Google Chromebook Comparison Chart | Hacker News Reader

Google Chromebook Comparison Chart

prodct.info

75 pointsd2p35 comments

Tough crowd!

I actually like it. I am looking at purchasing a chromebook as a RDP only laptop for my PC at home. Thank you and who cares if you are trying to make a quick buck? You gotta eat!

Thanks; glad it's useful!

I'm after something decent (4GB/1080p), but after compiling this chart, it's starting to look like what I want won't be available in the UK until early 2015! ;(

I've always wanted a chromebook. This is exactly the sort of information I need: I'm looking for a 15" model with at least Core i5 or equivalent performance and a high DPI screen.

Every time I go looking I end up digging through hundreds of irrelevant results on multiple sites only to discover no such chromebook exists.

In other words, this is exactly what I want. I'll keep coming back and checking stats!

Glad you like it!

Seems there's a market for decent spec Chromebook's that don't cost an arm and a leg like the Pixel :( Building this table also confirmed that what I want doesn't exist!

I was thinking about this setup as well, but wasn't sure if I was nuts. What setup are considering? Plug a hefty quad core tower in at home and then use a chromebook as a remote control with a screen?

I have a quad-core tower with 12GB of RAM and an SSD, that primarily runs a Windows 8 and Xubuntu VM. Performance over the local network almost feels like bare-metal.

I don't use Chrome Remote Desktop though, just VNC or Vmware Shared access through Crouton on my Chromebook.

My biggest concern with RDP is the screen res. I'd love to be able to use Visual Studio from a "dumb client", but the resolutions on the Chromebooks seems to kinda suck. I'm hoping for a 1080p one at least; but choices seem rather limited in the UK :(

Is there a good site for how to do a setup like this? It feels like it could be really nice. A beefy box with a wired connection that can capture a TV signal and broadcast wifi would be an swesome consumer appliance. Control it via Chromebooks, tablets, phones or whatever.

I like it too. When shopping I like direct comparisons like this, ones that I can sort based on my criteria.

I have an Acer c720, and use Ubuntu 14.04 using Crouton, and I primarily use it to remotely access virtual machines, and the occasional light web development. (Crouton allows you to switch into the chroot and back to ChromeOS using a very simple hotkey, it makes for a great experience).

I haven't even touched my i5 Thinkpad since I bought it two weeks ago, and at about $180, it's truly a steal.

This appears to be a static site hosted using Github pages and database backed by Google Docs?

That in itself is interesting to me because it costs nothing to host this content and is likely highly available.

This is correct. I have a small console app that pulls the doc from Google Docs and spits it into the YAML files on GitHub (it's about 100 lines of sloppy C# code)!

Filtering and sorting is done client-side with a JavaScript jQuery plugin.

note: You could do this entirely "live", and use JS to pull the data live in the page; but I already had the YAML all working from before the GSheet existed, so I chose tojust dump it into the files!

Price would be a handy metric...

I do have RRP on my todo list, but I don't want to list "current retail" prices because they're constantly changing; and the focus is more on helping people filter the list of options than to be a price comparison.

But isn't price one of the main things people choose these on? If I'm looking for a cheap chromebook (as one of the main points of the chromebook seems price), I don't want to see the $1400 Chromebook pixel, or at least (mentally) filter it out.

I don't think there's enough variance in price (Except for the Pixel) that it's a huge factor. My goal was to help people in my shoes, that have some requirements (1080p, 4GB, decent processor) to filter down the available list.

I really don't want to get into being a price comparison site. If I add prices, people will constantly be telling me they're wrong. I want to focus on specs/facts that don't change as much as possible.

You shouldn't have to update it manually. Isn't there a good way to pull the current price from amazon?

There is; but some devices aren't listed on Amazon and the prices can vary a lot. I think trying to show reasonable prices is a can of worms I don't want to open; especially given the little variance between them (ignoring the Pixel).

Seems like price would be the best method of discriminating between them, if all other factors are showing low variance.

I can definitely see the value; and I'm planning on adding RRP; but I don't want to get into price comparison and keeping things updated (or scraping). The goal is definitely to just help you see what fits your criteria and available in your market; then you have a smaller list to compare in reviews etc.

Round the prices so there are categories of prices. At least you can compare withing the same price range then.

I think it'd be tricky, things could be $2 apart and in different "bands". The only real logical bands to me are "Not a Pixel" and "a Pixel"!

I've added RRP, but it's currently unpopulated.

$179 vs $329 is a 1:1.83 price ratio. I think that's significant.

I'm adding RRP that should help with this; but it doesn't need a ton of maintenance work :)

If you can get some data about predicted release dates for other countries, that would be nice.

I'm hoping it'll be easier to add more countries now it's all in a Google Doc (previously it was a pain); but it somewhat relies on being able to easily find the data :(

OT: Why is the Pixel the online one with a Retina-like resolution?

It is the only one with a "Retina-like" price.

Because basically to every other manufacturer this is just another netbook. The OS is designed for everything that netbooks were originally touted for after all.

This is just a table to stuff you with Amazon cookies. If you click any product, you get redirected to its Amazon page with the affiliate tag. Understandable attempt to make money but feels dishonest to me.

Sorry if it seemed that way; it's not an attempt to make money, but be something useful. Products are listed regardless of whether they're listed on Amazon and I'm working on a tweak to show links to Google Play etc where available (I already had the Amazon code, as this page started off from something else).

I'll make it more obvious there are Amazon links shortly; if I can make some towards the costs/time, great; but that's not the motivation, I started off compiling the table for my own use (I'm trying to decide on a CB) and thought it'd be useful to others.

Strange, it struck me as an convenient. Why exactly does that strike you as dishonest?

Forwarding the user to Amazon through a redirect instead of plain visible Amazon links.

This is actually so I can send you to a more appropriate Amazon (UK or US) because Amazon doesn't handle this themselves.

I built a script that uses your timezone to guess if you're near the UK and forwards you accordingly (this was prior to this chart existing). I linked the CB chart to it to avoid reproducing the same functionality.

I can possibly do this in a different way, but since it doesn't cost you anything ending up on Amazon I didn't really think anyone would be upset by it. I just did what was easiest and most useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com