Chromebooks for Work: More manageable for IT, more powerful for users | Hacker News Reader

Chromebooks for Work: More manageable for IT, more powerful for users

googleforwork.blogspot.com

35 pointsbbrunner18 comments

I liked the ChromeOS experience, but the hardware was very lacking. Office workers want a nice 15" screen. The HP 14 screen was really bad, and that's as close as it gets. There's no way I'd want to use that screen all day. The only option is the Chrome Box with a decent screen. Also, I frequently went into swap with only 2GB of RAM.

The Pixel has rMBP type hardware. Not cheap, but the screen is beautiful, with coder-friendly 4:3 aspect ratio.

https://www.google.com/chrome/devices/google-chromebook-pixe...

edit: huh, not available in Canada.

Until recently, I couldn't 1) connect my Chromebook via HDMI to a projector, or 2) view spreadsheets from my finance department. Both "bugs" were fixed in the last few months, but I had mostly given up on using it at that point.

I don't think anyone is recommending a Chromebook to tech professionals (i.e. everyone reading these comments), but for those who need a computer at work primarily for basic office and productivity apps.

Even an standard office worker will be more productive with two screens and a proper keyboard.

Sure, if they got used to it, but I don't think it would make a huge difference.

Most people in the world get by just fine with one screen and one desktop – anecdotally, everyone I know who is not in tech or design does...

I don't see the relevance of that. A Chromebook can be configured with two screens and a USB keyboard.

True, but the article does suggest using stack that is Chromebook centric, including virtualization.

The Chromebook stack like a viable option for a very limited use case, likely offices heavily locked into the Google-sphere of web apps, whose daily operations primarily aren't design/production/development.

Any use case that previously involved Thin-clients probably could be replaced with Chromebooks, and deliver as good, (if not better) user experience. Places like large etailers that use almost exclusively browser based applications (inventory / order management, CMSes, shipping services) could easily go this route.

> more powerful for users

Only if they never experienced the freedom of a proper OS.

I think for many people 'freedom from inexplicably slowing down after 6 months' might be preferable to 'freedom to reskin my custom window manager' ;-)

My Dad loves his Chromebook and it's the first computer he's not managed to bugger up.

What OS "inexplicably slows down after 6 months?" I cannot think of any since TRIM got implemented everywhere.

Windows 8.1, OS X Mavericks, and Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS certainly don't. They also all support TRIM or defrag depending on storage.

A big proportion of my non-tech friends have viruses and malwares on their computers.

Windows totally does, at least in my experience. I'm not installing software from "questionable" sources or downloading random executables from the internet, but Windows pretty consistently develops problems like several seconds of progress bar to load local folders.

YMMV, but that's been my experience on every Windows computer I've had, including Windows 7 and 8 on SSDs. Surface isn't showing signs of it yet, but that's only a few months old.

Strange.

That definitely was my experience pre-Windows XP. Windows XP made it "better" and Vista "solved it."

There are things I can do to make Windows slower (e.g. Installing VMWare/Hyper-V w/virtual network adapters), running out of drive space, running out of RAM, bad Windows Explorer shell extensions, or just multi-tasking too heavily (e.g. 30+ Chrome tabs left open for days).

But in general I haven't noticed much natural degradation I cannot pinpoint the source of like the old days.

I'd be interested to dig into your system to see if I can determine the source of your "slowness." Normally the performance tab gives some clues and if not Process Explorer with the DLL display can find others. The Event Logs occasionally have information if it is hardware, COM, or service related.

Definitely not disk space, RAM, or too much multitasking, but it could be shell extensions (don't think I have anything unusual) or virtual network adapters (VirtualBox, Evolve, and Viscocity). Never gotten any clues out of the performance tab, but I didn't know about Process Explorer until a few months ago. I'll definitely take a deeper poke at it if it shows up again.

At least the days of LAN parties invariably starting with someone wiping their computer to fix a networking problem are done with!

>Only if they never experienced the freedom of a proper OS.

I'm a consultant, and many IT departments I've worked with have started deploying Chromebooks as clients for their VDI environment. When the VDI side of things is done correctly, the user experience is very, very good.

Chromebooks are generally cheaper than traditional thin clients, and offer basic productivity tools and access to mail if VDI is down. They're more or less disposable, and easy to provision. I only see them becoming more popular in the enterprise as VDI grows more popular.

Edit: I'll also point out that "freedom" is pretty much the antithesis of what most enterprise customers are going for. The space where VDI + Chromebook is growing quickest is within sales departments/orgs - places where the business has a vested interest in keeping a very tight grip on information.

some people only need (and are perfectly happy with) what is essentially a "microsoft office appliance" (or: google-docs + chrome appliance). that's fine. I just wish they wouldn't call it a "computer"

It would be disingenuous to not call it a computer. People should come to understand what computation is, not be relegated to simple lifestyle devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com