Hacker News Reader

Comment by therobot24 | Hacker News Reader

I posted this earlier, but it's relevant for a repost.

My brother got a chrome pixel at Google I/O and he loves it. The hardware is beautiful. The interface is simple. The speed and ease of use is really unparalleled. The downside is by far the most important - the functionality is very limited due to the limited App space.

View on HN

Depends on what you want, of course. I put a full Ubuntu distribution on mine, along with a full numerical stack (anaconda python + Octave), git, ruby, perl, etc., and am happily programming away. I grant you that I am not the customer that Google is targeting, but I find it very capable. I am already working from the cloud - all of my python and data resides in Dropbox or a BitTorrent Sync folder, and I just work from them regardless of what machine I'm on.

It's an interesting tradeoff. You will obviously not be putting a first person shooter game on one of these, or installing massive software stacks, but I don't really want that from a ultrabook anyway. I'm overjoyed with mine (I have the cheap Toshiba, not the Pixel). If I lose or break it who cares, I'll buy another. Meanwhile I have a portable ultrabook that I can develop on, keep up to date with the office, or just take to bed to do some light browsing. It's utterly fantastic in a 'less is more' kind of way.

edit: so far I am only using the Dropbox stuff with the chromebook - I do not know if can use BitTorrent Sync from it, and I may have to revise that part of my workflow.

The hardware of the pixel looks great. If Windows had a proper touchscreen driver, I'd probably buy one and load it up with Windows (or, if I could get OSX running on it...)

From my experience with the Pixel, using it as my primary personal computer, the hardware of the Pixel is mediocre shit with the sole exception of the screen, which is absolutely fantastic.

I guess if you really have a thing for aluminium then the case is nice enough, but I find it extremely uncomfortable to use at times (the sharp edges have a tendency to bite into my wrists if I am not careful to keep my wrists elevated.)

yea i can't really speak for experience other than the few minutes i got to try it out, but from what i've been told he really likes the hardware (more than just the screen), but hasn't mentioned the sharp edges

Windows 8 is all about having a proper touchscreen driver - what do you mean?

For the Pixel, I think he means.

I thought about it a while ago, but then why not just buy a Macbook? Same price, comparable hardware looks, much better specs, much better capabilities. You can run Chrome and do all the same stuff you could do on a Chomebook, plus a ton of other stuff too.

For me, the Chromebook killer feature is that it's not got any state: if I borrow someone else's Chromebook, or demolish my own and get a new one, everything I have is back again. I am sick and tired of having to worry about backups! They're such a headache.

I think for many users the Chromebook does fine, and I think for many others the Chromebook is too limiting. I would personally be very happy if, say, Chrome OS was built as a dual-boot solution for Microsoft Surface. Chrome for general case, and an escape hatch to Windows for games or whatever. A VM solution hosted in Windows would also work here.

However, my last attempt at running Chrome OS in a VM indicated that the open-source version of Chrome OS (at least as downloaded by VMWare) was running at a significant lag behind what's being pushed to Chromebooks right now, so I stopped investigating it any further.

If you run Chrome for Windows 8 on an Intel based Windows tablet in full screen mode it's hilariously similar to Chrome OS.

I agree with you on the state thing. The problems we have (hopefully temporary) are the number of choices of where to store our state are inadequate (i.e. too many hosted in the US) and we're living with the layers of crap that is the modern web. The idealist in me would prefer a clean slate completely, but the pragmatist knows they're approaching this in the only way the idea will get traction.

If you can find a Macbook with the same specs for anything close to the price of the Chromebook then please do link it.

This guy has a down vote but I believe he is referencing the screen, which has a resolution unmatched by Macbooks at this price. The 'Retina' MacBook costs more.

The posts above you are talking about the Chromebook Pixel, which had a release price of $1299 (similar to MacBooks) but inferior specs.

The pixel is very similar to a Macbook Air, (IIRC, thiner/lighter) except has a HD-touch screen. If they refreshed the processor, all that would be missing is a decent harddrive.

I'm interested to see when a MBP or similar comes out with touch - I'm finding there's a few things I do which naturally work well with touch (e.g. scrolling pages).

I actually disabled the touchscreen on my Pixel. The coating on it means it picks up dirt like no other laptop screen ever, and if it's touch enabled it goes crazy whenever you try to clean it.

That and if touch is enabled things like Gmail like to add lots of padding around stuff regardless of if you're going to use the touch at all.

Frankly, I found the touch utterly useless, especially since the touchpad is so good.

I still wonder if you can install an IDE on it, like eclipse or codeblock.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com