$149 Chromebooks | Hacker News Reader

$149 Chromebooks

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503 pointsojn409 comments

This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.

Look at the brand names. TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?

This isn't about cheap Chromebooks, it's about a major strategic effort to court the global middle class. As with the Android One initiative, Google are seeking to establish an affordable but capable gateway to their services for middle-income consumers. They're working with local companies to leverage local marketing and distribution resources. In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.

If their strategy for Chrome OS works half as well as their Android strategy, then the industry is going to be unrecognisably transformed over the next few years. A whole generation of consumers could come to see the Chrome OS pseudo-thin-client model as the norm, with full-fat operating systems being a niche curio.

The middle class can afford to pluck down a few more bucks and get a device with a real OS...

I've never had a chromebook. How bad is it? What if I just want to browse the web and watch hulu, netflix, and youtube?

If all you need is a web browser its amazing.

I have a cheap Samsung Chromebook ($250 in 2013). I've never had a problem browsing with 10+ tabs open and watching hulu at the same time.

It is not going to run Visual Studio of course, but it is quite capable for browsing/videos/word processing/etc.

I have a aver c670 and was 159 and I love it. Would love to get a chrome bit instead of the stupid chromecast

How usable/practical is it without a WiFi connection?

It's basically just a web browser with some tweaks for convenient offline Google Docs. You can unlock a full shell and download some decent editors (Caret is one that I've used), if you want to do JS or Python development. Unfortunately the third-party package manager ("chromebrew") does not have a very robust offering, so you're pretty limited in what you're able to do. You can try building binaries yourself but you'll need to build your toolchain as well.

What do you want to do offline? You can install chrome and turn off your internet connection today and find out how well it works for you.

Browse https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/apps?_feature=of... to get a list of apps that are available that work offline.

Or just take your chrome book to china where all Google apps are blocked...

If you have a windows desktop on your lan, using RDP via the chromebook does okay in a pinch... when I used mine, I'd typically have several SSH windows, and an RDP connection open. Worked really well for me. Though I really wanted VPN, and the ability to run VMs, so broke down and bought a new MBP (my prior one was stolen).

It isn't. Even the first ones ran at a decent clip.

I also have a cheap, late 2012 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor and 2GB RAM, the kind the reviewers like to get down on as horribly underpowered. But over time updates have improved the performance and at this point it's really fine.

And yes, Netflix, YouTube etc., no problem.

They're like fairly-reliable burner laptops. They handle most of the day-to-day things you would ever need a laptop for, but don't leave you worrying that much about price if it were stolen or damaged.

Which is probably why they're so popular with schools. I no longer own one but when I did it was my go to for email and basic web stuff.

I have an ARM Samsung and I really like it; great battery life and runs Linux with Crouton. ChromeOS is fine for browing and most document writing I do. My wife wrote a few books on it in Google docs. No problem...

Really, we're in a day and age where most people can do their daily activities on the web.

The usual "word processing, research, facebook" student load, for instance? A dedicated physical machine powerful enough to run even MS Word locally is a waste of money in this instance.

Access to the global information network and ability to use things on it is step 0 in getting people into the modern era. All that other stuff that you get from a "real OS" is a step above that.

Not everyone lives in a first-world country where ubiquitous internet access via wifi hotspots has been implemented, and not everyone can afford a 3G plan.

And this is probably not the device for them.

The whole point of a netbook (which is really what a Chromebook is, with the tainted name dropped) is something that has most of its functionality on the web rather than a local device.

Never understood why "netbook" became a bad word. I loved mine; it was sturdy and simple and cheap and I never worried about throwing it in a bag and taking it wherever I was going. My mindset was "so what if it gets trashed, it only cost $250, I'll buy another one!" - but in fact my one netbook lasted five years, and by then the category had disappeared. That one Eee pc outlasted two macbooks!

I think part of it was that there were so many horribly specced Windows devices sold. As in, the specs were not good enough to handle the OS. 2GB, a single core first gen Atom, and a 5200RPM drive is painful to use even Windows 7 on.

Had one of those machines for work. Even after a fresh install, the lag was positively infuriating.

Ah, that makes sense. My Eee came with an SSD, and I installed Linux the day it arrived. I can see how it would have been a different experience with Windows and old-school hard drives.

It honestly wasn't awful. I used an MSI Wind U100 for several years - I actually used it for school until June last year. I gradually transitioned OS's - WinXP, OSX, then Ubuntu 11.04. Ran all of them like a champ, video playback was the only sticking point.

In the third world, internet access is more common than you think... My wife's family gets more reliable internet and wireless coverage than they do electricity or plumbing. When I went down there, you could go to a textile shop or open air market and I'd pick up open WiFi hotspots..m

Not to mention that "first-world country where ubiquitous internet access via wifi hotspots has been implemented" doesn't particularly describe, say, the US very well. The picture painted to try to make these contrasts tends to itself stand in contrast to the picture that is real life.

Not that the over-arching sentiment of "you shouldn't take the existence of an always-available network connection for granted" is a bad one. It's just that saying, basically, "These devices aren't suitable everywhere; consider market segments that may be less mature than the big, contemporary Western one you're most familiar with, for example" is a little bit of a weird and not terribly convincing way to express it.

In support of this, in my SO's city in Brazil there's many more public wifi places than anywhere in the Netherlands.

I rarely see working (as in usable, encrypted and not total rip-offs) hotspots in Germany. Anywhere.

Not in Cologne (~1 million) nor Dortmund/Bochum (part of the 'Ruhrgebiet' metropolitan area, which Wikipedia estimates includes about 12 million people).

Guess not a first-world country?

We're probably on the same side: I would NEVER go for a Chromebook. Always online is stupid. Mobile sucks on trains here, so forget about data on the move. Hotspots don't exist. There are still lots of places that I visit that have little to no usable data connectivity.

I have no clue what the Chromebook is for, but it would be a giant failure in my circles and my environment.

An awful lot of people pluck down premium-level bucks for iOS, which is even more neutered than ChromeOS. Consumers have spoken, they do not care.

Consumers do care, they just care about different things that some of us do.

This is not a particularly insightful comment.

The implicit context for the comment you're replying to, made explicit, is clearly "Consumers have spoken, they do not care [about whether their devices have a 'real' OS or not]." Given that this is the case, your rebuttal is a fairly empty one. It's essentially in the same realm as tautological-ish, no-impact statements, as far its role in this discussion goes...

I liken it to techies running out and buying a Tesla. You can't put your own turbo on it, you can't do much to improve the performance or customize it, you can't repair the engine in your garage, you can't drop in a new transmission when yours goes out, and it's not a manual transmission, so you're giving up a lot of control in driving it.

That's what an automotive-minded person might believe. Why would you buy an electric car that you can't control when you could have a 1989 Volkwagen Golf getting 30mpg that would last you forever with just a little bit of maintenance? You would make that choice because you don't want to have the responsibility of doing something that makes the car unreliable or unsafe. You don't have the knowledge or the tools to fix it when it does. And you can't be late for work, or fail to pick up your daughter from school because your car wouldn't start. So even though you could get a car perfectly tailored to you and controlled by you for just $5,000, you buy a $60,000 electric car knowing that there's hardly any moving parts, so all you need to do is turn the car on and put your foot down and it will work. You plug it in when you get home, and unplug it when you leave for work. That's all you need to know.

That's how I liken the debate between Android and iOS, or Linux and Windows. People say to me "look at all the customization I can do!" and all I see is a maintenance nightmare. I use Linux at work because that's what it's best at. When I get home, I'm playing video games on my Windows desktop. On the weekends, I'm driving down two-track roads in my custom-built 1998 Toyota 4Runner, but my daily driver is a Fiat 500. When I'm playing around with developing apps, I'll sideload them onto my Nexus 4. But when someone calls my phone number, it rings to my iPhone, which I know will always ring no matter what software I manage to install.

As a consumer, it's not that I don't care. It's that I don't even want it. I know it's there. I know it's cheaper and I know it's more powerful and I know it can be customized. But none of those things are at the top of my list. Reliability, compatibility, and simplicity are my three biggest requirements.

>I liken it to techies running out and buying a Tesla. You can't put your own turbo on it, you can't do much to improve the performance or customize it, you can't repair the engine in your garage, you can't drop in a new transmission when yours goes out, and it's not a manual transmission, so you're giving up a lot of control in driving it.

That is an interesting analogy, but it's pretty misleading. Tesla happens to be locked down but not because it's electric. It doesn't need a turbo, that's like being upset you can't put a new zip disk in your SSD. The engines are fixed ratio, that's a more direct control than using a gear box. Electric cars have either simpler transmissions, or no transmissions at all. In general that means easier replacement, or not having to replace anything, surely a positive, right?

Electric cars are capable of being simpler and more alteration-friendly than ICEs. They just cost more.

Well obviously turbo is just an example. Analogies can only ever approximate their subject, they can never be perfect. The idea is, that's the antithesis of what the guy down at your local garage might look for. It's not terribly moddable, you have less control over the inner workings, it's really expensive, the manufacturer holds tight control over the software, and yours is exactly the same as the one next to it. Those are all the criticisms aimed at iOS when people are saying they like Android better.

What I'm saying is it's not that customers don't understand these points, it's that these points are exactly why some customers don't choose a more open system.

But what I'm saying is that the tight control specifically from Tesla is totally unrelated to it being electric. Nothing stops electric vehicles from being great for modding. Tesla is a lot like Apple but it's not at all about the engine.

And some of the androids are even more expensive than iPhones...

People mod Teslas. You can't mod the transmission because it basically doesn't have one. But you can write awesome html5 apps for the 17" touchscreen.

> iOS, which is even more neutered than ChromeOS

I disagree, developers can develop native apps for iOS even if they need to go through the App Store. Only crippled web apps are allowed on Chrome OS and only Google can develop really native apps.

Google publishes instructions on how to unlock the boot loader and install whatever you want. Apple does not.

The middle class in first world countries, maybe. Try spending some time in the developing world. Lower cost of living means that "middle income" families can live comfortably on less income. But the costs of large capital goods, e.g. computers and cars, is not lower.

Imagine your average laptop cost $5k - $15k. Would you consider it a big deal if you could get a decent <$1k laptop? That's the equivalent situation.

Don't bother, this thread is totally astroturfed by paid googlers. What you can read here is just insane. I can't believe HN is alllowing this. This product is crap,but boy they are selling it hard here.

I too was surprised by how positive some of the comments were. Microsoft's Surface tablet seems widely panned here (unless I am looking at the wrong comments) but if Microsoft had released a Chromebook, everyone would have said "HAHA! What a piece of junk! Who'd buy that???"

When Apple released the MacBook the other week, everyone had the same reaction ("Only one port? Can't plug in a USB stick and the power adapter at the same time? It'd STOOOPID").

But, when Google releases an UNDERPOWERED netbook with abysmal 1990s screen resolution, less storage than a USB stick and that only fully works when you're on a network, it's widely praised. I don't understand it!

In the 1980s with the microcomputer boom, if you'd have told all those kids using BBC Micros at their school that they could only use their computer and the Interword ROM whilst connected to the telephone system, they'd have thought you were stupid.

Yet, essentially this is what Chrome OS offers you. You can upload all your data (as if uploading your 4GB videos to "the cloud" is an enjoyable experience), and then view it periodically when you have a network connection.

I know we normally DO have network connections but the invention of microcomputers was meant to DO AWAY with the need for mainframes, not turn our local powerful microcomputers into dumb terminals for remote corporate-controlled mainframes. If you'd proposed such a solution 20 years ago, they'd have thought you were insane.

I've never understood this argument.

You need a connection for web-based use-cases.

You don't need a connection for non web-based use-cases (document editing, etc works offline).

The same is true of any OS.

But it's true that with ChromeOS the entire usability of the product is massively different without Internet access. All of the "apps" don't work as well without an Internet connection. This doesn't happen with an ordinary machine (if you open Word whilst offline, it isn't crippled).

I think storing all of your data online is foolish, basically as it means that offline you're scuppered.

Yes, it makes me wonder how many people buy a Chromebook and state "never again!". It's like being given an etchasketch as a computer to do "real" work on but with the iron filings only accessible when with a tethering plan.

With all the talk of schools mandating that children have equivalent devices, what was wrong with writing on paper and doing maths on paper? We managed at school.

> This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.

Is it that or is it just an effort to stay relevant? If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it? There are tons of tablets from HP/Dell that cost 100-200$ and run full windows OS and have comparable specs to the Chromebooks. As far as I know they are selling quite well. I am wondering if this is Google responding to that pressure.

exactly. in the US they also launched with the mobile association. leading them to be mostly ignored by everyone.

the only time i heard about chromebooks in the wild was while walking at low income are shopping malls. the Cricket and att stores would often have a little banner on the floor advertising the "cheap kinda of a computer!"

"ignored by everyone"

Heh... wonder what your definition of "everyone" is. Another comment posted above points to data that chromebooks are forming 14% of PC sales in the US. From my personal experience, the local highschool and middle school where I live have basically mandated that each student buy a chromebook -- they don't say chromebook exactly but heavily, strongly suggest it for the low price and maintenance factors. 90+% of the students are carrying around lightweight chromebooks in their backpacks now.

Chromebook sales are constantly rising.

With the eventual capability that they'll be able to run Android programs, as well as PNaCl and Emscripten borrowing from each other and getting better offering opportunity for tons of apps to be ported to the web, and then of course HTML5 and Js becoming the technology of choice for all sorts of apps, Chromebooks are the eventual future.

Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future.

And this is the main thing - for millions (hundreds of millions, maybe billions soon), a smartphone is their first entry to the internet. Probably an Android. When they see the Chrome logo in a laptop they can afford, and they already like the Android/Chrome ecosystem, they'll buy it, versus Windows which is associated with viruses, scams, piracy, etc...

Keep in mind Googles current business is still search. The net they're casting has nothing to do with the present, they're gunning for 7 billion people to associate them with computing, and to create the new future of computing.

Go to the third world. Yes some families have cheap PCs running pirated XP, but every kid has a cheap smartphone that they can connect to the internet with. They all have Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc...

>Chromebook sales are constantly rising

Where are the real shipping numbers from Google then? Surely they must know the numbers? Why won't they release it then? The only reason I can think of could be that they aren't all that great.

You do realise that Asus, Lenovo, HP, etc... sell Chromebooks, right? Google sells very few branded as a 'Google' product.

The numbers are out there, but Google isn't releasing numbers because they're a tiny vendor.

You mean Google does not know exactly how many Chromebooks are being sold by Asus, Lenovo, HP, etc?

No. Why would they? You think Asus, Lenovo and HP are giving sales data to Google?

They do know about Android activations, it's not so far fetched.

All the Chromebooks phone home regularly checking for updates, etc. Google knows exactly how many have been used and are in use now.

They probably do, but all those are public companies. They all report sales a certain way. Google isn't going to mess with reporting sales that other companies are making. That's irresponsible.

I don't have a Chromebook, but I think you have to sign into a Google account to use a Chromebook, so surely they have the numbers?

You can use it in guest mode without a Google account or other authentication. I don't remember if you need to explicitly set it up to do that, though.

I'm sure Google has the numbers since the Chromebooks/Chromeboxes auto-update (part of the whole point, really) so given that they likely have unique device IDs (or ethernet MAC addresses), the 'live devices count' would be rather easy to figure out.

"Chromebooks in Q3 2013 had at best a 1.2 percent share of the PC market and a 0.76 percent share of the combined PC-tablet market."

Latest IDC figures show Chromebooks continue to struggle http://www.zdnet.com/article/latest-idc-figures-show-chromeb...

Q3 2013 is a long time ago. According to NPD, Chromebooks had 14% market share in 2014, counting retail and commercial (read: education) channels. Growth was up 85% year over year, too, which is amazing in the context of a stagnant/declining laptop market.

http://betanews.com/2015/02/24/2015-is-year-of-the-chromeboo...

NPD is a less reliable source covering a much smaller market (not that any of them are reliable).

Chromebook sales are about 1% of all PC sales, says ABI Research http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/chromebook...

Different source, different paper, different journalist, same conclusion.

The idea that Chromebooks sell in volume is delusional, at this point, and downvotes won't make it any less delusional.

You can spin it all sorts of ways. Keep in mind the 'PC' market includes all those legacy Windows XP computers which are languishing in peoples homes, businesses, corporations, etc...

Chromebook sales are a much bigger part of current PC sales. And vendors do keep expanding their Chromebook lines. If it was a failure they wouldn't.

The "PC market" refers to current sales. "Installed base" is the term for the metric that includes the languishing WinXP machines.

Ah yeah you're right. The 1% came from some guy extrapolating Samsung's sales of Chromebooks to mean the whole Chromebook market...

Some guy being a professional journalist who actually made some effort to analyze the numbers.

I appreciate from the downvotes above that some people prefer to believe what they want to believe ;-)

> "Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future."

That reminds me of Sun in the early 90's.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I don't think it's inevitable you're right either. Especially since browser UI toolkits are still stuck in the stone age compared to native counterparts.

Until that gets fixed, I actually think it's probably just wishful thinking.

How ubiquitous is Java? Containers, VMs, etc..., ARE all the rage. Sun was correct as to what technology belongs to the future, they just couldn't position their company properly. Odds are we're all using technology that's part of Sun's legacy...

That wasn't the vision that I recall. Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea.

A lot of cool things came out of Sun. I don't think this was one. Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.

You mean like Atom? A lot of the web IDEs are pretty good nowadays. Not decades behind desktop software.

No. Atom is a text-editor with plugins. It's no more a competitor for IntelliJ than UltraEdit was a competitor to Visual Studio.NET. (IMO)

But I was actually talking about in-browser environments like CodeAnywhere.

Atom is in-browser. It just so happens to ship with its own browser (Atom-Shell is based on Chromium)...

Depending on the language and stack you choose, a text editor with a terminal and a REPL may be all you need. I spend most of my day switching between emacs, a terminal and a browser.

> Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea.

I'm pretty young, so I was woefully ignorant of this. However the more I read about it, the more it sounds like 'Cloud computing' and 'internet of things'. In fact, Chrome OS isn't too far from their Java Internet Terminal idea.

> Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.

I have. My main IDE, and probably my favourite ever, is R Studio which runs in a Webview (or as a webpage) and uses Ace for editing. Two fairly popular upstart IDEs, LightTable and Atom both use web technology. I quite enjoy Caret as well.

Not sure why you think they're decades behind. If anything the fact they're as advanced as they are is impressive, given most have been developed only in the last few years, whereas Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc..., have been around much longer.

> In fact, Chrome OS isn't too far from their Java Internet Terminal idea.

That's what I was getting at. That was 19 years ago.

> Not sure why you think they're decades behind.

I was thinking in person-hours. I don't mean to belittle them. But I feel like these are mostly "JustAnotherTextMate".

any good sources on sun's history?

Not really. Just Googled and found some old pages. Others could probably do better.

There are orders of magnitude more UI kits for HTML/CSS then there are for native.

Is that because HTML/CSS UIs are more robust and advanced than native UI frameworks? Or because native UI framekits solved all the problems that the vast cornucopia of HTML/CSS UI frameworks are still struggling to solve? Or because everybody looks at all the HTML/CSS frameworks, decides none of them solve their problem, and decides to write their own?

It's because it's so easy to create your own. HTML/CSS is very accessible, well tested by lots and lots of small communities.

There are many HTML/CSS frameworks that are doing really great job and not struggling at all. It all depends of course on what you want to do, but finding a good kit that solves your problem is definitely not the bottleneck of creating a modern HTML UI based application.

I don't think you can compare Angular with Cocoa.

> There are orders of magnitude more UI kits for HTML/CSS then there are for native.

of course you need them because working directly with hTML/CSS is total crap.

Are there any decent modern ones at all? I'm looking for a few, but don't want to re-invent the wheel.

> If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does

That's not remotely true.

When my grandparents and parents ask me what computer they should get, or my in-laws ask what they should get their kids, I'm going to seriously consider Chromebooks. If they need to run Office, or Minecraft, clearly it's not a fit. But for the tweeting / facebooking / gmailing universe, a Chromebook is a very nice box.

And the number of zero-day exploits, viruses, keyboard loggers is way smaller for a Chrome OS machine. And the update process is a painless reboot. And I'm not helping them try to read data off of a dead hard drive (because it's in the cloud.) And if they want a second or a third, all of their data is visible on all of them. And the battery is great, the wifi works great, the build quality is great. Get them hooked up with two-factor protection, and their accounts and data are pretty well protected.

You're viewing the Chrome OS machines and their competitors, from a tech-savvy super-user standpoint. Many people don't need, don't want, and are hindered by that flexibility and power.

The maintenance cost on a "full OS" is higher than the maintenance cost on a Chrome OS. Period.

One of the problems I run into when recommending Chromebooks (I tried to convince my 75 year old mother, for example) is that almost every user turns out to have a need for something you can't do on a Chromebook. It ends up being a 90% solution for 90% of people, rather than a 100% solution for 80% of the people.

What was she trying to do?

For me, it's the camera-printer link that keeps messing me up.

A google cloud print enabled printer solves the printing issue.

The Google printer "solution" has always struck me as an exceedingly stupid solution. I have a local microcomputer, and a local printer yet the solution is to send my data to the other side of the world and then push it back on to the printer I am stood looking at? Why? It's stupid. Why not talk directly to the printer without the requirement of an Internet connection?

The same goes for sending files via Dropbox to someone next to you on an iDevice. Since it's very difficult for me to send data from my Android device to my wife's iPad or even from my MacBook to my wife's iPad3, the "solution" is to send it to the other side of the world on to Dropbox's servers for her to retrieve it.

Back in thte 50s when people had visions of an interconnected world and a utopian human future, filled with spaceflight and wonder, I am pretty sure they didn't have visions of needlessly sending data through 50+ network nodes just to get it back again on a device right next to them.

It's so stupid; if you had proposed this "solution" 20 years ago they'd have laughed you out of the room, yet today Chromebooks ("store all of YOUR data ELSEWHERE! Struggle to get it back! Find it impossible to send to a device NEXT TO YOU!") and the associated cloud solutions are all the rage.

It's stupid.

When I send an email to my boss, it goes up to Google servers.

That's how cloud stuff works. Picking on cloud printers in particular is raging at the wind.

Good point, but email is understood to indicate remote people, even if in truth your boss is sat next to you.

Printers don't really fit this model - when you tell something to print (for the printer on your desk), getting it sent to the other side of the world just to come back is daft, energy inefficient and wasteful.

Trying to reply to sibling post:

She works as an interpreter/translator and needs to be able to write documents in multiple language systems (e.g. non-Latin alphabets) in a way she understands.

The thing is, most people are replacing a junky old Windows laptop that's just too slow/malware-ridden to use anymore, right? Keep that thing around, drag it out when you need that 5% app, and use the Chromebook the rest of the time.

I mean, if you buy a tablet, you don't worry that it can't print out Excel documents, right? It's still the best device for doing what you're doing with it. So with a Chromebook -- it's a better general-web-use device than a Windows laptop, particularly at the price points that Chromebooks live at.

I think most people want one device not two, and they want to improve their experience with everything, not just most things. While a Chromebook met 90% of my mother's needs, the 10% of functionality it lacked was 75% of her usage.

> When my grandparents and parents ask me what computer they should get, or my in-laws ask what they should get their kids, I'm going to seriously consider Chromebooks. If they need to run Office, or Minecraft, clearly it's not a fit. But for the tweeting / facebooking / gmailing universe, a Chromebook is a very nice box.

If you really need Office, and not just Google Docs, you can actually run Office on a Chromebook.

Yeah, but Office in the browser is worse than Google Docs, in my opinion.

It's sad to see folks celebrating computing devices that are more extremely locked down than even the iDevices. A Windows PC/laptop is much more open than a Chromebook.

Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS? Only Google can make system and native apps, unlike the iDevices where you can access most of the native functionality even if you have to go through Apple's approval and you're not forced to upload all your information into Google's cloud with paltry local storage like 64GB on even a 1500 dollar machine where the information is mined by Google and is accessible to various parties like the Government. They now even track which retail stores people visit using their Android phones or iPhones. http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

Looks like user and developer freedom are a big concern only when Apple or Microsoft infringe it(even though Win32 is much more open than ChromeOS, after all Google exploited it with the Chrome browser and bundling it with Flash and Java updates), but Google gets a free pass to lock everything down and still call itself open.

You can't release Firefox for an iDevice either as Apple does not allow native code that you need for Gecko so they are about equal in ability to run system apps front.

Chromebooks also run Android apps so in the near future there will be a lot more flexibility in what kinds of either web apps or Android apps you can develop. Firefox already runs on Android and presumably will be available for Chrome OS within this year.

Sure Apple allows native code.

Apple doesn't allow third-party interpreters/compilers if they can run code from untrusted sources (Codea and some Python environments get around it by only running locally written code).

Apple allows native code. What they don't allow is the use of any other rendering engine besides WebKit.

and that's fucking stupid - because web browsers can't compete on iOS

There is crouton. Just github it.

Just because you can replace an OS does not mean it's open. It's about the ecosystem too. How much percentage of Chromebooks could be running Crouton or Linux? I wager less than 2%.

And how many Windows users installed Linux? If it's easier to run Linux or use Crouton on a Chromebook, then that's an argument against the view that they're less open than Windows or iOS.

You're wrong. 100% of Chromebooks are running Linux. If you don't want to use Crouton you can bootstrap Linuxbrew and have access to pretty much any program you'd have on any other Linux distribution.

not just Linux, but Gentoo Linux. the one everyone used to make fun of[1] before Google made it acceptable, and the only one not going the systemd route.

1. http://funroll-loops.teurasporsaat.org/

> Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS?

Can Google even make a Chrome browser for FirefoxOS?

All of the PR surrounding the creation of FirefoxOS lauded how it was completely open because it was built on standards like HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

But when Google does the same thing, it is an example of "locking everything down while still calling itself open."

Mozilla has been arguing for years that compile-to-JavaScript is good enough (and based their opposition to NaCl/PNaCl on this principle). It is strange to see argument here against Google that "only true native will do", when that argument is what motivated NaCl/PNaCl to begin with.

Folks aren't talking about FirefoxOS replacing laptops or desktops though, unlike Chromebooks, if you follow this thread. Nor does Mozilla do a lot of cloud business nor is it in the business of tracking users for advertizing purposes.

The PC software ecosystem has been open historically, even with Windows and OS X, and now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative

> Nor does Mozilla do a lot of cloud business nor is it in the business of tracking users for advertizing purposes.

What does that have to do with how open the devices are?

> now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative

If Mozilla and Google both do X, but Mozilla's actions are judged as "open" while Google's are judged as "completely closed," then the words open and closed are losing their meaning.

How does Google's other business activities affect whether, in principle, an HTML/JavaScript-based OS is "open" or "closed"?

Yes, it's true that OS platforms are moving towards sandboxing their apps more and more. This is mainly being driven by market forces, because more sandboxed platforms offer important features:

    - more resistant to malware

    - more secure (one stupid little app can't steal/delete all your data)

But no one is taking away your Windows or OS X boxes. If people keep wanting them, manufacturers will keep making them.

And while mainstream consumer devices are moving towards being more sandboxed, the ability to tinker is being addressed in other ways, like Raspberry Pi, which are very cool in their own way.

You are kind of conflating a few different issues here.

iDevices are locked down for the purposes of Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users. Chromebooks are locked down for end-user security and ease-of-administration.

Chromebooks allow the end-user to unlock the bootloader and/or run them in developer mode if they really want to do that (and this is all well documented by Google, not akin to jailbreaking), and pretty much the only reason a lot of developers even consider Chromebooks as full laptop replacements is for this reason.

Want to run Firefox on a Chromebook? Install crouton (a project developed by a Google employee) and just go ahead and run Firefox, works fine, just like any other Linux app. Google does nothing to stop this (in fact, they go out of their way to make tools to enable it), they just put enough friction into it to let you know that when you do this all bets are off as to the security of the chroot you are running native Linux apps in.

> Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users.

There are legitimate benefits to having a locked down platform which Apple (and developers/consumers) have decided is worth the negatives. There are zero viruses or malware on iOS compared to quite a few on Android. The quality of applications is significantly higher on iOS because (a) developers have a consistent platform to optimize for and (b) majority of iOS users are more than likely on the latest release.

This approach is working so well for Apple that Google, Samsung and Microsoft are all trying to emulate it.

And these advantages are meaningful not just for the companies, but for the end-user. Most users don't want to root their own machines, they just want a machine that can help them live their lives, make ends meet, and learn more about their world. A virus that bricks the machine keeps them from doing that.

Of course, for some 15-year-old girl in Jakarta, "learn more about their world" may in fact mean rooting their machine so they can deal with grotty Unix details and 8 years down the road build on that to for an MEng thesis and then startup.

I honestly don't see any real benefits of Apple's lock-down approach compared to ChromeOS's lock-down approach. Users who want the full security of ChromeOS can use it as it ships and be happy, users who want to live on the wild side can fairly trivially (but with enough effort that they don't do it on accident) break the locks.. best of both worlds, user gets to decide how much they want to live in a locked box.

I don't disagree that there are benefits to the consistency of the Apple ecosystem versus that of Android, but all of those benefits are rooted in Google's lack of control of what phone vendors do with the OS (though they have been working to change that), not lack of control of users or app developers.. the entire jailbreaking ecosystem proves that such freedom doesn't harm the people who want the safe thing, it is just a shame they are forced to constantly fight against the phone vendor (on the Apple side) to keep things open whereas Google (usually -- they've been uncharacteristically dickish with Chromecast hardware) usually goes out of their way to allow the user to run free if they want to.

nacl is not exactly "standard"

> when Google does the same thing, it is an example of "locking everything down while still calling itself open."

Well, Mozilla have a proven track record of providing a self-host alternative for their cloud platform (the main reason I'm using Firefox sync -- with Mozilla servers -- is that I could set up a proof-of-concept sync server[1] on my own hw, see that, yes it does work fine. Contrast that with what Google does ("We have a magic database, here's some of the ideas behind it; sorry you can't host your own, so all our service tech will remain proprietary").

I use Chromium from time to time, but I don't use Chrome -- and I avoid logging in to Google services when I can.

I've been waiting for a Cyanogen-mod for my current phone, because I don't like running stock Android in it's sort-a-open, mostly-closed state -- not to mention the amount of spyware that ships with the platform (it doesn't help that Samsung ships its own software too -- which I'm assuming contains its share of bugs).

Try building a working phone kernel+userland with whatever Google+partner have released and try and convince me that they're good at doing "open".

I hope they will keep the dev-mode for all chromebooks -- and that they'll make it easier to boot into custom kernels without a boot-up delay etc -- but I'm not holding my breath.

[1] I actually ran the previous one, but I'll be setting up an updated one, as soon as I move "into" my new server.

Actually, I upvoted this, but on reflection I think this is wrong. Here's why:

- Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing any operating system to be loaded on them.

- ChromeOS follows the same open source model as Chrome—Most core features open, with things like Flash/Wildvine/API keys held secret.

- There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS" and "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chromebooks". Both of these statements are absolutely true.

So I fail to see how Chromebooks are "more extremely locked down" than iDevices.

> There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS"

Exactly - ChromeOS is a browser. "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS" makes about as much sense as "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chrome" or "Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer".

...or it would have made that little sense before Mozilla wrote a browser in html: https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html

The fact that the Chromium process is what's compositing windows is relatively uninteresting to the end user. It's Linux with a different GUI system. Ubuntu is ditching X11 also, as I understand it, so people other than Google appear to be prepared to redo Linux GUIs.

There's Native Client, so you can write native code. I believe there are things like Emacs for NaCl, though Emacs is relatively useless until someone also ports your favorite programming language, version control, etc. to this model. For programmers, it's tough to have to redo everything, and because we tend not to use the ability to run unaudited native code to install viruses on our machine, it seems like a lot of work for no reason. For the end user, though, things are a bit different. It's a long road but ultimately computers that are easier to use and get fewer viruses is a worthy goal, I think.

Someone could port Firefox to ChromeOS if they found it to be interesting. It would probably be quite difficult, however.

I use ChromeOS as my primary workstation because it removes a lot of headaches I have with computers. I hate configuring things. I just want a terminal with Emacs and a web browser. ChromeOS gives me this. I log into my laptop and it has the exact same configuration as my desktop.

ChromeOS auto-updates and takes 8 seconds to reboot afterwards. It doesn't nag me about auto-updates or checking that Windows Defender is up to date. All my work is saved somewhere other than my desktop/laptop, so if I lose the computer or get another one all I have to do is log in again.

It's very much a thin-client thing, which some people hate, but I find quite suitable for my normal workflow. sshing into a Linux box is generally great for doing work. Using the GUIs is an effort in frustration. ChromeOS solved that issue for me. (Yup, I need an Internet connection to get to my ssh-able Linux box somewhere. I always have one.)

If you are convinced Google is out to get you with configuration syncing, SSH clients that run "in a web browser" (but are native code and preserve all keybindings that you're used to), and "cloud storage" then ChromeOS is probably not for you. Enter developer mode (one keypress) and install your favorite Linux distribution instead -- all the patches necessary to make the devices work are in the open source tree, and unlike with Linux on random Windows laptops, your WiFi will work and you'll get the advertised battery life.

I have given ChromeOS laptops to family members where my previous attempts at giving them computers have failed. A year later their laptops are running the latest version of the OS and didn't have any viruses. I even got them using two-factor authentication with security keys! I was surprised.

Disclaimer: I work on ChromeOS as my 20% project. But I work on it because it solved a lot of my computing problems and I find it worth my time. I wouldn't waste my time advocating to help my employer sell $149 laptops.

Totally agree on the family thing.

I purchased my 88 year old father a chromebook two years ago.

It just works, and is the only computer he has not messed up.

Highly recommended.

I guess the terminal is just a browser tab? can the configs made to the browser terminal tab persist? like font, text size, color, etc...

Also, when running emacs in the terminal through ssh, doesn't emacs keybindings interfere to much with chromeos's browser?

Apps running in a window can capture whatever keys they want. So Control-W is interpreted by your shell/app, not by the browser (closing the window). In a tab the browser keybindings still exist, so be sure to set "open in new window" by right-clicking the app before running.

Terminal settings are configurable and persistent.

You can have as many windows open as you like.

Here's the app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...

It works on any machine running Chrome. Things don't quite work right on MacOS, I'm told, but it seems native on Windows and Linux. (And CrOS of course.)

cool, I think I'm getting one, one last question :)

you said it is your main workstation, I'm guessing you are an external monitor, how well does external monitors work?

Fine.

There's a dialog for setting up resolutions and relative position of the screens to each other. Attaching a screen means that it's automatically fired up with its default settings.

Each screen has the window bar, and clicking on icons there opens the respective website/app on that screen.

When closing the laptop with an attached screen, it merely disabled the display (instead of going to sleep completely) which was confusing the first time but actually makes sense and is how other devices handle the situation as well.

I actually use a Chromebox: http://promos.asus.com/us/chrome-os/chromebox/

I have the i7 model at work and an i3 model at home. Both are fast. I also have a Chromebook Pixel for situations that require a laptop.

As for monitors, both the desktops and laptops handle my 4k monitor OK, but only at 30Hz (because it's a Displayport MST model which are horrible hacks and are thankfully no longer made). At work I use a 24" and 30" monitor. Works as expected.

You can tune the density per-monitor, so you can run your 4k monitor at 1.25x or 2x density and your normal monitor at 1x density and it Just Works.

It's a pretty nice OS.

> Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer

Sure they could; it would just be an ActiveX control, or whatever they call that this week.

They could, and they pretty much did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_Frame

> There are no native apps on ChromeOS

This is not correct, you can run native apps for Chrome OS via Native Client (NaCL) or App Runtime for Chrome (ARC).

VLC, a poster child for native apps, will be released for Chrome OS in a few months using ARC.

Anandtech has already tested a beta version: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9082/the-chromebook-pixel-2015...

Hmm... If you can port VLC to Chrome OS with ARC, I wonder what happens if you try to shove Firefox for Android into it. Are there fundamental roadblocks that would prevent it from working, or would you just end up with a slow and buggy waltzing bear?

You'd have Firefox running on top of Chrome, so that doesn't make that much sense.

I suspect their sandbox doesn't allow code generation since they statically verify you aren't using instructions they can't protect against and that would break it. That means that while you could probably get a Firefox running, it'd be with a Javascript interpreter, not a JIT.

While I don't work on any of the related pieces, it should be noted that NaCL has dynamic "check this code" support precisely so you can JIT-compile code and execute it safely.

> Anandtech has already tested a beta version

It's an interesting experiment but I don't think Google is aiming to please the crowd with the need for "native apps" anyways and they wouldn't be terribly interested in keeping the native VLC dependencies alive and/or compatible. It seems pretty obvious to me that Google is trying to push the mainstream consumer market into a "cloud computing/services lifestyle", it only makes sense because their whole business model revolves around web users. So VLC is out, Netflix/Playstore is in.

Not for me, don't get me wrong, I'm not that kind of consumer and it may be safe to state that most people within the HN crowd isn't either. I'm personally following and waiting for the Novena[1] laptop and open hardware to be launched.

Even if chromeOS is removed and Gnu/Linux is loaded instead, chromebooks' keyboards look abysmally ugly and useless to me, otherwise I would at least be excited about the inexpensive hardware.

So yeah, as a consumer I can distill my opinion about this product to "meh...", but as a web developer though, that's a different story, the possibility of Google hardware converting handheld mobile users to desktop-ish mobile users and reaching a broader international audience makes me almost enthusiastic about Chromebooks.

After all, until some potentially better hardware project (Firefox OS [2] or Indie Phone [3], who knows) expands to the netbook-ish form factor ("Lapfox"?/"Indiebook"?), the not-so-open inexpensive Chromebook hardware & affordable by hundreds of millions (potentially billions, we'll see) introduces and welcomes new demographics to the web and is better for the world (in the short run) than almost-fully-open expensive hardware that only a few million can afford (for now), don't you think?

[1]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop

[2]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/

[3]: https://ind.ie/about/

Which Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked?

I am asking because it was a major pain to get Lubuntu installed on Acer C720, Windows is not an option at all.

Chromebooks feel extremely locked down I'd say close to iDevices.

  There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question
  is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS"

Ah, so we're back to "the browser and the OS are inextricably linked, so the browser can't be replaced with a competing product" ?

It's just like the old days!

> - Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing any operating system to be loaded on them.

So do most Windows Notebooks. I just bought one recently at 250$, installed Linux. so there is nothing special about chromebooks in this regard.

They weren't saying such.

"So I fail to see how Chromebooks are 'more extremely locked down' than iDevices."

> Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS?

Sure, Native Client's there and should have all the functionality you need. It'll technically be running inside Chrome, but so is everything else like the settings dialog.

https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html

That's merely a browser GUI, not a full browser with a Javascript and rendering engine and whatnot.

> Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS?

Apparently they can: https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html

I don't think having a "full OS" factors very much into the decision process for someone considering this kind of device.

Not phrased that way but phrasedmore like: why can't I run skype on this? Or why can't I use this while on plane and so on

Why no Skype? Because the owner of Skype doesn't feel like supporting that. That may make these devices unsuitable for you, but consider that this same owner may want to consider dropping service for you on your other devices, too.

(The ubiquitous presence of an ISA/OS pair is a historical anomaly, and I believe it's on the way out)

You can't log in to a Chromebook for the first time while on a plane. After initialization, for example the Google Docs suite works pretty well with no connection - and so could any other web app that doesn't rely on connectivity for its base operation: eg. Skype on Windows on a plane will work just as bad as Hangouts on Chrome OS on a plane.

> If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it?

Are there really any sub-200$ Windows laptops that have 10 hour battery life on an 8 second boot?

I find that pretty hard to believe. Maybe they have similarly specced components but the experience will be much worse.

> 10 hour battery life on an 8 second boot?

8 second boot ,frankly who cares ? my windows machine takes 40 second to boot sure, but I boot it like 2 times a week.

10 hour battery life ? maybe on idle, I bet this thing doesn't last 10 hours with 50 tabs opened or when playing youtube videos ...

I can't believe there are still people defending that stuff, it's netbooks all over again but worse cause it's only a browser ...

Or we are on full astroturfing mode like anytime there is a Chromebook thread on HN i'm not sure.

10 hour battery life ? maybe on idle, I bet this thing doesn't last 10 hours with 50 tabs opened or when playing youtube videos ...

You are right - it's probably more like 8 hours. The older Acer c720 got between 6 and 7 hours streaming Netflix[1]. The Chromebook 13 got 10 hours[2].

[1] http://www.trustedreviews.com/acer-c720-chromebook-review-ba...

[2] http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/23/acer-chromebook-13-review...

Those numbers are with hardware decoding, aren't they. I'd be more intrested in something compute-intensive that was compiled to asm.js. I bet they'll last much less.

That said, these are machines with mobile processors and an OS that is tailored for mobiles. It isn't all that suprising that they are more capable than their normal counterparts.

Decoding is hardware accelerated, yes.

Chromebooks seem to average around 8 hours of continuous web browsing[1].

[1] http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/samsung-chromebook-...

For my mom/grandmother/dad... They're all using chromebooks... not for the reduced cost, but because the environment is more secure, and fits their needs.

So the answer is maybe.

Your grandmother picked a platform to be secure? Grandmothers these days...

No, I did after the 3rd time I had to remotely remove crapware from my grandmother's computer... when the hdd died, I sent her a chromebook... my mom liked it so much, I gave her one too, and she got one for my dad. They all really like them. They simply work for what they wanted.

I just bought a Chromebook for my parents-in-law, even though there were slightly cheaper Windows laptops. The reason? I'm off the hook for support. No malware issues, no backups, no nothing - worst case the thing lets out the magic smoke, you buy a new one and log in again.

And that's why the education sector is flocking to these things. OK, the price is good, but when you factor in order of magnitude less support costs, it's a very compelling proposition.

No, it isn't just about the cost.

If I had a choice between a £150 Chromebook and a £75 Windows laptop, I'd choose the Chromebook.

Windows isn't an 'upgrade' to Chrome OS.

I hope you're right, but past Google initiatives into the developing economy markets (like Android One) haven't been too successful (so far)

There's better options in the $50 - $150 price range for smartphones than Android One. The same with laptops - a $150-$200 x86 laptop running Windows is much better than the equivalent ARM Chromebook right now.

And that's just for new sales. Another reason is the large market for used products - which provide better performance per dollar than most products which needs to be manufactured (and maintain the same 'expensive western brand' status-orientated in cultures, and income unequal economies (which is strongly correlated to consumption of luxury goods).

I want to agree, but then I remember that emerging markets are skipping a generation of technology towards cellular phones. In a few ways a laptop is a step back in terms of connectivity and utility right?

I'm just curious... will the laptop be their first device or their second?

> Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?

Me on the other hand see only the hunger for next batch of data collecting on a population that is still "unexplored".

Oddly enough, though, there's currently no Chromebooks in Thailand aside from greymarket imports. HP, Acer, none of the Chromebook partners officially sell them here. It'd be interesting to have any Chromebooks for sale in Thailand—and at this price point, even more so.

I think affordable Chromebooks is key in order to increase adoption, especially if Google is targeting lower-income markets like Africa, South America, etc, And I believe that might be what this is all about. It certainly complements their Loon project (http://www.google.com/loon/ -- 'Internet via balloons') very nicely. I think it's a brilliant move by Google and partners.

> In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.

In Indian due to the import tax Chromebooks are far more expensive than entry level laptops. I had to get it from some come in US as it simply doesn't make any sense to buy them at these inflated prices (Its like 2x the original cost in India for an outdated model).

Where is the $149 Windows-Based laptop with SSD, 2-4GB RAM, and moderate graphics, that can run your usual Office to Minecraft software? The Chromebook-killer from Microsoft should be here, but all I hear about are the Surfaces.

Honestly, the only reason my kids don't have Chromebooks is because they don't easily run Minecraft or downloadable games. Sure they can do their school work on them, but they also like to play, and we've already tried messing with Linux on some older desktops.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-Laptop-Personal-Horizon/dp/B... HP Stream 11 is likely the closest to what you're looking for $199 so slightly more expensive, but a year of Office365 included...

For those interested, here is a review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8784/hp-stream-11-review-a-new...

tl;dr: "...if you have been wanting a Chromebook running Windows, be sure to check out the HP Stream."

the first hit is always free

downvotes for disagreeing with the O365 business model? thanks hacker news!

I was going to post this if somebody else didn't. To add one important detail: the HP Stream you linked doesn't just exist as a proof of concept or whatever, which would be one thing, but it's currently outselling all the Chromebooks (and every other laptop for that matter) on Amazon.

Chromebooks dominated in 2014, but they've been bumped and I'm not sure they'll ever be back at the top. Rather than a sea change, it looks like Google was just ahead of its competitors for a year, and now that year has come and gone.

Actually that was a USA only phenomenon, I never saw Chromebooks live in Europe.

Here in Germany, some chain stores do have a few of them at their little corner being ignored by everyone.

It's also perhaps that Germans are vary before an OS which is an internet machine and comes from a company where main revenue is ad business.

Pretty sure Chromebooks dominated amazon.co.uk for a while too...

> Pretty sure Chromebooks dominated amazon.co.uk for a while too...

Pretty sure it didn't.

I wasn't 100% so I had a quick look. Here's a blog post from 2012 with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook shown as the top seller in laptops in the UK (you have to scroll right down to the bottom).

http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/chromebooks-best-...

You're right though, it wasn't 2014, it was 2012.

Is it possible to install Linux on the HP Stream ?

Almost certainly so. It's got a real bios, so you should be able to change how it boots.

If it's anything like the other devices in that series it will be 32 bit UEFI, which not many distros have out of the box. You can certainly build 32 bit GRUB. http://askubuntu.com/questions/392719/32-bit-uefi-boot-suppo...

I'm running ubuntu on it :)

I've also seen this system in my search, but it doesn't meet the criteria:

1) This system is listed at $199, not $149.

2) In the questions at the bottom, users do not recommend this as a Minecraft or gaming system.

A bit more expensive

http://www.costco.com/ASUS-T100TAR-Transformer-Book-2-in-1-T...

detachable Touchscreen tablet, quad core, 2GB RAM, 32GB Storage

I doubt the battery life is any longer than the ARM based competition. "Better" depends on what value you put on which feature. For me, I wouldn't use a Chromebook because Emacs needs Alt and Super keys.

Minecraft is a pretty intensive application, don't be fooled just because the graphics seem to be less clean. There are lighter versions of Minecraft for different platforms, but those are often incredibly limited and only support the specific platform.

$149 is ridiculously cheap and I don't think Microsoft wants, or should want to operate in that market.

At the $200-$300 price range there are many Windows choices - most with significantly better hardware and features.

Microsoft: Leave the sub $200 market to others and leverage your online services to sell to those consumers.

Microsoft ate IBM and others from the bottom, because the margins were too low on PC vs mainframe and minis. And now, you're suggesting Microsoft should accept being eaten from the bottom because the margins are too low (I guess that's what you're arguing). Classic innovator's dilemma scenario.

Those who don't learn from history will repeat it. Even those who made the history in question.

What makes the Chromebook a disruptive innovation?

It's cheaper and simpler with less functionality. Isn't that the broad idea [1]?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market. What market does the Chromebook create that a $200 netbook didn't already create?

Sometimes, all it takes to be disruptive is to be cheaper.

"What market does the Chromebook create that a $200 netbook didn't already create?"

I prefer to think we mostly find markets rather than create them, generally speaking. Chromebook may find a market in India or Africa or China. Places where a mobile device was everybody's first experience with personal computing, so the idea of it being intimately tied to the network isn't so strange. And, just as importantly, where $50 is a weeks wages so it seems a lot more important to spend 25% less on the device.

I can see how me invoking Innovator's Dilemma here is possibly a stretch from some perspectives. Even if it is not disruptive innovation in the sense you prefer, it is still seeming more and more likely to continue to erode Microsoft's dominance in the places they have always been very, very strong: Cheap home PCs.

Also, I think the argument could be made that this is a better product for less money. Windows on such scanty hardware is a pretty rough experience. Chrome OS on tiny machines isn't so bad. And, for people who already only use their computer for Internet stuff, there are no benefits to the Windows experience and plenty of negatives.

So, this isn't a situation of, "Why would I get a dinky little fake computer if it's only $50 less than a good computer with Windows?" It's more of a "Why would I spend more for a computer that is slow, clunky, has a bunch of crap I don't need/want only so I can use also-ran webmail, online docs, etc. when I can get the market leading stuff for less?"

I dunno, really. I'm just trying to imagine this from the perspective of someone who didn't grow up in a world dominated by Microsoft, because that's the world we now live in. The world is now dominated by Google with Apple and Facebook as thought leaders on the periphery. Things are different now, and getting a computer with Windows on it just isn't a thing that (young) people care so much about.

I think MS's reaction will be interesting. When linux netbooks came out, they aggressively discounted Windows for them, fending off the linux threat from below.

MS/intel already have some incredibly cheap tablets (and Windows 8.1 reportedly runs well on them). Seems logical that MS will discount again. All they have to lose is everything.

That was an interesting, and scary, wielding of their power actually. I'm happy they don't have quite that much power anymore.

The reason I say it was scary was that it was a moment in time where you could watch a class of computers from one generation to the next get worse because of limits imposed by Microsoft on OEMs. I bought a Dell Mini 9 just before they switched to the Mini 10. The Mini 10 actually had half the memory capacity of the Mini 9 (1GB vs 2GB in the Mini 9), because Microsoft defined "netbook" to have a maximum memory size and CPU power, which was lower than what netbooks had already climbed up to. Microsoft didn't want to see their margins decrease on "real" computers, but didn't want to cede the low end market to Linux. They saw the power of cheap then, and will probably see the power of cheap now. The difference is they don't have enough clout with enough manufacturers to dumb down these small computers.

So, yeah, I'd be surprised if they don't respond. They already have very low cost Windows Phone licenses in order to compete with Android (but it's not really working). Honestly, I believe we're entering a post-Microsoft world, even on the desktop. It'll be five or ten more years before Windows is no longer commonly seen, but it's already not really a foregone conclusion that computers should have Windows on them.

The people who downvoted SwellJoe: Can you explain? The facts about the "netbooks" are verifiable facts, see e.g. [0]. That's a business version of "embrace, extinguish" (no extension here), and it's classic for the Bill Gates / Ballmer era.

Microsoft was strongarming the manufacturers - in 2009, they could still do that easily (and they might still be able to today). The carrot and stick was reduced Windows licensing - but only if you make netbooks unusable. And thus netbooks died. I hope that Nadella's Microsoft is not like that - it looks way better than the Ballmer days - but having been bitten multiple times, I'll wait until I trust Microsoft again.

[0] http://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_h...

I have a theory about humans having a generally short memory for corporate malfeasance, or to put it in a better light, having a much more forgiving nature than I do.

I also tend to get down-voted whenever I talk about nasty stuff Apple has done.

And, occasionally, when I do get a reply rather than or in addition to a downvote it will be of the form: "Well, X also does what you accused Y of." i.e., complaints about the monopolistic practices of Microsoft will result in, "Well, Google is also a monopoly, and I think they're worse because of this other thing." Which, while often true statements, do not provide any reason to dismiss the assertions about Microsoft they are responding to.

I am occasionally disappointed in HN. But, that's OK, because HN is occasionally disappointed in me.

Consider the HN audience and the disproportionate percentage of megacorps employees in it. Actionable community consensus that is being critical of Microsoft/Apple/Google is now nearly non-existent on HN.

These things are only obvious in retrospect. Why did the iPod create a new market when the Nomad MP3 Player already existed?

I agree Christensen often seems a bit post hoc, but I think at least trying to see if there's a new market can help (as opposed to attacking the fortified hill of an established market).

One could argue the Nomad's market was much smaller (most people who bought iPods had never heard of it), partly because of Apple's aggressive advertising... which certainly helps "create" a market.

In the case of the iPod, the answer is surely the iTunes Music Store, which was the first legal online store that sold popular music in digital formats.

No it wasn't.

Here's an article from 1999 about a variety of digital music distribution.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/netnotes.559....

That wiki's definition is simpler than I'd thought possible. But a "new market" includes a new group of people (doing the same old thing), and the same people doing the same thing in a new way (e.g. people with landline phones using cell phones).

Just in the comments here are mentioned: low-hassle machine for grandparents (which the HNer has to admin, who influences the decision); low cost and low hassle machine for school kids (which the school has to admin, an who decides); second or third backup machine; machines for the developing world; for people working mostly in chrome browser (which is faster than on Windows), which includes most of us, and some HN even dev in web IDEs.

Cheaper + low-hassle + web-optimised also makes them attractive, to almost everyone.

Well, just this week a purchased a HP Stream 7 Signature edition for £50 (~=$50). Microsoft is definitely in the market.

£50 !=$50 £50 ~=$75 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=50gbp+to+usd

For technology, the currency difference is almost entirely lost in poorer buying power and tax inclusive pricing.

eg. a 5K iMac is 2499 USD and 1999 GBP. That makes it about 3000 USD. Using that basis, the £50 tablet would retail in the US at 60 USD.

I got one for my wife about a month ago. Paid about $100 dollars for it, she uses it almost every day for email, Facebook, and browsing the internet.

I agree. Microsoft should ignore this because there's no money in it. Still, it's nice that a couple billion new people will be able to afford their first computer.

it's an awful computer

Yes, but it's a tethered computer with a dependency on a mainframe.

Do these poor people that this device is targeting also have sufficient money to pay for constant network access? The total cost of ownership for one of these suddenly becomes very high when you factor that in.

I have a few $300 Windows 8.1 machines and although they might have objectively better hardware, my Chromebook is nicer to work with. It feels a lot less flaky than some of the Asus and Acer $300-350 machines with Windows imho.

This is running an ARM chip, not an x86 one.

What does that have to do with anything. Minecraft runs on ARM.

Minecraft, yes. Other Windows software, maybe, if you are lucky.

Microsoft isn't as good at collecting and reselling all of your personal information, so have to charge the actual cost of the hardware.

> Microsoft isn't as good at collecting and reselling all of your personal information, so have to charge the actual cost of the hardware.

Google does not sell your personal information in any way. They use it for their own advertising purposes, but they don't sell it to anyone, in any form.

advertising is selling your information to advertisers.

Even that's not accurate. Advertising is selling access to people matching a certain demographic profile to advertisers.

They maintain a demographic profile (arguable: how accurate and comprehensive it is) by way of this line of business, but at no point is that profile sold to advertisers.

At no point has Google, or any other reputable ad network, had a system whereby you can download the information, personal or otherwise, of a few million people.

This is misleading and hyperbolic. Stop it.

If you want a view as to what advertising is actually like and what an advertiser can actually see, go sign up for Adwords and step through the process. I guarantee it is not as sketchy as you make it out to be.

Google has indeed sold information to the NSA.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri...

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing anybody but me. I work at Google, not on lawful intercept.)

That's not what this article says. This article is about what happens when the government lawfully issues a warrant to obtain somebody's private data, and orders a private company to give them the data. When this happens the company has some rights to recover their costs from the government.

You may not like what the US government is doing here. I certainly don't. But it's still the law, and companies that operate in the US have to comply with it.

>But it's still the law, and companies that operate in the US have to comply with it.

It's interesting that you guys figured out how to circumvent the US tax law, by hiding money in tax havens. I guess dodging the NSA warrants is not a priority.

The tax code is byzantine and full of loopholes.

Warrants are comparatively straightforward. The paper says "jump", you say "how high?" or else. In any case, handed a warrant signed by a judge (kangaroo FISA court or otherwise), you hand over the info first and fight it later. Anything else is obstruction.

OK, your opinion on warrants is noted.

I can be proud of my employer's substantial efforts to address NSA warrants, and would challenge you to find any single entity that has done more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25910694

https://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/google-2015-will-be-the-...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/31/apple-face...

http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/11/17/google-microsoft-appl...

Google is NOT in the business of selling information to advertisers. They're in the business of choosing who to advertise products to based on the information they collect and hold onto.

There is a significant difference between the two.

Google is the advertiser. Just replace the word 'Google' with 'Doubleclick'. It starts to make sense.

When you use mail.doubleclick.com for your email, and www.doubleclick.com to search the web, all from your DoubleClick based phone, its pretty easy to understand the situation.

Nobody here is under any misconceptions that Google doesn't get most of their money from advertising - where we diverge is what their overall mission is and how good or bad those ad tactics are, and if they represent a good tradeoff for the services they provide.

Personally, I've got no issues letting them build a better profile in return for some of the best web services out there. I owe my career to the excellence of their search product.

I find duckduckgo equally effective and they don't need to build a profile on me to do it.

What often gets ignored in that value judgement is that the profile can lead to more relevant search results. (Subjectively, Google's results get better when I'm signed in.)

At least for me, using DDG is like stepping back into the 90's as far as search result quality goes.

Agreed, I tried it for about a month, and went back to google... with my profile information, my search results tend to be much better.

With Google, the product is you. You (your demographic profile) is sold, by Google, to their advertisers.

This includes potentially identifying information.

That's completely untrue. Advertisers come to Google and say "we want to sell this, people in these demographics would like it" and Google shows it to me or you based on what it knows about us.

Google knows lots about me; people who buy adwords don't.

They know that every person who clicks on their add is within the demographic profile they targeted. They do, indirectly, buy that information - and there's no way to operate Google's business model without that remaining true.

Google does help them (google's advertisers) to track you indirectly. Not throught the adwords networks but throught the RTB network (DoubleClick).

You can easily validate this by checking all the "pixels" (in the RTB sense) that are being deployed by Google. In their defense, they do mask a lot of things so stuff like the full IP address are not available (last time I worked on that they just give you the three first segments) but still quite a few information was available to target your demographic segment.

Edit:

For downvoters and people curious about tracking pixels: - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/1347585?hl=en - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2508388?hl=en

Tracking pixels are pretty standard for the web analytics industry, and are a tool to aggregate information, not sell. Google, Facebook, Optimizely, Marketo, etc. all use them.

If you really want to learn more, you can read the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tracking_pixel

It is a derivitative product, you're just splitting hairs.

As squeaky clean as everyone in the valley believes Google to be, even most Googlers would be surprised with the type of work and contacts taken on by Google Federal (hint: it's not just Google Apps for the military). Here is a list of their current unclassified military contracts: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/fpdsportal?indexName=awardfull...

It's not about being "clean". It's that the most profitable way to go about it is not to sell the info, but rent its use over and over again, keeping the actual data closed (except to LE, of course).

If you assume they're completely profit driven, it still makes sense for them to protect your data from other companies.

Found something called Robogator in there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CnamzIE3Rg

What's sinister in that list? I just see things that look like purchase orders for Google search appliances, a vague "research" contract at Army Research Labs, and what looks to be mapping consulting by NGA.

If you're going to make a claim and drop a link on us, please tell us what's actually there to support your claim.

The research contract is the stuff with their Boston Dynamics subdivision -- all the abusable quad walker robots and stuff.

(Standard disclaimer: my opinions, not my employer's. Not representing anybody else. I work at Google, not on these projects.)

Most googlers who are also engineers can find out what most of these things are, and I would expect many are already aware of what those projects are likely to be. It is a core part of our culture that we share information openly within engineering, and don't leak it.

We can't tell you what's happening. That doesn't mean we don't know.

The grandparent comment makes it sound nefarious, and there are a lot of people that dislike the US... but it doesn't sound too bad to me to bid on contracts for a democratically-elected government.

The NSA thing is disappointing and it's important that the electorate hold the government accountable, but democracy has not broken down yet, and the situation isn't quite as dire as, say, North Korea.

(Waiting for the "google employee compares US government to North Korea" headline, sigh...)

> They use it for their own advertising purposes, but they don't sell it to anyone, in any form.

Some people wouldn't distinguish those two.

Some people don't distinguish a knife from an elephant, but those people are wrong too.

If I don't want people paying someone else to use my information, I don't care whether that party ever actually sees it or not.

I don't get it - are you saying you don't like knives and elephants?

Microsoft is as good at collecting personal information as anybody. Collecting information isn't hard. They're just not very good at making that information useful to the people who provide that information or to themselves, via advertising or otherwise.

could you tell me which personal information of yours was sold by google?

These devices are made by other companies not Google. How do they profit from advertisement. Are you implying that Google pays these companies when they sell their own devices with Google software in it?

Yes. It's no longer a secret that Google has begun to share ad-revenue with oem's. Fortunately, Microsoft is in no position to do so.

Shilling for Microsoft huh? What makes you think that Google sells your personal info?

A $150 Windows-based laptop would be a crappy netbook. Chrome should run significantly better on Chrome OS than it does on Windows or IE does on Windows for that matter.

Also, Chromebooks usually seem to be targeted at kids or tech illiterate folks who don't want the complexity of Windows. Even a $99 Windows machine won't change that.

And what about the security of Chrome OS? It's "virtually" unhackable, while Windows...well, it's Windows.

As for Minecraft, Google has been promising Android apps on Chromebooks, so maybe before long that will work, too. But as others have said, it's still $150 hardware. So I wouldn't expect too much from it.

Also, last I checked Office also runs in the browser now? Microsoft seems to be making quite a big deal about that actually.

>Chrome should run significantly better on Chrome OS than it does on Windows or IE does on Windows for that matter.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. In my machine IE and Firefox beats Chrome performance almost in everything. And I have seen ~$100 tablets running Windows 8.1 and the performance is far from crappy.

I've got a $100 tablet and $30 bluetooth keyboard running windows. This means that I have a small form factor machine that I can develop on, and with a usb otg cord, I can connect to near anything I want. Finally, it comes with a real bios, so I can install whatever operating system I want on it, without doing silly things like removing screws.

I would like more details on this. What kind of development are you doing? What was the specific tablet and bluetooth keyboard you got?

Development is mostly using Avr Studio to do embedded stuff. The tablet was the Asus VivoTab8, the non-note version, unfortunately. The bluetooth keyboard was just some generic keyboard and case [1]. My only complaint really is that the meta keys are cranky within putty, but other than that, it's been pretty solid for me.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KCKXIXE/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_d...

My son uses a Chromebook for homework and a Windows PC for games. I consider it a huge feature that they are separate devices. Much too tempting otherwise.

We're doing a similar thing but with a Raspberry Pi that I've stripped down so it runs nothing but a plain text editor. It's just what we had lying around when the issue came to a head. There was the temptation of the Web, but even the fonts and settings of a regular word processor were too distracting. He's happy with the solution. It's a little bit geeky and weird, which is an attraction for him.

put linux on the chromebook and you can run libreoffice, gnumeric and minecraft

Have you done this? If so, what JRE are you using for Minecraft? I know that trying to run Android Studio with the OpenJDK JRE on hardware with a similar clock speed, is pret-ty slow even when that hardware is x86. I can't imagine what it would be like on ARM.

Got this one for my granddaughter for Christmas and she loves it: Asus11634 Laptop Intel Atom 2GB Memory 32GB Flash

Paid $148.53 plus tax at BestBuy.com. At first I thought that the 32GB drive would be a problem but with the OneDrive integration she has plenty of space.

She also plays Minecraft and other games without any problems.

There are Windows tablets at that price range that can run office. Not idea if they can run Minecraft, considering its a horribly unoptimized java application.

The HP Stream 7 and 8 has an x86 1.8ghz atom chip in it. BYOK. The Stream 11 has a keyboard but chimes in at $199. Games using DirectX and native libraries work. There are a lot of Stream 7 and 8 youtube videos showing gaming performance.

If anything, the Chromebook is overpriced. It really should be a $49 near disposable laptop. Even then, in the age of cheap tablets, it may not be more than an education market novelty.

More here: http://www.gizmag.com/five-windows-81-tablets-under-200/3497...

Very true, those HP Stream devices look competitive compared to these Chromebooks.

There are Windows 8.1 tablets that are not far from that:

http://www.tinydeal.com/windows-tablets-c-997_1002.html?zeni...

These have the Quad Core Intel Atom Bay-Trail processor which is good enough for non compute demanding things and even some older games are running fine on them, also a quick search shows that Minecraft too runs playable on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7dBOaHmW94

> Honestly, the only reason my kids don't have Chromebooks is because they don't easily run Minecraft or downloadable games.

Some parents would consider this a good thing.

Earlier this year I bought an HP Stream 11" laptop directly from Microsoft for $199 (no crapware if you buy a Windows machine directly from Microsoft). The build quality is good, and with a cheap 32gig extra flash memory card it is fine for web browsing and some light weight development (I use IntelliJ). This laptop came with about $140 of free software and services coupons - perhaps if those were not included, Microsoft could approach your $149 price point.

I doubt you're paying for the "free" software -- it's all loss-leaders. If anything it may be reducing the cost of the device.

In the works according to rumors.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150327VL201.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/03/29/microso...

Chromebook can now run Android apps (a few now, more as time goes on). That means soon people will be able to play their android games on them, including Minecraft pocket?

HP Stream comes pretty close (I think they are better than the Chromebooks though a bit pricier) -- http://store.hp.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?eS...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

Codestarter's Ubuntu Package comes with Minecraft and other programming/educational resources.

I am running an Acer 720 with 4gb of Ram and 128gb SSD - best laptop I've ever owned.

It's sad because Minecraft was originally Java...

I think the bigger news here is the Chromebit. A $100 device that turns any monitor into a computer? Fascinating.

Beat me to it. I agree, the Chromebit is way more interesting.

More details on Cnet - http://www.cnet.com/uk/products/asus-chromebit/

Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11AC, USB 2.0 for accessories, 2GB of RAM and 16GB SSD

Amusing that it has a more useful port than the new Macbook.

> The Raspberry Pi is a nearly stick-like mini computer that can run Windows or Linux.

What? Is this about the future version of Windows that will run on ARM?

Windows has been running on ARM since version 8 (the ARM-specific version was called Windows RT). Since then, Microsoft announced a “special” version of Windows that's intended for the new Raspberry Pi 2.

If I remember correctly, it's more of a runtime for some .NET programs with access to the Pi's GPIO pins than a full-fledged OS.

Wow. AC wireless in a $100 device. Now I'm interested.

What does it do for power? Through the USB port like most other similar devices I'm assuming?

You can get AC routers for under $80 now, and they are basically just Linux boxes.

It apparently has a full-size USB and microUSB port for power purposes.

I thought this was interesting too... but are you also carrying around a keyboard and mouse?

Not necessarily.

I do virtually all my work split between my home office and an actual workplace office. Currently I drag a laptop back and forth between the two, but having a monitor/keyboard/mouse at both (which I already do and dock the laptop into) and just bringing a small stick literally in my pocket that I can plug in to either place and get my full, familiar, always-up-to-date development environment is very appealing.

Obviously YMMV depending upon use case, for me a full laptop (even a small one) is overkill for what I need for a work machine, since I never really use it anyplace other than work or home and in both places I plug it into "full-sized" keyboard/mouse/monitors anyway.

Since I do Android development, ChromeOS isn't the ideal platform for this, but I suspect these sticks will run crouton like other ChromeOS devices...

For this workflow (where you already have most of a computer at two locations), wouldn't having a diskless workstation at work and home also work out, and just carry around a USB thumbdrive? That way you still have the same environment in both locations.

I've actually considered USB before in years past and discounted it because the speed of USB sticks was very bad (in the context of keeping all your files on one, compiling from one, etc).

Thinking about it again in light of your comment made me realize there very well could be USB 3.0 thumbdrives with suitable speed (based on some Googling around it looks like there are some that are quite fast, but you have to be really careful with brand/model since it appears there is a very wide spread between the performance of different USB3.0 thumbdrives). But, yeah, I suppose using a fast USB3.0 thumbdrive would be another way to achieve this sort of setup.

Why not switch to desktops? You'll be more productive (faster/bigger/more capable everything), and you won't have to haul around an entire laptop.

If you commit your work, you only need the network to sync between two desktops.

The fastest USB 3.0 drive I have is an msata card I had left over after I upgraded, which is mounted in an msata SSD to usb converter case. I haven't tried running my normal OS environment off it yet, but overall performance is way better than a typical USB stick, or USB hard drives.

Similar offering to Intel's stick computer (albeit Intel's has better specs and costs 50% more):

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-c...

Actually, according to CNET, there's a Linux version of the Intel stick that costs only $89, plus, Intel's has a micro SD card slot, although it lacks the 802.11ac.

http://www.cnet.com/products/intel-compute-stick/

Unfortunately, the Linux edition only has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, while the Windows version will have 2GB and 32GB respectively.

It seems like a good alternative to raspberry pis. We use these types of small computers to power dashboards, and frankly the Pis are a pain to set up for this purpose. I hope the Chromebit works well for just loading a website.

That's exactly why I was considering buying a raspberry pi for. Have you also considered the chromecast for this (maybe by creating a custom app/plugin for your dashboard)?

We dropped using the pi for chromecast. Much more responsive and less maintenance, though the Pis are great learning tools.

I'm pretty sure it'll be good at that :)

For dashboards and kiosks, there might be of use:

https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3134673?hl=en

http://googleforwork.blogspot.com/2015/03/screens-go-Google-...

I see no point in carrying around a little stick to use as a computer but not as storage. Plenty of flash-based local storage would be easy to add (with locally encrypted backups to the cloud if needed) and turn the privacy-impaired ChromeOS products into decent personal computing devices.

I wonder how much thought they put into theft prevention if this is really intended to be used in schools - the ability to just pull this out the the USB port and walk off seems entirely too tempting in a school setting.

Glue.

Organizationally-managed Chromeb.*s can be remotely disabled by the administrator.

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3523633

Any monitor? Not mine. HDMI required.

Where d you even get a monitor that doesn't do HDMI any more?

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l...

One of those running XBMC would be awesome.

That doesn't surprise me, because I already have a Chromecast.

And there are many other instances of small cheap computers too, but my point is this: once you've seen a little device that plugs into a TV/monitor and does stuff, you've already seen a computer, because all these things are computers nowadays. Hardware has to be seriously small and special-purpose nowadays to even consider a microcontroller. It's the age of system-on-a-chip.

Over the last month, I've moved many of our 25 customer service team from crappy, ~$200 Dell laptops to Asus Chromeboxes ($160 with 2 GB of RAM). The feedback has been universally positive, because the Chromeboxes are so much more responsive than Chrome on a low-end Windows machine.

A few caveats:

+ We've found Chrome more responsive with 4 GB of RAM, especially when you keep open many tabs, such as large spreadsheets in Google Docs. We didn't see any improvement moving to 8 GB.

+ We have struggled with editing PDFs. Dochub has the rotate and delete page functions we need, but can't save in place to Google Drive (it only edits). NoteablePDF is supposed to add rotate and delete soon.

+ We had to buy a new scanner that can save directly to Google Drive. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EKW6JZ4 worked well, after the Epson required being tethered to a PC.

+ We found Google Cloud Print to be unreliable, so we bought a hardware print server that works great: http://www.amazon.com/Lantronix-XPS1002CP-01-S-xPrintServer-...

We're not the market for $149 Chromebooks, but I'm glad to see Google investing to expand the market for ChromeOS.

I own a Acer c720p Chromebook and I have to say it is a wonderful machine. I now only use my main PC for programming, and I even do that sometimes by SSH from my chromebook.

Main point: * Great battery life * Lightning fast * Small/Thin

For me it is a perfect cheap laptop to use as a goto for all my less resource intensive activities. (reading, youtube, chat etc.) I might get a bigger 15 inch one so I am happy to see Chromebooks developing. I am having a hard time figuring out who would use a chromebit though..

I use an Acer C720P as well, for everything including programming, via Cloud9 (https://c9.io/). Cloud9 has been almost exclusively the platform for all my development since 2013. Having my entire workspace state synchronized across machines, saved whenever I'm not using it to be resumed precisely as it was, sandboxed from causing or falling victim to issues with my desktop, is invaluable.

I switch off between my desktop and my Chromebook whenever I go out, or even just when I want to lie down instead of hunching over at my desk. I experience no disruptions from doing so.

The only real complaint that I have is that ChromeOS's use of alt+arrows to emulate Page Up/Down keys interferes with a few important default C9 key combinations (alt+shift+down to copy a line getting converted to shift+pagedn).

I'm using C720 with chrubuntu, a full featured ubuntu along with the native ChromeOS for dual booting. Some guys may prefer crouton and it's similar.

I should say I use my C720 everyday on my train to work mostly with linux. It's with x86 CPU, just as a normal laptop. Its performance, battery and portability are great for me as well. I really love travelling with it.

The most important thing of these Chromebooks, at least for me, is the quality of the touchpad and keyboard, as if I ever get one they will be used mainly for typing stuff/chatting. There is a reason why I still us an almost decade-old Lenovo Thinkpad R61 as a reserve machine and something that I can use outside/on the go. Granted it is a big heavy but for me, it's worth it.

So, is there a chromebook, that can offer me a good quality of keyboard/touchpad?

Sadly I don't think there is one with a trackpoint, which would pretty much make these the perfect notebook for my use-case.

The touchpad on the Chromebook Pixel (the annoyingly expensive one) is high end. Large glass multitouch touchpad. I doubt you'd be satisfied with the keyboard though.

So I think the answer is probably "No." The most expensive one available doesn't have a good keyboard by 60-series era Thinkpad standards, so I would be surprised if any do.

The most expensive Chromebook doesn't cater to Thinkpad users. The Lenovo Chromebook might.

I seriously doubt it. I have never seen a non-Thinkpad branded Lenovo laptop that would satisfy somebody who liked the R60's keyboard.

Looking at http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/11e-series/11e..., the keyboard looks "too chiclet" to be what Thinkpad users expect, despite the name. Right? (I'm not a fan of those laptops, so can't tell)

Well the Pixel of course, but the Levovo Chromebook Yoga 11e is widely said to have the next best keyboard and I haven't heard any complaints about the touchpad. It runs around $450 US so pricier than most.

To be honest, I think the Samsung Chromebook (~$249 model) has the best keyboard/touchpad of any laptop I've used < $800. That doesn't mean it's fantastic, but it is surprisingly good and much better than most at any price point.

I'd definitely consider using a Chromebook if the offline functionality works. My understanding from people I know working at Google is that the offline Docs and Gmail experience is pretty sub-par at the moment.

I guess if you pop out their SSD for a larger one it'd make a decent BSD netbook. Bitrig[0] is slowly but surely getting better.

[0] https://www.bitrig.org/

I haven't actually used a Chromebook but I'm surprised they're struggling with offline functionality. Android does just fine on spotty connections - at least Google's apps do - I wonder why they don't have a few mobile experienced engineers help out revamping so their apps just assume a crap connection and deal with it the same way they would on mobile.

I bought a Chromebook Pixel 2015. The first thing it asks, when you turn it on, is for an Internet connection. You cannot go past the first-boot panel until you give it internet access, then agree to Google's ToS which says you'll let them auto-install updates at anytime, and then let it try to download updates from Google. Then you must log in to a Google account.

I didn't bother with ChromeOS enough to see how well offline apps work. The laptop does not have any screws, and I'm told the SSD is soldered on even if I knew how to take the laptop apart without breaking it.

That being said, there are magical keystrokes you can use to bypass even the intro "first boot" panels to switch the laptop into "developer mode" which you can use to wipe ChromeOS and install a real Linux. Much of the hardware isn't supported by mainline kernels, but Google has a lot of that sourcecode online, so I'm trying to compile my own module to get the touchpad to work in Debian.

That's all experirence with a different product than what we're talking about here, but my anecdotal observations are that ChromeOS fundamentally expects internet access, and it might not be possible to upgrade the hardware and get a comfortable setup with a real Linux or BSD.

I don't know about modern chromebooks, but I have an Acer C7 that I spent $199 on and then added another $240 for it to have a 128GB SSD, 16GB RAM, a working bluetooth module, and an upgraded battery. $440 total and it's been a solid dev machine running first chrubuntu and now crouton. I've mentioned before that the only issue I've had with it is lack of CPU horsepower for clojure-based work to get into the REPL, which as I understand, is slightly fixed on later iterations (or other models). All of my hardware (AFAICT) works under Linux, and I use Google Hangouts, Skype, Steam (for TFC), and vim/tmux on it routinely.

$440? You could get a Lenovo T440 for a few bucks more in the Lenovo outlet

It could end up being better in terms of battery life and portability if OP had bought a C720.

My battery lasts about 9 hours on a charge with normal usage (testing/developing in vim with Python (using python-mode+jedi) and Clojure (using vim-fireplace and nrepl-middleware) against Postgres, Mongo, Elasticsearch, Redis, and Storm. The original battery was somewhere in the 4-5 hour range.

And I'd still need to spend another $300 for the SSD, 16GB ram, and a new battery (batteries on used laptops are miserable, and not up to the 8 hours of usage I demand). It would also be heavier.

> ChromeOS fundamentally expects internet access

ChromeOS devices are less "surprising" in this sense, if you think of them not as computers per se, but as (the fat-client equivalent to) thin client appliances that boot into a Citrix session connected to a machine-instance running within the Google cloud.

It's not a perfect analogy—you can use [some carefully-written apps on] the device without internet access once you've set it up, and so forth—but thinking in those terms lets you predict what ChromeOS will tend to do in a given situation quite well.

How to open the Pixel 2015: remove the two glued-on rubber strips on the bottom, remove the 15-or-so screws below them, remove the bottom plate.

Once you're there, you can even turn a screw (or pull a jumper on some devices) to unlock the write protection of the firmware flash chip.

https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download... provides tested replacement firmware that make running 'regular' operating systems more comfortable on many Chromebooks (no more security measures in the form of scary warning screens and 'return to factory' key combos). That may kill warranty - or not.

I find that this is a pretty reasonable trade off between providing an 'unbreakable' secure-by-default (hence the auto updates, which also cover firmware) configuration that is also reasonably safe against drive-by attacks (that's why the jumper is inside the device) while allowing people to use their hardware differently if they want. This doesn't rely on security problems that are used as 'jail break' elsewhere.

And yes, the SSD is soldered on. There's not a whole lot of space in that box, and soldering makes things so much more compact.

(Disclosure: I work on Chrome OS firmware)

The offline experience is going to be pretty much what you'd get with the offline experience of those apps in Chrome on a Windows or OSX computer, so you can try it out pretty easily.

I guess my point is that people don't always have wifi. I want to use my laptop on the plane (though some airlines now offer super-exorbitantly-priced wifi, I still refuse to pay for it) or in the back seat of a car.

I should be able to tap away at a document or use a Thunderbird-style "send emails when you next have connectivity" mail client.

My understanding is that the Google apps don't currently offer this.

Try it out on your Windows laptop, if you want, and you'll see how it works. My understanding is that this functionality is there to some extent, but I haven't used a laptop without wifi in long enough that I have no real idea.

As far as I know, most Google branded apps can do this and there is nothing preventing third parties from doing it too. You can probably boot your laptop with a ChromiumOS live stick and check it out.

Even then, you'll probably have a pain in the butt time. It uses coreboot to startup, and the coreboot devs don't seem to care about any OS that isn't Linux, so you have to go through a somewhat painful process to get to the point where you can install a BSD.

(wearing my coreboot developer hat): We care about BSD. And Windows. And Solaris, Haiku, and whatever else comes our way that runs after coreboot. The amount of care varies with developers, and Linux is indeed the OS that sees the most interest.

If BSD fails with coreboot + SeaBIOS, that's a bug, and I'd love to hear about it. And I think so would the SeaBIOS developer and the QEmu people who use the same PCBIOS implementation.

Can one wipe out a Chromebook and install Linux?

Or dual-boot, even.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-run-both-chrome-os-and-ubu...

From that link: "you must download a tool known as Crouton, which will allow Ubuntu to run on top of Chrome OS"

No, I don't want to run Ubuntu on top of of Chrome OS; I want to completely wipe out Chrome.

Yeah, you can. Usually you unscrew the laptop, remove a screw on the motherboard and you get SeaBIOS and you can install any distro you want.

Think of it as using the ChromeOS kernel (which suits the hardware configuration perfectly) and then running the Ubuntu userspace (which co-exists with the Chrome OS userspace).

Even if you don't use the Chrome OS userspace much, removing it won't save you enough to make it worth it.

Yes, there are plenty of howtos on how to do this. The only downside is you have to enable developer mode, so you lose trusted boot.

It depends a bit on the model, but in general yes you can. I haven't done it on a Chromebook, but I've completely wiped out ChromeOS and ran Arch on an Asus Chromebox (using instructions meant for the very similar C300 Chromebook). Worked perfectly, great little machine. Only hiccup was I had to flash a custom bios.

Yes, but distro and kernel maintainers don't seem to think that supporting chromebooks is a worth their time, so don't expect it to be a smooth process out of the box.

Yes you can but it's not a straightforward process. I did it for my chromebox which follows the same procedure as doing it for a chromebook. Basically you have to open the machine and remove a screw to enable write access to the bios. After that you have to replace the coreboot bios that came with the computer with a newer coreboot version and install SeaBios (old bios emulation on top of coreboot) as a payload. You could also have a linux kernel as a payload but this was more complex and I didn't need faster boot times.

Once all this is done, the laptop behaves much like any other laptop except you have an open source bios. You can then install linux on it from a USB key like you would on any other device. I imagine the quality of the drivers depends on which chromebook you use. I hear the chromebook pixel has excellent support and that's no surprise as that's what Linus uses (or used to, I'm not sure if he changed).

That's great, thanks for the explanation. Does the battery life stays the same with Arch?

These are ARM Chromebooks though so there is no conventional bios to flash.

They have u-boot with support for booting external media turned off so all you need to do is turn that on and make bootable media.

http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung/samsung-chro...

Recent ARM Chromebooks also come with coreboot.

Note that these are arm based; the intel based ones are more amenable to running alternate OS.

Yes, if you put the Chromebook into "Developer Mode" first; searching for "chromebook linux" should do the trick (skip the stuff about Crouton). Note that the selection of Linux distros for ARM Chromebooks (like both of the $149 models) will be quite a bit slimmer.

The Chromebit is probably the most exciting thing in that post for me. I wonder if it'll be this time that a company gets the plug-n-play PC right. I remember the big promises Ubuntu Phone, for example, made in this department.

16GB storage is pathetic. I think of these as terminals connected to the giant Google mainframe in the sky. The System Administrator will be monitoring your activities.

Wow. The OLPC XO-1 launched for $188 in 2006. Now we have relatively mainstream retail laptops selling for less than that.

I completely forgot about that computer and the organization behind it. Looking at their site I guess they eventually moved on to a tablet in addition to a version of the computer; I wonder if they can even make them cheaper than these big companies anymore.

I've had sub $200 chromebooks before. And upgraded to the Toshiba with intel processor and nice screen.

On the sub $200 model video ran like crap, couldn't cast tabs to chromecast, and more than half dozen or so tabs killed it. Other than that is was great.

I bought my Acer C720 for $160 and it has been the best preforming chromebook until a couple months ago.

You can still get good performance in a cheap chromebook if you do a little research.

Can you run those things as a pure Linux system, without any tie to Google? I have an application where I run a Python program that needs WiFi and a USB port, but nothing else. I'm using old EEEpc 2G Surfs now, but they're getting old.

You can in most cases but you wouldn't need to. Most people install Linux using a project called Crouton which creates a chroot running parallel to ChromeOs. The Crouton chroot can see a USB device and of course has network access.

If you have a forget-in-the-back-of-the-closet application, you might do well simply switching to a ChromiumOS build. http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os

the said ..

> More Chromebooks, for everyone

but ..

> The Google Store isn't available here yet.

> We're working to bring it to more countries as soon as possible.

I don't think these Chromebooks are sold in Google Store in any country.

(Google Store selection varies by country, anyway. Where I live, they don't sell any Chromebooks; I might have considered the new Pixel if it weren't for the hassle.)

FWIW, https://store.google.com/category/chromebooks lists bunch of chromebooks for sale in the US, including the new Pixel.

The list of chromebooks here in the UK is just one: the new Pixel.

Despite all of the pictures showing Acers etc. you can only actually buy one from Google. It's silly.

Yup, as a Canadian, apparently I'm not part of 'everyone'.

There will be chrome-almost-tablets. I am waiting for Chrometabs and Chromephones (I know there is Android, but well). I am not joking really.

I expect that, Chromephones would undermine Android, but Chrometabs could be good idea.

Chromebit is great idea! I am in process of searching what to buy for my father. His computer is broken down Athlon machine with Linux (I maintain it). I don't have time to properly maintain it (I don't have time and energy even to do it for my own computers). I am from Poland, so these prices have for me 4x multiplier attached to them. I now consider buying used workstation and try to maintain system myself. Or buy some Chromegadget and call it a day. My father can't put more than 100 USD on this and even 100 USD is stretching a bit. I will probably add few tens of dollars to this sum and maybe buy something like Chromebit or used Chromebook.

I want to buy Chromebook for myself also. I am thinking about used Pixel or Toshiba Chromebook 2. Or I will wait a bit longer for new greatness. My requirements: max 500 USD, 12-14", at least 1920p. I am not sure what I value more: performance (Pixel) or quietness and lightness (Toshiba).

The flip model has a touch screen, though it's probably not multipoint.

I bought an Asus chromebook for my grandmother a few months ago for $159 (via Amazon), though a few days later it jumped to $199. It was a pretty great deal.

I love ChromeOS... it's grandma/mom safe, and works very well. The only limitations I've really struggled with in my own use, is VPN to work, and the lack of an IMAP mail client. Other than that, it's worked great for everyone I've given one to.

I really enjoy my Samsung Chromebook 2. The only thing I wish it had more of is computing power, RAM and screen space. Too bad there aren't very many 15" 8GB RAM Chromebooks on the market which makes the Chromebook Pixel 2 all the more painful to lust after, despite it not being 15".

TL;DR. Crouton + Chromebook FTnearW! (Would still like to keep the secure boot, though.)

I do well with the Toshiba Chromebook 2.

Intel Celeron N2840 Gorgeous IPS 1920x1080 screen.

It is a lovely machine.

I've been thinking about that myself - the IPS screen is certainly more appealing.

So there are two models available at $149:

Haier - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3DYVLM

Hisense - http://www.walmart.com/ip/44389793#about

Which looks better?

I personally like the Haier's appearance more than the Hisense's. I dig the whole carbon-fiber aesthetic.

If the tech specs are to be believed, Haier is significantly underclocking the same SoC, presumably to extend battery life.

This thread is being totally astroturfed by Googlers, or people actually like the specs of that thing? I don't get it. People, you can buy machines that have a proper os AND a browser ... but you're ready to spend money on a glorified browser?

So where's this proper machine of yours that sells for $150?

Go to amazon,plenty of products for a reasonable price.

That something does more, doesn't make it better for a given task. In fact in some cases the extras make it less suitable.

When you eat a meal, do you use a knife and fork, or two Swiss-army knives?

Agreed!

Cell phones could only be afforded by the wealthy in the 80s. Now the cell phone market in developing countries is burgeoning. Soon, there will be a substantial laptop market in most developing countries as well as prices continue to decline.

I think this product will do well especially for students, start-up businesses, or even for leisure use. Google's goal is to be able to address the affordability and at the same time not sacrificing quality. It definitely isn't the best machine out there but it is sufficient for daily use of middle-income consumers and students. On their video ad, it's obvious that they are also focusing on an international market where it's not focused on first-world countries only. I think it's a great step for Google to create something very affordable that has a good quality for their product to reach all facets of the world.

> Google's goal is to be able to address the affordability and at the same time not sacrificing quality.

Google's goal is to sell its cloud services, not the hardware here. The specs are crappy and that laptop is basically useless if you are doing anything else than internet. Sure it cost 150$, but that's an expensive surfing machine. And Google is off course selling internet services...

> I think this product will do well especially for students, start-up businesses, or even for leisure use.

You know, the exact same arguments were used to sell netbooks(students,leisure), which were an horrible failure,and you're still falling for that? at least most netbooks ran on windows... You don't even get that with Chrome OS.

People are not idiots, especially those who have a tight budget, they'll be even more vocal about crappy cheap products because it represents a larger share of their income. That thing with these specs... I bet most people are ready to invest $100 more to have at least a proper notebook. You can get a 11 inches Acer laptop for 50 dollars more. With a browser AND windows,with a proper Hard drive.Why would people want to pay JUST for a fucking browser? they wouldn't unless they have so much spare money they don't care.

Why do you think running Windows is an advantage?

> Why would people want to pay JUST for a fucking browser?

Because there's a lot you can do with a browser these days. You can even run offline apps and native code (Emscripten, NaCl, PNaCl).

Also, if you turn on developer mode, you can access all the Gentoo bits that hide underneath the Chrome bits.

Consider common use cases - word processing, social media, organising photos, communication - all can be done with a stock Chromebook. Once developers realise the full potential, you'll see bigger, better games that run on Chrome (check out Bastion and From Dust on the Chrome web store - pretty impressive already).

> Because there's a lot you can do with a browser these days. You can even run offline apps and native code (Emscripten, NaCl, PNaCl).

Sure it's true for hipsters, but we are not talking about them right now.

Wow that's ugly, all the bad memories of the netbook era just came flooding back....

Agreed.

But even worse, these devices have practically NO local storage. At least netbooks came with 120GB hard disks!

That Chromebook Flip is an awesome answer to the overpriced surface tablets. I'm amazed at the variety of chromebooks out there. Chromebooks might still be the biggest sellers again this christmas season.

The ChromeBit looks pretty cool though. Entire computer in a flash drive.

You can buy the chromebox which is somewhat similar but not as compacy as a chromebit

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B...

Still has a dependency on an external mainframe though; better to buy an Intel NUC perhaps?

Just not the greatest for programmers... But cool for everyone else!

I disagree. If you're not doing hardware-level hacking, a cloud IDE like Cloud9 (https://c9.io) beats any fragile client-side workspace I've ever used.

It doesn't just have to be hardware level hacking. c9 is great but, anywhere that you want a decent amount of control over web server(apache, tomcat) configs, graphics acceleration for games, or storage of large local files, you're going to need something more. I'd take Ubuntu any day. Given the choice, what are some reasons to actually choose Chrome OS over Ubuntu?

If they support it like my Nexus 7 (2012), thanks, but no thanks. Cheap != Good. I think we've still got a few more years to go before the price/quality ratio is right.

And when they are sold in Australia, they will cost over $350.

I picked up a refurb C720 a while back for $119. I've been very impressed with it at that price point. It's currently my backup laptop.

Wow, does someone know if I can wipe the hard drive, install linux on it (Arch or Debian) and use it for light development (Python with Emacs)?

You should be able to. See my previous post with more details as to how I installed linux (arch) on my chromebox. It might be as straightforward for this version since it has an ARM processor instead of the x86 processor found in my setup. For instance, normal archlinux doesn't support non x86/x86-64 architectures.

yes, you can also run it along with chrome via crouton.

The Chromebit is actually the part that caught my eye. If the USB 2.0 hub can connect to high-capacity external hard-drives rather than just thumb-drives, I might be looking at my new Kodi/XBMC machine. The RPi is getting a little long in the tooth.

I'm also curious if the Chromebit will include Chromecast-like functionality as far as screencasting goes.

The Haier 11.6"'s SoC seems pretty cool for a phone. Then again, phones are ridiculously overpowered these days. It supports 4K. http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip_RK3288

>And a lot of people love them—Chromebooks were the best selling laptops on Amazon last holiday season, and teachers and students made them the #1 device in schools last year.

What does this even mean? Does it mean on Amazon all Chromebooks combined sold more than any other laptop categories, Windows or MacBook?

It's a shame they didn't put USB 3.0 slots on these chromebooks. Pretty useless with 2.0 for any external hard drive activity.

True, but chromebooks aren't really designed to deal with lots of local storage. What do you think that AC wireless is for - they want you to stream all day long!

The Samsung ARM Chromebooks have one.

    > TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in
    > Thailand ... do

I've never seen any of them.

I wonder if there's the possibility of using a phone as the input device for the Chromebit.

It's netbooks all over again.

Many netbooks were under spec'd machines (typically 500mb to 1gb ram) running Windows on a small 10 inch screen and a low power single core CPU. They failed in my opinion due to running Windows which killed performance. Runing Linux on those machines generally improved the experience.

"ARM wrestler" haha

It's a shame that all Google services blocked by China gov.

Nice to see that, still can't afford my food tomorrow.

Wow it's kind of like, the network is the computer...

Really makes me which that Google would have bought Sun instead of Oracle.

Wow! That's cheap for a "Notebook".

I was hearing about $100 laptops from the time, I joined college. Finally, I see it happen.

Every developing nation should award highest civilian honour to Sundar Pichai for making this happen. Thanks Google for making this happen.

You just reminded me about the OLPC program, or the 100$ laptop.

We are getting pretty close, aren't we.

also thank the component manufacturers for finally selling their chips super cheap!

Yeah, I think this is more because of Rockchip than because of Google. Rockchip manages to make a potent processor for very little, which is what is powering these. Google's volumes help as well but I would give more props to Rockchip

I'm interested to see more about the build quality and durability of these machines. Typically chromebooks have delivered an above average experience for the price.

Can I install gentoo on this?

could you run Pycharms on this?

or install ubuntu instead of chromeOS?

Yes - https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

Personally I develop on a Chromebook by SSH-ing into a Digital Ocean server direct from Chrome OS. I don't use it full-time as a dev box though.

it would be nice if apple does same...but then Mac is great for its UX which will be affected here.

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