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Comment by moonchrome | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually wondering why would people spend money on a chromebook - the hardware is crap and the price isn't that great. If I was looking for a cheap portable web browsing device I'd get something like : http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-v975w-quad-core-win-8-tablet... - that's a 10 inch Windows 8.1 tablet with 2048*1536 resolution, quad core atom and 2 GB ram for 220$. Throw in 20$ and you can find a USB case with keyboard.

Portable, better performance, better screen, can be used as a "internet machine" with Win 8.

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I recently bought a Chromebook and I love it. I am a college student - and I have a powerful desktop machine, but wanted something I could take to classes. I could have bought a low powered laptop, but I didn't need all the features of Windows 8. The Chromebook is perfect for me, as it starts up within about 3 seconds, and does everything I need to it do quickly. I even have Crouton on it, meaning I can switch to a debian installation with a keyboard shortcut. Every now and then, if I want to run a steam game, for example, I use this. But even without that ability, it's nice to have a device that 'Just Works'.

> I'm actually wondering why would people spend money on a chromebook - the hardware is crap and the price isn't that great.

Battery life. Most Chromebooks get good to great battery life and in my opinion good battery life is a requirement on any laptop; no matter how cheap.

My experience with low-end Windows laptops is that the battery life is usually atrocious. 2-3 hours on my last one. If I want to be plugged in all the time I'll buy a desktop.

If you think that tablet is going to have the build quality of a Chromebook then you've obviously never spent much time with cheap iPad knockoffs before.

But is it locked to Win 8? Can you easily install ubuntu on it, or is all the hardware drivers closed source?

No, it's not locked. But you can't install Ubuntu there (at least not easily). Google for "32-bit UEFI" if you need any more details about the sorry state of affairs with booting Linux on latest crop of Atom Bay Trail hardware. The only out-of-the-box working distro for it is "fedlet" - some obscure fedora 21-alpha fork.

>Google for "32-bit UEFI" if you need any more details about the sorry state of affairs with booting Linux on latest crop of Atom Bay Trail hardware.

There is at least one product with a Bay Trail CPU in it that runs Linux: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19836.

Unlike most Atom CPUs, the graphics driver for Linux on Bay Trail CPUs is completely open (like it is on Intel Core CPUs), which I guess makes it doubly sad that some manufacturers of products with Bay Trail CPUs in them are screwing up with the boot loader.

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