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Chromebooks are the only small, portable, sub $500 PCs that don't completely suck. No wonder they sell. Everyone else is trying to charge $800+ even though laptops are perceived as something that should be cheap because they have a high risk of being stolen, getting damaged, or quickly going obsolete. It's like Google understood what the Netbook wanted to be, while everyone else dreamed of being Apple (without the least bit of ability to actually be Apple).

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I feel like the Chromebook is actually a better experience than a laptop.

As a programmer, I honestly only use 2 windows: browser and shell. Running crouton to create chroot Ubuntu "images" I can have my normal full (text-based) dev environment, and alt-tab back and forth with the browser. Honestly it feels easier to use than Ubuntu - I don't use any of the builtin Google services (e.g. Drive), but they manage to stay out of the way.

It's pretty cheap, looks pretty reasonable, and comes in at a pretty low weight. The screen's not the greatest, but I'm not doing anything where that matters. So all in all a great dev machine.

Only caveat for me is that Dropbox doesn't have an installable app for ARM. I need to find something else that does a good job of seamlessly syncing my workspaces and NFS, rsync, etc don't fit as nicely as Dropbox.

What are you actually building that will run on this hardware? Are are you ssh'ing into a different machine?

I just can't see it possible to run anything that relies on the weight of the JVM or relies on external apps (Redis, etc). What web app can live without some sort of a data store (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)? Let's not even get into if you need to compile anything. (Even if you're not working in C, compilation is sometimes necessary with gems/npm/etc)

The default answer seems to be just ssh into a dev machine, using the Chromebook as a dumb terminal. While it works, that destroys a classic workflow used by many, relies on Internet access, and adds additional cost (especially if you're a consultant). Even a cheap VPS adds at least $300 a year in cost.

Am I incorrect about running a full dev environment on the Chromebook? I'd love to hear others' experiences.

I can't answer for jdf, but, in my case, I've built a lot of applications using Django and Google App Engine on very frugal hardware, probably less than a more recent Chromebook. On both cases, the development environment is very light and defaults to store data in SQLite. Working with Python allows me to skip compiling stuff most of the time. Of course, a JVM is off the table, as is using Eclipse for your IDE. This machine is one of the reasons I went back to Emacs.

I've always been a vim/screen/bash user rather than an IDE, so I can't speak to the experience of using Eclipse/IntelliJ on a Chromebook. The fact that I'm doing everything console based certainly lowers the resource needs since the chroot isn't running another windowing system.

I know the JVM isn't often associated with low memory applications, but it seems like it should be possible. As I mentioned in my other reply, the Chromebook has more resources than the average Android phone, so all those Java Android apps should run fine (albeit under Dalvik rather than Sun's JVM).

I would not dare to run Eclipse under Dalvik. Just the other day, when someone compared it to Emacs here, I wondered whether it should be called "Egacs" rather than Eclipse.

The real problem is IDEs; the JVM is also a resource hog; however, you can run lots of server software on small hardware; heck, my RaspberryPi runs mysql, postgresql and apache (and PHP), plus a django app, and has only 256MB RAM; it's not blazingly fast, and you wouldn't use this in production, but for development ...

For me, there are three potential types of applications:

a. Those that run fine on the Chromebook.

b. Those that would run fine on a larger laptop or desktop, but not on the Chromebook.

c. Those that need to be deployed to some sort of server.

I don't write anything that falls under (b). If a program is expecting to be run on 10 disks, or with 48gb of RAM, or across a cluster of 12 nodes, it's highly unlikely that my personal dev machine will work out, so (c) will be used. That's also how I'd want to test any production-level deployment.

The gap between (a) and (b) is actually quite small. The Samsung 3 Chromebook specs are a bit better than almost every smartphone, so pretty much any Android app could be placed under (a). Pretty much any unit test for a (c) app fits under (a).

Compiles would be faster with a beefier dev machine, but the fact that the Chromebook comes with an SSD already places it ahead of the default corporate machine (at least in my experience - perhaps employees get SSDs in their Dells nowadays). Certainly a MB Air has a faster CPU, but the difference isn't that dramatic for development purposes.

As one counterexample, I'll point out that my wife spends most of her work day in Photoshop and Illustrator. Even if those apps ran on Linux, my guess is that the resource needs would still make an Air or a MB Pro a much better choice.

SSD isn't automatically faster than a traditional HD, as people using SD cards to boot ARM boards have found out.

The SSD in the Chomebook for instance gets about 64 MB/s sequential read, 17 MB/s sequential write, 4 MB/s random 4k read and 1 MB/s random 4k write.

Which in practice is probably better than a 5400 RPM HD, but there's still a magnitude of difference from a most laptop SSDs.

I appreciate what you are saying, as I had a CR-48 and liked it a lot. That said, unless you absolutely do not want to perform any configuration or just don't want to spend more money, I feel that the DIY route is better.

For instance, I recently bought a Lenovo x230. I have Arch Linux on it, along with Firefox and Ratpoison. I get pretty much the same thing as I had ChromeOS: a full-screen web browser in one window and a full-screen terminal in another. This configuration has none of the privacy concerns I have about using a Google product and I don't need Google's permission just to create a user account.

(Backups are a breeze too: just a few dot files. I use Firefox Sync to back up my bookmarks.)

But if the x230 is broken or stolen, it costs ~1k to replace. A new Chromebook is ~200.

I personally love the design of the x230, and am looking to get one myself. The biggest sticking problem for me is price.

If price is an overriding issue, than the Chromebook would be a better choice.

Yup. Probably the only other OS you could use to pull this kind of platform off would be Win8RT, but nobody wants to sell win8RT devices because they're scared of users freaking out when they find out their new Windows notebook doesn't actually run real Windows.

Chrome and Win8RT are the only OSes that are good for an ARM-based notebook form-factor, and the ARM chip is necessary to make this device not suck at this end of the cost spectrum.

That and frankly, I think we're all sick of supporting Grandma's windows machine, so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great.

I won't buy one, I don't need one, but I can see the niches it fills.

>so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great.

I recently replaced my wife's aging MacBook Air with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook - she much prefers it. It doesn't overheat, nor require frequent restarts. But she has a Masters in CS, and works from the command line, so let's add to, "computer-illiterate people" , "..and people who dont want to spend time nursing their computer".

I haven't used my Air since getting a Pixel. When I need to build something, I fire up Sublime in VT3.

What's VT3?

Virtual Terminal 3. If you press Ctrl-Alt-F2 (forward arrow), you'll get to VT2. You can install crouton and run xinit, which will start a window manager in VT3 (Ctrl-Alt-F3/Reload).

I've got my setup scripted here:

https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev

I think he means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console

I would also like to know what vt3 is

Don't have one yet, but are there any window managers with high-resolution support out yet? I may just get a Pixel if there are.

I know Unity hasn't, and Gnome 3 (my favorite) has pixel-doubling support on the way, but if there are any others or if you've been able to optimize an X WM to be readable and polished.

I've been using Openbox with no complaints. My setup is documented here:

https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev

All I use it for is Sublime Text, so things more-or-less look great for me. The problem with Linux is that there are multiple ways of doing any one thing. So, just because Openbox and Sublime can handle high DPI doesn't mean your run-of-the-mill KDE/GTK app will.

Another option is https://www.nitrous.io/app

Fully-featured web IDE; supports Ruby, Python, Go, and more. You provision a box to do your development on.

I've just started tinkering with nitrous.io - I have to say it's very impressive and it makes the chromebook an actual usable device for development out of the box without any tinkering

Good to hear. I haven't actually used it much yet but it's made me consider getting a Chromebook.

Why wouldn't you wife replace her own computer?

Good question! I'm sufficiently interested in technology for its own sake that I keep abreast of developments in the PC industry, so I already knew about Chromebooks, and that they would be a good fit for her. My wife does not keep abreast of developments in the PC industry (she wont mind me saying that :), so as far as she was concerned, there was no such thing as a $250 PC that would easily usurp her MBA, so she didnt even consider it.

and a 5 minute browse on Amazon didn't occur to her?

Your wife is right, there is no such thing as a sub $250 pc that would usurp her MBP

I beg to differ. http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black...

With Haswell, the Asus could really hit it big. Ubuntu, I strongly think, has its future as the sort of super-Chromebook. More advanced, but still manageable.

I have one of these since February and it's far better than any Chromebook - x64, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, extremely portable, and runs Ubuntu 12.04 LTS by default. No weird ChromeOS limitations, no push to cloud storage by all means etc. Just the keyboard could be better...

How is it for speed? On my old low-end Dell netbook and desktop, I would get frustrated every time I did an "apt-get upgrade" or install as I waited what seemed like 10-15 seconds just for the "Reading package lists..." step to complete. On my MacBook Air this step is instant, which I attribute mostly to the SSD. I'm suspicious of regular hard drives now (though on the flip side I now only have a tiny amount of space).

Both CPU and HDD are bottlenecks, it's not a speed king. HDD is a regular 5400rpm one, the Celeron 847 1.1GHz is also rather slow. I used it for some Java + Scala compiling and it took significantly longer than on MBP (10 vs 2 minutes). Also, I was able to run FL Studio under Wine and it was capable of recording my MIDI playing in realtime for arpeggiated sounds, though it had problems with 4+ simultaneous channels. Keyboard is really bad. Otherwise for the price it's currently unbeatable in my opinion. For my purposes a large HDD was more important as I make a lot of photos and hence need a lot of storage. I use it while traveling in "less safe" countries, such as those in Latin America - I don't really care about losing it.

I've thought about buying one of those repeatedly, but have been afraid that it won't play HD video smoothly or have decent battery life (the bigger issue; My netbook started out getting 7.25 hours and still gets 3ish years later). Obviously would immediately swap the spinner for an SSD, too.

I've actually been hoping that Haswell would revitalize the market for machines like this like you mention, but all it seems to have done (so far) is make every machine like this get a touchscreen thrown on it and marked up another $150.

How is it on power consumption? I'm using a n2600 netbook as a home server, always on but just for ssh & things, it has 2gb ram, I could consider an upgrade if it doesn't use a lot of electricity.

A friend of mine recently bought some ~$500 laptop with Windows 8 on it. Buying a new toy like that should be fun, but when that thing showed up he just spent a week being frustrated with it. And I was very little help. I don't even understand Windows 8. I've recommend Chromebooks to people, at half that cost, and when they get it they immediately love it.

The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. They're netbooks, but far too often they weren't powerful enough to even run a modern browser with the weight of the OS hanging off of it.

A Chromebook is really the only true netbook that's ever existed.

That doesn't explain why companies killed netbooks though. A lot of the low-end full sized laptops are now running netbook-class hardware at netbook-level prices, with all the performance issues that goes along with it. You just can't get anything smaller than 15" anymore without either shelling out for an Utrabook or Macbook or buying a Chromebook.

To be fair, OEMs didn't kill netbooks. Microsoft and Intel did - by stopping the OS and processor deals that made netbooks possible in the first place.

This is pretty much why I haven't bought a new laptop in 4ish years.

> The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop.

I didn't have a problem with my Acer netbook. It's slow, but not horribly slow. The main laggard factor is the 1gb RAM, which is too little for a Windows 7 install.

However, I had to remove all the crapware first. If they didn't ship with those installed, they wouldn't make money from all those juicy contracts.

Same setup here. While I got a newer laptop a year ago, when I really need mobility, the Acer netbook is the first to go into my backpack. It runs Ubuntu, Unity, Emacs and my choice of Django/Flask/App Engine stacks. Mine has 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and I'm considering giving it a small SSD drive. The slow disk seems to be the worst performance bottleneck.

Fellow netbook user, Thinkpad x120e, 6 gigabytes of RAM and a recent 256 gigabyte SSD (recommended!) make for a plenty capable machine. It used to last 6 hours, but could do with a new battery. And USB3 ports etc. but it generally flies.

Someone further down mentioned a beer-induced $800 repair on a MBA. I dropped half of mine in a sink of water (don't ask) and it works perfectly. Tested the 'splash proof' keyboard quite thoroughly.

Definitely a market for lower-end sub-$500 machines that are actually capable of running anything.

See, when I said that the Chromebook is the only true netbook that has ever existed, I meant that the term "netbook" implies that the device is configured to prioritize the use of a web browser over that of native apps. This is assuming that web applications offload their processing needs to a remote server, so the hardware can be lower power. That's where the "net" in netbook seems to come from.

In the sense of a true netbook-as-a-thin-client, the Chromebook is the only competitor in this market. What you have with 6GB of RAM and a large hard drive is a small form factor laptop. I agree that there's a market for lower-end cheap laptops. I disagree with calling them netbooks, because then you get confused posts with people asking what the point of a netbook is. The Chromebook is the point of a netbook.

> In the sense of a true netbook-as-a-thin-client, the Chromebook is the only competitor in this market.

Some Sun partners tried. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray

and

http://www.aimtec.co.uk/sun-ray-notebooks.php

I did pick up on that, but struggle to believe you genuinely believe that the term "netbook" originated from a concept of the browser-only system. I suspect you might be mangling the semantics to fit a product you like. The most likely origin of the term for me is the mass-media, recommending the lighter units for web-browsing as that's all they were capable of. This all before pads and tabs hit the big-time. Or, specifically not manufacturers intending to build browser-only systems.

Cue a few years of Moore's Law, and the net effect of a market for affordable yet usable portable machines produces capable, upgradeable machines. And tablets. Cue content producer/consumer distinction etc.

I was taking the term to the most extreme literal meaning, yes. Because to me, if a netbook is not designed almost exclusively for web-apps, it's not a netbook. It's an ultra-portable laptop, a category that has been around a lot longer than the EeePC.

I disagree; I see two problems with netbooks:

1. People were expecting a laptop; they are not; however, they're decent computers (don't do video, don't run VMs ... :), and portability and price are really nice.

2. Laptops got cheaper, and netbooks didn't ; when the first netbooks came out, they were less than half the price of the cheapest laptops; now, they're about the same price :(

There's a lower bound price where it's just not worth making and selling a computer of that price point because your per-unit price won't justify the inventory costs, design effort, risk and support costs. Right now, it seems like that price is ~$350 for PCs and $250 for Chromebooks. That may be the real innovation of ChromeOS: Windows usability without Windows licensing fees, plus lower support costs. Plus, you don't have to worry as much about inventory becoming obsolete, because the OS will update as soon as they connect anyway.

Maybe, but a used Thinkpad might be a better deal overall : http://lee-phillips.org/x31/

$800, hahaha; my co-worker paid that much to simply repair his MBAir after being on the receiving end of a beer. They resale for more, so it wasn't a bad choice, but the idea of paying the original cost and then such a repair cost floored me.

If there is innovations to be had with laptops, it is resistance to common desk issues like spilt drinks. The device being cheap is parallel with these needs. Making something thinner and more proprietary and glued together is the wrong direction for me.

Some high-end laptops do take those issues into account.

Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video: http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk

Here's a video of a Thinkpad taking lightning bolts from a pair of Van de Graff generators for a whole minute without any problems: http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk

Resistance to common household wear and tear such as spilled drinks or being struck by lightning is certainly a rare quality in a machine, but it's not unheard of.

> "Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video"

I'm a fan of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ujtrHvOTk

Two guys (doing a promo spot for Lenovo) jumping on a trampoline with thinkpads and water balloons, then pouring water into one, all in glorious slow motion.

Sort-of, but you still have netbooks; I have an old netbook as my developer computer ! it has an Atom, which is slow, 2GB RAM, and an SSD; I dual-boot windows and Linux; can run Visual Studio Express, and of course, all Linux stuff (I even run Unity on Ubuntu). You can get an Acer netbook for about the same price of an Acer chromebook.

Also, we've just bought an Acer V5, 12.1" with touch screen, 4GB Ram, and an A6 processor; really nice, for $429 ; it's a sub $500 laptop that doesn't suck; basically, a slightly nicer netbook :)

Chromebooks are nice, especially for simple stuff, but there are nice cheap laptops too :)

Wonder how this jibes with this report.

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromeb...

I also wonder if Chromebooks are priced to make even an operating profit.

It's all in how you draw the lines: "Sub $300 laptops" is a very distinct (and I would think small) category of total laptop sales.

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