Samsung Chromebook Series 5 Review

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes an in-depth look at the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 3G and finds the device comparatively lackluster. 'The Chromebook is lightweight and inexpensive, and it offers a full-featured Web browsing experience. But its low-end hardware, lack of versatility, and primitive support for commonplace computing tasks such as printing, file management, networking, and media playback make it a poor choice for everyday use, particularly in a business setting,' McAllister writes. 'All in all, the Samsung Series 5 is an average-quality netbook with a large screen and a higher-than-average price tag, while Chrome OS itself feels more like a proof-of-concept project whose time has not yet come.'"

Comments

Chrome OS = thin client all over again

[eobanb]

Remember when thin clients were all the rage, guys? Remember Bill Joy telling us the network is the computer? It was true!

Well, kinda...

As it turns out, internet access isn't ubiquitous, at least not yet. In the age of 4G smartphones and tablets we'd like to think it's ubiquitous, but you really only notice that it's not when you have a system like a Chrome OS laptop that literally does not function at all without a network connection.

Even if it were available all the time (airplanes, underground, in the wilderness) it's still not fast enough. And even if it were fast enough, presently we have to deal with usage caps.

Chrome OS is an idea way too far ahead of its time. Right now there's no reason to ditch native software that works perfectly well.

Re:Chrome OS = thin client all over again

[grantek]

I think the problem is that to have a slick, user-friendly UI that doesn't get in your way with latency caused by inadequate performance, you need enough performance that doing thick-client stuff is trivial, and there's no reason not to include it.

I think if you used the SSD to hold a fairly large cache of applications, you could practically work "in the cloud" a bit like distributed RCSes (eg. git) do, and re-sync everything when the laptop can connect. You can still have backgrounded automatic update of the cached apps, and you can manage the cache completely automatically (or allow more power to users to "pin" data and apps to the cache). I haven't used ChromeOS before, but if it's on its way to working like that (TFA suggests it isn't there yet), it would be workable for some use cases.

I'd also like to see some open-source web apps rise to fame, I'm sure most companies deploying these things would be happy to contract with Google, but for government work or running a small company that competes with Google, I'd prefer to recompile the OS to point at a privately-managed cloud (which would probably be as simple as a couple of clustered web servers and maybe a DR site)

Re:Right tool for the job...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The issue with this "Chromebook", from my perspective, is that it manages to be as or more expensive(and no better in terms of battery life or weight/build quality) than an equivalent netbook/cheapie laptop.

If I can save money by buying something else and just running Chrome in full screen on Ubuntu or something, or don't get it.

I find Google's experiment conceptually interesting, and its continued evolution will be something to see; but in its present state(while I wouldn't turn a free one down) it doesn't seem to be worth any premium over whatever netbook is winning the knife-fight-in-a-telephone booth on price/performance today, just running a web browser most of the time.

The eternal problem of a WebOS

[brim4brim]

You need an OS powerful enough to run a web browser with multiple tabs and flash. At this stage the processor requirement is high enough to make the costs not competitive against a full featured desktop OS so your asking your users to cut off their nose to spite their face. Unfortunately the logic doesn't work, not even for dumbo the office salesmen/marketing person. They can all spot the con when they see the price tag. In order for a WebOS to take off like this is basically trying to be, you need to have a price tag of about a 100 Euro at which point, you can't provide the hardware necessary and satisfy the hardware manufacturers profit margin needs. Rock and a hard place unfortunately. Then you have the additional problems of connectivity on top of that. For the 50 Euro extra (not even in some cases). Also, the review shows tellingly that there was never a worse time to kill Google Gears for offline access since clicking your excel file can't open it in Google Docs. A clever interface with Google Gears could have made a short development time frame to get that implemented. Just looks like Google doesn't have a full realised idea here and has implemented the theoretical idea in full without trying to test it properly with user needs when the connection drops.

Re:What apps can I run on a Chromebook?

[oakgrove]

When a post like this gets modded "overrated", you know the anti-google shills are on a rampage.