At $250, New Chromebook Means Competition For Tablets, Netbooks, Ultrabooks 283
Google's new ARM-powered Chromebook isn't a lot of things: it isn't a full-fledged laptop, it's not a tablet (doesn't even have a touch screen); and by design it's not very good as a stand-alone device. Eric Lai at ZDNet, though, thinks Chromebooks are (with the price drop that accompanies the newest version) a good fit for business customers, at least "for white-collar employees and other workers who rarely stray away from their corporate campus and its Wi-Fi network." Lai lists some interesting large-scale rollouts with Chromebooks, including 19,000 of them in a South Carolina school district. Schools probably especially like the control that ChromeOS means for the laptops they administer. For those who'd like to have a more conventional but still lightweight ARM laptop, I wonder how quickly the ARM variant of Ubuntu will land on the new version. (Looks like I'm not the only one to leap to that thought.)
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this different from any generic netbook that comes out around the same price range (with a x86 processor may I add)?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, we know [dilbert.com].
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, the PHB shows quite a bit of acuity.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Pointy head is acute, by definition...
Re: (Score:3)
And before someone *points out* that PHB stands for pointy haired boss: under that hair there are horns.
as long as you have a good network link (Score:5, Insightful)
as long as you have a good network link and you better hope it's cap free and don't even think of roaming as it can cost $10 or more pre MEG!!
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You get the CLOUD, son. The CLOUD. All your data can be stored in the CLOUD. The processor is not relevant. Cycles per second doesn't matter when you data is instantly accessible in the CLOUD. At our fingertips. We can scan, parse, and not store any data. Promise.
SOLD!
Because when Google decides to do something like stop supporting .doc export in GoogleDocs, I want to be absolutely certain that feature is unavailable to me that very instant!
No legacy cruft in the CLOUD!
(sorry if you've been asked to submit that resumé in .doc not .docx - but... the CLOUD!!!!)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair they have always warned people in good time. You are still ultimately screwed if people continue to demand your CV in MS Word formats of course, although I'd be worried about any place that can't accept a .docx these days.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
You can't "save as" .doc, but you can still read them, edit them, and then save in a newer file format.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company requres that you submit your resumé as a .doc then you don't want to work there! Google is just helping you improve your quality of life.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this different from any generic netbook that comes out around the same price range (with a x86 processor may I add)?
Power-efficient ARM setup with modest sized SSD and crippled OS. Just needs a proper Linux install to make a cheap and useful geek trophy. Subsized by Google, what's not to like about that. I wonder if it requires prorietary modules or firmware.
And I wonder how long Google will continue beating this dead horse.
Subsidised? Remember this hardware is cheap (Score:3)
Re:Subsidised? Remember this hardware is cheap (Score:4, Funny)
The cost per unit of this sort of hardware isn't a lot and they only have to sell a few thousand to get their development costs back.
We lose money on each unit but we make it up by selling in volume.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm pretty certain you meant to be funny there but it's not as strange as it sounds. By selling in volume, you get a LOT of devices out there which can be used for money generation in other ways. Haven't you ever wondered how Google makes money despite the fact that their flagship product (search) is free to use (as are quite a few of their other products)?
Re: (Score:3)
Primary costs are not the CPU (Score:3)
They are the screen, the battery, the SSD, the toucpad, and the keyboard in that order.
You need to read "The Innovators Dilemma" to understand why, regardless of capacity, the bottom end hard drive is always the same price. The same is true for laptops.
While it's true you could produce 4MB hard drives in volume for practically dirt cheap, you can't buy them for that price because no one is producing them in volume.
The saddle point for the low end machine is $300 today, and will be $300 tomorrow. The only
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a race to the bottom.
They make the revenue by giving up your location and what you do. After all: this is Google we're talking about. Between Adsense and Google apps you use, there are no secrets. At.All.
People pay for your secrets, so buyers get a nebbishy netbook wannabe, and think they're getting a deal. Yeeeesh.
Like smartphones, they can sell it at or under cost and make money on the back-end.
Re:Subsidised? Remember this hardware is cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a race to the bottom.
They make the revenue by giving up your location and what you do. After all: this is Google we're talking about. Between Adsense and Google apps you use, there are no secrets. At.All.
People pay for your secrets, so buyers get a nebbishy netbook wannabe, and think they're getting a deal. Yeeeesh.
Like smartphones, they can sell it at or under cost and make money on the back-end.
Race to the bottom is just how capitalism works. Its why Apples [who make siri useless with advertising] market share in phones continues to drop. Google will never give away your secrets, because it is not a good business model. They sell advertising space.
Re:Subsidised? Remember this hardware is cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
10" ARM Android netbooks are retailing from $100-150 in China, so I'd say Google have a bit of room to earn money on their Chromebooks.
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they only have to sell a few thousand to get their development costs back
Did you just grossly underestimate how much the care and feeding of a department full of Googlers and associated hangers on actually costs?
Don't attack a strawman just because you fail (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
"sell a few thousand"? How much money do you think they've spent developing all of the software running on this device? I bet it's several million dollars at the bare minimum - which represents infrastructure, plus a modestly sized dev/qa team's salaries.
The 'software running on this device' is the Linux kernel, developed at no cost to Google[1]; some Linux user-space programs, also developed at no cost to Google; and the Chrome browser, which Google is developing anyway, so no additional cost to Google. The only costs of 'Chrome OS' are a teensie bit of integration and some testing - and frankly I could do that in under six months of my time, so of the order of US$100,000.
[1] Yes, I know Google makes a considerable contribution to the Linux kernel; but tha
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And given the same Watt-sucking screen as any other netbook, you'll see at most a 10% improvement in battery life. FAIL.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
And given the same Watt-sucking screen as any other netbook, you'll see at most a 10% improvement in battery life.
Where did you get that number, out of your ass? Try some actual data. [wikipedia.org]
MSI Winpad 100, 10.1" display, 5 hours battery life. Samsung Galaxy Tab, 10.1" display, Android, quad core, 10 hours battery life. Looks like Intel chipsets suck a lot more than you thought.
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"And I wonder how long Google will continue beating this dead horse."
It's a Zombie horse.
Remember when the I-Opener was all the rage at Slashdot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener [wikipedia.org]
Graveyard of obsolete devices but an informative read:
http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl [linux-hacker.net]
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Woah... did you just compare a $1700, 7 pound laptop to a $250, 2.5 pound laptop and conclude that the technology hasn't advanced?
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
My Dell Inspiron 8600 from years ago still lasts 8.5 hours on a charge, and with a power-sucking a 1920 x 1200 screen.
The bulk of the power isnt consumed by the number of pixels.. its consumed by the backlight. Want a high contrast ratio so you can see it in direct sunlight? Suffer a significantly reduced battery life.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh someone that has zero experience in IT chiming in as an expert. Let me fill you in there kiddo so you undeerstand how the big boys play IT. Goog's business services works great. ALL our CRM systems are web based already as well as other data systems so moving them to cheap disposable chrome books is a no brainer. What is wasting their time is Giving them Windows Laptops. Having to have IT service them, deal with AV issues, etc...
Chromebooks work great for all of them. PLUS it give them more connectivity as we are buying a large data pool for all the laptops to be connected everywhere. Before the sales guys had to find a wifi location OR use their cellphone. Now they are "always on" and always through our Company connection via VPN.
Works great. Maybe you should look into how it all actually works.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about Chrome OS.
In short this is likely the ideal computer for someone who just uses their PC for the internet and a few things like word processing that they could be using the internet for. And it's great for someone who isn't technically inclined, no need for anti-malware and less opportunities for things to break and having to get a relative to fix it.
More improvements are coming in newer versions of Chrome/Chrome OS, including a set of APIs that allow for creating "native"-like applications that manage their own windows etc (still all HTML/JavaScript based of course).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So when Microsoft locks down the bootloader, it's bad. But when Google does it, it's good.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
So when Microsoft locks down the bootloader, it's bad. But when Google does it, it's good.
Of course. That's a well known law of nature.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
This is incorrect. The boot loader isn't locked down - it still allows developer mode where you can put whatever software you want on it.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
And you can even open it up and unlock the firmware to install your own boot loader, as stated by Google engineers at https://plus.google.com/u/0/109993695638569781190/posts/3EoeZU8QnNG
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So it's slightly cheaper than an older iPad, but gets worse battery life. It has a fraction of the software of an iPad, and isn't as easy to whip out and use since you have to fold out the keyboard. It's less features than an netbook (which you could restrict down to be malware free) but at the same cost.
I'm just not sure about the value on these things.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
So it's slightly cheaper than an older iPad, but gets worse battery life. It has a fraction of the software of an iPad, and isn't as easy to whip out and use since you have to fold out the keyboard. It's less features than an netbook (which you could restrict down to be malware free) but at the same cost.
I'm just not sure about the value on these things.
iPad2 [apple.com]: $399 ($529 with 3G). 9.2" 1024x768 screen. No keyboard
Samsung Chromebook [samsung.com]: $249 ($329 with 3G) 11.6" 1366x768 screen, keyboard, touchpad, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, SD Card slot
I'm not sure I'd say that $150 - $200 is "slightly cheaper".
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
No need for anti-malware... it runs a super-locked down variant of Linux.
Car analogy time. Fill a sedan up to the windows with concrete and nobody will be able to steal it. You also won't be able to drive it to the store to buy groceries but nobody will be able to steal it.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Vehicle analogy time:
You change from a car to a train. The infrastructure is different and less flexible, but while the vehicle doesn't let you go as many places, it's much more efficient, less prone to breakage and less stressful at getting you to your workplace day in, day out.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Everything is stored in the cloud so backups and data loss isn't a concern."
Say again ? How many examples of people losing access to some or all of their data definitively (the MS Sidekick fiasco for example) do we need for people to finally realize that the only safe place for your data is.... several backups that you physically have and have spread in different locations. If "the cloud" is so safe, why do each and every cloud license agreement state and restate end rerestate and rererere.. that the clou
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Cloud is way safer than your typical malware ridden PC.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a couple uses for it. One of them, is essentially a remote terminal, assuming it has Citrix or other receiver support.
For typing stuff and general business/IT stuff (remote logins), it is a lot easier to do that with a keyboard than on a tablet, especially when dealing with a number of screen or text sessions.
Also, if the Chromebook gets stolen/seized, it is "just" a hardware loss except for saved browser preferences. An attacker might be able to tell what sites were visited with Chrome, but there would be little to no sensitive data physically on that device.
No, it isn't a game machine, but if I needed something to take out with me on a vacation trip where I had to log from remote, it would be immensely useful.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems like it is going a step forward from what we really need right now. Still the linux arena is not the mess that is windows to worry right now for linux malware (at least, in 2-3 orders of magnitude that it should in windows). There are few differences between a netbook with ubuntu or another linux based (fedora, ubuntu/debian variants, mer, openwebos, firefox os, etc) os preinstalled using even google apps and chrome for most of your data, it could even be running under arm architecture and a prett
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure what you mean? There are certainly "macro" type malware that infect documents, but most of it gets at you executables. If your executables are all read-only from Google's servers, how are you going to infect them?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
With this machine you are looking at $300 per workstation, google apps included. For certain uses, you are talking about a a complete cubicle farm for what one could put on a credit card. And if a computer breaks, just swap it out.
I can see these used in call centers. I can see these use in certain school situations. I can see this for use in the home for small kids. I can't see a laptop matching this price point, at least not one that is going to last a few years.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Increasingly we have a workforce that simply needs to connect to a database, do email.
... and has $250 to waste on a device that is a brick without a net connection, purely because of crippled software. Good luck with that.
Many offices are already dead without a 'net connection - no connection to financial systems, email at the corporate office, etc. If they are lucky they have a local fileserver, but can't do much without the network. Which is why they tend to have redundant connections (i.e. a leased line back to the corporate office and VPN over public internet as a backup).
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
This is correct but you forgot VOIP. Many businesses are using VOIP or a PBX. Losing Internet access would mean losing the phones. I am a lawyer with my own small office. If my Internet went down (and I didn't have my smartphone) then that means no phone service, no Westlaw access for legal research, and no email. Internet access to me is as important as electricity service. I believe that I'm not an outlier.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
'brick without net connection'.
gee, how many companies, on their site, have 'no net connection'?
that's quite a large number. you're right! no one would ever want a thin networked client that does not need any sysadmin and does not fall prey to windows viruses.
nope, no one in corp america would want one. you are certainly the smart one to discover this.
Re: (Score:2)
It's better than a Dell because it won't let you install anything and it protects you from getting a Microsoft infection of Windows.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to use - if you know how to use a browser, you can use this. No fiddling with drivers or apt-get or anything else to make the input devices work properly/better, make battery life acceptable or get performance up to par - just open it and start working...
As an example as to the problems regular notebook users face, I've been noticing an alarming trend lately: The German language Thinkpad forum (thinkpad-forum.de), which is actually full of intelligent people - lots of engineers, IT guys, sound guys and so on - is starting to show that Windows 7 is too complicated and difficult to set up in a way that maximizes potential battery life. As I sit here and type this on a big 15.6" Thinkpad with the power-sucking FullHD screen, I'm seeing a power draw of, oh, 6.5W - I'm seeing 12+ hours of real-world use with the big 9-cell, usually leaving my power supply at home and coming home with 30% to spare even though the damned thing was on all day.
Other users with the same internal hardware (Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i7 on the same chipset, no dedicated graphics) and often smaller, more efficient displays, are reporting *much* higher battery usage. They're only getting 3-4 hours out of a 55Wh 6-cell battery, so 15-20W of average power draw, while surfing the web without Flash or just using Office applications... how does this happen?
Easy:
Forget to install a driver? Power consumption skyrockets.
Let Windows update update a device driver to a non-manufacturer-optimized version? Power consumption skyrockets.
Use the device manufacturer's update utility, which then proceeds to crash in the middle of a driver update? Power consumption skyrockets (if you're lucky enough to be left with a booting system).
Forget to close CPU-hogging program X or a program with moving graphical elements (i.e. an animation of some kind that constantly repeats itself)? Power consumption skyrockets.
Don't realize a program has crashed and has pegged a core of the CPU at 100%? Power consumption skyrockets.
Device driver crashed? P C S!
And that's just the power usage aspect... there are all sorts of other finicky little traps when it comes to running a full-blown Windows or Linux machine. You and I are probably used to it, so we really don't notice all the little optimizations we use to make our machines run properly: NoScript, Adblock, Click-to-Flash, no background tasks that hog CPU or I/O, restarting browsers and other processes that are using more and more memory over the last week of uptime... we notice when our machines are running more slowly than usual, and can use tools like the task manager and resource monitor to determine what's causing the slowness...
And let's be honest: Which normal person wants to fuck with all that?
Even cut down Linuxes like Android exhibit some of the same symptoms - Even excluding third-party non-system-apps there are too many software components that can crash or misbehave, keeping the device awake during standby or draining the battery faster than usual during regular use. It's all too complicated for a regular user, and in the case of Android and Linux in general, I myself have trouble pinpointing many issues... often, the only thing I can do is just reboot the device.
That's why Chrome OS's approach is so awesome - bare-metal OS, browser, done. Nothing to fuck up, minimal processes to crash, hardly anything that can misbehave and suck down power... Of course, not being able to work offline means it's also completely useless for actual day-to-day use unless you get a version with a mobile data connection and never take it out of the country, but the concept is freakin awesome.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
It only runs a web browser. No ios apps, no android apps, no x86 apps. You won't be able to upgrade its miserable 2GB of ram or attach an ethernet cable and it hardly has any cache. Might as well fuck yourself in the leg with it; it's a DOA POS that will be filling landfills by the end of 2013.
I spent the same amount on an Acer last year and I can read/write DVDs on it, have a moderate HD (250 GB), 15.6" screen and dual-boot Win7 and Linux w/o hacks. I upgraded the mem to 10GB for ~$25 and it has a Radeon 6310. Even before the mem upgrade, I could compile FPGA code, FV-1 code, AVR code, STM32F4 code and develop games with Game Maker on it. Oh yeah, I can also run what the Chromebook "cellphone in a laptop body" does. faster.
Fools and their money.
How much does your $250 15" acer weigh, and how long does it last on batteries? I wouldn't buy a Chromebook as my primary machine, but sounds perfect for travel or catching up on email on the train on the way to work. (the keyboard makes it more convenient than a tablet for replying to emalis)
Could be a decent spare machine. (Score:5, Interesting)
The really cool think here is that we're seeing the impact of Moore's Law in new direction. ARM-based hardware in its various guises (cheap notebooks, tablets and smartphones) has ushered in a wave of inexpensive machines that has been made possible by the availability of incredibly cheap chipsets that are just good enough for the task at hand at prices that are absolutely astounding (I remember carrying a work-issued laptop in 1996 that cost almost $3,000).
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Re:Could be a decent spare machine. (Score:5, Interesting)
... and unlike netbooks, It's unlikely Microsoft will weasel in with a version of their OS for this hardware ... although with WinRT, I guess it is possible. At least it will force the price down. I kind of like the idea of this in general as a maintenance-free laptopn, but I really don't understand why people don't just install Ubuntu or something. They'd get almost all of the safety, but with a full offline OS.
GPU could be a problem for generic Linux install (Score:4, Insightful)
"but I really don't understand why people don't just install Ubuntu or something."
According to the usual random Google sources, the new Chromebook appears to be running a Samsung-branded System-on-a-Chip called "Exynos 5 Dual Processor" (http://www.chromestory.com/2012/10/googles-new-249-chromebook-complete-specs/).
A quick check at Wikipedia showed that Exynos is composed of a 1.7 GHz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and ARM Mali-T604 GPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos#List_of_Exynos_SoC). If I remember correctly, opensource support for the Mail GPU is a work-in-progress. So unless Ubuntu has the same OEM-level access to the binary drivers, running Unity on the Chromebook will be a painfully slow, framebuffer-only experience.
However if your idea of a window manager consists of terminal sessions running Links, Mutt, and Bash, this would make a mighty fine Emacsbook.
Re: (Score:2)
Why, because he voiced his opinion? I realize the whole Linux crowd has drifted away, but some of us are left. Keep that in mind.
Offline e-mail and web on the bus (Score:2)
I suspect that very few typical users actually work offline much.
A passenger on a bus or in a carpool who doesn't subscribe to mobile broadband is working offline. Someone driving a car is not. I wonder to what extent the lack of offline use speaks to the inadequacy of public transit and carpool arrangement in some U.S. cities.
Access to the web, email and social media pretty well requires a connection.
Access to web and e-mail at least requires a connection but not a persistent connection. POP3 or IMAP e-mail can be downloaded while online, read and replied to while offline, and sent through your SMTP MSA while online. The Pocket add-on for Firef
To hell with Chrome OS (Score:5, Insightful)
The big advantage over other ARM based netbook hacks is that this one has a driver accelerated X (since ChromeOS is just a Linux distro) and not just some Android graphics driver.
Too bad it looks like they won't be selling them in Australia.
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China is not far away and their are a pile of places where the business model is a Chinese expat getting stuff from China, as well as the option of getting stuff direct from Hong Kong from people fluent in English.
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Except stuff from China tends to be riddled with GPL violations and stuck with some ancient, decrepit version of Android.
1st thing (Score:4, Insightful)
1st thing I thought when reading about these was "will I be able to put another OS on it". I have very little interest in ChromeOS, but Android, linux, or even Windows RT, and now you've got my attention.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course you can. Chrome OS devices have all got a developer mode switch that turns off some of the security, allowing you to install your own software on the device. Up to and including Windows and other Linux distros.
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Hackability of new Chromebooks (Score:3, Interesting)
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too bad that there is no driver for the gpu in linux.. still going to grab one, eventually. i always wanted a arm system.
Why bother? (Score:2)
"it isn't a full-fledged laptop, it's not a tablet (doesn't even have a touch screen); and by design it's not very good as a stand-alone device."
So....it's a crappy piece of tech? I don't get who they expect to market this to. Business customers? Really? Pipe dream if you ask me.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the same thing. "I have no use for this, in my life." Then someone pointed out where this fits: in the hands of every person that has ever asked me for tech support. This is perfect for the non geeks in my life. I'd love to never be asked to figure x a laptop again and this may just fit that mold.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
be real, the second a non geek gets their hands on one you will be called up and buried in dumbshit questions like, "why doesnt my GPS map updater work on it", "how do I install EXCEL", "my yahoo account doesnt work"
I agree with DMX (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDs7F4x3Dyo
Stop, drop, shut it down google non stop
Oh, no
That's how Ruff Ryders scroll...
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I dont follow how a machine that phones home to do anything is "more secure"
you can also get 250$ netbooks that run on atom, get similar battery life, dont have to be connected to use the fucking calulator and run every common home app ever made, whats the point of a chromebook?
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
At $250 I can wait for Black Friday and get a 15.6" i3 with Win 7 Home.
As far as I'm concerned, an extra 4" of screen (with attendant bulk, weight, and battery life reduction) would be a liability rather than an asset. Same goes for Windows. I realize that my needs are not everyone's, but I suspect there are a lot of people out there who don't want to lug a 15.6" machine around.
As reliable as the network (Score:2)
19,000 of them in a South Carolina school district.
I foresee a lot of downtime in the classroom each time there is a glitch in the the school's wifi or network.
Re: (Score:2)
I foresee a lot of downtime in the classroom each time there is a glitch in the the school's wifi or network.
Which, from what I have seen, would happen if they were using standard laptops from Dell. You'd be surprised how much a non-cloud device still relies on a working network.
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19,000 of them in a South Carolina school district.
I foresee a lot of downtime in the classroom each time there is a glitch in the the school's wifi or network.
That wouldn't surprise me; but any school system(or other enterprise setup) shoving 19,000 clients around is likely going to be toast if the network glitches in any case:
You can't trust a laptop hard drive even as far as you can throw it, so it is typical for the user's home or documents directory to be a mount from a fileserver. That certainly doesn't function any better for losing connectivity. Authentication is usually centralized, so if you can't talk to the domain controller(or OpenDirectory server, if
Download, read, reply, send (Score:2)
the kiddies aren't going to be doing much research, email, collaboration, whatever without a network connection in any case.
Since when does mail require a continuous connection to the Internet? I thought the use case for a store-and-forward system like Internet mail was to download mail, go offline, read, reply, go online, and send everything in the outbox.
Re: (Score:3)
. Everyone else either uses their phone or uses webmail, IM instead or OMG Facebook.
Just sayin'
My phone's email system is a traditional IMAP client. So I'm store 'n' forwarding all the time.
Also, I use Thunderbird at home as I have two regularly used email addresses, and it makes it easier to check both simultaneously.
Way too many limitations (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that a Chromebook works best when on a network, at least it should get the network stuff right. Right?
VPN - does it support, say, Cisco AnyConnect? No.
Kerberos? Not that I can tell.
Printing? Sure, if my organization is willing to install "Google Cloud Print Connector".
Baslcally, this thing might work fine if your entire business runs in the Google universe. Otherwise, get a netbook.
Re: (Score:3)
[Backdrop - the requirements I enumerated were only a partial list of what I need to get my day job done.]
VPN - The link you provide says that "Cisco AnyConnect is supported when configured with L2TP over IPSec." Unfortunately the VPNs I need to connect to all run in SSL mode - not supported.
Kerberos - Google's SSO is of no use. I need to authenticate against my organization's servers.
Printing - here be dragons. Google's solution (for "classic printers") assumes that your printer is plugged into a comput
Cisco VPN rather sucks; sorry you have to use it (Score:3)
Start with the Java it requires in order to run the client. Then move onto the licensing that prohibits redistribution of the client, and therefore the client can not be signed code, and then move onto the known replay attack CERT advisories for the Cisco VPN system itself.
Lots of blind opinions (Score:2)
Lotta people who haven't even seen it yet are sure rendering authoritative opinions. Me thinks the proper thing to do is to wait and see and decide for myself, or at least to talk to someone with real experience. I like Googles stuff in general and hope I would like their Chromebook and the Chrome O/S as well.
Re: (Score:3)
As a Web terminal, my Cr-48 is fucking brilliant. Unbreakable operating system, nearly instant wake from sleep, good keyboard, touchpad, and screen. I'd take it over a tablet any day for web use, and it's been a daily driver of mine since December '10.
It's really only good as a web terminal, though. Doesn't run much on itself. Can do games that you can d/l from the Chrome store, but the old hardware's a bit slow - Atom N455 and 2GB of RAM. There's production hardware from Samsung that's got a Sandy Bri
three questions (Score:3)
Can it mount an external USB drive?
Can it play flac audio?
Can it route audio to a USB DAC?
Re:three questions (Score:5, Informative)
> Can it mount an external USB drive?
Yes
> Can it play flac audio?
Yes
https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/audio-video
" When build Google Chrome OS, the following codecs/containers are also included:
FLAC audio codec"
> Can it route audio to a USB DAC?
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/21/chrome-os-update-includes-custom-wallpapers/
"audio can now play through either HDMI or USB."
Web Apps already failed, ChromeOS is obsolete (Score:4, Interesting)
Since then, App Stores materialized and proven to be highly successful. Developers have again and again refused to develop their apps in HTML5 and clearly preferred to go native.
Apple, added an App Store to OSX, Android and Blackberry did the same and Microsoft is also going the same way with Windows 8.
So, ChromeOS is based on a premise that didn't really catch on. I can't blame Google for insisting on this since the web is their main source of revenue, but at this point they should just adapt the highly successful Android OS to handle the Desktop metaphor and forget about Web Apps. It didn't work.
Same should apply to Firefox and their Firefox OS..
Re: (Score:3)
at 250$ why would I buy it? (Score:3, Insightful)
its arm so it wont run the applications I want
its slow and light on ram
it requires me to be attached to the internet to access my storage
its got a shit camera (640x480? really? my 5 year old free phone has a 1.2mp camera douche)
its not even all that good on battery life
why is this compelling?
Re:at 250$ why would I buy it? (Score:5, Funny)
... my 5 year old free phone has a 1.2mp camera douche...
I think you're using it wrong.
Androiod Please (Score:2)
Cloud storage violates our security standards. (Score:3)
So other than zero corporate use and how it's not much cheaper than a netbook which, as a sector of the market died more than a year ago and it's nowhere near high powered enough for most actual use that's not browsing, I don't see a single thing wrong with it.
But (Score:2)
I don't want to keep my data in "The Cloud"
I keep my data on (micro)SD cards
Does it have a (micro)SD slot?
Netbook (Score:5, Interesting)
For $200 if bought a 10.1 inch netbook that seems like good value.
It works great for watching movies on the bus/train when on vacation (or in a hotel, thanks to HDMI and VGA out), occasional work when commuting, and of course sitting next to the couch to fact-check the rubbish that passes for TV news. It's an Asus eeepc "Flare" that I bought right off the shelf at Best Buy. When I get the chance it'll need some more RAM, so I might have to spend another $20.
I can see the value of these things for large companies or schools that can remote administer and secure large numbers of machines, but for home users these would seem to be a fringe item.
Can't get netbooks any more (Score:3)
ASUS discontinued their entire netbook line on September 4, 2012.
Low cost netbooks with large hard drives interfered with the "lock users into the cloud then raise the price and make ads more intrusive" strategy of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Another machine with a generally-closed platform. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me up when the platform doesn't favor a bunch of binary blobs that moot the ability to change the firmware.
At least with the Intel platform you don't have that issue.
I can actually see where this could be good... (Score:3)
This is fairly obviously a re-hash of the old "dumb terminal" idea that does the rounds every ten or fifteen years.
In the past the big issue has been "we'd need to re-structure an awful lot of backend IT in order to actually use these dumb terminals, and they're not that much cheaper". This probably remains an issue for large businesses, but for smaller organisations that are buying in most of their IT (and quite often buying it in in the form of web-based systems that they pay a monthly fee for), I wonder if this makes more sense.
In the past you'd probably sell them a machine running Small Business Server, add all their PCs to the domain and charge for ongoing support, but as SBS is basically being retired this leaves the door open for Google. After all, if the server's on its last legs and the replacement will necessitate moving some or all of the infrastructure to an online service anyway, why does it have to be Microsoft's?
Re: (Score:2)
Hulu, yes. Netflix -- not yet.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/laptops/21180/new-samsung-chromebook-netflix [computerworld.com]