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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'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.
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.
...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
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.
Im honestly not sure why theyre bothering. Android is already a well-known product with lots of support, applications and users, and is itself based on linux. Id much rather see them implement controls and whatever else they think makes chrome special into android, along with a good browser with features.
I'm not sure why people don't get this - if they can get you to do everything through Chrome, they have 100% of your information. That's why they do this.
It's really got nothing to do with Linux. If you're using Android, you can turn the network off and they've lost their access to you. With Chrome, you and your eyeballs are a captive audience, 100% of the time.
I fully expect to see a chrome phone at some point, once they feel like Android has penetrated the market to its fullest potential.
#DeleteChrome
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.
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