The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?
forbes.com
forbes.com
1 for my daughter. Only purpose she can use is Gmail (email and keep in touch with Aunt's and other relatives overseas). Occasionally she uses youtube and her school website.
1 for My Dad to read new papers online.
Both of them love it and its the only computer they use. I am sure none of them show up in any stats.
Edit: I must add Why I bought Chromebooks for both of them. Their uses cases:
1. Only activity is online. No use with offline computer.
2. Not Tech savvy enough to deal with AntiVirus.
3. Limited Use and hence need cheaper option.
Chromebook fits perfectly in both scenario's.
Also tablet is a distraction since kids would want to play games as soon as they have one in their hands.
Also starting in 2nd Grade (At least in my area) kids are taught typing on computer (Home Rose?).
How do you expect them to learn to, if you don't give them devices with keyboards? Sure, they could wait until that typing class in middle-school, but wouldn't it be better to have them pick it up themselves, much earlier?
Despite all that, I'm still happy with the decision. It's a super simple machine that's fast as hell, updates without him even knowing, and is incredibly secure. And the dev APIs are getting reasonably complete pretty quickly, such that I was able to write a little app to import photos off a camera in just a couple days.
Seems like a good startup idea.
"Install Google Cloud Print on a Linux server"
this is headless mode, BTW.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2906017?hl=en
I have a substantial server infrastructure at home, although reports all over the net indicate a rasp-pi is more than good enough to be a mere print server.
If the chromebook I wanted wasn't hopelessly sold out due to christmas demand, my wife would probably be using one right now.
My personal plan would revolve around installing that software on an existing server which already talks perfectly well to an older model Brother laser printer. So the server to printer link is done, working, rock solid, no problem, I'd only have to debug the headless cloud print interface. Which I've been meaning to do for some time, but I've been busy and unmotivated to set that up.
My plan was foiled by the chromebook I wanted to get being sold out due to christmas. Otherwise I'd be reporting glorious success or failure rather than my vague plans and suspicions.
If I can't get it working headless, well, I'd figure a way to get it working on one of my linux desktops, although I'm not sure the microscopic gain in being able to print exceeds the microscopic increase in electrical use. The cost of wasted toner and paper would likely exceed the cost of the electricity...
My existing desktops all have google drive and printer access so anytime I print something, to pick up the printed sheets I'd have to physically walk past a machine that could do the printing instead of the chromebook. And its kind of a post paper world so I don't print very much. If my printer broke I don't know if I'd bother buying another.
I had a chance to play with the Pixel version and it's really nice. Cold boots in something like 7 seconds. Chiclet-style keyboard, nice touchpad, etc.
Truthfully I'm not sure my next laptop won't be a chromebook anyways: Surely it's possible to put linux on them, in which case you've basically got yourself a netbook.
It's not a replacement for my desktop machine, but still worth the $250 bucks.
I agree with the SSH sentiment though.
Haven't had a serious need for it yet but it makes a Chromebook more attractive to me for sure.
Chromebooks aren't full replacements for how we use computers, but they're 95% of the way there, and given how inexpensive and light they are (not to mention how freakin' fast they are to boot/wake) they're an amazing complement to most computing cases.
My dev setup for years has been a Windows client working against a Linux box on my LAN. This works great with the Chromebook because I can just SSH into my Linux box and work in vim - the lack of computing power or storage doesn't bother me because all the real work happens on my beefy server, but I can still hang out on the couch with my boys and code.
Once I told him I was a developer, he loosened up and started talking about their marketing strategy. He said that Google is pushing Chromebooks hard in 2014, and have been frustrated by stores not using the marketing displays they provide. (Apparently my city is a test market.)
Most interesting to me, he said the main use case he was hearing customers ask about was video chat. (Something which probably wouldn't show up in StatCounter numbers.) Customers were most interested in Skype, but if they'd settle for Google Hangouts, then they were particularly interested in the Chromebooks. (He also said many older customers were buying the Nexus 7 purely as a Skype device.)
I stopped carrying a Windows laptop around early in 2013 when I switched to a Nexus 10 for everyday use. Now I want to show other people that there are alternatives even within the familiar laptop form factor. Plus I want to demonstrate to customers that I can deliver a fully functional application without Windows.
The security issues do have to be addressed and we do need to get the spies out of our lives but as far as I can see all the available platforms are currently corrupted by those agencies at the moment.
For $199 I have a computer that runs 10hrs on battery and does everything I need in the simplest way possible -- far simpler than the competition, that's for sure.
The question I have is why would I want a traditional laptop over this? They offer extra features I just don't need at the cost of complexity, maintenance, battery life, and price.
BTW, if personal Internet ever went down, there's a model that has a cellular modem or you can tether from your smartphone with mobile hotspot.
If you need to use traditional Windows applications frequently then maybe a native Wkndows device would be more useful. Although I gather that it's technically possible to install Windows 8 on a Chromebook.
There's really not much she's missing out on. I don't have to worry about the drive crashing (docs are saved in Google Drive), her pressing a button she shouldn't, or downloading malware. It's a really great device for children and anyone that spends most of their computer time online.
The device is a lemon then.
At least with a normal Mac/PC you can plug a printer in it.
Anyway it's a relevant argument today because as you say, we don't want the new "my dog ate my homework" to be "our internet went down and so I couldn't access my work on the cloud"
I live in Silicon Valley, and based on my internet options (one sole unreliable option: Comcast), I have to say that we're far from the day that connectivity is like electricity.
b) school doesn't have a public WiFi network and all the ethernet ports are MAC address locked to the workstations plugged in for security reasons. This is the correct way to do it.
c) We have ADSL here in the UK as the primary connection. When it goes bang, usually several exchanges are out. This happens surprisingly frequently. Friends will be down too, as will other free internet options. Your only option is to drive or get a bus 5+ miles away which just sucks.
Sorry but your solutions are bad as is the product.
I'd be extremely hard pressed to lose wifi connectivity. I've been carrying around a republic wireless phone which offloads calls over voip for a couple years (got in on the beta) and I have excellent connectivity at home, work, library, kids school, every coffee shop I've ever entered, one fast food joint and two family dining restaurants within 2 miles of home, and believe it or not, our local grocery store. Oh and auntie's house, and about 20 of my kids friends houses all of which seem to have wifi either DSL, fiber, cablemodem, or who knows what (satellite?). My kids pediatricians office has a guest wifi, it helps the waiting room time a little.
I'd have to think for a second, other than in my car while driving, where I don't have wifi. The movie theater (probably just as well). The local fast food sub sandwich store. The Home Depot store. The local walgreens drug store. Um... that's all I can think of? There must be more. City hall, where I spend 5 minutes annually paying my property tax, OMG thats the end of the world having no wifi there.
If I was really hard pressed, I'd buy one of those wifi hotspot gadgets on a pay as you go and use that. They're cheap.
When it gets to the level of the ridiculous, like whatsoever shall I do after the solar flare wipes out all internet and the zombie apocalypse begins and I really want to see that kitten video on youtube, well, I'll have better things to do than watch youtube videos, so I'm STILL not worried.
London has that kind of connectivity if you're prepared to pay - at which point the cost savings of chromebook start to fail. Especially with the increased uk cost of the device.
LOL no, typical neighborhood in the 2nd richest suburb of a boring former top 30 midwestern urban center about 20 miles from "downtown", nearby a really freaking huge freshwater lake. Everything around me was built around 1960, the modern exurbs and mcmansions are all 5 to 10 miles further out so I guess you'd call this an inner-ring suburb. My commute length is about in the middle of my coworkers commute lengths. This is Extremely stereotypical suburbia at least in the midwest USA. 100K people, basically no real crime, the crime blotter is all "drunk idiot did this" and "drunk idiot got into fight" type stuff. One rare bright spot is our local HS always makes it thru regionals and into state at the Academic Decathlon, always every year no exceptions, and when I was on the team we made 4th at state, but once in awhile the local H.S. places pretty high at nationals, I guess the year I was on the team I must have dragged them down (LOL). They're not going to be filming a reunion episode of Friends or any other trendy urban stuff here any time soon, we don't have a Tesla dealership or anything like that. There is an Apple store but its 10 miles away. We only got a frozen yogurt store last summer, we didn't even have cupcake stores until after they already peaked on the coasts, its just not that trendy of an area. So a very nice area, but hardly the urban paradise SV is supposed to be, or all of CA is supposed to be, or pretty much anywhere on the coasts. We're referred to as flyover country, made fun of a lot. The nearest smart car dealership is 30 miles away but I don't know if they're even still cool. The closest IKEA is like 100 miles away, no kidding. We have a symphony orchestra that no one attends (well, far under 1% of population) so unsure if thats culturally good or bad. And no, our symphony does not play dueling banjos or whatever just because we're well over 1000 miles from any ocean coast. Nor do all our summer vacations look like "Deliverance" movie although sometimes it gets kinda iffy. TLDR is on average its a pretty typical boring suburb, some things a little better, some a little worse.
I'm more a tea drinker than coffee, but I've been given the impression for about a decade its illegal or something to sell coffee without free wifi.
Oh and I forgot the local McDonalds about 1.5 miles away has free wifi, I don't eat that kind of "food", but if I needed wifi I'd do what I have to do to get it, including eating a big mac or whatever.
Sadly lots of companies focus on "fast" internet, and very few focus on low speed but very reliable internet.
I have lousy internet but i could get a lot of use from a chromebook.
I wasn't able to find an application in the Chrome Web Store with a price. Maybe the store for proper Chromebooks is different? Sure lots of things are freemium or charge on the services side. However, I was expecting at least a few applications that cost something. Are there enough Chromebook users and do they buy software/services?
In my research for a potential purchase, its just chrome, so if it works on your desktop...
So right now, in my family, $200/yr for Ancestry, then there's Evernote, and Airdroid, video streaming services, this stuff adds up to a lot more than the typical 99 cent mobile app market... Probably a couple hundred dollars per year total.
I suspect most of the money snapped up by people providing services to chromebooks don't even know/care that they're providing service to a chromebook, from their perspective its just another chrome browser.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tank-hero-laser-wa...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/they-need-to-be-fe...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rick-oshea/maphdck...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wordflow/ldjhnilbg...
You even have the sales numbers effectively in there at the moment :
They need to be fed : 1013 users @ 0.99$
Tank hero : 233 users @ 0.99$
Rick O'Shea : 404 users @ 0.99$
Wordflow : 1547 users @ 1.99$ (not a game, a "distraction free" editor)
The limitations of the Chromebook might actually be a good thing to remove distractions for me. I've been trying using Nitrous.io(https://www.nitrous.io), and although I miss not being able to use Vim shortcuts, I've been somewhat productive with it. I'm hesitant to pay for the service now. And I wonder if I I would be better served if I installed Linux instead (even though I hear that you have to do a weird dev boot sequence every time?).
Invitation link to Nitrous.io, if anyone would like to try https://www.nitrous.io/join/X01nmhYHezs
I think the Desktop Apps available in the Chrome Web Store and the accompanying Chrome Apps icon in my Mac's Dock and Windows taskbar are much more interesting developments and I imagine Apple and Microsoft are rather more concerned about that than the netbooks. This is not the first intrusion of browser based applications onto desktop computers (Prism ,etc) but it certainly the boldest and works quite smoothly.
firstly, my son used a chromebook and ssh'ed into cloud nine in order to do most of his learning of JavaScript and web development.
secondly, my wife has been using the chromebook the last year to do all of her homeschooling planning, finances, correspondence, and web browsing.
tertiarily, my father who spent the week with us over the holidays, used my wife's chromebook to great effect and is planning on buying one as soon as he gets back.
NPD’s numbers would have us believe Chromebook’s were nearly 50 times more popular (9.6% of the market vs. 0.2%) in a segment that grew 25% from last year. That’s rather remarkable as it would suggest sales increased perhaps sixtyfold.
What else grew 60x this year, besides bitcoin and chromebooks?
The entire article investigates whether the 60x number from NPD is plausible or not.
The article's conclusion seems to be: perhaps in one segment of the market, but it isn't clear which segment, yet at the same time it is clear that sales are in fact rising to some extent. One measurement shows a 10x increase, much of it very recent. So something interesting is going on, but we don't quite know what or how much.
The best way to answer this would be to get actual sales numbers from Google, and stop guessing using indirect sources.
My (anecdotal, N=1) evidence is in seeing people who were frustrated by the iPad. The iPad really did a huge amount of volume and I'm hearing from a few people that they wanted something more like a Chromebook.
StatCounter relies upon subject sites adding a bit of code that reports back to StatCounter, giving them their metrics. Curious, I inspected every single site I visit in a typical day, and zero of them have the StatCounter code.
I am invisible to StatCounter. I don't roll with Chromebook, so not really relevant in this case, but it's interesting how frequently StatCounter is used to make some proclamation or other with no one ever questioning what their coverage is.
And what has the actual result been over time? Are we looking for confirmation anecdotes in the wrong places? It seems to me that many of those early stats turned out to be true. For example, Android devices dominates the global smartphone market at over 80%. That's either a lot of shipped but not sold devices sitting on shelves filling up every inch of floor space in retail stores around the world, or this kind of stat tracking has some validity.
It would be easy enough to test the location theory: just slice your web traffic by country or find someone with a big non-US site
Unless something has changed, you still end up with a data plan which is expensive if you don't plan on using it at all. I suspect something else is going on with the reported stats, but I'm not sure what it is.
I'd really like to see some more in depth research on this phenomenon whatever the cause is.
Seriously, guys. You reek of dad. Your ability to predict and understand the tech market is undercut by the demographic of reporters needed to furnish reporting to your markets. This is why you all understand Burberry a lot better than Blackberry, and that a lot better than any of the devices that have come out since the Bush administration.
I am replacing you with a tiny shell that accepts PayPal from Microsoft.
Thank you.