Samsung Chromebook Series 5 Review 136
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes an in-depth look at the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 3G and finds the device comparatively lackluster. 'The Chromebook is lightweight and inexpensive, and it offers a full-featured Web browsing experience. But its low-end hardware, lack of versatility, and primitive support for commonplace computing tasks such as printing, file management, networking, and media playback make it a poor choice for everyday use, particularly in a business setting,' McAllister writes. 'All in all, the Samsung Series 5 is an average-quality netbook with a large screen and a higher-than-average price tag, while Chrome OS itself feels more like a proof-of-concept project whose time has not yet come.'"
So how do I... (Score:3, Interesting)
...use this thing on a train in the middle of nowhere where there's no wireless access?
Frankly, my netbook was much cheaper, has a real operating system (Debian) and I can use it offline.
Re:What apps can I run on a Chromebook? (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow, the "cloud" snuck right on me and I feel like I'm just now waking up to the real potential of it. An example, I was in line at the post office the other day and I pulled my cell phone out and started hacking on my latest project that happens to be in dropbox. And since my eclipse workspace is mapped to my dropbox folder on all of my computers, as soon as I got to my desktop to do the real work, all I had to do was hit refresh in the idea and the changes I made at the post office were live. There's a there there.
Re:Right tool for the job... (Score:4, Interesting)
Im honestly not sure why theyre bothering. Android is already a well-known product with lots of support, applications and users, and is itself based on linux. Id much rather see them implement controls and whatever else they think makes chrome special into android, along with a good browser with features.
I'm not sure why people don't get this - if they can get you to do everything through Chrome, they have 100% of your information. That's why they do this.
It's really got nothing to do with Linux. If you're using Android, you can turn the network off and they've lost their access to you. With Chrome, you and your eyeballs are a captive audience, 100% of the time.
I fully expect to see a chrome phone at some point, once they feel like Android has penetrated the market to its fullest potential.
Re:Got it (Score:3, Interesting)
I have identified the following benefits.
A great performance to price ratio. There is no equally spec'd Windows laptop at the same price.
Simplicity. I understand you can pare down any OS to the necessary essentials... that's exactly what Google did so the consumer did not have to.
Unique "actual apps" that require Windows are actually far and few between. The behemoth - MS Office, Games, Image/Video Editing, CAD, IDEs. Now, I understand everyone is 5up4r l33t and needs the best of the best, properly licensed, most resource intensive "actual app" available to mediate their genius into the world, but there are webapps that already exist that fills those roles. And I'll tell you from experience, the WebApps might not do a lot of this, and won't do a lot of that, but the fact that they exist at all and are marginally useful is an accomplishment in its own right.
Subscriptions. For schools especially... many of whom are already on Google Apps for Education. Small businesses with no IT.
Security. Students and employees won't be doing anything outside of the browser. Remote wipe.
Privacy. Haha, no, I'm just kidding.
I think the Chromebook has its niche and a chance. (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue with this "Chromebook", from my perspective, is that it manages to be as or more expensive(and no better in terms of battery life or weight/build quality) than an equivalent netbook/cheapie laptop.
I personally think the Chromebook along with the Google Online Cloudstuff has its niche already and stands a real chance at becoming the prime choice for household computing.
The first Chromebook from Samsung weighs 1.4 Kg and is roughly 2cm thick, if not thinner. It fits squarely into the MacBook Air carry-around pattern, whilst costing a fifth.
For those who do 95% of their stuff online and know so little about computers they couldn't find a directory on an Thumbdrive - even with OS X Finder in 'stupid-mode', let alone know where to plug it in and how to unmount it before removal (99.999% of all users), the chromebook is a viable every-day computer.
If has the form, size and weight factor of a sleek MacBook Air, costs a fraction of that, has above 8 hours of uptime on battery, has zero hassles with installation and setup, needs no worrying or even knowing about such things as backup, software installation, sane security awareness and data-migrate-ability. All you need to know is how to log into something on the web, which most people do know nowadays.
For those who know what they're doing it's nearly trivially easy to hack a bash CLI onto it, with all the goodies you want.
Optical media aside - which we all agree will become full-scale obsolete any time soon - this would actually be a replacement I'd get my spouse if her iBook G4 breaks. She mostly surfs, does email and sometimes writes a letter. Nothing you can't do with the Google stuff. DVDs are the aforementioned exception to that, but as I see it Netflix, Lovefilm et al are standing ready to solve that even for the very latest of adopters.
And let's face it: I - and I gather most of you too - would take a Linux+Web based Google lockin over an Apple or MS lockin any time. No?