A new generation of Chromebooks, designed to work with millions of apps | Hacker News Reader

A new generation of Chromebooks, designed to work with millions of apps

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214 pointsshankarvellal220 comments

So is the Tablet version of Android dead again? Is "ChromeBook" an operating system, a system architecture, or what? It uses the App store from my Android phone, does that mean my phone apps will work on this thing?

As a technologist and someone who spends way more time picking apart computer architectures than is healthy, I think it is great that Google is enabling a 2-in-1 ARM architecture which Microsoft pioneered with Windows Surface. I think Google's approach of making it more phone+ rather than laptop- is likely to be better at setting performance expectations.

That said, whomever is responsible for brand communication at Google should be let go. I have never seen branding so confused by such a large company. Pixel is a high end chromebook, uh no its a phone now, Nexus is a phone, no its a tablet, no its a speaker system? Android is an OS? Phone OS? Just Linux? Free? Not free? Open? Not open? Chrome is a browser? An OS? A type of device? A TV peripheral? A way to talk to TVs?

It stuns me how so astonishingly bad this is. Someone should tell them "Hey this is like Star Trek OK?, a lot of nerds follow you and you really have to get what is canon and what isn't canon straight otherwise you'll lose the entire audience."

We call it "shipping the org chart." Your fundamental error is assuming that there is any one person -- or even center of authority -- in charge of brand communication.

Thats one of Google's biggest problems IMO. There is no "grand vision" just a bunch of teams working on random stuff that sometimes completely competes with each other and they end up killing 1, if not both after a year.

On the contrary, the decentralisation is what I appreciate so much about Google - I feel it's the primary driver for innovative stuff that comes out of Google. It may seem like a mess but then you see - creativity doesn't flows out of grand visions.

PS: perhaps Apple was able to achieve "centralized creativity" only because of Jobs.

Metaphoric org charts of tech companies: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_or...

That can be also a strength. You just keep on throwing out things without much hesitation and see what sticks. You create confusing set of products and kill stuff all the time, but on the other hand you give markets change to decide.

Compare to for example Apple which seems to think so much they get very little out.

Maybe it is very difficult for large organisation to find the balance between these two. Grand vision requires somebody to manage it and filter what gets out. That can lead to great products getting killed just because they were not invented by the VP Visions.

This is a good term. It is the marketing/branding version of Conway's law[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

I like that phrase. I call it 'destroying credibility.'

I get that there are a lot of different groups at Google and they all have their own vision of their own part of the universe, and its super empowering to tell every product manager "Hey, if you can get it market ready you can ship it!" The part that I don't get is that people working for Google aren't clueless. I know a lot of smart people that work there still. So why tolerate a company behavior that is so harmful to their consumer image? Rebranding is treated like a dot dot release it seems. Sure you can get away from a stigma maybe for a bad choice but rebranding on a whim? This stuff has to go through legal right? Trademarks and all that. Who decided to make Pixel a phone? And to just sort of drop the whole Nexus thing? (here is a funny discussion about the Pixel trademark: http://thetrademarkninja.com/2016/10/03/google-event-tradema...)

What it means is that nobody in any authority at Google understands brands, and that is a big red flag for Google's aspirations in the product space.

> So why tolerate a company behavior that is so harmful to their consumer image?

Because they make more money than God? I mean, okay, some customer somewhere is mad at Google abstractly, but not mad enough to stop paying Google (still use Android/gmail/g-suite/buy chromebooks/use chrome). If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

edit: For real, they "tolerate" it because looking ahead into a future where this "harm" to their "customer image" does actual harm to Google is really hard. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't, but no one can say how likely or precisely when. So, make hay while the sun shines?

By this reasoning, is everything that happens within a company with sufficiently high gross revenue "good enough"?

That's capitalism for you.

But they don't (make more money than God). Apple has more net income in a quarter than Google has revenue. I've said else where that the really "big" bucks eludes them and part of the problem is, in my opinion of course, that they don't have a sensible product message.

Brin has said that Google's OSes could converge over time : https://www.cnet.com/news/brin-googles-oses-likely-to-conver...

These maybe the beginning stages of that convergence. Maybe they are attempting a device convergence too ?

There had been a lot of rumors about an OS internally called andromeda that would merge android and ChromeOs:

https://9to5google.com/2016/11/15/andromeda-rumor-tidbits-oe...

Then there was an interview in which Google's Hiroshi Lockheimer stated that what would most likely happen is each OS gaining features from each other like how ChromeOS can run android apps and how android is using some of chrome's updating methods. you can read the article:

https://chromeunboxed.com/chrome-os-and-android-not-merging-...

Its hard to say but it seems the andromeda thing is real. I personally think andromeda is just more ChromeOs features put into android. andromeda might just be android O.

Doubt they'll merge the two, but they will have a cross platform OS with Fuchsia, which may very well supplant both.

> So is the Tablet version of Android dead again?

Um, no.

> Is "ChromeBook" an operating system, a system architecture, or what?

It's a brand name for laptop form-factor devices running the ChromeOS operating system.

> It uses the App store from my Android phone, does that mean my phone apps will work on this thing?

It supports Android Apps from the Google Play Store, so, yes, apps that run on other Android devices, including phones, will generally work on it

> whomever is responsible for brand communication at Google should be let go.

I assume that's the crux of the problem. Whomever that is is either entirely impotent to impose a coherent vision across google or, probably more likely, that person simply doesn't exist.

You seem to be confusing branding and product naming.

Pixel is a brand name for high-end reference-type devices designed and built by Google, such as the Chromebook Pixel, Pixel C, and Pixel phone.

Nexus is (was?) a brand name for low-cost reference-type devices designed and built in collaboration with hardware manufacturers, such as the Nexus 5, Nexus 7 and (odd) Nexus Q.

Android is a mobile operating system used on platforms such as phones, tablets, cars, and as of a few weeks ago, IoT devices.

Chrome is an overarching brand name for various web-centric things Google is doing: Chromium is the browser. Chrome OS is a version of Linux strictly limited to providing a web browser paradigm-based user experience for computers. Chromebooks are a class of low-cost laptops that use Chrome OS. Chrome_cast_ is a brand name for streaming content to unconnected devices such as TVs and speakers by way of microcomputing devices such as the Chromecast Ultra or Chromecast Audio (which all run a stripped down Chromium under the hood).

All things considered, for a company as large as Google, I don't think it's really all that hard to comprehend. I think it's pretty consistent, and they try to fit as much as they can into the above set of brands when they can. For instance, Android Things used to be called Brillo. It feels a lot simpler than how eg. Microsoft used to do naming up until a few years ago. Calling for "whomever is responsible" to be "let go" certainly feels hyperbolic.

These distinctions--in particular Pixel versus Nexus--are utterly meaningless to customers. Pixel is laptops; Nexus is phones. That's what makes sense--not naming the thing based on the contractual relationship with some third party the customer has never heard of.

Do you have any details on Chromecast Audio running chromium under the hood? That seems like a really weird choice.

> Android Things used to be called Brillo.

Yes, but the APIs aren't the same as pure Android, and originally Brillo was expected to have a set of C++ Frameworks instead of Java, and Google gave up on it.

Pixel phones were still designed in collaboration and made by HTC. The main distinction is the branding; You will only see Pixel/Google branding, unlike Nexus. That's why Huawei passed on making the Pixel.

Nexus is in purgatory. Who knows what google will do with that.

It's pretty clear that this is imitating Microsoft, and specifically Surface. Except Microsoft came to that point from the direction of desktops and full-fledged laptops (not that it didn't try to also do mobile, it just didn't pan out well). Whereas Google started with phones and tablets, and scaled up. But the endpoint of that convergence is the same - a single OS and a single app framework across all devices.

Now it gets interesting, because Windows and Android will finally be competing directly in a niche which neither of them has a strong hold on.

> Now it gets interesting, because Windows and Android will finally be competing directly in a niche which neither of them has a strong hold on.

This isn't Android, it's ChromeOS. And ChromeOS is pretty well established for what amount to modern netbooks.

It runs apps from Play Store so apps written for Android will run on this device too. It's a way for Android to expand into Windows territory.

It's a way for Google to use the large number of Android apps to further boost ChromeOS further in the territory at the border of traditional laptop and limited function mobile use where ChromeOS is already a real contender with both desktop Windows and traditional mobile OSs.

> And ChromeOS is pretty well established for what amount to modern netbooks.

In USA, abroad not really.

In Europe, Windows 10 is the synonym for modern netbooks being sold at consumer stores.

It doesn't matter what you call the thing under the hood. It taps into the Android app ecosystem now, so from developer and user perspective, it's Android for netbooks.

There are a lot of people complaining about the 32 GB of space who're forgetting that most smartphones still come with around that much storage. My Pixel only has 32 GB, and it cost (unlocked) way more than $500. And I think that's Google's thinking. These things are essentially more capable smartphones. If you're someone who is fine with 32 GB on your phone then you should be fine with 32 GB on your Chromebook.

But I also understand the complaints about the size of the storage. I think the complaints come from people who are looking at it as a computer, not a tablet/phone with a great screen, keyboard, and pen. For a computer its storage space is very tiny. And for those who actually buy the 128 GB smartphone models so they can download games and movies, it seems tiny.

But most users don't match that profile. Which is why there are 32 GB phones still being sold, and why Chromebooks are still only available with 32 GB. When the typical Chromebook user wants more space, Google will oblige. But that's just not in the cards right now.

Personally, I'd like a bit more space, but I still think that for what you're getting it's a good price point: particularly if the pen works well.

If it's a "more capable smartphone", it stands to reason that it should have more memory than a smartphone?

In any case, if it has an SD or MicroSD slot, that would alleviate the storage concern for most people. The USB port could also be useful for more storage, but most people won't want to use up one of the limited USB ports for a memory stick.

Some chromebooks come with a big hd or ssd. But nobody seem to buy them

I wonder if anyone buys chromebooks at all in Europe, given that I only see them as single unit being victim of whatever promotion of the week, until eventually someone takes that thing out of the store.

"victim"?? Chromebooks are the perfect laptops for people who don't understand computers.

No viruses, no antiviruses, no forced reboots...

> No viruses, no antiviruses, no forced reboots...

Browser exploits, cross-site scripting, fake-urls, cookie harvesting, SSL impersonations ...

And what about privacy? An entire OS that records everything you do online, it even records printing to your desktop printer.

Microsoft rightly gets skewered for tracking user behaviour in Windows 10. A few years ago, Canonical was heavily criticised for sending anonymous data from Ubuntu to Amazon. Meanwhile, Google captures more user data than possibly any other tech company - we're talking gargantuan levels of data - and yet on matters of privacy, the tech community gives Google a free pass. Why such double standards?

Because Google is a SV darling, so whatever they do is cool.

It has no viruses because it has no userbase. Mac OSX enjoyed this same privilege until it had sufficient users to attract attention.

It's better to learn how to properly use a computer, then you can get whatever you want and use it correctly instead of leaping from one gimped platform to another.

I've never actually seen a Chrome book in the wild.

You might as well say it has no storage and a 30gb download folder.

That's how I use mine.

Thats basically all it is. There is no permanent storage on a Chromebook, since even the downloads folder will clear out old downloads as storage becomes limited.

Then there are some people, like me, who were unhappy with the size of the storage space and replaced the ssd with a 256GB ssd.

Storage not a problem any more. :)

Consider the chromebook pixel. I wanted to buy one, but they screwed me (and I think a lot of others) over with the drive. It cost $1500, but came with a 64GB SSD. I could have dealt with that if only the SSD wasn't SOLDERED onto the motherboard. I wouldn't buy a mac with a soldered SSD and that drive would be at least 4x bigger.

If it ships with an m.2 so I can expand or replace the existing HD, I'm fine. If not, I'm not buying it at any price. This is a laptop, not some tiny phone.

Depending on what you're actually able to run of the Android apps, there's a lot that you could do with one of these even just for local development just with the Android subsystem.

Shell? Yep, several options (BusyBox, Termux, others?). I was going to suggest Terminal IDE but it's apparently incompatible with anything modern, but I suspect there are other options out there.

Language-aware editors? Yep, things like AIDE, Termux (for vim or emacs), DroidEdit, etc.

Servers? Yep, the only one I ever played with (years back) was Servers Ultimate Pro[1], but I'm sure there are a variety of other tools.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icecoldapp... No Apache, but nginx and lightttpd. MySQL but no Postgres. Not for production use certainly, but for local development?

Chromebooks are actually great dev environments already --better than most of what I've seen on android.

If you're in developer mode (a one time key combo at boot, or a hardware switch under a cover on older machines), you can just ctrl-alt-T and 'shell' and you're in bash w/ the ability to sudo. If you want a more complete userland, crouton[1] will bootstrap an ubuntu setup in a chroot and you can apt-get away, plus it will give you X11 and some integration between that and the native chromeos stuff.

I've used a couple chromebooks as my primary laptop doing dev work for ~5 years now. The only time I ever carry a bigger machine is if I have specific tasks that need really big chunks of memory and/or disk.

[1] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

One problem with Crouton is that you're reliant on Google for the kernel and drivers. When Google decides to stop tracking upstream, you're on your own.

For example, I found that I couldn't run XBMC on an older ChromeOS device without building my own kernel and forward porting Google's changes, which I failed to do. If I decide to buy a Linux laptop, I'd get a non-ChromeOS device.

Yup, that's true. I wouldn't go that route for media or HTPC type use.

It hasn't been a problem for me, for development use, as kernel dependencies aren't common in your typical stable of editor/compiler/interpreter/IDE/etc... The only real limitations I've hit for development are when you want to run local tests that require a container or VM system, where you do start worrying about kernel and drivers. But that wouldn't be terribly practical anyway, since the hardware (other than the pixel) is just too low-end to handle that kind of use well, in general.

Most (all?) chromebooks also support unlocking the bootloader which would allow you to install a stock linux distro running directly on the hardware, but you're right...at that point you lose all the benefits of chromeos, and might as well look at low-end pc laptops instead.

Why use Android as a point of comparison for dev environments, when making a better dev environment than that isn't exactly a high bar?

Because that's what the comment I replied to was talking about -- using android tools on chromeos to create a dev env. Like you say, the android tools aren't great, so it would probably be a step backwards from what you already get w/ chromeos, which is what I was trying to point out.

Full specs for anyone who's interested: http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c...

Still only 32GB eMMC, this is not excusable anymore; there is no 4G modem in this, only wifi, a portable device without storage is pointless can barely fit 2 1080 movies on it....

The 32GB iPad Pro 9.7, Smart Keyboard and Pencil are $599, $149, and $99 for a total of $847. The Samsung Chromebook Plus is $449 and has a keyboard and stylus

I can get a 256GB version of the iPad pro, I don't care about the price atm, I want an option.

There's a long way between your price sensitivity and "not excusable". There's a place in the market for this, without question, especially since it sports removable storage.

No sorry a 500$ with 32GB of storage is not excusable.

Removable storage is pointless since they would likely not to support a filesystem which can be easily mounted on any computer (windows/linux/osx) and support files of 4GB or greater in size.

More importantly media apps like Amazon Instant Video, Netflix and Spotify which allow you to cache/download media for offline use do not allow you to use removable storage for that purpose and my downloaded spotify songs alone would fill A 32GB device.

I can download a few seasons of my TV shows from Amazon Video, Netflix and my entire music library from Spotify into my iPhone but I can't download even a full season of a 8-10 episode per season show onto a device with 32GB.

32GB eMMC is also very slow because of how the storage channel works, so sorry there is no excuse with having so little storage.

Also SD cards are slow, die fairly quickly, can easily get lost, and buying 256GB of storage in microSDXC Class 10 cards from a reliable source (as in definitely not fake) costs about as much as the difference between an iPad/iPhone with a 32GB and 256GB here in the UK.

Chromebooks are designed for everything to be in the cloud, always. If you're DOWNLOADING anything to the device, you're using it wrong.

When you buy a Chromebook, you're signing up for a cheap, lightweight cloud access device. That's why they (used to?) come bundled with 1TB of Google Drive storage.

you're being down voted but you are correct, schools buy these by the hundreds. everything is stored in the cloud. these devices are aimed at a different market. chrome book and Google classroom and Google docs is what they are for. apps make them nicer, there are tons of educational apps (think dyslexia, autism, etc) that we need iPads for. Now we can ditch the iPads.

I think the downvoting is around the assumption that there's a "right" way to use them. Personally I do store a lot of content in Google's cloud but I also have a large SD card in my Chromebook that works perfectly well.

It's being advertised as being suitable for movies and games. Personally I can only successfully stream movies when I'm not on the go with a laptop.

dogma's point about the Play Store apps is right though. ChromeOS was designed to keep everything in the cloud, but Android apps are different-- while currently running on storage-constrained tablets and phones, the Play Store on a laptop will feel a lot more like the App store on a Mac-- games especially will have tons of giant assets that will ideally be stored locally. But if you only have 32GB for a 500GB game... there's a problem.

When a device has a keyboard and 12" screen, it'll feel like a laptop and you'll expect a laptop-like installation experience, not a phone-like experience. That means not waiting a half hour for your game media to download every time you want to play a level...

Even a phone/tablet like experience. The "AAA" mobile titles and the older PC ports take a lot of space, Xcom takes like 4GB, Shadow Run takes 2-3 GB, GTA takes like 2-3 GB also... Even on my Motorola Droid the first "AAA" 3D mobile games would download 1-2GB of assets. A movie from Netflix / Google Play can be 4-6 GB also since it's 2-3GB per hour.

If you have a Marshmallow device today with an SD card you can lock the SD card to that device, format it in EXT4 and encrypt it and then never really remove it and apps can be installed on it (usually), if you still running an older version of Android you have to root the device and pray that the app doesn't do root detection format the SDcard in EXT4 and mount it in /DATA (?) and even then you might have issues since the SD card reader on many devices can be quite slow.

If Samsung wants to sell 500$ devices with 32GB it's their choice, but why not offer models with more storage? Why all the chinese phones can come with 64GB as a base for 300-400$ but Apple and Samsung still offer 32GB for flagship devices that cost twice as much?

And more importantly why are people OK with it? seriously "X is more than enough" when in fact it isn't is not an excuse, the fact that you can get by with 32GB doesn't mean you should, your use cases fit your storage capability not the otherway around.

When I bought the 128GB 6s I thought I would never fill it, within a couple of weeks I only had 30 GB left on the device.

So the Games games that they advertise in the god damn press release that need to download like 4+ GB of data once you install them from the store which cannot be stored on SD or in the magic "cloud" of yours are meant for what?

What about apps that can be as big as few GB's these days for prosumer apps?

What about the cache that the apps use that cannot be stored on an SD card or in the cloud?

What about the fact that internet is still not available everywhere and the fact that these devices do not come with cellular networking built-in?

They sure want me to use the device wrong since they advertise media and games rather than cloud storage.

A school doesn't need computers, it need remote terminals for that most Chromebooks are fine since they'll be used only in a networked environment.

This is a premium device touted as a laptop replacement; don't sell me the cloud. Neither cloud nor Google Storage isn't mentioned even once in the press-release.

In fact in the 1st paragraph you have:

"And with apps like Google Play Movies and Spotify™, you can download movies, shows and music to keep watching or listening when you’re on the go."

Oh but wait, 32GB.....

> do not allow you to use removable storage for that purpose

You are complaining about Samsung's hardware being inexcusable, yet you consider an unnecessary software restriction to be acceptable? I was not aware that Amazon Instant Video, Netflix and Spotify had such restrictions but I do consider that restriction to be inexcusable and would use other software instead.

Google doesn't do it either...

Google, Netflix, Amazon etc. are doing it for "DRM" purposes, sure it stinks but but Google pretty much dropped support for installing apps on SD cards from Android all together until it returned with Marshmallow, so even if you exclude DRM they can't even offer that functionally reliably on Android since not everyone is running 6.0.

If you are running Android 6.0 then you can use the SD card for phone storage if you format it as EXT4 and encrypt the SD card using the built-in encryption in Android which effectively locks the SD card to that device. This also prevents you from swapping SD cards in and out since it will break your apps and your phone basically.

> Removable storage is pointless since they would likely not to support a filesystem which can be easily mounted on any computer (windows/linux/osx) and support files of 4GB or greater in size.

http://www.howtogeek.com/262630/how-to-work-with-external-dr...

Both exFAT and NTFS supports files bigger than 4GB.

> my downloaded spotify songs alone would fill A 32GB device.

You just invalided your argument, no single music gets to more than 4GB.

> 32GB eMMC is also very slow because of how the storage channel works, so sorry there is no excuse with having so little storage.

You keep giving examples with media. eMMC is fast enough for media playback. It is not ideal for, say, random file access, however it is getting better.

> Also SD cards are slow, die fairly quickly, can easily get lost, and buying 256GB of storage in microSDXC Class 10 cards from a reliable source (as in definitely not fake) costs about as much as the difference between an iPad/iPhone with a 32GB and 256GB here in the UK.

Good for you. Here in Brazil an iPhone 7 256GB is twice as expensive than the base 32GB model. FYI, this is a R$2000 difference, while a good, professional grade 256GB SD card is half of this price.

And btw, you're assuming that you need to buy one SD card to put everything on it. You could buy multiple smaller SD cards (say 32GB or 64GB cards), that are very fast and high quality and get much more storage than one unique 256GB SD card (that are expensive since they're pushing the quantity of flash that you can put in a small space like microSD). Smaller cards have much better price per GB.

NTFS and exFAT are useless since Android can't mount SD cards that are formatted with those properly. You may be able to hack the OS to read from them but then they can't be mounted for general purpose use. If you are running Android 6.0 you can mount the SD card as internal storage if you format it in EXT4 and encrypt it which also locks the SD card to your that phone and you can't swap it in and out since it will break apps and as it's encrypted you can't transfer files to it manually.

>You just invalided your argument, no single music gets to more than 4GB.

What? it's not about a single music file getting bigger than 4GB it's about the 3000 music files that Spotify allows me to download reach considerably more than that when you download them on higher quality.

>You keep giving examples with media. eMMC is fast enough for media playback. It is not ideal for, say, random file access, however it is getting better.

You should really look at storage benchmarks and see just how "well" the 7 plus does "raw" photos on the 32GB model, especially in rapid mode.

>> Also SD cards are slow, die fairly quickly, can easily get lost, and buying 256GB of storage in microSDXC Class 10 cards from a reliable source (as in definitely not fake) costs about as much as the difference between an iPad/iPhone with a 32GB and 256GB here in the UK. Good for you. Here in Brazil an iPhone 7 256GB is twice as expensive than the base 32GB model. FYI, this is a R$2000 difference, while a good, professional grade 256GB SD card is half of this price. And btw, you're assuming that you need to buy one SD card to put everything on it. You could buy multiple smaller SD cards (say 32GB or 64GB cards), that are very fast and high quality and get much more storage than one unique 256GB SD card (that are expensive since they're pushing the quantity of flash that you can put in a small space like microSD). Smaller cards have much better price per GB.

>Good for you. Here in Brazil an iPhone 7 256GB is twice as expensive than the base 32GB model. FYI, this is a R$2000 difference, while a good, professional grade 256GB SD card is half of this price.

And? how does offering a 256 model affects you? In the UK buying 4 64GB cards not of Amazon where even the Amazon fulfilled orders are at best only about 50% chance of getting an authentic card if you are ordering a decent brand will cost you about 150-160 GBP since Currys/JL etc sell them for about 40 GBP, an iPhone 7/7p costs 180 GBP more for the 256GB model.

> NTFS and exFAT are useless since Android can't mount SD cards that are formatted with those properly.

That might be relevant if this was an Android device and not a ChromeOS device that can also run Android apps.

ChromeOS is also locked ;) Android apps on it are even more restricted.

There's an SD slot, no?

There's also a USB slot so? I don't want to deal with storage and SD cards that die when you copy large files to them.

I currently use the Samsung Note 2014 (with the Wacom digitizer) as my portable Media player with pretty expensive 64GB cards and it's not fun, they are easy to lose and you still need to swap cards and the media transfer speed to those cards unless you pop them into a reader is so freaking slow and then you get into problems because you can't easily copy large files to them (as in 720+ movies and 1080 ~1 hour TV shows) since exFAT or NTFS is often not supported which defeats the purpose anyhow.

And if "less than official digital copies" are not you thing then both Amazon and Netflix allow you to download videos on mobile devices and play them back while offline, and they do not allow you to use your SD card for the cache.

OK. So it doesn't work for your use case.

But: "a portable device without storage is pointless can barely fit 2 1080 movies on it...."

is not true. I imagine a vast majority of the population carries a portable device that can't fit 2 1080p movies. Indeed, the number of people watching 1080p movies on their phone is probably pretty small to begin with.

This isn't a phone, this is a laptop with a 12" screen....

A phone with 32GB is also not excusable when camera photos take up 5-10MB today, and most phones can shoot 4K video.

Plenty of users willingly find use cases and buy devices with "not excusable" amounts of space. If I were less charitable I would call your definition of the term not excusable.

If you are willing to pay 500$+ for devices with 32GB of storage then it's your business but it's not excusable. I don't think Apple offering 32GB is excusable today either.

And as for the users they buy what they have, most devices don't offer more it doesn't mean they shouldn't the OnePlus One had this too and the 16GB version was pretty much killed because the overwhelming majority of the orders were for the 64GB version and this was like what nearly 3 years ago...

I don't like the 32gb storage option, and everybody that's doing it is being a jerk about it.

But with that being said, 32gb is fine for any use you will have with a tablet. If you have an iPad 32gb, your music, photos, contacts, everything is in the cloud. You jump on to wi-fi when you can, and in between hotspots you just use the space that's on your iPad. That's for normal, every day use. If you have to go on an extended trip or something, you have to reconsider.

Please keep in mind I think the 32gb sucks, I just think that most people can get buy with it and it's plenty excusable.

From all it seems that when having the option most people opt out to buy the bigger storage... And it's funny I use spotify and my Music is not in the cloud, it's on my device even tho O2 doesn't meter spotify streaming and I live in London where I get wifi even in the tube (at the stations). Everyone else I know also downloads most of their common playlists, since streaming isn't always available and it consumes considerably more power than local playback.

Contacts don't take space, and photos in the cloud are a backup, it's not like you can easily browse 5-10MB photos even if you are connected to a metro-wifi connection it's not going to be fast enough in most cases.

Well yeah I think bigger storage is better but I do think people can make do with the 32gb. I think that Apple and others need to up the ante with storage space.

People make do because they have too, I got the 6s with 128GB thinking I would never come close to filling it, within 3-4 weeks I was proven wrong.

How you use your device changes with the storage you have. I don't need to worry about what I store on my device so I have VLC with movies and TV shows just in case. I have seasons of shows from Netflix/Amazon just in case. I got all my music downloaded so I won't have to stream from Spotify killing my battery and warming up my pocket for no reason. I got audiobooks, podcasts, documents and everything I need just in case.

And I found out that the "just in case" is used all the time when you have the option, missed a train? well got 18 min I can watch another episode of star wars rebels instead of idling or trying to stream from my Plex server over the wifi at a train station. Met a friend you haven't seen in a long time? well I got my videos and photos all ready to show... Bored? Well I'll play XCOM or Magic the Gathering....

GB's left GB's right, sure this is just wasting time, nothing life changing but people just don't realise how limited they are because they don't have more storage not because they need it badly but because they are conditioned to get by without it.

Sure yeah. For me I have a 64gb iPhone 6+ and 3gb/month data but I use about 1 or 2. Wifi at work and home. I don't use social media or a lot of other stuff either and don't really watch movies or tv shows on my phone (or at all). I have a lot of music, but since getting a subscription service I went from like 20gb of music stored on my phone to 4. It all depends on your habits. I also don't really play games other than hearthstone, but I'm rarely bored enough to even do that!

I'm not a typical case here though just mentioning my habits for fun.

Clearly, this particular pair of devices is not for you. That doesn't make it inexcusable, it just makes it not for you.

most phones can shoot 4k videos? excuse me, you mean most phones in silicon valley probably?

New phones that cost 500$ or even 300$ can shoot 4K today yes, again we are talking about pretty high price points.

I'm not expecting a 50-150$ phone to come with 256GB option, even tho they would also support 4K today or soon enough, go on GSM arena you'll be hard pressed to see

Paying ~500$ for a device or more and only getting 32GB is a ripoff, the funny part is that many of the new (and current) "chinese" phones from makers like Oppo, Meizu, Huawei, Xiaomi which are intended for the international market come with 64GB as their base and offer 128GB versions.

> Paying ~500$ for a device or more and only getting 32GB is a ripoff

There are other features besides storage that justify spending money for some people. Storage may be decisive for you, but having different preferences doesn't mean people are getting ripped off.

> This isn't a phone, this is a laptop with a 12" screen.

It's more of a tablet with an keyboard and a 12" screen than a traditional laptop.

I'm thinking it's the first thing that I'd see as a suitable replacement for my Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 with keyboard case -- a more modern tool with some key utility and convenience updates that is well suited for the same roles.

Yes:

http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c...

well, it is a chromebook. i think they want the users to keep everything in the cloud and use storage as cache.

i have the same concern, its a deal breaker for me. if i am paying $500, why cant i have some decent storage so i can do things offline and store movies and what not. i dont / cant stream 100% of the time

> i think they want the users to keep everything in the cloud and use storage as cache.

That used to be the case but now you're installing Android apps - which are often fairly hefty.

There isn't a single mention of Cloud, but the first paragraph tells you about downloading Games, Movies and Music.

But currently Android Apps running on Chromebooks under ARC Containers don't even have proper read access from the SD card write is out of the question completely....

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=660189...

Following your own link http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c...

it says: MicroSD Multi-media Card Reader

So bung in a 128GB or 256GB microSD card and you're good to go. For $449 ? That's pretty decent. If my mother hadn't just got at my suggestion the (frankly astonishing) Lenovo Yoga Book Android version for $499 I'd be recommending this Samsung Chromebook to her.

SD cards are not a solution for Chromebooks, you can't store apps/appdata in fact Android apps run in isolated containers currently on Chromebooks and have no access to the SD card at all, this means that if I download some photo editor from the Play store I can't open photos stored on my SD card directly...

General Media is also a problem, I can install VLC on my Chromebook but I can't access media on my SD card, even tho ChromeOS supports exFAT.

So people can go on and say SD card this SD card that, but currently SD cards are not usable at all, they are also not designed for random access, eMMC is at least somewhat decent at that. SDcard readers on many devices are often accessed over USB which makes them even slower and less reliable.

And the design of the SDreader itself often doesn't lend well to permanent storage which means that SD cards cannot be physically used as reliable system storage.

A 256GB micro SD card costs in the UK 150-170 GBP, you can get it for about 130-140 if you want to play 256GB or 256MB Amazon roulette.

Apple Charges 170 GBP for the 256GB upgrade over the 32GB one, yes this is more per GB than an SD card but this is considerably faster and more reliable storage and you can actually use it as both system and general use storage which means that any app or general purpose use of the phone would be able to take full advantage of it unlike SD cards on Android/ChromeOS which range from utterly useless to very limited.

500$ Chromebook with 32GB of storage is utterly useless, considering the price of eMMC it's also inexcusable, so is the fact that iPads come with 32GB still at a similar price point, but at least those offer a higher capacity option.

It seems that the Chinese makers do 64GB as base now, probably will soon go to 128 since when they play around the same price point they need to win on features, I'll wait for a Chromebook from them or see if Asus is going to launch a 256 or 512GB version.

Like honestly I'm really baffled by the level of technical inaccuracy in the counterpoints and the downvotes people that talk about SD cards seem to not actually own a Chromebook nor use it as Google wants you to do now which is as a platform for Android Apps since there are virtually no Chrome Apps anymore and everything is from the Play Store.

I have yet to see a chromebook with an SD reader that wasn't USB2.0

Slow external storage that doesn't interface properly is no replacement for a fast internal drive.A m.2 slot isn't that big. There's no excuse to not add one.

$450 is a bit more than I'd like to pay for something that's a tablet+. I wonder how these compare with the Asus Flip, which is $260? That feels a bit better for a device I'm just going to use to watch some movies on and maybe a bit more.

I have an Asus Flip, which I love, and use for serious work (I use Ubuntu via crouton). I would be willing to pay a little more for an Intel chip to alleviate the headaches of broken software having ARM has occasionally caused.

The light weight of the Flip was a big factor for me as well, since my main machine was hurting my back, so hopefully these new Chromebooks are around as light.

I'd be willing to pay good money for an 11" Asus Flip (with or without the flip capability) with great screen resolution, backlit keys, and other high-end features. Increasingly it's my go to travel machine even though I can't run a few applications I like to.

Could whatever changes they made to accommodate Android apps, break crouton? dnschneid works at Google, so he could make the necessary updates if given the time, but sometimes I wonder whether crouton will remain a priority...

The new Flip was just announced, it has an Intel CPU (but it's also twice as expensive, sadly):

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ASUS-Chromebook-Flip-C302CA/

Has a core m7 and 8 gigs of ram, that's fast enough to run Bitwig in crouton

Also 12.5" instead of 10", which I found very cramped.

Also, smaller bezels :)

Looks interesting. The Samsung seems to have some plusses and minuses. I suspect I'll be getting one or the other over the next few months.

What's the touch screen support like, when running Ubuntu?

Considering a Flip - mainly for browsing at home and doing light NodeJS development when I didn't bring home my laptop.

Any important software broken with the ARM chip?

The #1 thing that jumps out at me is a high res screen, which is the reason I returned my flip. I liked most everything about the flip, but doing tablet things on it like reading or watching movies was unpleasant considering I've been using high res screens for some time now.

$260 is crazy cheap, but I think a lot of people would pay couple hundred extra for the high res display, intel chip, and all metal body. I think it's a decent value.

the biggest difference is going to be a 2400x1600 screen instead of 1366x768. A high res screen is much nicer to use.

Just to give a litte headsup to https://www.neverware.com/cloudready This is recompiled chromiumOS for those of you who want to try (chromeOS)chromiumOS in their standard laptop. I am not a customer nor belong to the company - but just installed it on for my mum on a old Dell latitude. Performs fantastic; no need for any virus/backup.

I bought a new chromebook a few months ago. One of the nicer ones, not the super cheap one.

I'm just as disappointed as I was when I first used a chromebook 4 years ago. It's slow, already crashed once - requiring a full re-install, the touchpad barely registers my finger, and it loses battery in a few days. Seriously if I leave it alone for a few days it drops from 100% battery to like 5%.

For $449 I'd rather buy a 5 year old macbook air than use another chromebook. I'm selling mine.

A few days?! That's a killer feature for me... most laptops can barely get through half a day.

I think he meant that it looses its charge without him using it.

Well, my 2013 MBP does that, to the point that if I leave it for 6hrs it's out of battery such that I cannot even turn it on. Real shitty. Don't know if I'm just bad at this stuff or if most computers do that.

Your battery might be shot or it might not be really sleeping. Either way you can try changing it to hibernate instead of sleep using a command line utility (pmset I think). Not nearly as convenient but if your battery is dying that quickly convenience is probably secondary.

Probably not really sleeping. Holds it's charge when I do more. Most of the time I just close it and leave.

You've probably already looked but console might actually tell you exactly what the culprit is. This has happened to me in the past a couple of times. Once with an app running in the background that I can't remember the name of that wouldn't even let the screensaver start, much less sleep. The other time was because of a kernel extension shitting the bed on a regular basis. If you're curious what non-Apple kexts you have installed you can see them like so:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

They're at /Library/Extensions/ and you can disable them like this:

kextunload /Library/Extensions/Some3rdPartyModule.kext

Even if it's not a kext it's good to keep tabs on kernel extensions you have installed. I hope that helps and apologies if you're already aware of all that.

Probably common knowledge but a PSA just in case:

Keeping batteries fully charged all the time makes a HUGE difference in their lifespan and ability to hold a charge. If you regularly let a battery run down under 25% you're directly contributing to the "won't hold a charge" problem.

I can't speak as well to the bottom end, but if your hardware provides the option (ThinkPads generally do, at least with Windows), cap the charge at somewhere between 80 and 90% to maximize battery lifespan, and set it to not start charging unless it's at least 10-15% below that maximum charge level.

At the fully-charged end of things, think of the batteries like latex balloons - if you repeatedly fully inflate them they're going to have problems sooner than if you just mostly-inflate them every time.

They mean in standby, not in use.

Which model, and how much did you pay? Your experience is not at all typical.

It sounds like you got a defective unit. I've used half a dozen Chromebooks across the price spectrum, and none have had any of those problems (even the lowly Acer C720 from years ago). In particular, battery life and touchpad are usually excellent on most Chromebooks. Usually it's the screen that's the weak link, which is one of the reasons that makes these new Samsung models interesting (along with Android apps and possibly the pen).

The C720 was/is an awesome chromebook! Mine is still going strong and is perfect for 99% of my use. Is the screen as nice as a MBP - nope, but I think it was under $200 vs $2,000+. Not all chromebooks are created equally but some of them are excellent value for the money.

I had one of the original beta Chromebooks and I loved it to death (literally) - so much so that I am occasionally tempted to get one on eBay even though it would run at a crawl now. Disappointing that it doesn't seem to deliver.

I think yours was broken. I have had 3 chromebooks and all of them worked well. I have never had to reinstall. These things can break as they were made by humans,but I think yours is defective. What brand was it?

"A new generation of Chromebooks"... that are likely to not have any meaningful retail distribution in Australia, if past experience is to be any guide.

Any Chromebooks that have been available locally have been generally much lower spec versions than what have been available in the US. I don't know why Google Australia isn't doing more to increase their visibility locally?

Google barely sells them directly, they don't market them that much even in the US with the exception of a few devices.

As for the specs well honestly the "high end" Chromebooks are a joke, are you really going to buy a 1000-2000$ Core i5 Chromebook?

The CPU and RAM on these things doesn't matter that much for their use cases, even with the general purpose android repackaged apps it still wouldn't matter, what does matter is the storage and even the Core i5 models come with 32-64GB storage usually which is a joke.

I would have bought the chromebook pixel if it had an upgradeable SSD. You can use regular linux on them and the machine itself was great hardware in every other way (a friend had one). A macbook with 4-8x the storage was the same price, so it became an obvious choice. Once again, Google just didn't know their market...

You have to install linux through Crouton which has it's limitations.

The specs in the Best Buy link seem...implausible?

1. Is there really such a thing as an ARM-based Chromebook with Intel HD graphics?

2. It says it has HDMI output, but doesn't appear to have an HDMI port?

3. It says its USB ports are compatible with USB 2.0 devices, but all I see are type C ports. Also USB 3.0 does not "maximize the latest high speed devices."

Are the Best Buy specs just crap?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-plus-12-3-touch-screen-c...

What should be linked is http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c... which is the only actually relevant URL that matters.

1) No. This seems to be one of Samsung's own ARM SoCs.

2) It doesn't seem to have an HDMI port, but seems to support HDMI-over-Type-C (which is its own can of bullshit)

3) Type C refers to the port, as in, akin to Type A, B, and Mini and MicroUSB variants thereof. Type C does not depend on the implementation of any specific USB version, but is USB 3.x compatible.

As in, USB 2.0 over USB 3.0 ports (including 3.0 variants of Type A, B, and MicroUSB AB, as well as Type C) is valid.

Type C does maximize the latest highest speed devices because it does not refer to a version of USB. As in, the brand new USB 3.1 can use (but is not limited to) Type C. There are very few 3.1 devices.

Skylake-generation chipsets, for example, do not support USB 3.1 yet. This is slated for post-Kaby Lake (as Kaby Lake seems to also be using Z270 and friends, not a new Z370).

4) Yes, Best Buy is just crap, they often list incorrect and hilarious specs. No one seems to care enough to get them to correct it, and this is probably why they are not a popular internet vendor.

How are they doing this? Is there an Android runtime embedded in Chrome OS now?

You've been able to run some Android apps inside chrome for a couple of years now: https://chrome.googleblog.com/2014/09/first-set-of-android-a.... Perhaps this is based on that?

No, the previous method was very different, and it required developers to modify their apps for Chromebooks, if they were to work at all.

This article explains it:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/the-play-store-comes-...

Ah, right! Thanks for the link.

They put the whole Android framework in a Linux container that runs on Chrome OS.

Yes. LWN has the details: https://lwn.net/Articles/701964/

What are they referring to when speaking of "built-in" virus protection?

Means it can't run .Exes so it's safe! Just like OSX.

it's way safer than osx. There haven't been any chromeos viruses. It's not because of people trying, google pays people who manage to crash chrome. of course, osx has had many virii.

If it's not a chrome app, it won't run on a chromebook. The browser sandbox is incredibly tight.

There's also Android apps, which would presumably be scanned -- and removed if deemed malicious -- by Play Store Verify Apps.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/2812853?hl=en

When will I be able to build Android apps on this? I'm planning on building one, and it would be great if I could use this laptop to do so.

That would immediately make it more powerful than the 13-inch iPad, in that I can get my real work done. I'm a developer, so for me real work means programming.

From when I used Samsung Galaxy S[N]; I cannot even imagine the amount of non-removable crapware this laptop will have.

If you want to fiddle with Android on a laptop, try RemixOS; I used it for a while in a virtual machine when my phone broke and it's awesome.

What about the google crapware, does it remove that too?

You mean Chrome, a calculator, a camera app, and a file explorer? Those are pretty much the only apps preinstalled on a Chromebook.

I was thinking more of the android ones, gmail, google+, google maps, play music, play movies, play books, play newsstand, play games, google drive, youtube, hangouts, calendar, google docs.

All installed and unremoveable on my phone even though mail and maps are the only ones I use.

From my experience with an Acer R11 chromebook, there are no pre-installed android apps. You have to explicitly install them from the play store.

Given that a chromebook has pretty good integration with GSuite apps via the web, I am guessing most folks will not need the android versions.

There is no crapware. They comes with the google play store, the web browser, file browser. That's about it.

Chromebooks have generally been okay when it comes to bloatware (OEMs seemingly aren't allowed to do more than pre-install easily-removable (Chrome) extensions, and even that doesn't seem to be very common). Maybe that's going to change now that this is closer to an Android device.

They mention exactly two third-party apps installed:

https://news.samsung.com/us/2017+ces+Samsung+Chromebook+Plus...

I can assure you the Galaxy S didn't mention all the preinstalled s* it had.

There have already been many samsung chrome books, I was using mine this morning, and it had no crapware.

Am I the only person who doesn't want a "convertible" with a touchscreen? If I want a tablet, I have a tablet. For laptop work, I have a laptop.

I had the 2015 Chromebook Pixel and loved it, but never used the touchscreen (and ended up selling it).

Surprisingly, different people have different needs.

No. I really like the Chrome Flip but would like it equally without the flip component. The convertible arrangement just always feels a bit awkward and ends up with me hitting keys I don't mean to. I'm not opposed to it--and tend to believe that tablet and laptop form factors will reconverge--but at the moment I tend to use tablets and laptops differently.

No, you're not.

Having the ability to draw on on the screen for content creation purposes is nice, though. Microsoft's Surface products come to mind.

I got a convertible Yoga ThinkPad and I'm quite happy with it. If you're just reading stuff (e.g. I do this on the bus but same applies for flights etc) folding it over into a fat tablet works great. I also tent it up when I use an external keyboard which is another bonus... I don't touch the screen at all when I use in its laptop form or in "tent" mode but I do when I use it as a tablet...

I use a T100HA for exactly these reasons, but it's got a detachable screen. Older models had extra batteries and HDDs in the keyboard section, which is a great addition imho.

I'm quite happy with a similar Asus model. I have a rather odd combination of needs: Touch screen, occasional keyboard use, and ability to run Jupyter/Python. So far this can only be done with a Windows tablet. Websites describing the installation of Linux on Bay Trail tablets all end in despair.

I'd be interested in a Chrome tablet if it would install Linux with touch screen support and let me run Jupyter/Python on it.

> Am I the only person who doesn't want a "convertible" with a touchscreen? If I want a tablet, I have a tablet. For laptop work, I have a laptop.

No, certainly lots of people share that preference. OTOH, lots of people prefer one multirole good-enough device to a variety of specialized devices.

I have an Acer R11. I didn't think I would use the touchscreen / tablet mode - but I am finding it is really handy for browsing / reading, netflix, and android games.

I have a Vaio "convertible" and I've been pretty disappointing about the convertible functionality for two main reasons:

a) It weighs too much too use as a tablet

b) It didn't come with a stylus for drawing diagrams

So, I've certainly been disappointed by this trend, but I think it can work and the Surface line is a good example of this; many people are quite happy with theirs.

I don't think this particular chromebook makes a compelling case for the "as a tablet" use case, which seems odd given the Android app focus.

This one comes with a style, weight 2.x pounds, so maybe it works for you? What is the weight limit?

My Vaio weighs 2.9 pounds, this weighs 2.4. My wife's iPad Pro weighs 1.6, and I think that's probably close to the upper limit of what I would want a tablet to weigh.

I don't know if weight distribution is also an important factor since I can tell my vaio is definitely not evenly weighted.

I don't think this chromebook is for me, I just wanted to say that I don't think convertibles as a category are doomed, they are just harder to get right than other categories.

The whole point of the new generation of touchscreens that wrap around to tablet format if wanted is that they let you use android apps with a touchscreen. If you don't want a touchscreen, buy one of the many existing chromebooks that don't have touchscreens. I have the 2015 pixel and it's awesome, and almost every day i use the touchscreen with a few android apps.

The biggest thing is are the Android apps actually usable...

I bought a Pixel C and it was a horrible experience using mostly all apps... most major apps only support landscape, there is no auto focus on text boxes, horrible graphics in full screen, etc... I returned it 1 hour after using it.

You can install Remix OS and their way of dealing with this is scaling down apps to mimic a phone interface. I'm not sure how Chrome OS will solve this problem.

There's virtually no Android apps made for these interfaces/sizes.

> There's virtually no Android apps made for these interfaces/sizes

Eh, I use an 12" Android tablet; whil e most apps might not be specialized for the size, I've never run into any that I want to use that don't work well on it. This is basically a 12" tablet with a swing out keyboard rather than a detachable keyboard case, so I don't see it being much of a real problem.

Here's a small user-experience report for a similar Atom-powered machine from Asus. I bought it because I am trialling a life built around a dumb-phone, a large tablet/laptop, and AWS based primary computing power for sci-kit, ML etc.

I have the Asus T100HA and intend to run Linux on it, replacing my previous Macbook. As a custom keyboard user, I don't mind the tabletable form-factor. Yet I understand why Apple has stayed away from this FF as there are too many unresolved issues (minor ones, for the most part).

The core hardware is not bad at all, for the CPU, RAM & screen. Opera works great, Chrome too. The keyboard has some flex, is a bit small (but serviceable), and the tablet's magnetic attachment to the keyboard is a bit jiggly (expected). Windows is still the biggest failing of this category - endless updates that brick your machine for hours at a time, powershell is an embarrassment etc.

The SD-card in theory lets you repurpose the computer from ereader to music/media machine to work/github etc. I particularly like detaching the keyboard when flight attendants say laptops must be put away, it's a party trick that makes for a great advertisement of this niche.

Even in 2017, the options for media are very limited on airplanes, and I've been travelling a lot, so I REALLY appreciate this feature.

I popped off the shell once, and the core computer is pleasingly compact and well laid out. Heat is not an issue with the Atom chips (it was with the Macs I've used post Intel).

I do hope Chrome/Android/Linux become serviceable on this platform. Windows is certainly trying, but their baggage holds them back.

>trialling a life built around a dumb-phone, a large tablet/laptop, and AWS based primary computing power for sci-kit, ML etc.

I'm curious as to why this choice?

I'm holding out for the new pixel rumored to be coming out late 2017.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/09/26/exclusive-google-is-...

Resuming: I would buy one.

The price is not that bad (comparing with Mac world) assuming that it's well built (looks metal?), has an high screen resolution and access to android ecosystem. I would just need a way to run VScode or Sublime.

2400x1600 http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c...

>I would just need a way to run VScode or sublime

I'm assuming Crouton is still an option on this device, so that would give you an Ubuntu environment. Not as elegant as a native app, but it works.

> assuming Crouton is still an option

Any confirmation available?

Well, it's basically a Googler's hobby project, so you can't expect any 'official' confirmation, but there's no reason it shouldn't run on any x86 Chromebook.

I hope you're right, but we're pretty light on details about what was changed for this new product. If enough changed, there could be a delay before crouton catches up...

You can install GalliumOS on an existing Chromebook[1] today and run Linux natively (which it does surprisingly well).

[1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...

For $100 less than the Samsung model listed in the Google blog post you get a 128GB SSD and a 13" IPS 1080p panel. Sure you lose the touch screen, but for a development laptop, I'd much rather have the HD space and 1080p resolution on a great display.

Hopefully the rise of Chromebook/Android hybrids will give Google and App developers more reason to make Android apps big screen friendly.

Interesting to see where this goes esp with the price point.

I hate the way Google handles updates.

My chromebook (lenovo n20p) was on the list to get android apps during 2016 but still nothing.

Other os vendors like Microsoft and apple can roll out updates to all their users at the same time, why can't Google.

It's not as bad as with Android phones but I get the feeling that Google just don't give a shit about their end users.

Google seems to be quite fond of partnering with a hardware manufacturer when they roll out new ideas on the software side. I guess it’s one of the sweeteners they offer when trying to entice companies to sign up to a new product roadmap: “if you’ll make something like this then we’ll give you 3/6 month exclusivity on features X/Y/Z”

I imagine the Chromebooks that were slated to get Android App support will get it in a few months when whatever deal Google has with Samsung expires.

The most interesting thing will happen when an Android phone with a screen & keyboard is Android with a Chrome desktop. Marketing shouldn't be burning the midnight oil to figure out the branding of Android/Chrome cross overs.

I would actually really like to see a "crossover" phone. Windows is trying this strategy, but of course then I'd have to carry a windows phone. I can imagine how nice it would be if I could just take my phone out and dock it and do some work or make a presentation.

I miss my Firefox OS phone (Flame). Chrome OS seems to have solved the apps problem here.

If Google were to release Chromium OS community builds for Nexus phones, I'd have a gander. (My Nexus 4 needs a new battery and I don't have the spare change to run out and purchase a Pixel!)

HTML5 for the phone and Android/Crouton compatibility via Wayland would make for a nice challenger to Ubuntu Convergence/MS Continuum.

>Top apps for productivity like Slack™ help you get more done

Slack available everywhere, it doesn't make more sense than saying "our chromebook has keyboard and screen".

>you can enjoy popular games like Plants vs. Zombies Heroes

No comments.

Strangely, we dont get to see as many of the cheaper chromebook laptops in a country like India where taxes are such a huge part of a laptop price. A macbook or a thinkpad are out of reach for most people here.

So ChromeOS can now run android apps.

It's a step away from the purity of design of the original vision, without the usefulness of actually just coming out and admitting the things run Linux (and, say, letting us run linux apps on them without jumping through hoops). And it doesn't solve the performance problems (Chrome is amazingly heavyweight. My modest school-issued machine will sometimes crash if I've got a moderate number of tabs open, due to what I think is OOM). But it will give us a handful of useful apps. And at the end of the day, it lets me play Quake (and maybe Doom) on a chromebook, as well as anything I can convince RetroArch to work with. So I'm happy.

Android isn't Linux in any sense that is meaningful to users because you are locked into a Google-ized JVM that only sees the world through Google APIs. Google wants to run Android apps (rather than Linux apps) because they control that platform as their own walled garden. For example, a huge number of Android apps depend on Google Play Services and other Google-specific dependencies. It appears that Google never insisted on everything running in the browser, just that everything runs in their walled garden, and Android is also a part of that.

>Android isn't Linux in any sense that is meaningful to users

...Which was rather my point: rather than revealing linux meaningfully, we just get Android.

Not interested. Waiting for galaxy tab s3 with proper s pen. Still dont get the use case for a cloud only device. Many of us do way more on tablets than take notes for college.

How about one with Snapdragon 835 which is compatible with Windows 10? Maybe soon multiboot to ChromeOS, Windows and Ubuntu will be real.

I like the irony that my Chromebook works fine with all pages, but frequently crashes when I use Gmail while having other tabs opened.

"ƃunsɯɐs" (Samsung upside down) is the first thing I noticed when looking though the pictures. It doesn't change how the device performs, but someone seen that and signed off on it (at least put it on the side rotated 90 deg or on an angle in the corner). You see something like that and wonder what else was okayed that shouldn't had been

I'm not seeing that, maybe your computer is upside down.

The article said "check it out at bestbuy" and the picture was this http://pisces.bbystatic.com//image2/BestBuy_US/images/produc...

Edit: I guess a lot of these convertible laptops do the upside down text thing. I honestly didn't notice before

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lvGTn7xm3L_JOBhgUCMl3IYNM9A...

https://static.bhphoto.com/images/multiple_images/images500x...

It's only upside down when you're using it in a mode such that all screen content needs to be flipped vertically. If you use it as a laptop, the text appears right side up to the user. If you use it as a tablet, the text could be in any of 4 rotations relative to the user.

It's upside down when you invert the computer from conventional laptop orientation to the nonsense tent orientation that they love to use in convertible ads.

For $ 449.99 I can get a decent Windows 10 laptop, no thanks.

Can you get root access on these? Use a HOSTS file etc?

Hopefully like some other chromebooks have been, they will be relatively hackable (e.g.: they will make it easy to install your own OS on too if you want).

edit: relatively easy -- I'm typing this on a Toshiba Chromebook on which I flashed a new BIOS to turn it into a regular PC laptop. Had to do the washer removal trick, etc. I think this was a good trade off on Google's part, between security and freedom, actually.

I have one of the earlier samsung Chromebooks with the exynos processor. I flashed Linux to it no sweat (I did not have to open it up or anything), but the graphics drivers were terrible and I was forever stuck on some 3.x kernel because not all the hardware drivers had been mainlined (or something). I couldn't even watch 480p non-fullscreen YouTube videos at 10 fps - that's how unusable the Linux drivers were. I was able to get Stepmania to run on it just for kicks, and it got < 2 fps. Literally worse than a 1st-gen Raspberry Pi.

So... don't rely on it unless you know the drivers are in order or don't need any realtime graphics.

kind of, there's chroot hacks that let you run Linux distros on them :)

as someone who's tried out Android apps in ChromeOS...meh.

Most of them crash, and are non responsive on the touchscreen.

Which chromebook do you have? I have an Acer R11, and I don't have any complaints.

Acer R13. Enabled beta channel, downloaded apps, they all don't work worth a crap.

will they be able to run Skype without hackery?

Tangential: This is the first time I've seen the .google TLD in use. Looks...weird.

Wow - Google actually knows about Slack. That's surprising, most Googler's I know still use Hangouts to communicate at work and have never heard of Slack lol.

Slack has replaced hangouts as the primary chat for my friends and I. Hipchat replaced hangouts at work as the primary chat.

Will it explode?

The whole Google approach is herding people into a ecosystem where Google controls everything including your data which is mined aggresively to build profiles which in turn makes total surveillance by state actors a cinch.

That they continue to use Linux to enable this dystopian control is the biggest irony. There are all sorts of security and encryption technologies in use which perpetuate an illusion of security but these technologies are used to further their access and control not yours.

It's so sad that the android, google and arm ecosystem make x86, Intel and Microsoft look open and positively lovable. If they had followed the Google lock down approach we won't be able to install or use Linux on x86.

Chromeos is so strange. It's not at all light weight but manages to be one of the most useless OSes out there. At least with android you get a certain form factor but I really don't see the point in chromeos at all.

Its great for non-technical people and people supporting family. I haven't had to support a single Mac or Windows problem since getting my parents a Chromebook :D

Because you've had to support Chromebook problems instead?

It's a given that those with Chromebooks will not have Mac or Windows problems.

But beyond that, I'd agree that giving children or parents a Chromebook will cut down on tech support requests.

I also think as a parent, it might be relatively easy to monitor a (younger) child's use of the device through Chrome itself.

look at supervised account on chromeos. It's the best supervision I have seen - my teenager hasn't managed to escape it (yet?).

Would you know if she did?

I'd also add that it is great for technical people as a second device.

Typing this on a chromebook

Yup. Useless OS powers one of the best-selling notebooks on Amazon. It also used in a lot of schools.

I gave it to my mom and she loves it versus a complicated Windows machine she used to have.

But yeah, you don't use it so it's useless.

Useless is a pretty relative term. If what I want is something I can send some emails on, watch a movie or do facebook; something light, cheap and instant on is pretty appealing. It's like a tablet with a keyboard.

And there's the management features that have made them so appealing to schools. Cheap to acquire and easy for someone without a great deal of IT experience to manage.

> Useless is a pretty relative term.

Definitely true. One member of my household has similar needs that you've outlined: somewhere to write, email, Netflix, web browsing, Youtube playing in the background.

I do all of those things sometimes, but also expect access to a few games, Amazon streaming, for anything that can work offline to work offline, and some kind of a development environment that supports whichever set of languages I'm tinkering with at the time.

It's easy for me to dismiss ChromeOS and similar systems because they don't do what I want, and easy to forget that other users honestly don't have the same requirements that I do.

I can do amazon streaming in the browser on chromeos. What devices have offline amazon streaming, I didn't know that was possible? Is it possible to do that using an android app? If so, run that app on the chromebook, problem solved.

> I can do amazon streaming in the browser on chromeos.

ChromeOS would cover a portion of my requirements, and that's part of it.

> What devices have offline amazon streaming

I know my Android devices support downloading Amazon video and have for a long while.

> problem solved

One problem of several, as far as I'm concerned.

So what is left is dev environment? crouton lets you run linux at the same time as chromeos.

Well, games. And Crouton isn't a viable solution, as long as dev mode on a Chromebook still requires you to do the ctrl+d thing at boot, or whatever.

Honestly, if it's not a machine with at least a TB of storage, user serviceable, and capable of running both Windows and a standard Linux distro, then it's not something I'm interested in as a primary computing device.

I'm not a big fan of cloud storage, using more of Google's services than I need to, browser-based technologies, being forced into choice of a specific OS, or jumping through hoops to use my computer.

From what I've seen, a ChromeOS machine is an appliance. Crouton is a kludge with a few unpolished edges, trying to turn it back into a computer. Why would I buy that?

especially true when your main interface to real work is a terminal or emacs. most everything else is browser based.

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