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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.'"
No shit
I use my Cr48 every day at home. I can code on it and do what I need to do. I have learned to operate with minimal file downloads and don't have anything to print. It does what I need it to. Right tools for the job and all that...
I've had my Samsung Chromebook for about a week now and I absolutely love it. It brings an immediacy to the 'net that I have never experienced with any other computer. True, it's not good at the "heavy lifting" you often need to perform with a "real" computer, but compared to the utterly pitiful web experience you get with an iPad, it can't be beat.
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
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.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Hey, remember when the iPhone first came out, and how everyone thought it was so awesome you could only write web apps?
Good times.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Was there really no photos af the actual product?
It's as if Google hasn't learned the lessons that are to be learned from the success of the Iphone and Android. Smartphones are popular because they are both easy to use and more powerful than the phones that came before them. Not just easy to use. Part of their popularity stems from that they have standalone apps that you can install. Remember how Apple claimed it didn't need apps because browser apps/websites would give you the full experience? Wrong!
People don't need dumbbooks. People need smartbooks. Basically, a professional Linux distro with a good UI and some extras on top. Ubuntu and Mint aren't getting there fast enough. Fedora isn't trying to get there. Apple is close, but they're not aiming for the sub $500 market, at least not yet (and it's not Linux and it's not free software for the most part, but that's parenthetical in the minds of most people).
Come to think of it, some people actually might want dumbbooks. I'm thinking of places that offer public computers and offices that don't do any creative work beyond writing reports and copy-pasting existing images. Maybe. But not schools, please. You'll ruin a whole generation of geeks.
From ChromeOS. I only like it cause they gave it to me for free with a 100MB/month data plan. OK for the commute, but the darn thing doesn't even run Java. Saw these were going for like $500 - which is asinine.
It's the answer to a question no one even thought to ask.
Whatever resources Google has put into ChromeOS should be diverted to Android.
...use this thing on a train in the middle of nowhere where there's no wireless access?
Frankly, my netbook was much cheaper, has a real operating system (Debian) and I can use it offline.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
And you can't install Linux or some other OS, I understand. Correct? If so the thing makes no sense at all. You can get a full featured netbook with actual apps and the browser of your choice. What's the CB got to make up for that?
The only real questions are is the licence is cheaper than Win 7 Starter (hopefully free) and how good the the out of box Linux support is?
I guess it did bring back the SSD to netbooks.
A local media player inside a browser is just terrible. The review summary really makes it seem like CromeOS is still in alpha and not even close to feature freeze.
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.
Chrome OS laptop that literally does not function at all without a network connection.
According to many sources, handily compiled in the Chrome Wikipedia page, you can edit docs, view pics, and playback media offline.
I have no idea why people keep repeating the 'does not work at all without teh internets' meme
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Somehow, the "cloud" snuck right on me and I feel like I'm just now waking up to the real potential of it. An example, I was in line at the post office the other day and I pulled my cell phone out and started hacking on my latest project that happens to be in dropbox. And since my eclipse workspace is mapped to my dropbox folder on all of my computers, as soon as I got to my desktop to do the real work, all I had to do was hit refresh in the idea and the changes I made at the post office were live. There's a there there.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I see the pattern now. In another decade, Google will become passée, but the Chrome browser will have become dominant by that point. From here, the new giant corporate of that future era will build an OS *inside* the Chrome browser (itself running on Linux or Windows). A decade after that, someone will then build a browser inside of THAT.
In a couple of centuries, we will be stuck with a giant crumbling 20 layer behemoth with the top layer inheriting all of the bugs of the previous generations. "Hello World" will therefore take no less than 4000 lines of code to work around the bugs (as long as you include the 20 necessary semi-compatible 100 MB libraries), and will require numerous other kludges to implement correctly.
I like Google, maybe more than most, but let's just stop the insanity, cutting the numerous bloated layers of mess, and make the OS (which shock, doesn't need a browser to access the internet!) the base from which to build all else upon. Unnecessary layers are kludges; always have been, always will be.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I have identified the following benefits.
A great performance to price ratio. There is no equally spec'd Windows laptop at the same price.
Simplicity. I understand you can pare down any OS to the necessary essentials... that's exactly what Google did so the consumer did not have to.
Unique "actual apps" that require Windows are actually far and few between. The behemoth - MS Office, Games, Image/Video Editing, CAD, IDEs. Now, I understand everyone is 5up4r l33t and needs the best of the best, properly licensed, most resource intensive "actual app" available to mediate their genius into the world, but there are webapps that already exist that fills those roles. And I'll tell you from experience, the WebApps might not do a lot of this, and won't do a lot of that, but the fact that they exist at all and are marginally useful is an accomplishment in its own right.
Subscriptions. For schools especially... many of whom are already on Google Apps for Education. Small businesses with no IT.
Security. Students and employees won't be doing anything outside of the browser. Remote wipe.
Privacy. Haha, no, I'm just kidding.
"No similarly specced Windows laptop at the same price"? I brought a faster laptop (Acer, dual Athlon at 2.2GHz, 3GB of RAM) for $500 in 2009. Now I'm supposed to pay $500 for a system with netbook-class hardware, and be thankful for it?
When a post like this gets modded "overrated", you know the anti-google shills are on a rampage.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
One with windows 7 or 8 or hell Ubuntu like the Dell 9 minis. They have the apps and functionalty. If I want to save power I can use an Arm with linux or windows 8 snd still watch movies. I just dont understand the chrome book? Perhaps someone who used it can enlighten me on why they are better?
http://saveie6.com/
I wonder what happens when you enter the US with a Chromebook?
Currently it appears that custom agents can seize and search your laptop, possibly even force you to divulge passwords to encrypted files. [We're waiting for this to hit the US Supreme Court... it will eventually.]
With a Chromebook nothing is on the laptop. Its all in the cloud. You are not importing anything other than a bunch of wires and transistors (very very tiny ones...)
And your data is in the clouds, who knows (well maybe your cloud provider) where in the world it is actually stored. In the US? Somewhere else?
So now instead of forcing you to divulge keys; the question is can they force you to divulge your credentials? And possibly with judicious use of two-factor authentication you may not even be able to provide that (usb key, destroy as you leave the plane..., replacement comes from outside of the country, can't be forced with a court order, etc etc.)
Yes the data may be obtainable directly IFF they can prove probable cause etc (and the cloud provider is in an amenable jurisdiction). But currently crossing the border the data actually on a laptop (or phone) is subject to the whim of the border agent.
Apple's iCloud may actually be the first usable instance of this. Reset your phone to factory default. Go through customs. Re-provision via the cloud as you sit in the back of the taxi going home.
I am confused by the notion that this thing is a netbook. And the comment about having a poor file manager. My iPad do 90% of the things I want from a computer, and don't even have a file manager. Why a good Web OS have a filemanager? Is because this thing is a netbook, and not a tablet pc?
Most of the ./ comments seems offtopic of weak. Ahead of his time, need constant conection. I already know, everybody knows. But you know what? my iPad (sorry to tell you again about it) is also ahead of his time by maybe 10 or 15 years, and is useful.
I feel I must discart TFA and all ./ comments has none I have read here is informative.
-Woof woof woof!
I've tried the web apps for both word and excel on google and the functionality seems lacking
Spreadsheets wrap in columns by default and there's no way to span columns. The word processor doesnt support any kind of labels templates or layouts I could see.
Maybe I hit the missing functions each time, but the apps do seem antiquated right now
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.
I personally think the Chromebook along with the Google Online Cloudstuff has its niche already and stands a real chance at becoming the prime choice for household computing.
The first Chromebook from Samsung weighs 1.4 Kg and is roughly 2cm thick, if not thinner. It fits squarely into the MacBook Air carry-around pattern, whilst costing a fifth.
For those who do 95% of their stuff online and know so little about computers they couldn't find a directory on an Thumbdrive - even with OS X Finder in 'stupid-mode', let alone know where to plug it in and how to unmount it before removal (99.999% of all users), the chromebook is a viable every-day computer.
If has the form, size and weight factor of a sleek MacBook Air, costs a fraction of that, has above 8 hours of uptime on battery, has zero hassles with installation and setup, needs no worrying or even knowing about such things as backup, software installation, sane security awareness and data-migrate-ability. All you need to know is how to log into something on the web, which most people do know nowadays.
For those who know what they're doing it's nearly trivially easy to hack a bash CLI onto it, with all the goodies you want.
Optical media aside - which we all agree will become full-scale obsolete any time soon - this would actually be a replacement I'd get my spouse if her iBook G4 breaks. She mostly surfs, does email and sometimes writes a letter. Nothing you can't do with the Google stuff. DVDs are the aforementioned exception to that, but as I see it Netflix, Lovefilm et al are standing ready to solve that even for the very latest of adopters.
And let's face it: I - and I gather most of you too - would take a Linux+Web based Google lockin over an Apple or MS lockin any time. No?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
While there is clearly a market for "premium" items that cost a LOT, the non-Apple world can get a decent laptop for the $500 range. Yes, that may not have the aluminum case, but it also is a fully functional laptop that has full support for Flash, and ALL normal Windows based applications will run on it. There are also new platforms that are just starting to show up, like the AMD A4 and A6 based that are also starting to show up in very thin laptops that get acceptable graphics performance that will accelerate Firefox or IE 9, plus other applications that are starting to use the graphics power to improve performance.
The competition isn't all about what Apple puts out, it is what you see in the market in general, and with the economy still in the toilet, people are less inclined to spend money on products of questionable value to them.
MS Office is "unique" in what sense?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
As an owner and user of Google's CR-48, I have to say that I am very unimpressed by the prices of these new Chromebooks. The Chromebook concept is solid--I've used my CR-48 in many scenarios, and I find it to be exceptionally useful. The instant-on feature and its overall light weight makes it a dream to use and tote around.
That said, they dropped the ball on pricing.
Had Google priced it in the $199-$299 range, I'd definitely consider one.
Had Google included reasonable free 3G access (say 1 or 2GB per month instead of the 100MB per month) for the $500 price tag, I'd definitely consider one.
At $500, I'd just as soon purchase a "real" laptop.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Which kind of wireless, and what are you trying to do?
If you are trying to surf the Web or do Internet-based tasks, then you obviously need wireless, either Wi-Fi or 3G. If neither is available, then you obviously cannot do those tasks. Of course, if there is no wireless connectivity you cannot do those tasks on a laptop, tablet, netbook, or cell phone either.
If you have no wireless Internet connectivity, then you are admittedly limited by your options, unlike a laptop, netbook, or tablet, but you do have options. For example, you can listen to locally-stored MP3 files, edit locally-stored text files, or view locally-stored PDF files, etc.
Yes, you are quite limited in comparison, but it definitely is not a doorstop.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
But its low-end hardware, ...
Hey, what'd you expect from Google? All their server-farms basically consist of cheap commodity hardware.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Price?
For those who do 95% of their stuff online and know so little about computers they couldn't find a directory on an Thumbdrive - even with OS X Finder in 'stupid-mode', let alone know where to plug it in and how to unmount it before removal (99.999% of all users), the chromebook is a viable every-day computer.
The whole WIndows ecosystem is driven by that last 5%. Telling users they are too stupid to be allowed to run a desktop application will not get you very far.
If has the form, size and weight factor of a sleek MacBook Air, costs a fraction of that, has above 8 hours of uptime on battery, has zero hassles with installation and setup, needs no worrying or even knowing about such things as backup, software installation, sane security awareness and data-migrate-ability. All you need to know is how to log into something on the web, which most people do know nowadays.
Right, except all of that comes at the cost of, you know, not being able to run apps. You can't justify it by tellign people they are stupid. You're an arrogant fool.
And let's face it: I - and I gather most of you too - would take a Linux+Web based Google lockin over an Apple or MS lockin any time. No?
Compared to ChromeOS, Apple and MS don't lock me in. I can install whatever I want. But on a Chromebook, you are shackled to the web browser, ,which I can already run on Apple and MS products. Why in the WORLD would I choose to be locked inside of a web browser if I don't have to? I can get the same cheap hardware as a netbook. CHromebook is a netbook with less functionality.
Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't run on Chromebooks yet.
MS Office is unique in the sense that only MS Office is going to open MS Office files with full fidelity. You can use any of the multitude of Office alternatives to create and publish files, but as soon as a third party sends you a MS Office file, when opening that file in any program other than MS Office you're risking data loss.
Unique "actual apps" that require Windows are actually far and few between. The behemoth - MS Office, Games, Image/Video Editing, CAD, IDEs.
I would agree that you probably don't need Microsoft Office, but if you're really saying there are Web apps that do anything that people use Photoshop for, you need your head examined.
As for what else you might need that the Chromebook doesn't provide, it depends on your usage style. What about a really good FTP client? If you send files back and forth in the course of your work, a Chromebook isn't going to cut it for you. What about a telnet client to log into servers? What about having a hotkey that pops up a nice calculator? Yes, you can punch formulas into Google, but it's not really the same. What about recording audio? I've used Audacity to record audio tracks for podcasts at work before, and while there's a mic jack on the Chromebook, but I don't know how to use it except for video chat. What about packaging stuff in Zip files? Chromebooks don't understand Zip files at all. Forget IDEs, what about a simple HTML editor? I know of a few attempts to make a Web-based HTML editor but I wouldn't describe any of them as anything other than "painful." But let's say you found one -- what about if you had a stack of fourteen HTML files that all needed one search-and-replace change; is there any way to do that on the Web?
Maybe these all sound like nitpicks, but there all the kinds of things I do with a computer during my workday and they are all cases where I would be frustrated if all I had was a Chromebook. Even my Eee PC will allow me to do all of these things and run Chrome, and it would be cheaper.
As for your comments about security, yes, I guess that's true, but is it really worth giving up all the things that real computers can help us do? Google's argument seems like saying that learning to read can give people bad ideas, so we should all just go to church and have the pastor read the Bible to us. It's an interesting model, but as a "power user" it just doesn't sit well with me. I'm still happier with the frustrations of having a Windows PC on an office network where the IT department has locked everything down and I have to run some kind of odious antivirus software etc. than the idea of only having a Chromebook to get my work done.
Full disclosure: I wrote the review.
Breakfast served all day!
I personally think the Chromebook along with the Google Online Cloudstuff has its niche already and stands a real chance at becoming the prime choice for household computing.
In my experience, one of the main things people use a "household computer" for is playing music and movies, both of which the Chromebook absolutely sucks at.
Full disclosure: I wrote the review.
Breakfast served all day!
MS Office opens MS Office files with full fidelity? The same installation of Orifice? On the same drive? On the same computer? Wonders will never cease.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"