HP Chromebook 11
google.com
google.com
Surely one can blame the ecosystem; but still the conclusion does not change, and as a comparison, tablets and phones had a more successful approach at adapting or modifying the ecosystem and become usable.
You cannot use an arm chromebook as laptop because of lack of storage, applications, limited options to connect peripherals (no drivers for anything except storage). No way to print that occasional document or boarding pass (unless you have another computer or perhaps network enabled printer); no way to scan a document. The samsung had an SD slot (this one does not); but you could not show videos from your camera because of unavailable codecs (and no way to install them, despite plenty of android apps for arm that play the same formats).
Casual browsing also fails a lot because of unsupported codecs (flash, silverlight); a lot of chrome extensions do not work for arm. Apps, almost non existing.
Compared to a tablet, you get a keyboard and the ability to display multiple windows on screen; but in exchange you lose almost every other sensor or peripheral (accelerometer, gps, camera, light) which make the device useful.
Now if there were at least a sandbox to run android apps, one could (temporarily ?) address the lack of applications.
My family mostly browse the web. Actually, they don't call it the web. They call it facebook and google. This is the 99% use-case. For that matter, this laptop is perfect.
He plays his online Texas hold'em (flash based), looks up unfamiliar destinations on Google Maps to see the satellite imagery, and checks the weather radar regularly to avoid storms. He's also able to better keep in touch with us now that he can shoot off e-mails whenever he wants.
It's actually a handy, useful tool for him.
I've hardly touched my MB Air (2012 refurb) since I got the Chromebook. Small and light enough to throw in any bag/backpack without care, cheap enough to not worry about theft.
I don't mind it being the same CPU and RAM specs as the original; I don't need much for the Chrome browser and a SSH session to the beefy server where I do most of my work.
Also owned the C7 Chromebook for a while; upgraded it to SSD and 8G of RAM, but it felt like an abomination with the fans, heat it put out, etc. Sold it to a friend, who absolutely loves it.
It has fans though and you will notice those! And the battery life isn't stellar. But at least it is cheap and relatively light weight and comes with USB ports.
I would love a Chromebook I could easily install a Linux distro on (I don't mind which, I can work within any distro quite happily although I would pick Debian if I had a choice) with a good 13" screen of 1440x900 (IPS). Don't care or want touch. A solid trackpad with multitouch. All the ports on the left (like this HP) as I am right handed an use a mouse to the right mostly so anything plugged in there gets in my way. A 128GB PCIe SSD. 8GB RAM. 8+ hour battery life. CPU I don't really mind but an Intel i3 would be the best (for me) due to compatibility with everything else. Backlit keyboard would be awesome. I am sure they could do all that for $500 or less. Even if I can't take Chrome OS off and have to dual boot that is fine with me as I quite like Chrome OS for a lot of things and only need a real OS for work. If anybody knows of such a machine please let me know!
You might be interested in our 2016 models.
[1] You get a pretty locked down laptop that you have to boot into developer mode to do anything useful (which adds an additional 5-second boot time) [2] I'm a happy camper at setting up dual-boot systems with Windows laptops, but crouton sounds like a pain to me. [3] Limited disk space: I would think we would need at least a 64 GB or 128 GB SSD to do anything useful.
Note that I'm only speaking as a power-user. IMHO, the Chromebook is actually a great laptop for the older generation and people who use web-based products all the time ... but I do wish Google had put in some more though on how to make it useful for power users who need the Linux utilities as well as Eclipse, Thunderbird, and other X-based applications etc.
I really hate having to buy a good laptop that has Windows pre-installed and having to wipe it out just to install Ubuntu/variants, but it still is my only choice at this point. (Yes, I realize there are companies that produce pre-installed Linux laptops, but their build quality doesn't compare to the HP/Dell/Asus/Samsung kind.)
Note: not that I'm suggesting you get one, I'm just adding what I know. I've been tempted by the screen: the LTE version with a DigitalOcean SSD-based VM to do all the painful work (and completely disposable, my favorite part), combined with that screen for text editing, makes a lovely combination.
But, I just run Arch on a thinkpad. I still get a little kick when I boot a machine the first time I get it, try out the hardware to make sure it all works, get annoyed with windows being utterly awful, and then get to wipe it over. I might dd it with all zeroes first, depending on how annoying it was :-)
I think a lot of us in the younger generation do this too, including the more tech savvy. I'm a software engineer in my 20s and my Chromebook is just fine for me 95% of the time. Sometimes I wish it had a little more RAM for when I get lazy about closing tabs, but that's about it: it's rare that I care about desktop apps.
The Macbook air is small enough to take anywhere, and let me assure you, people will steal anything. Didn't Stallman's ridiculous 200MHZ laptop with a monochrome screen get stolen at an airport or something?
Chrome OS itself can't possibly be that compelling, so does this suggest that people just want a Macbook Air form-factor that runs Linux well?
I don't own either device, I'm just intrigued by the fact that so many people seem to be replacing Macbook Airs with them.
I have a full 15" MBPRo, and it'd be nice to not lug that around on the weekends and such.
But then again, maybe we just get a Surface Pro 2 (or similar) and replace everything.
So many choices with how to manage your technology lifestyle now.
But more generally, most of the things most people do on a laptop can be (or are) done in the browser. You can even do image and video editing in the browser nowadays, as well as programming.
If the web browser is your only application...
Basically, I love the concept of a computer that I don't have to setup, worry about backing up, etc. By using a remote VM, I get access to a more powerful machine that is backed up daily, and I won't misplace. This is the main advantage of "the cloud" (or whatever you want to call it) to me.
My girlfriend, on the other hand, spends all of her time in the browser. All she does on the computer is write her papers, surfs the web and check her email/calendar. She could save nearly $700 by purchasing a Chromebook versus the 11" Macbook Air. The Chromebook fills a growing niche, the users who need more than a tablet, but less than a fully-blown desktop machine.
ChromeOS is perfectly functional for so many use cases (though not all of them). I do all my development on a Linux machine on my home network through SSH anyhow, so I can work at my Windows desktop, or pick up the Macbook or Chromebook and continue working easily. It actually outperforms the Macbook in regards to video (I can't watch fullscreen on the rMBP without it going all laggy).
I still go for the Macbook sometimes, but if I just need a portable terminal and browser, the Chromebook is perfect.
The ARM chromebook also feels nicer because it has no fan. This simple detail makes it feel less like a computer and more like a tablet.
The most astonishing is that these two points give the ARM chromebook the edge over the macbook even despite its very poor screen.
That being said, I do occasionally turn to the macbook for in-browser work, when the low power of the ARM chromebook is too palpable.
[1]: Such as:
- A sketchy neighborhood
- Leaving it at home while you're away for a long time
- Customs/border (where 4th amendment is N/A)
- Non-border transfer at LHR (e.g. David Miranda)
No, in this case the authorities would have asked google to seize/snoop on your account ages ago, so they wouldn't need to bother.
ChromeOS may be the right answer in some cases, but secure against authorities it is not - please don't kid yourself.
Also, you can encrypt all settings and history locally before syncing in ChromeOS. While that won't help your gmail account or search history, those are products you can much more easily use alternatives to while still using ChromeOS itself. That leaves you vulnerable pretty much only to the authorities forcing google to send you a corrupted update, which can't be trivial and is an even higher barrier protecting you from casual and dragnet snooping.
This is definitely a valid point. I'm terrified of losing my macbook pro :-/
Full specs
Screen
* 11.6" display with 16:9 aspect ratio (IPS Panel)
* 1366 x 768
* 60% Color Gamut
* 300 nit screen
* Wide viewing angle (176 degree)
Inputs
* Chrome keyboard
* Fine-tuned, clickable touchpad
* VGA Webcam
Ports
* 2 x USB 2.0
* Micro-SIM slot (3G and 4G/LTE model only)
* Micro USB for 15.75W charging and SlimPort video out
Industrial design
* Magnesium chassis for strength
* Available in black or white with a choice of 4 accent colors
* Silent, fanless design
* No visible screws, vents, or speakers
Size
* 297 x 192 x 17.6 mm
Weight
* 2.3lb / 1.04kg
CPU
* Exynos 5250 GAIA Application Processor
Memory
* 2GB (4x 4Gbit) DDR3 RAM
* 16GB Solid State Drive1
Audio
* Combined headphone / microphone jack
* Digitally-tuned speakers with sound ported up through the keyboard
Battery
* Up to 6 hours of active use (30 Wh battery)2
Network
* Dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
* Bluetooth® 4.0
* Verizon LTE connectivity (optional and coming soon)
Goodies
* 100 GB Google Drive cloud storage, free for two years3
* 60-day free trial with Google Play Music All Access, and $9.99/month pricing after that4
* 12 free sessions of GoGo® Inflight Internet5
http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/hp-chromebook-1...
Isn't this the same dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 that was in Samsung's Chromebook last year?
This is a horrible time to buy this... Assuming Samsung's new Series 3 ARM Chromebook (Rumored Exynos 5420... "Eight core" CPU+Mali T628) keeps the same price this year ($250), then HP's model is left in the dust. No one should be buying a new Nexus 4, 10, or Chromebook until mid november if they want to have a cutting edge device.
Only benefit I see with this model is that its an IPS display. We'll see what Samsung or Google produces this November.
I wish they kept Apotheker a bit longer... He had the real potential to be a bigger laughing stock of the technology circle than Ballmer.
This whole industry has always suffered from lack of viable competition. There never seems to be enough market to support third players, where we're lucky enough to even have 2 market leaders. sigh...
maybe that's true of other industries as well..
Honestly, working for a business that buys enterprise devices, 1 year behind is stunningly good. Buying business Android devices with a bar code scanner there's something like a 7 year product life cycle so you get some stunningly old hardware, for example.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...
"This adds Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling support for exynos5420 and this also adds the Adaptive supply volatge support for exynos5420."
Which points towards future devices using them.
Unless the 5420 has better battery life characteristics, I'm not sure if it's actually a better processor for the Chromebook.
I bought an 11" ThinkPad X131 but quickly returned it because the viewing angles were woeful. The hallmark of a garbage spec panel is noticeable vertical shift even when looking at it dead on.
On one hand, the form factor and aesthetics are great. The price/power engineering is great. The mission/concept is fantastic.
On the other hand, we've learned something from Android/IOS. We need apps and they do not necessarily lead to a computer that cannot be managed by a below average user. Even the average 'your mother' has some needs that aren't well met by this machine. Skype. Fill out this (Word) form and email it back to me.
I really want android/ios-like (ideally iOS simplicity with chromebook prices/hardware) computers to come out and solve computing for the many many people poorly served by cheap clunky windows laptops.
Word has a competitor called Google Docs that works just fine in the browser.
Desktop-only apps need to adapt or get left behind.
I haven't used Word since Word 97, and I have never come across a use case that Open/LibreOffice, Google docs or Latex couldn't solve for me. I would imagine that the same would apply for most people.
On the other hand, I remember collaborating on many reports using Google docs because that was the only application featuring decent real time multi user editing.
Doing references and placing images in Latex, on the other hand, was a breeze once I got a hang of its programmatic behavior.
Maybe it's better in Word now though. As I said, it's been a while since I seriously used it.
LibreOffice Calc sucks, but LO know it, and Kohei Yoshida is working very hard to make it not suck. LO 4.2 will be much faster. Then they just need to recreate VBA ...
Or do you mean better than Excel? If it's better than Excel at the sort of sheet I mean, that's important news for the people who run such sheets - they'd be moving to Linux yesterday.
Regardless, it shouldn't matter what OS. Gnumeric runs on Windows, and I've had Excel running on Linux w/ Wine...
Thankfully the world is changing, MS products are no longer as essential as they once were. Excel really is the last holdout...
but the original argument in this thread was that chromebooks couldn't do things that "your mother" needed to do. Google docs can't replace all the power-user features of MS Office. but that doesn't make a chromebook unsuitable for everybody.
Chromebooks are fine "Mom Machines" most of the time, or fine laptops to stash in your car in case of unanticipated need.
My opinion is that people need to stop attempting to conflate the market of true casuals, served by phones on the low end, tablets on the middle end, and netbooks like the Chromebook on the high end, with the market of serious users needing real desktop operating systems and applications, using laptops on the low end and high-powered desktops on the high end.
They are separate use cases, and we're best served if each segment focuses on itself instead of trying to be all things to all people. Manufacturers seem scared that if they don't provide it all, they'll be obsoleted, but I believe it's just the opposite; there's enough overlap in these markets to share (for instance, I have a smartphone, a tablet, a Chromebook, a real laptop, and multiple big huge desktops; certainly atypical, but normal people are fairly likely to have a smartphone, tablet or Chromebook, and a real laptop, and that's not going to change anytime soon). The paranoia is wasting a lot of our time.
And even those only when flying outside of Europe, as here we can use QR Codes on smartphone screen at the gate.
At some point an estate agent will send them a word doc and ask them to fill in some details and email it back. You and I can figure out how to get this going in google docs but the intended audience might have trouble. Google docs will encourage them to save it to the cloud and share instead of attaching which will confuse the estate agent. That doesn't mean Google's way is wrong, but in this scenario it does mean its harder and defeats the whole purpose.
Same problem with skype. If your friends/kids use skype, you will not be happy with a computer that can't do skype.
Basically, chrome needs to be compatible with the PC world and the way people are used to doing things. Compromise.
On the Skype front, until WebRTC is mature enough (soon), Microsoft is stuck using browser plugins if they release a Skype Web App. I'd say chances are near zero that they'd have a Chromebook compatible plugin. Complaining that Skype doesn't work on ChromeOS is like complaining that there's no Google Hangouts app for Windows Phone. The market share is too small to be worth the effort, unfortunately.
Now if Google would only open up Hangouts to video bridging solutions like www.bluejeans.com, www.vidyo.com (which.. is the tech powering google hangouts video), etc.
First of all, Google Hangouts replaces Skype, WebRTC eventually will too, and Google Docs or MS Office 365 are both perfectly good Office suites.
Second, the idea is simplicity. Anyone can maintain an up to date Chrome OS system. Anyone's grandmother could have an up to date, virus-free Chrome OS laptop.
Native apps? Chrome has Native Client. It's up to developers to make use of it. Not to mention technologies like Emscripten - again, up to developers. Anyone, what's out there on the web already is enough for most people.
If it's not enough, you can turn on developer mode, and run regular Linux apps (install with Portage), or install Ubuntu with Crouton.
Anyhow, Chrome OS solves 80% of use cases out of the box, and the rest with a little effort.
I've always found getting Skype running on Linux to be easy though (Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Arch are all trivial)...
I hope the same thing is happening to Windows marketshare.
I hope the same thing is happening to iOS.
edit: Note that I said "marketshare." I'm not wishing bankruptcy on Apple and Microsoft. It would be a weird desire.
The best dictators spread the freedom mantra and the more gullible believe it.
I'm pretty sure if you say "google" and "freedom" in front of RMS you'll get your head chopped off.
The Apple app store is a flat-out threat to human freedom. I do not want to live in a world where the only software available is the software approved by Apple and the governments that have jurisdiction over it.
edit: Note that I take no warmth in it being Google. Yes, they are closed. The good news is that HP just offered up "Not Intel" and "Not Microsoft" preloaded in a laptop form factor. The hardware companies are retreating to neutral corners and leaving the OS vendors to duke it out on their own. This is good for free software and good for the web.
Generally, you remove a washer and you get developer mode. From that point you can change anything.
> (albeit arguyably, Apple also open sources it's kernel)
When was the last time someone managed to build a binary identical kernel to Apple's from the supplied sources?
Google is the greatest machine for data gathering and mining in the history of humanity. (Perhaps the NSA or other 3-letter agency eclipses them, but in the private sector, no one outdoes them) Google's entire purpose for all they do is to get more information so they can show you ads. They have the capability (not the desire, I believe) to censor the Internet in monumental ways. (Imagine shaping search results based on political leanings that my search history suggests) They have a dossier of info on me they can turn over to whom they wish. (Probably won't, but a few public statements doesn't disprove the possibility) Which company, at face value, is "a flat-out threat to human freedom".
What free software? Locked down behind SaaS walls.
Advancing the web still makes sense.
Anyhow, there's also plenty of online instructions on how to use Crouton to install Ubuntu onto Chrome OS, the point is that Chrome OS is a full, real Linux distro.
Besides what is the point to pay $279 for a web browser?
Google could have locked it down as much as iOS if they wanted to. They didn't. Who do you think created developer mode?
The automated scripts that ease the task were created by individuals that don't work for Google.
This is hardly proper support.
If this was a desired way of using Chromebooks, options would be available to select it in a user friendly way.
If you dislike the paradigm that's fine, but don't claim it's hurting your freedom when
a) it's open source and
b) you can modify it the way you see fit.
Heck, you can change the Chromium OS source, recompile it and throw it on a Chromebook if you want...
All applications are behind SaaS walls.
And Chrome OS absolutely IS an OS. The fact that it's centred conceptually around the Chromium browser and Google's proprietary bits doesn't make this less true.
Why do you feel this way?
Does a technology exist if nobody writes anything for it?
Unification of the two OS's keeps getting rumoured, but never happens.
To pick an example, I think the mobile ecosystem would be a lot better right now were WebOS still a viable alternative. Instead HP left it to rot. How much progress did we lose there?
For branded Android/ChromeOS, AFAIK, you are paying Google for it the same way you pay for prebundled Windows. Insofar as the OS cost is discounted because you are an advertising target for Google, that's not that different from Windows PCs where the OS cost is offset because you are crapware target for third-party business partners of the system vendor.
And advertising revenue, isn't, I think, the only motivation for the low cost of consumer ChromeOS; low-cost consumer ChromeOS is the lever for building acceptance, knowledge base, and build a base of apps to motivate institutional sales of ChromeOS (sort of the way that getting Apple computers into schools was always a way to build commercial consumer and business markets for them.)
Sorry but this is not either or anymore. They will take your money and you will still be a product being sold. Just because you paid money doesn't mean they won't try to squeeze an extra penny off of your information if they can get away with it.
Agreed on Chrome OS. I'll stay with my cheap old Linux Thinkpad. My remote services run on my server at home anyway and they're pretty close to what Google offers, minus the sleek look (who cares, I'm functional).
And I have a Chromebook, which I'll freely admit is brilliant for many things, but they're always going to be slightly useless until running server apps on them is supported out of the box.
The whole thing is remarkably similar to the model Acorn, Sun and Oracle were aiming for with the NC back in the 90s.
You can't run servers on the devices themselves, without something like crouton. They also miss features like Bonjour interoperability to make local service discovery just painful enough to force you into the cloud. The result of this is when you are away from the Internet, which happens way more often than a lot of people seem to believe, they become utterly useless.
The problem with Chrome OS is Google's larger strategic objectives are guiding their product direction. It seems like Android only became what it did thanks to Apple effectively forcing their hands, but as it stands Android on the same devices would be enormously more useful.
I prefer my laptops, with my data, my native applications, on my hard disk, only accessing the Internet when I say so.
If I did, though, man, they couldn't take my money fast enough.
1. Do consumers want what is essentially a modern netbook? Didn't this market die once the iPad and tablets took hold?
It would seem from recent consumer buying trends that most prefer a touch screen/tablet form factor at this price point/screen size.
2. How does this compare to an Android tablet (Nexus 10) with a high quality keyboard? Or even some of the "transformer" products with keyboards/additional ports already available?
It seems you pay quite a premium for touch, I wonder if this machine will help sway people back into this form factor without touch/tablet mode.
Yes.
> Didn't this market die once the iPad and tablets took hold?
No, Chromebooks have been successful.
http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/04/12/nokia-lumia-900-do...
Here's some analysis based on browsing data usage which shows sales were worse than Windows RT.
http://www.zdnet.com/first-real-world-usage-figures-suggest-...
If Chromebooks sales are good , why don't they release real official numbers?
Also Acer has already said 10% of their shipments are Chromebooks.
> If Chromebooks sales are good , why don't they release real official numbers?
Who is "they"? Chromebooks are released by several manufacturers, some of which have released numbers.
And if Chromebook sales are bad why do more of them keep coming out, with more manufacturers joining in?
I don't see manufacturers jumping on board the Windows RT train, do you?
The mouse really is a great tool. People need to stop trying to get rid of them.
This initially freaked me out until I realised that they were all learning VB at school (shudder), and were just tooling up to use what they already knew. I was encouraged that one of them had had a look at another language (Perl, of all things) and encouraged him to take a look at Python instead; citing xkcd of course.
Anyway, they were all very excited by touchscreen laptops, and actually using them while trying to do development. It was weird.
1. does netflix work ? I know that there was some chromebooks that it did not work on. 2. Any one have any experience with playing flash videos? 3. If linux is put onto it using crouton or similar, is it a severly limit set of packages due to the architecture or does it run quiet well.
I want a very casual system that I can occasionally use for some writing/coding. I also have a VPS which I would ssh into for most (if not all) coding.
Flash works because Google maintains a NaCl version of Flash for Linux and ARM, but it's closed source and requires staying inside Chrome OS. If you install e.g. Ubuntu you won't be able to use Flash on Chromium on the same hardware.
If Apple ever comes out with a MacBook Air powered by ARM they better use the Lightning connector.
With that and the fanless design, IPS display, etc. This is looking pretty good. If could run a "real" linux distro without the hacks, it would be awesome.
EDIT: Although it has very few ports (no ethernet, HDMI) and a glossy screen, so that sucks
I have the acer c7 chromebook, and am really fustrated I can't simply trade it in for this chromebook. It really is one of the most appealing deals.
HN has also recently been talking about crouton, which I found very usable.
The biggest issues I see in this is 2.0 usb and that non-celeron processor.
For anybody considering developing on a chromebook, this looks like one of the most efficient chromebooks for you. A shame it doens't have a celeron though...
(Side note. I await installation for that IPS onto the acer. I may not be able to turn in the acer c7 for the hp, but if I can get ahold of that 11 inch IPS, I'm game for that :)
As it stands, I have many computers that could benefit from me programming a 32 bit application, but only my rpi could benefit (and my cell phone, I suppose) with the ARM builds.
32 bit is also helpful for me because I have some 32-bit IDE (like the naobot from Aldebaran IDE). It is simply easier for me to develop and configure.
Are you mixing 32-bit and x86 in your comment?
Obviously you meant x86 every time you said 32 bit in your reply. While it is pretty pointless to get into a religious war over processor architectures, I think it should be noted that the base compiling tools such as GCC and now more advanced/cutting edge ones like LLVM/Clang have started to give developers platform independence with cross compiling. As long as the libraries used have support for whatever you want to compile to (and almost all current packages and major libraries have ARM support), you can cross compile to x86 and vice versa. While I'm not a Stallman level FOSS advocate, I do love the fact that having as many open components to software allows this application portability to be a lot easier.
But I'm getting increasingly close to picking up one of these just for the hell of it.
A Chromebook would serve all his writing/email/browsing needs, but the only question I have is about USB peripherals - can you plug your digital camera in and have it pop up with all the pictures? And then a nice easy workflow to upload to google drive?
Also I presume it doesnt play nice with iPhones?
The high end has good specs - even thus it runs chrome os, at least, it'd make sense to convert it to windows or linux if chrome os was too limited. It's also a lot faster.
The biggest trade-off is that I have to keep some of my number-crunching on a server that I ssh into, which does limit working from trains/planes/busses/etc.
My biggest gripe is that the method I'm using to run a proper linux environment (Crouton) creates a startup situation that risks blowing away my hard drive image if anyone but me opens the laptop and follows the "Press the Spacebar to exit Developer Mode" (or whatever it says) message.
I really hope Google realizes they've got a community of programmers using Chromebooks as trip-friendly development machines and creates proper support for dual booting (or chrooting) into linux.
What's the advantage of this thing over a tablet with an external keyboard?
This laptop could be a gateway for kids as they need a entry device that parents can afford.
Am I the only one who sits on a couch anymore? There's no way I'm juggling a tablet, something to prop it upright with, and a bluetooth keyboard in my lap all at once.
Following the link for the US to Amazon, the HP Chromebook is nowhere to be seen on the resulting page.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/chromebook-1460-commercial.htm...
The price is listed as $385 which is far from the google stated $279
Edit: The price has dramatically changed since both of us viewed the page. My comment is no longer valid. The current 7:50AM PST 10/8/13 price is $279.99.
In a similar vein I'd guess you can get ethernet and SD card adaptors via the full size USB.
Not a bad thing, IMO.
Or Use code LAPT20 to make it £209.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/chrom...
Please make this comment come on top so that people will save some money. Thanks
I wonder what the options are like out of the box for development, or if this will work http://afaqdar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/5-different-chromebook...
Meh.
> Buy now
> US or UK?
casual work=>tablet,
? => chromebook
For casual use otherwise (movies, books, angrybirds/candy crush style games), then a tablet is probably a better tool.
My old retina iPad did quite well as an occasional SSH terminal.
When will the UK get Chromecast?
£59.99 = 96.47 US Dollar
Sold by Sinclair Intl and Fulfilled by Amazon.
Nothing about that sounds right.
*100GB of free storage for two years, starting on the date you redeem the Drive offer.
Some things like Hangouts, voice search and auto updates obviously require internet.
Screen images simulated. Color availability may vary.