Ask HN: is Chromebook dead?

5 points·petervandijck··6 comments

I quite liked the first Chromebooks, both conceptually and in practice. I was hoping there would be a lot of new Chromebooks coming out, but it doesn't look like that. Is the Chromebook in practice dead?

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Google have recently launched their first retail store in the UK (really it's just a store within a big PC World store) to sell the Chromebook:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8800002/Worlds-...

So I don't think it's dead, but it does need a big push to get it going again.

I love the hardware and the price isn't bad for what it actually has inside it (cheaper netbooks lack an SSD, screen quality, etc), but I'm not sure what I'd actually use one for.

We are piloting several hundred of them. The reactions are very mixed, but overall people like them. The TCO is pretty high if you buy into any of their enterprise management tools (which you will need to do if you're going to manage these in a corporate or education environment).

For the cost of the unit plus the enterprise management you could get a pretty nice Windows laptop, or even a decent Macbook.

I remember people being pretty sceptical of android when it first came out, and it took time for the issues to be ironed out. If google are going to use the same gameplan, then the prices will eventually go down and the usability up. It seems to me to be a question of Google's commitment.

The new Chrome Remote Desktop BETA could go a long way towards increasing usability too.

ps: what I liked about it: "no" OS to get viruses etc., boot up in a few seconds, 3G connectivity on the go, clean UI, fast even with a cheap machine, nothing local (reminds me of nothing shared architecture for servers).

It's serving as a good monitor stand for me right now.

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