20 minutes with my Chromebook
fredandrandall.com
fredandrandall.com
This is the kind of review methodology I dislike:
"I’ll give this 3/5 stars. I really believe in the spirit of the laptop. It beats out traditional netbooks like my girlfriend’s EeePC and it is going to be a lot better for typing/video watching than my iPad. Unfortunately, it’s still a long way from replacing my Macbook Pro."
3 out of 5 stars for being nicer than anything else in the price range?
There are two general ways you can rate a product: Give it a rating based on all of the possible things it can do, or give it a rating based on its intended expectation. The reviewer seems to be of the first kind.
For many products, like cars and computers, the first kind seems to me a pretty silly way to do things. Almost all of the listed minuses, such as not-impeccable speakers, are givens before the product is purchased. Its like taking points off of a sports car review because there isn't a lot of trunk space.
No he said it was better at two things then the ipad. And traditional netbooks do not comprise "everything else in the price range".
I thought overall this was one of the more balanced and positive chromebook reviews I've seen. Even if it is only a first reaction there were a number of good comments about the nuances of the hardware design.
Whether positive or negative it seems Chromebook reviews often circle back to the following question: why not just run Chrome on a $500 laptop?
The things I'm curious about are:
1) How is the 3g? Is it invisibly always connected like a mobile phone is, or is it more like a laptop where you have to connect and disconnect?
2) How is the Camera? And how easy is it to upload a photo to flickr (or Picasa if it's easier) having taking a photo? My father also doesn't have a digital camera, but is selling a camper van... I want him to be able to take a photo using the Chromebook and to be able to figure out how to upload it to somewhere useful... would this be effortless for someone not deeply familiar with computers?
3) How is the battery life? In real usage, of occasionally accessing the internet, opening and closing it, etc... how does it fare? Also... can you buy spare batteries? Especially batteries that are chargeable off a car socket? i.e. Could he charge the battery whilst driving along, and without needing the laptop to all be wired up which he might consider weird.
4) How are the prompts? So it asked for an update... but did it do that in language that even my father would not find confusing or intimidating? Are the alerts and prompts too numerous so as to dumb him down, or are they are few and far between and phrased in such clear English that anyone could really grasp them even without knowing why or how software updates happen?
5) How are the native apps such as Maps? I realise that the Chromebook is designed to be online all the time, but one of his use-cases will be searching for a place, driving to it, and then referring to the previous search to do the last bit of navigation (he's too old school even for sat-nav). So... is there caching for when signal fails? Is it adequate and useful enough to be helpful?
Basically... the Chromebook for me, is going to help get the last few people in my family and network online. In a way that even the iPad hasn't. I cannot tell you the number of times my father has walked into a computer shop intending to get online, and walked out as soon as what he regards as techno-babble starts.
The Chromebook really could be the thing that works for him... he hated the iPad (couldn't grasp modality of being in apps and not in apps, and was frustrated that things he felt should work together - apps - didn't).
So I'd love it if someone who has a Chromebook does a review either watching someone who has virtually never used a computer use one, or who sits there and really is able to consider how a new user might find one.
That or someone here in the know just answer the questions above ;)
1. I always disable the mobile data when I'm on wifi cause I don't want to burn up my bandwidth. Otherwise I believe that once you turn it on it will connect. (after setup of course) As an experiment, my parents are trying 3G only until they can determine a usage pattern and find that $35/month internet through their ISP will be cheaper. They do travel to visit family and have the 3G as a fallback is great.
2. On my CR48, the camera is only useful for video chat. I never found an appropriate flash based camera app to just take photos. Likewise I haven't yet tried plugging an SD card in to see how it does uploading to Picasa.
3. Battery life is awesome, I charge my CR48 every 3-4 days with light use. Even if I use it a lot, I've always lasted an entire day (but I'm not watching videos or anything like that)
4. The updates download in the background and you will see a little green upward pointing arrow on the menu bar. Click on it and you get a dialog that prompts you to restart now. If you don't ever hit the button, the next time you shutdown it will start back up with the new code installed.
5. The apps are the web app versions so it's not like Android with the navigation. My CR48 has a GPS chip but it's not turned on yet in the builds. It is close though, because people have got the daemon started and Google Maps will find your location.
The other thing I like that I know their gmail password and can sign in to their account and can add apps/bookmarks and it will sync automatically to their Chromebook.
I can't judge how well your father will do but I had my parents using my CR48 just fine. The problems were things that just needed practice: Using the touchpad, knowing how to close windows and recognize links to click on. I feel _much_ better about their online safety with this machine vs windows or mac when I'm trying to troubleshoot from 800 miles away. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss any other points. (email in my profile)
To everyone who says just buy a windows netbook and install Chrome are totally missing the point. Yes, of course you could do that but it wouldn't work the same. If you already know how to run windows/mac and need or want native apps, the chromebook is not for you unless you want a 2nd machine. Both my wife and I have laptops that mostly stay on their respective desks now that I have the CR48. It is the form factor and the speed of booting/wakeup and the ease of switching users. Both of my young children have accounts and they can use it just fine. It really is 'our' computer instead of 'my' computer and that makes it perfect as a companion machine.
Of course this is all just my opinion.
1) I don't have a whole lot of experience with this as we were pretty much on wifi the whole time. I do know you have to manually enable 3g in the settings though. Once 3g on I assume it's automatic when there's not wifi around.
2) Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot of experience with this one either. The only pictures we every took with it were the initial user pictures, which didn't turn out all that well (although the newer chromebooks may have better cameras). I would assume you would be able to take pictures through any site that cam make use of a webcam though.
3) Battery life was pretty excellent. My girlfriend would use it all day at school for notes. It pretty much goes into hibernate when the lid is closed.
4) This is the part about the review that confuses me. The CR-48 we had always updated silently. It would update in the background, and then when the laptop was restarted it would install. I don't think I ever saw it prompt for an update.
5) First off, there are no native apps. It's literally chromium on a minimal linux build. The maps 'app' that he would have to use is the full blown maps.google.com. As long as he had a 3G connection I would think he'd be fine, otherwise I'm not too sure how much caching the web version of maps does.
I hope this helps. Sorry I wasn't able to provide more info about some of your questions
A forced update only occurs on the first turning on of the machine, presumably in case it's been on the shelf a few months. I vaguely recall having to do the same for my CR48.
2) Crap. It works with Gtalk video chat seamlessly, and is used for your initial profile picture, but it's otherwise useless for other websites. It's pretty low resolution. It has an SD card slot, but last I used ChromeOS, uploading pictures off SD was basically broken.
3) Regarding the battery life, I was getting about 5.5 hours under ChromeOS for standard passive web browsing (HN, Reddit, blogs, etc), no Youtube or games. Obviously YMMV based on how you engage the CPU/GPU, but I'd say 5.5 hours is the about the Cr-48's upper limit. Closing the lid puts it in sleep mode and it's instant on/off, probably the closest I've seen to a Mac's lid closing power management experience. For the power user: I later flashed the BIOS and tossed on 11.01 with Xfce and powertop and got much better results (strictly speaking for battery life). With micromanagement of power consumption under linux (bluetooth off, throttling back to 1Ghz, 3G radio disabled, no USB/SD devices plugged in, nothing really using the GPU, LCD brightness turned down as appropriate) I can squeeze out almost 8 hours of web browsing and terminal based programming, which was a huge gain for me. I think idle power consumption was about 7.5 watts like that, compare to a default Ubuntu install at around 11 or 12 watts.
4) Pretty much seamless, although I always ran the dev channel, so I can't recall how the public release looked, but I wouldn't worry about a non-technical user, it's pretty much bulletproof, going so far as having a duplicate "safe" partition of the OS to restore from if shit breaks.
5) There aren't any native apps. There's a few custom ones like Gtalk and Scratchpad to persist as a uniquely styled interface above all tabs, but basically it's the Chrome browser in a sandbox on netbook hardware. Your apps are whatever can be "installed" from the Chrome Web Store. No maps caching that I'm aware of, it probably wouldn't make a good GPS device replacement.
1) Setup took several days and a call from a Google Chrome Ninja (support team) between me and Verizon, since the first time I signed up, it went to a crashed page due to checking 'disallow third-party cookies', and I submitted twice. After that, it was seamless, with a little indicator just like wifi.
2) Camera is bleh, uploading to Picasa was okay with stuff downloaded from the Web browser, though I didn't try any SD cards.
3) Battery life was good, though I don't move around a lot with mine.
4) No prompts really, just a tiny little green up arrow. If you ever turn it off, you'll never even notice. It's so bad I sent in feedback asking for them to send more info about changes...
5) Google apps run okay. Offline still isn't here, which will be a major improvement. Docs, Music, Gmail, etc. all operate well, but seemed to suck down CPU time, even going so far as to turn on the fan (CR48 was single core though, the new ones have dual core). Offline is my number one requirement which isn't fulfilled yet now that Google Music is available.
One of the best things I found about using the Chromebook was that I had migrated most of my stuff to "The Cloud" so I could use it full time as my main computer. When I installed a new hard drive in my desktop and reinstalled Windows, all it took was loading Chrome and hitting 'sync', and I was 90% back to where I was.
Chromebook: $500?
iPad with 3G: $629
Based on the selection available on Amazon, chromebooks seem to have three price points: $350, $430, and $500.
Admittedly, I'm focusing on the fact that chromebooks don't seem to compare well within your price range, while you're focusing on the fact that it doesn't make sense to compare a chromebook to a macbook pro.
a more general problem that no reviewer seems to have commented on: netbooks where you browse the internet most of the time derive little from their horizontal aspect ratio, because so many web designers insist on formatting for 800-pixel widths or the like, so that your netbook has 30-40% of the screen devoted to whitespace. A vertical format is considerably more useful for anything except spreadsheet work.
I also bought Linux based Efika MX SmartBook for $199, and love it too - but for different reasons - OpenGL ES 2.0 & ARM at one place, ready to develop.
A rushed, nonchalant review is hardly better than no review.
I saw too many comparisons to a laptop that is far superior than a Chromebook. Right now they are not in competition.
The privacy implications to using Chromebook are huge, in my opinion.
It's hard to get any more transparent than that.
"If you are typing a search or url in the address bar, Google Chrome will talk to the current search service to try to offer useful query/url suggestions."
And since its "only cloud" device, most of the applications you will end-up using are Google products. Mostly because other players aren't yet convinced that all applications should exist in the cloud.
As far as trusting Apple and Microsoft is concerned, I think it is about the business model. Apple and Microsoft make money by selling Products and Software. Google on the other hand makes money by collecting your data. I do not understand why people fail to understand the difference.
All I needed to read. Really, reviewing a laptop on the box? Talk about judging a book by its cover. As long as it gets there in one piece, isn't the computer itself more important?
Windows actually doesn't.
In that case, you are right: No sound is played when you set the volume. Probably (I couldn't be bothered to test it) you usually hear one of the sound theme entries, at the new volume.