.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  When the network connection is available...
  - j2kun 12y ago
    That's true, but a lot of new Chromebooks these days ship with "lifetime" 3g or 4g, right?
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Still no coverage in many places outside big cities.
lucid00 12y ago
I wouldn't call people that torrent shows and movies, pirate copies of Photoshop and play 3D-intensive games on Steam "non-technical users". That's clearly not the target audience.

chestnut-tree 12y ago

I would never use or recommend a Chromebook for one main reason: ChromeOS tracks everything you do online. Does Google disable online tracking for school users? If not, Google must be rubbing their hands with glee at all the data they're collecting. Yes, I know that Google doesn't do nefarious things with the data they collect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't scrutinise the way they track online behaviour so relentlessly. Even printing to your desktop printer in ChromeOS is recorded by Google because all print jobs go through Google's cloud print service. If people thought their Linux, Windows or Mac Operating System was constantly logging their actions and sending back the details to the OS vendor, they'd be angry. When companies ask for app usage data they do so on the promise that it's anonymous and they tell you what they are recording and why. Google tell you nothing and you're not even anonymous (you have to sign in with a Google account to use Chrome OS. A guest account gives you limited access and even that's probably being tracked). How does Google get such a free ride on such matters? The response from the tech community generally seems to be "meh - it's a non-issue, I'm fine with Google collecting my data". I find it pretty depressing.

lucid00 12y ago
Chrome OS tracks what you do as much as Chrome does, which isn't as much as it's hyped up to be and is optional. Plus Windows 8 somewhat does the same thing (built in Microsoft accounts, OneDrive integration, bookmark syncing, crash reporting, etc...).
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  What's optional? You can't use ChromeOS without signing into your Google account. You can still use Chrome in incognito mode, but you can't use Google apps without signing in. I don't have to sign in with an online account to use a word processor on Windows, Mac or Linux. And if I want to save to the cloud, there are plenty of online storage providers that give me better privacy. In the case of Windows 8, it's easy to bypass their email sign in and avoid their online tools. The fact that Microsoft are following Google's lead is not an argument in favour of online tracking. If Chrome's tracking is not as much as it's hyped up to be, then why don't Google clearly and unambiguosly state what they record and track while you use their operating system and for how long they keep this data? (Their lengthy, but vaguely-worded privacy policy tells you very little.)