The Chromebook Pixel Is Real, and Expensive

First time accepted submitter Lirodon writes "Just when you thought Google's rumored Chrome OS laptop, the Chromebook Pixel, was an elaborate fake, think again. This high-end Chromebook with a 12.85-inch high resolution touchscreen (available in both Wi-Fi only and Verizon LTE versions) and an Intel Core i5 processor under the hood is super fancy, and also super expensive: starting at $1299. Would you want to pay that much for what is essentially a premium netbook?" Engadget has a hands-on with the device.

Comments

nope

[Anonymous Coward]

nope

Re:nope

[jones_supa]

With products like Chromebook Pixel, Intel's Ultrabooks, and increasing popularity of Macs, the market seems to be taking a direction of expensive laptops. Apparently people do have money and are willing to pay for these things. With Intel HD Graphics 4000...

Re:nope

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Fine for regular folk. Us enthusiasts have vastly higher expectations, and we're not a shrinking market.

Re:nope

[symbolset]

That's what people said about the Galaxy Note. Somehow though last August they hit 10 million sales after less than a year. Many billions of dollars in revenue will help soothe the pain of being made fun of.

Actually when Android first came out phone makers didn't want to make a high-end "candybar" phone because it would be ridiculously expensive, so Google paid to have one made and the demand proved itself enough that phone makers came onboard and Google could retire their own-brand phone. Now Android is the number one smartphone OS, nearly 3x ahead of its nearest competitor and by itself over two thirds of global unit sales. This is probably that evolution again.

OEMs ought to buy a hint one day and when Google says "we're thinking of making an X..." leap into that briar patch. God knows OEMs have made enough failed Wintel and Windows Phone products to hit their career fail quota, and on the winners they make bupkiss, nada, zilch. Google doesn't want to own-brand their products and they're not great at it, but if OEMs will stand in the the way of progress Google needs must march around them and move on. Waiting and begging for people to let go of their Windows obsession was for the old way when Google was not a more influential, successful and bigger company than Microsoft is. Google are becoming less patient with impediments to their vision of the future. Once it was "we think this might be neat." Now it's "help or get out of the way."

Driving Google to get good at product manufacturing, sales and delivery is not a good incumbent device OEM survival strategy. If OEMs make them do that, Google will be as good at it as everything else they set their minds to. I.E. Google will eat the entire client device OEM ecosystem if they must to drive progress. They'd rather not - the progress is what they want and if the OEMs will deliver it they can put their effort in other places. But if they must, they will.

Re:nope

[tehcyder]

Fine for regular folk. Us enthusiasts have vastly higher expectations, and we're not a shrinking market.

Well aren't we a bunch of precious fucking snowflakes?

Re:nope

[jones_supa]

Fine for regular folk. Us enthusiasts have vastly higher expectations, and we're not a shrinking market.

So you would like even more expensive laptops? My point was that the $1,500 premium price of an ultrabook could already easily include a Nvidia top chip.

Re:nope

[BasilBrush]

Actually when Android first came out phone makers didn't want to make a high-end "candybar" phone because it would be ridiculously expensive, so Google paid to have one made and the demand proved itself enough that phone makers came onboard and Google could retire their own-brand phone.

Yeah right. It's not as if the iPhone hadn't already demonstrated demand for that form factor.

God knows OEMs have made enough failed Wintel and Windows Phone products to hit their career fail quota

They rode that pony for 25 years. What have you done that's so great?

Google is an advertising company. I've never head anyone quite so hungry for products that are specifically designed to spy on them and advertise to them.

Re:nope

[cheesybagel]

Don't compare this with the Note. You are going to pay $1500 for a machine you can run next to no applications on. The library is even more limited than that of Android. Where are the productivity and multimedia suites? Google Docs and Picasa? Blech. Where is the development environment? etc.

It is $500 bucks too high and it does next to nothing. Now you formatted the thing and installed Ubuntu on it it might be usable for otherwise...

Re:nope

[symbolset]

Google itself has already provided detailed instructions for how to dual-boot Linux Mint on the thing on launch day. So that's one worry cleared up. Since there is Chrome for Linux, and you can do anything in Chrome on Linux that you can do in ChromeOS there's no reason not to default boot to Linux when that option gets sussed out. Should only be a few weeks, and Google will cooperate.

I'll bet Linux Mint is a wonder to behold on a 2560 x 1700 at 239 PPI display. Imagine the field photography review potential. The world of professional video editors is probably doing their best to deplete the supply. Of course Mint is a media focused distro so it's got all the goodies available.

Document edit pros can probably use the thing as it is. Google docs gives the power of live collaborative documents that can't be had as well anywhere else, and this device gives the glory of seeing it in full quality with art as it would print, from wherever you happen to be. Add a second 30" 2560×1600 with mini DisplayPort or through an adapter HDMI to an arbitrarily large bigscreen available everywhere. With 3G even, so you don't have to rely on local network.

Sales pros should be all over this too. If you can't carry your product with you because it's too large you need must have the finest portable display to show it on. For these folk price is not an issue. The best of them ask each month "what is the best today?" and then demand whatever that is - and get it. What's a few thousand dollars every few months to outfit a Sales Warrior with the sharp spears he uses to bring in millions in gross profits a year? Just asking him WHY he needs it is wasting his valuable time.

It has the finest display available of any mobile client compute device in the world. That alone commands a premium price. And it's a touchscreen! And it's smaller than a Macbook Air in every dimension. Also it's the Latest Thing all the Cool Kids have.

And then there are the lawyers, doctors, sports pros, the rich, those who want to appear to be rich, and on and on who don't care about this petty amount, to whom high cost is a plus, or will just charge their customers the cost before you even start to talk about why Joe the mechanic down the street would want one. We know why Joe wants one. Mobile HD porn. We don't have to be embarrassed by that. The Internet is for porn. Speaking of which, the devices will be highly in demand in the Internet porn industry as well - which is like most of the Internet.

Of course Mint opens up all the various remote machine management potentials and remote desktop options too. Remote into SIX 800x600 rez machines at the same time (some can be higher) without any of them overlapping on your screen on the device itself - and up to six more with an attached display for a total of TWELVE PCs on your display at the same time (probably at least one local and one VM). And room for other stuff on the screens also, without you even start counting multiple USB-attached slow-mo displays. And it has 3G. The thing's a mobile Nerd Command Center. Did I mention that it's got all of the latest Intel virtualization technologies present and enabled? It does.

Needs more storage. You can get a terabyte pen drive though. That pen drive will, by itself, cost more than this whole beautiful machine.

The Note is a phone that is also a tablet. This is a small professional notebook. Top end phones cost less than small professional notebooks. Although they exist in separate domains, I think the analogy is apt. Would you prefer a car analogy? I don't do those usually.

Re:nope

[symbolset]

Yeah right. It's not as if the iPhone hadn't already demonstrated demand for that form factor.

Yes, iPhone had. OEMs thought that Android was not worthy to compete at that price level. It had to be proven to them before they would move forward. So Google did prove it and they did. If one of them had stepped up without this proof they would now be the the premier Android provider with a leg ahead on 70% of the global smartphone market.

They rode that pony for 25 years. What have you done that's so great?

The last 10 years that cow gives no milk. She's old and dry. It's time for BBQ. She's livestock, not a pet.

Google is an advertising company. I've never head anyone quite so hungry for products that are specifically designed to spy on them and advertise to them.

My whole life the world has been ad driven. Saturday morning cartoons with Underdog and Superchicken on a black and white TV, late nite "Our Gang" interspersed with ads for cereal we demanded our parents deliver if they truly loved us and wanted us to be well... and so on. Now by trying to learn more about me in ways other than my preference for video content the advertisers are actually becoming more useful by delivering ads for stuff I might actually already want, to teach me about things proximate to my interests that I was not aware of. I kind of like that. It's also more efficient to them: offering mutual funds to kindergarten kids is a waste of time. The loss of the wasted mistargeted ads is an increase in both efficiency and consumer quality. I'm OK with the idea that helping people who make stuff I might want find me and let me know about their interesting stuff is a profitable business I don't have to pay for - especially if it drives an economy that gives me increasingly good free stuff on a regular reliable basis, and through the efficiency of only advertising to people who are conceivably interested in the product drives prices down for everything overall and QUITS WASTING OUR TIME with stuff we would never and could never be interested in.

Re:nope

[BasilBrush]

If one of them had stepped up without this proof they would now be the the premier Android provider with a leg ahead on 70% of the global smartphone market.

That's basically what Samsung has anyway. They're virtually the only successful Android manufacturer. The only ones making decent money out of it other than Apple. Many tried, most failed.

My whole life the world has been ad driven. Saturday morning cartoons with Underdog and Superchicken on a black and white TV, late nite "Our Gang" interspersed with ads for cereal we demanded our parents deliver if they truly loved us and wanted us to be well... and so on.

Ah bad luck. Our best TV channels are run by the BBC. No advertising. Shows and feature films with no commercial breaks. Nice.

Re:nope

[dreamchaser]

Fine for regular folk. Us enthusiasts have vastly higher expectations, and we're not a shrinking market.

Maybe not a shrinking market, but enthusiasts are a rather small slice of the overall market.

wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expected

[Anonymous Coward]

I was quite enthused about this when they started leaking the specs, but that's at least 2x what I'd be willing to pay.

x86? REALLY?

[ButchDeLoria]

Oh well, at least this will (hopefully) allow me to install a real version of Linux.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[cristiroma]

Also my old Dell allows installing Linux. Too bad the broadcom wireless works only in g mode and the ATI driver renders porn movies using 3d acceleration at 100% , allowing me to bake some eggs in the mean time.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[angel'o'sphere]

Macs, and that is OS X in our days, have resolution independed display code since the late 1980s ... no idea where you got this "double pixeling" idea from.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[the_B0fh]

No idea what you are talking about. My 15" Retina display runs happily at 2880 x 1800 and looks great.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X upscales non-Retina-aware applications by pixel-doubling. That's the facts, jack.

You can turn on the resolution-independent stuff with the developer tools. In practice, it doesn't look good -- too many bitmaps and hardcoded resolutions. Just like Windows and probably Linux.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[shutdown -p now]

Sure, it has that code - but its UI stack does not use it for widgets etc. Which is why it still doesn't have an option to e.g. make text bigger in all applications, like you can in Windows or most Linux DEs.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[jbolden]

He's talking about problems with applications that use dpi specific resolutions. Try browsing on Firefox 17 you'll see very quickly the problem.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[maccodemonkey]

Sure, it has that code - but its UI stack does not use it for widgets etc. Which is why it still doesn't have an option to e.g. make text bigger in all applications, like you can in Windows or most Linux DEs.

This isn't necessarily true. Apple has been shipping this for years as a developer features (open Quartz Debug, set your UI scale, logout, login.) Apple seems to have given up on this path and is instead doing Retina/Non-Retina (along with a lot of fancy software scaling algorithms to do things like 1.5x UI), but the UI stack certainly does support this.

The real reason Apple didn't go that route is because vector graphics aren't really usable for everything, and most developers are still using bitmaps.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[shutdown -p now]

This isn't necessarily true. Apple has been shipping this for years as a developer features (open Quartz Debug, set your UI scale, logout, login.)

Yes, they did. Have you ever tried actually enabling this option? It didn't just break third-party apps - it broke the core OS UI, such as the top-level app menu. I don't know on what level the UI stack actually supports this, but it clearly doesn't extend to all stock widgets.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[maccodemonkey]

This isn't necessarily true. Apple has been shipping this for years as a developer features (open Quartz Debug, set your UI scale, logout, login.)

Yes, they did. Have you ever tried actually enabling this option? It didn't just break third-party apps - it broke the core OS UI, such as the top-level app menu. I don't know on what level the UI stack actually supports this, but it clearly doesn't extend to all stock widgets.

You had to log in and out. Processes didn't scale until they were restarted, so you had to restart the process that controlled the menu.

Yes, it worked fine for stock widgets. Apple had/has an entire framework dedicated to the stock widgets required. They redid a lot of them as pdf/vector. I spent a lot of time going through the innards of the system.

This entire system is still in place and shipping on the Retina machines. The only difference is Apple has hardcoded it to 2x, 1.5x, and 1.0x scales. But it's the same underpinnings. You can even force 2x on a non-Retina computer.

So for something that supposedly breaks all the apps, it seems to be working pretty darn well on shipping hardware.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[shutdown -p now]

I know that it works for 2x scaling in 10.7. However, when I last tried to do 1.2x in 10.6 (because I had a Mac Mini hooked up to a TV, and default text size was too small to be readable), I kept getting visual artifacts no matter what.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[viperidaenz]

Back when I did VB6, it was all in resolution independent code. They used "twips", not pixels. There are 1440 twips per inch. If you needed pixels, you called a system function to find out pixels per inch.

That's been around since Windows 3.x

Re:x86? REALLY?

[angel'o'sphere]

What exactly do you want to say with that?
That you did have to do your "device independent" (resolution independent) programming yourself? Was it fun?
On a Mac the OS does it for you ...

Re:x86? REALLY?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sure, it has that code - but its UI stack does not use it for 1) widgets etc. Which is why it still doesn't have an option to e.g. make 2) text bigger in all applications, like you can in Windows or most Linux DEs.
1 and 2 have nothing todo with each other.
Go to one who has a laptop with an external monitor. Move a window so that it is half on the laptop display and half on the other monitor (preferable one with a different resolution ;D ) ... the window has the same size in millimeters on both screens. There is no, oh it so tiny on the laptop screen and so huge on the external one.

OTOH being able to change the look and feel in a system pref for bigger fonts might be a missing feature. As I always set it to the smalest one on windows ... I'm however not so certain.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[shutdown -p now]

#1 has everything to do with #2. If I want to make text bigger, it means that widgets have to grow to fit it.

Have you ever actually used UI scaling on Windows or Linux, where it actually (mostly) works?

Re:x86? REALLY?

[viperidaenz]

That it was harder to work with pixels than the runtime resolution independent API. You only needed to use pixels when working with bitmap images.

The Mac does it poorly, with hard coded 1.5x, or 2x scaling. Anything in between results in display artefacts.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[shutdown -p now]

Making text bigger is not the same thing as supporting arbitrary DPI.

No, it's not, but you need support for arbitrary DPI to allow the user to make text bigger, because otherwise bigger text will break fixed-DPI layouts. In other words, you need to be able to scale UI - widgets etc - up and down reliably.

Making text bigger is not the same thing as supporting arbitrary DPI. Put your money where your mouth is and set Windows to high DPI for a week. It should take about ten minutes of casual use to figure out the difficulties with it.

I did that for many years now - I own a 1920x1080 15" laptop for two years, and I had another 1920x1200 one for three years before that. All that time it's been running at 125%. Works great - Windows itself and most apps scale well, and for those that don't know how, the OS will bitmap-upscale them.

Now having said that, which Linux DE even comes close to Windows level of DPI support?

Both Gnome and KDE handle it well last I checked. Gnome actually tries to get your monitor's real DPI value, and automatically adjusts to that by default, which is something that Windows doesn't do.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[the_B0fh]

don't see any problems. But then I do a CTRL-minus a few times first when I run browsers, so that may not be evident.

Re:x86? REALLY?

[jbolden]

Firefox 17 not 18 correct? You should see it immediately. Here is a sample image with FF 16 vs. Safari.

https://bug674373.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=631507

Re:x86? REALLY?

[Ed Avis]

I use Windows at 200% scaling (both XP and 7) and it looks fine in pretty much every application; where are you seeing problems?

Re:x86? REALLY?

[hobarrera]

For that price, get a macbook and install Linux onto it. Apple may be expensive, but this is equally expensive, and poorer hardware.

Unask

[Anonymous Coward]

>Would you want to pay that much for what is essentially a premium netbook?

Can I unask this question?

Re:Unask

[theVarangian]

Wouldn't a 'premium' notebook have a real OS?

This isn't a 'premium' notebook, with Chrome OS installed it isn't even really a notebook, it's a portable $1299 thin client.

Re:Unask

[squiggleslash]

No. Premium is, and always has, refered to the price, not the features that may or may not make it attractive at that price.

It's a fat-client. There's no reason you can't have a "Premium" fat-client.

Re:Unask

[squiggleslash]

A thin client would do most processing on the server. This device just uses servers for storage, so it's an old fashioned fat client. But either way, it's a client, which I guess is what you were getting at...

Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

Assuming I can flop it into dev mode and easily install Chrubuntu it looks interesting. A nice laptop is not going to be cheap and the old chromebooks were cheap pieces of shit. I just wish someone made one of these ultrabooks run a normal linux distro out of the box. Please don't respond with links to the POS dell one. Last I looked the screen resolution was pathetic and the build quality was typical dell.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[BanHammor]

Still, it's like 1 million dollar vodka - it does its job for sure, but it is surely a little expensive for that.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

It does not seem to cost more than the only other competitors, macbook pro or air if that comes out with the better display this year.

1 million dollar vodka costs a lot more than even super premium vodka, this laptop is pretty reasonably priced compared to its competitors.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

What about the 11.6?
1920x1080 might be good enough on that one, I was hoping for more on the 13".

Re:Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

Still too low. My laptop from ~2000 had a 1400x1050 display. In 13 years I had hoped for more.

Did they fix the flexing? The one I played with, was before they went on sale, had nasty flexing if you held only one corner.

See proof of ancient high res display below.
http://www.lcds4less.com/SagerLaptop__Sager_NP8560__laptop-screens.html

Re:Looks pretty good.

[Bigby]

All you need is a few crazy obsessed people and PROFIT!

Re:Looks pretty good.

[beelsebob]

I don't get why you'd want this – it's only $100 less than a 13" rMBP, while having 4GB less RAM, a much much smaller SSD, and a far inferior OS.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's not a mac. For some, that's a plus.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[swillden]

Inferior OS? I dunno. I have a Samsung Chromebook and a MacBook Air, and for most work I prefer the Chromebook -- mostly because the OS gets in my way a lot less than OS X does.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's not a mac. For some, that's a plus.

Apple's popular so the hipsters need to look elsewhere.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[the_B0fh]

First link when I googled.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro_Retina

So apparently people are happily doing it since forever, if you're willing to pay for a Retina display.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[derGoldstein]

ie - the Apple business model.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[jawtheshark]

My father used to own an Dell Inspiron 8000 with that resolution. He hung on to it well into 2009 *because* of that resolution. Up until 1920x1080 and the "retina" displays came out, I never saw a higher resolution in laptops. The "standard" resolution of 1366x768 is a pure shame, in 2000, 1024x768 was standard and that aspect ratio is arguably better.

I sure hope, that at least "FullHD" becomes the new "standard". For now, it still seems to be the "premium" resolution for PCs (I paid extra to get it on my current laptop).

Really, it's painful and a sad sad state of affairs.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[jbolden]

My laptop in 2001 had 1600x1200. Resolutions on PCs are generally terrible. But they are finally starting to move from 720p to 1080p.

I own the 15" rMBP and wow does the extra resolution make a difference.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[viperidaenz]

You got more. It's now 1920x1080. 40% more pixels.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[rsborg]

Inferior OS? I dunno. I have a Samsung Chromebook and a MacBook Air, and for most work I prefer the Chromebook -- mostly because the OS gets in my way a lot less than OS X does.

If your "work" cosists entirely of web browsing, then I guess ChromeOS is a better OS. Sorry but most of us actually have to use non-web apps like spreadsheets, IDEs, and groupware/office. Also, I can't use Chrome in all cases even for web usage because I need to test my code on multiple client architectures.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[tehcyder]

What's scary about Apple's business model is that it's not just a few crazy obsessed people, it's millions of the fuckers.

I swear to god they must implant some sort of addictive mind-altering parasite in their products like that one you get in cat shit that turns you into a pussy-loving zombie.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[swillden]

Sorry but most of us actually have to use non-web apps like spreadsheets, IDEs, and groupware/office.

Spreadsheets: Google Docs -- far more useful than an unshared document anyway.

IDEs: Chromote into my desktop (I actually am not allowed to put source code on my laptop anyway), plus there's a web-based IDE in development.

Groupware/Office: gMail, Google Calendar, Google Docs.

I can't use Chrome in all cases even for web usage because I need to test my code on multiple client architectures.

I don't do UIs, but, again, I would actually just do that stuff on my desktop machine, remotely. VPN + Chromoting covers most of my work.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

The OS is pointless on pretty much all laptops. I will be removing Windows, OSX or Chrome, so it does not matter to me.

Name one laptop as nice for half the cost. The next nicest laptop I can find is a mac pro retina. Build quality is another thing I am willing to pay for.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[h4rr4r]

It only took a fucking decade. For most of that decade all you could get is less pixels.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[rsborg]

Sorry but most of us actually have to use non-web apps like spreadsheets, IDEs, and groupware/office.

Spreadsheets: Google Docs -- far more useful than an unshared document anyway.

Glad GDocs spreadsheets works for you. You can't however simply dismiss "unshared" spreadsheets like that.

GDocs is missing very many features for almost all of my work use cases. Plus offline/non-cloud is useful for those areas where we can't legally "share" the info we're slicing/dicing/preparing-for-customers (yes some big orgs use Google Docs - even some of my customers, but as my work organization isn't doing so, I can't do so in general - thus I still need an offline spreadsheet tool, and one that has all those features that gdocs does not).

Perhaps in a few years.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[swillden]

GDocs is missing very many features for almost all of my work use cases.

Which?

If you haven't looked lately, it may well have changed. New features are being added all the time.

My use of docs is pretty basic, I'll readily grant. Relatively simple calculations (though I occasionally do some fairly hairy stats stuff) in spreadsheets, simple design docs in the word processor, basic presentations. However, the primary feature of docs for my workflows is shareability. After so many years of passing requirements, design docs and contracts around, either trying to avoid concurrent modifications or to usefully merge versions when time is so tight that concurrent work is unavoidable, it's a huge relief to have shared docs with real-time collaboration.

I fought so much with trying to collaborate successfully with MS Office tools that eventually (pre-Gdocs) I wrote a series of markup languages and document processing systems so we could use CVS (and later SVN) to manage the collaboration. The markup language approach meant that everything was ultimately text, which source control systems manage well. We were constantly running into missing features, which required everything to stop while I improved the tools, but it was still faster than using Office (or anything similar).

In contrast, it's really common for me now to write nothing more than the bare outline of a design doc before I share it with my closest collaborators, who begin commenting on and even tweaking my document while I'm still writing it. When one of us has a question, there's a builtin chat client, or with two (IIRC) mouse clicks we can fire up a Hangout. Once it gets to solid draft state, I open it up to a wider audience, incorporating their feedback as it comes in -- and with trivial changes they often don't bother to tell me about the issues they see, but just fix it themselves. I've had upwards of 20 people looking at and commenting on a design simultaneously, with me able to respond in realtime, whether in-doc, in-chat or via VC.

Of course, depending on the quality of the people in your team, getting that much feedback may be a negative rather than a positive (you risk design by committee-itis), but with my team, it's awesome. We routinely write, review and approve non-trivial designs in days, rather than weeks, and small ones in hours -- and with full input from all of the relevant people.

If you really produce non-trivial docs all by yourself, then that's not an issue for you, but for my work GDocs is so much than a standalone office suite, there's no comparison. A minor formatting capability here or there is irrelevant in the face of that huge advantage. Of course, standalone apps and real-time collaboration aren't mutually exclusive, and I think that's what MS Office365 is supposed to provide (I've never used it).

Back to the core point... for many people GDocs or similar is not just an adequate solution, it's a better solution. And if that describes a large chunk of your daily work (not for you, apparently), then a Chromebook can be a very productive platform -- and $1300 for a heavily-used tool isn't unreasonable.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[ceoyoyo]

So what you're saying is that a Chromebook is just dandy if you have a real computer to connect it to?

Re:Looks pretty good.

[stenvar]

Sorry but most of us actually have to use non-web apps like spreadsheets, IDEs, and groupware/office.

Pretty much all of that works fine on ChromeOS, and a lot better than Apple's imitation-MS-Office-apps.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[swillden]

So what you're saying is that a Chromebook is just dandy if you have a real computer to connect it to?

For the things that you can't currently do on the web, yes, you need a real computer, somewhere. However, it doesn't have to be the computer you carry around. In fact, for some of the development I do, I'd far rather use a Chromebook to connect to my desktop than use a laptop. My desktop machine (Eight 3.1 Ghz cores, 32 GiB RAM) is much more powerful than any laptop.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[ceoyoyo]

I have a similar desktop machine in the lab. I frequently connect to it remotely. But my notebook is quite useful, certainly for coding, testing, emergency processing on the go, photo editing, video editing, etc. And it does that all on airplanes, trains, on the beach, at my friends' house, my parents' house, my cousins' house, on the boat or at conferences, where the Internet connection ranges from non-existent through too-crowded-to-be-useful to "farmer-class." Oh, and if the university internet connection flakes out, as it frequently does? My notebook can still do everything.

You're describing your chromebook as essentially a dumb terminal, except for webapps, where it's kind of a thin client. An $1100 dumb terminal is... expensive.

Re:Looks pretty good.

[swillden]

Well, my Chromebook cost much less than a Pixel... but I'm not so sure the Pixel doesn't make sense for anyone.

Your life may be different, but I'm rarely disconnected, including on airplanes, etc., and lack of Internet access is becoming rapidly less common, particularly since my Chromebook has 3G. Also, my employer doesn't allow engineers to put code on laptops. As a result, I find that I rarely use my MacBook Air any more, except for photo editing.

I could see myself getting great value out of a Pixel, assuming it's as nice as all the reviews say (I haven't actually seen one yet).

There's also the fact that there are already simple hacks published that allow you to run a full Ubuntu distro in a chroot on your Chromebook, with a hotkey to toggle back and forth. I haven't tried that yet, though, and I probably won't. I do have that MacBook for the rare cases I need something more than my Chromebook (about once every two weeks).

Seems expensive for a notebook.

[rajanala83]

Is it worth the money?

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[Tough Love]

Is it worth the money?

Especially considering it comes preinstalled with crippleware.

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[h4rr4r]

Just like a normal laptop and just like a normal laptop you can install linux to your hearts content.

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[AmiMoJo]

How so? ChromeOS isn't as flexible as Windows, but it isn't "crippled". You can install any software you like on it, and enable developer mode to get a root shell. You can compile it from source (Chromium OS) if you like.

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[Tough Love]

ChromeOS isn't as flexible as Windows, but it isn't "crippled".

No, you're wrong. ChromeOS is pathetically crippled. How do I run Libreoffice on it? Just to pick one example of the top of a very large stack of stuff that just won't work on ChromeOS. And no, Google office is not substitute, far from it.

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[the_B0fh]

How so? ChromeOS isn't as flexible as Windows, but it isn't "crippled". You can install any software you like on it, and enable developer mode to get a root shell. You can compile it from source (Chromium OS) if you like.

Just curious - have you actually used it before, or are you just cheering from the sidelines?

As I understand it, it is not a simple job to install your Linux distro of choice on it.

Re:Seems expensive for a notebook.

[dreamchaser]

It's not that hard to install Linux on it, at least not hard by the standards of most /. readers.

http://www.chromestory.com/2013/02/how-to-install-linuxmint-on-your-chromebook-pixel/

tl;dr? Boot into dev mode, get to a root shell, dd the image over, you now have dual boot.

MICROSOFT TAX!

[CajunArson]

This thing would obviously only be $2.99 + S&H if it weren't for the Microsoft tax! I'm tired of M$ driving up the price of hardware with ... interruption... whispering .... uh... I'm tired of the GOOGLE TAX!

Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[JDG1980]

Hey, it's an x86 PC, even if it runs a crappy OS. I suspect most of these will eventually wind up running Windows, unless there's something about the hardware that prevents this.

For people who liked the Retina hardware on the new MacBooks but couldn't justify the price (and don't care about or don't want OSX), this could be a good alternative. I'll wait a while, though: I don't see this price point lasting very long.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[alen]

Apple just dropped the price on all their retina laptops

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[EvanED]

...and with the macbook pros starting at $1500, they're still more expensive.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Subratik]

I'm 90 % sure they only dropped the price for the 13 in model. The other model's specs were bumped up by a little for the same price.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but the 13" MBP comes with a stand alone OS, a faster processor and a real hard drive. Somehow that more than justifies the additional 200 dollars.
 
And don't get me wrong, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I do own a 15 inch MBP Retina with most of the bells and whistles and when people ask if it's worth the price I tell them not really unless they have to run OSX for some reason. I wanted to step into something different to kill off the compugeek blahs that I had been getting recently. I don't regret buying it but I don't really recommend it to others if money is a question.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[tlhIngan]

Hey, it's an x86 PC, even if it runs a crappy OS. I suspect most of these will eventually wind up running Windows, unless there's something about the hardware that prevents this.

For people who liked the Retina hardware on the new MacBooks but couldn't justify the price (and don't care about or don't want OSX), this could be a good alternative. I'll wait a while, though: I don't see this price point lasting very long.

You can't run Windows on a Chromebook. The BIOS doesn't exist - just a small loader that can boot Linux and that's it. You can flip a hidden switch into "developer mode" where it'll let you have a command prompt, but that's really all there is. You can modify ChromeOS at that point to have a Linux system (there are instructions for installing Ubuntu, but it involves a bit of work with DD).

In regular non-developer mode, ChromeOS is quite locked down.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Nerdfest]

This thing apparently has a touch-screen, not just a normal screen. I'm not sure that's a good thing in a laptop, but it's there.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[the_B0fh]

You can get it cheaper from resellers - $1350 for the cheapest retina display.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Derek Pomery]

Bit of clarification on the linux instructions.
http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/

Has the typing commands portion of the instructions simplified down to:
wget http://goo.gl/34v87; sudo bash 34v87

run at least twice.

And:
sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/mmcblk0

To set ubuntu as the default boot.

So. No need to type in anything too complex w/ dd

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[shutdown -p now]

If it has UEFI, it should be able to run Win7 or Win8.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[AmiMoJo]

I wish more manufacturers would do very high resolution screens, but it appears that Windows is holding them back. If you set Windows's scaling to 150% or 200% it isn't bad, but it isn't perfect either.

Having said that there isn't much advantage going above 1920x1080 on anything up to a 15" laptop. Windows subpixel font rendering is pretty good and you actually get more usable space than a retina display at 200% scaling.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[jbolden]

I'll do you one worse. It is officially supported: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[viperidaenz]

touch screen vs nothing. It's impossible to upgrade to that.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Kyusaku Natsume]

And aesthetically designed by Sir Ive too!

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[kthreadd]

Both Google Chrome and Google Chrome OS are proprietary closed source Google products. They are not open. The Chromium and Chromium OS projects are open source, but they are not the same thing as the Google branded versions.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[shilly]

Touchscreens are really fucking irritating on laptops that don't have the ability to disable them at the flick of a switch. You can't point something out on your screen to a colleague without jumping all over the fucking show. Gah.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[thesandtiger]

The retina MBP is $200 more and has much better specs and isn't tricky to get running any other OS you want to put on it.

The only way the chrome book is a cheap alternative is if you don't value any of that.

Re:Cheap alternative to Retina MacBook

[Patch86]

I suspect most of these will eventually wind up running Windows, unless there's something about the hardware that prevents this.

The fact that there will be no OEM shipping with Windows will be the main thing preventing this. The overwhelming majority of PC users (i.e., not Slashdot readers) will use whatever OS ships with the device, and buy whatever device has the OS they like. Most people wouldn't even consider upgrading from Vista to Win7, let alone changing from one major vendor to another. Why do you think Linux is still languishing at 2% after all this time, when it is quite comparable to the big two OSs?

I'm guessing that ChromeOS is marketed mainly at non-technical folk, seeing as a lack of a full native environment would be a big turn off for any semi-serious Linux/Windows/Mac user. These people will either find ChromeOS "magical" and buy a Chromebook, or won't and won't.

Netbook???

[nomel]

Since when is Core i5, Intel HD 4000, and 4GB of ram, and a screen with an absurdly high resolution, considered a netbook?

Sure, it has a netbook os installed...but that doesn't mean anything. I could also install windows 3.1...big deal.

Re:Netbook???

[jythie]

As specs evolve and advances slow down, what software something runs will probably increasingly become the differentiating factor.

Re:Netbook???

[IndustrialComplex]

The only standard definition I've seen for netbook is:

Clamshell and no optical drive.

Re:Netbook???

[hedwards]

If you filter out the MS astroturfers, a netbook is a low cost, minimalist computer with low specs that's mostly useful for the net.

MS had a cow when Asus had success with the Eee PC line and started to apply pressure to release Windows netbooks. At which point, the whole definition was pretty much broken as the specs had to be just about doubled to make that work with XP and the cost went above what normal people would pay.

As for your definition, that would include UMPCs as well, which is sort of a problem.

Re:Netbook???

[jkflying]

10.1" screen? Any bigger than that and I wouldn't call it a netbook any more.

Re:Netbook???

[lightknight]

I'm not really sure what it is, to be honest.

On one hand, the resolution is impressive, and always on the 'I want' list. On the other hand, the lack of dedicated video card, small storage space, USB 2.0 ports...ouch. I writing this comment on a laptop from HP, that I bought several months ago, whose specs, with the exception of that resolution, somewhat trounce this thing, for the same price. I've upgraded mine, so it has 16GB of RAM, and a 240 GB SSD, but still, it came with 8 GB of RAM, which is 4 more than this thing from Google...and it's not like the i5 is a 32-bit processor or that RAM is expensive.

Unless I am missing something, it looks very expensive, and underpowered. It looks like a laptop, with the hardware of a netbook, save the disk space you expect from a tablet. And they're charging prices like it's mid-level laptop. *shudders*

Now, it makes sense in that Google is an internet company, not a hardware company, and their strategy is to tether you as closely as possible to their existing services to make as much money as possible. Still, from a freedom perspective, as well as a bang for your buck perspective, this thing is a little weak if you have even one IT guy in house. On the other hand, perhaps this is part of the glorious revolution, where the masses pay for 32KB upgrades to their POP3 accounts, because they really, really are that kind of a terrible people, while the techs who are screaming about this are silenced with checks suddenly appearing in the mail for undisclosed, but potentially eye-popping, amounts, as well as gainful employment at these companies. A serious ethical dilemma, on par with being a defense contractor. But if the universe truly has gone mad, and is desperate to pay good money for little in return...yeah, I'd still probably have a problem with it.

Re:Netbook???

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love how slashdot blames everything on a vast Microsoft conspiracy.

What really happened was Intel pushed real laptops down into the $400 range, and that killed the demand for crippled 11" Atoms with shitty keyboards.

Re:Netbook???

[lightknight]

Laptop -> portable computer, been around for years.
Netbook -> mini-sized laptop, unlikely to have an optical drive.
Ultrabook -> laptop without an optical drive.

Re:Netbook???

[ohcrapitssteve]

Since when is such a machine considered "premium?" :) Even if I wasn't a Mac fan, to buy this over a Macbook Air, which is also an x86 box at heart wouldn't make a ton of sense to me, as it could run the same x86 OSes but also run OSX natively without hackery and dodging updates that might break your Hackintosh, etc.

Re:Netbook???

[gl4ss]

premium means just premium "quality" and more importantly premium pricing.

you can buy a premium car with a shitty engine and be still paying premium for the badge.

Re:Netbook???

[Nerdfest]

High-res touch-screen?

Re:Netbook???

[ohcrapitssteve]

You're right, and I guess the MBAir doesn't have touchscreen or built-in LTE as an option, if those matter to you. I'd rather carry a hotspot to get all my devices on LTE, and I'd rather not gorilla arm myself fingerprinting up my touch-screen laptop, but that's just me.

Re:Netbook???

[the_B0fh]

Ahh, you work for Intel/Microsoft? Because they're the ones who pushed *THAT* particular definition.

Re:Netbook???

[the_B0fh]

"freedom perspective"

Which is...?

Re:Netbook???

[Anonymous Coward]

The original Eee PC Linux stack sucked shit and had an enormous return rate. Asus put Windows on it so they could actually sell them.

Microsoft didn't force them to put Windows on it, that's the crazy voices in your head talking. I'm glad you like your Eee, but the product category died due to lack of demand.

Re:Netbook???

[swillden]

As specs evolve and advances slow down, what software something runs will probably increasingly become the differentiating factor.

True, and for a lot of uses ChromeOS has some pretty compelling advantages. It also has some non-trivial limitations, but those limitations make it both a lot easier to use and much more secure. As the web becomes a more and more capable platform, and as disconnected operation becomes less common (it's already pretty rare for me), the importance of the limitations will decline, too.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google. I don't have an particular interest in ChromeOS, though, other than the fact that I find I prefer it over OS X or the common Linux distros for about 90% of what I do. I haven't used Windows in anger since shortly after Windows 2000 was released, so I can't really compare with that.)

Re:Netbook???

[EGSonikku]

When that "Core i5" is only 1.8Ghz and dual core, and when it has only 32GB of storage, and no a web browser for an OS, then yeah, it's just an overpriced NetBook.

Re:Netbook???

[viperidaenz]

Ultrabook as CPU (Intel Core), size (less than 0.8in), resume (7 seconds), and battery life (5+ hours) definitions as well.

Re:Netbook???

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft set the unofficial 'rules' for "netbook" specs (intel to a lesser extent), when they offered deep discounts on oem windows xp _for that platform only_, in order to kill-off linux-based models... for this deal (which ended 2010), it started as something along the lines of: 10.2 inch screen max, no touch, 80gb storage, 1gb ram, 1ghz single core cpu or 1.6ghz atom or equiv...

this was to keep the ultra-low cost models from cannibalizing sales of higher margin products..

they didn't just kill off most the linux netbooks, they also ruined what would've been a kick-ass form factor -- imagine the specs of a modest full sized laptop (core i3 or comparable, 4-6gb ram, 500gb hdd) smushed into a netbook with the ULV variant of the processor -- would've been the perfect size for portability while still retaining usable performance.... and many people would be carrying those around instead of their iToys.

Re:Netbook???

[tepples]

So what's the term that encompasses "clamshell, 10-inch screen, and capable of building and running applications"?

Re:Netbook???

[jkflying]

Ok, how about if I also add the requirements 'cheap' and 'has a really shitty processor'.

Re:Netbook???

[the_B0fh]

Now, that'd work! :)

Re:Netbook???

[the_B0fh]

Touch screen is mandatory as well, I believe.

Re:Netbook???

[viperidaenz]

Not yet, not until the next version of Ultrabook in June.

Re:Netbook???

[Patch86]

Agreed. Worst thing about my original EEE was that Xandros nonsense. If they'd gone with a proper distro they'd have had far less trouble.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix (as it was then) turned mine into a lovely device.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[h4rr4r]

Then you are not going to get a machine of this caliber. The display is expensive, the method of construction is expensive, plus like all luxury goods there will be a good deal of markup.

Wow, reminds me of ...

[cristiroma]

WOW! Stevie would twist in his grave when he sees this cheap clone of a MacBook Pro!

-- Good artists copy, great artists steal

OMG, the display!

[dabadab]

The only interesting thing in the whole machine is the display.
It has sane proportions (3:2) and it has a very decent resolution (2560x1700). Basically these were the worst problems of the notebooks of the last few years: the 16:9 display that made no sense whatsoever* and the laughably low resolution. Now it seems that these may go away.

*: please note that I'm talking about the really portable size range where basically the keyboard determines the width of the notebook - in this category the displays did not get wide; they got short, with huge unused spaces above and below them.

Re:OMG, the display!

[DrEasy]

The 3:2 proportion is perfect for programming. I also want something that I can hook up to a projector when giving a presentation and I don't have to fiddle with resolutions. Ideally I want my usual resolution on both the laptop screen and the projector. That used to be the case for example with the first gen MacBooks.

Re:OMG, the display!

[dfghjk]

Pretty sad when your rant has to have a lengthy disclaimer because a massive swath of the market that doesn't line up with your point of view. Even sadder that you are modded insightful.

There's nothing sane about 3:2 proportions. They faded from existence because 16:10 is better. This notebook has a whopping 100 pixels more than a 13" retina MBP, a whole 6% more! That's something you can really pat yourself on the back over. Hopefully it will make up for not being able to install apps despite paying nearly the same price for a lot less machine.

Re:OMG, the display!

[viperidaenz]

I prefer wide screens for programming. I like the Package Explorer on the left and the Outline view on the right. Leaves enough room for text in the middle.

Re:OMG, the display!

[Fri13]

I belive that Google has agenda behind this display. As that 3:2 and 2560x1700 demands new production line from display manufacturer, it is now second one for Apple to get "Retina" display what forces many to follow with high resolution panels.

Now if Google agenda to get 3:2 as new standard instead anyt 16:9/16:10 then it is great thing as it would be better than current ones.

resolution and monitor size

[ThorGod]

I like the idea, but the monitor size (13", about) is small! But it's got a high resolution and a touch screen...

Still, it's interesting if I can treat it like a unix laptop...

I'll call it an interesting direction. You certainly can't touch the screen on any MacBook(s) at the moment.

Re:resolution and monitor size

[h4rr4r]

I just touched the screen on my MacBook air. I seem to still be alive. I think you can touch it all you like. It does not treat it as input, but that does not prevent you from smudging up the display if you like.

Touch on a laptop seems like a terrible idea. It already has better methods of input. It works for phones and tablets because there really is no other option.

Re:resolution and monitor size

[the_B0fh]

Think of all the times when you wanted an iPad but didn't have one handy... :)

Re:resolution and monitor size

[viperidaenz]

Touch on a desktop seems like a terrible idea. Touch on a laptop seems like a good idea.

Re:Well..

[rtfa-troll]

Depends...

On if you can hack it. As long as you can still open up the developer mode and if you can upgrade the local storage, even with some difficulty then this becomes a way of getting a MacBook Pro workalike without giving money to either Apple or Microsoft then I'm for it. Actually I will go for the more "expensive" 64G / LTE version too. It's still cheaper than the $2,199.00 Amazon pops up with for a retina Macbook.

I especially love the idea of having a proper shape of screen. I would sacrifice very much performance for that.

No.

[Richy_T]

In the last few days, I have switched over to the "Google is evil" camp and will be moving away from them as much as possible.

If anyone cares what pushed me over the edge, it was when I found they now require you have Google Plus to write a review in the play store. A move worthy of Microsoft at its vilest. This is not the only issue by any means though.

Re:No.

[squiggleslash]

You know who also forced people to join Google Plus when they wanted to write reviews of apps they'd bought?

Re:No.

[Dan East]

One thing that has annoyed me lately is that you now have to be signed in to a Google account to use the PDF preview capability in search results. These aren't "Google Books", but just PDFs on 3rd party sites that Google has retrieved and converted, so the documents are already sitting out there one the web. There's no good reason a person has to be signed in to Google view a preview version of a PDF found in a Google Search.

I can see now, if Google could get away with it, they would require you to be signed in to do just a general web search. Fortunately they would lose too much traffic if they went that far. For now.

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

You mean, like Microsoft Passport...?! The one that so many slashdotters got so angry about, but is rather blase when Google does it...?

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

You haven't used Chrome, have you...?

Re:No.

[paulpach]

If anyone cares what pushed me over the edge, it was when I found they now require you have Google Plus to write a review in the play store. A move worthy of Microsoft at its vilest. This is not the only issue by any means though.

As someone who sells a game in google play I appreciated this move. Before, when a customer had a problem with the game, I had absolutely no way of helping the customer. Now at least I can help some of them by contacting them on their google play.

I would really prefer if I could simply reply to reviews and keep it anonymous, many of the problems people have are just misunderstandings or are a checkbox away. Any change that allows me to respond to reviews is very welcome.

Re:No.

[tlambert]

You haven't used Chrome, have you...?

Actually, Chrome attempts to force you to login, but you open it in an incognito window instead, and it won't force the login.

Re:No.

[DrEasy]

Yup, the consolidation of the YouTube and the Google accounts made me logout from Google forever. I want to keep my YouTube identity separate from my Google identity, and since it's impossible to do so without constantly logging in and out of them, I gave up on the Google side of things (so I just use my old YouTube account). What made the decision even easier is when they announced the impending death of iGoogle.

Re:No.

[AmiMoJo]

I'm still in two minds about the real name policy, which presumably is what you object to. Google's stated reason for it is that it encourages more civil discourse online, and they appear to be correct. YouTube in particular is plagued by offensive comments, where as G+ isn't and app/place reviews are now cleaning up.

On the other hand it is a major privacy issue, especially without the right to be forgotten or be anonymous. Fortunately the "real name" policy is more like a "realistic name" policy, so you can effortlessly create pseudonyms. Even on sites that allow more traditional handles I have multiple identities, so it was natural to carry that over to Google as well.

Re:No.

[MSG]

That seems like an overreaction. You can't purchase anything from the Google Play Store without a Google account (which automatically means Plus). Why would they allow someone who can't use the Play Store to review an app there? That's nothing more than an open invitation for abuse.

Re:No.

[Nimey]

JULIUS CAESAR!

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

And are you aware of what Chrome does the *first time* it is run?

Re:No.

[thesandtiger]

People other than grandparents actually pay attention to in-Eco-system reviews? Huh.

Re:No.

[thesandtiger]

When Google went public they lost the ability to not be "evil". By law, going public means you have to put shareholder profit ahead of every other consideration or face a never ending stream of lawsuits.

Any public company that seems to be doing "good" is only doing so because they believe is more profit for them in that than in the alternatives. Such an organization might have a spokesperson who says don't be evil or whatever, but that's just marketing.

Personally, this has lead me to recalibrate my moral compass substantially. Murdering people: evil. Requiring people to be logged in to use convenient features of your product: smart business.

Re:No.

[swillden]

Umm, it asks you which search engine you want to use and offers you the option of signing into your Google account to enable Chrome Sync (keeps your bookmarks and other data synchronized across multiple machines).

Oh, yeah, and it also takes your grandmother hostage. Forgot that part.

Re:No.

[damnbunni]

No, you do not have to have Google Plus to have a Google account.

I have a Google account, but not a Google+ account. If I try to access Google+, it asks me to create an account.

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

A little more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Usage_tracking

RLZ identifier and that initial unique identifier/registration when you first run Chrome. So even if you don't sign in to your google account, you can still be tracked down to the system/machine/local account level.

But it does treat your grandmother very well.

Re:No.

[thesandtiger]

I don't consider making it harder for people to get away with habitually being a raging cockknob to be a privacy issue, really. Though, I am not particularly concerned about privacy because it doesn't exist.

The only private things are things that are known literally to only one individual. Anything known to two or more individuals has the potential of being known by all individuals and a reasonable person should anticipate the potential for exposure. This is something that, before the wired world, was proverbial - a secret may be kept secret between two people, provided one is dead.

In the wired world, people seem to forget that when they send Bob a text, they aren't jut telling Bob, but literally everyone else in the chain that leads from you to Bob or who can potentially come into contact with the text you sent at any point along that chain. You aren't texting Bob; you're texting AT&T and everyone else, it's just that Bob is probably the only person interested enough to notice.

Re:No.

[squiggleslash]

Technically there are different levels of Google account, and I believe you can buy something with a regular Google account but need Google Plus to actually do a review.

Nonetheless I suspect the aim with this policy is to make it harder to post fake reviews. I'm failing to see the giant conspiracy here. And as you say, if the aim is to track you, well, Google has always required a Google account when using Play Store anyway, it's just upped the level of accountability needed to post reviews.

Re:No.

[swillden]

RLZ identifier and that initial unique identifier/registration when you first run Chrome. So even if you don't sign in to your google account, you can still be tracked down to the system/machine/local account level.

Which contains no identifying information, is not unique (it tags you to a download "cohort" and a first search "cohort") and is not included if you downloaded your copy of Chrome from the Google web site. RLZ is used to track Chrome copies distributed through promotional campaigns.

Re:No.

[Richy_T]

Yes. Exactly like that.

Re:No.

[Richy_T]

I already have a gmail account which is required in order to use the play store. There is no need to add in a Google plus requirement.

Re:No.

[Richy_T]

A Gmail account is required to use play store so it would be possible to tie reviews to accounts anyway (and I'm sure they are behind the scenes). Why require Google plus?

Re:No.

[Richy_T]

How is this an upping of the level? I have a gmail account, I'm comfortable with that. I neither want nor need a Google plus account and there is no reason to require it for this function. None.

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

And if you never login to any google services on that browser, yeah, it won't know who you are. If you ever do, not so much.

I've logged out of Google, and still seen the G+ counter increment.

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

And you cannot understand why people who were subjected to abuse, or have a pseudonym, or any number of other legitimate reasons, might not want to have their real name associated with that because privacy doesn't exist?

Re:No.

[thesandtiger]

I can understand it, but I think a much better strategy, instead of being fragile, is to accept that it will only get more and more difficult to avoid exposure othe future and to instead cope with reality.

It sucks that some people are abused etc., but even those people must face the reality that it is extremely likely that in the not too distant future it will be absolutely trivial for people to find out anything they care to know.

Given the choice between fighting a losing battle and developing coping skills to handle the new reality, I pick ladaptation.

Re:No.

[swillden]

And if you never login to any google services on that browser, yeah, it won't know who you are. If you ever do, not so much.

If you really don't want to be tracked, Google allows you to opt out and even provides an extension that ensures your opt-out doesn't get lost. You may be skeptical, that's certainly your right, but I know one of the guys who works on the opt-out stuff and they take it really seriously. If there is some way that you can be tracked by Google's systems even with an opt-out cookie in place, it's a bug and they fix it.

I've logged out of Google, and still seen the G+ counter increment.

I'm deeply skeptical of this claim.

Re:No.

[the_B0fh]

At least I think I was logged out. But, remember, if you have multiple tabs open, one of those tabs may still have a session id or cookie that gets sent back (even though it's now invalid for checking email, for example - the cookie that was in the page still gets sent back).

It looked like I was logged out, because I had to log in back to gmail on another tab. It could be a timing issue or other issues, I did not do a tcpdump or anything else to verify/validate.

As for the extension, linky? Sounds interesting. Thanks.

Re:No.

[squiggleslash]

I neither want nor need a Google plus account and there is no reason to require it for this function. None.

Well, other than the reason I just gave, preventing bogus reviews from being posted.

A GMail account wouldn't cut it, anyone can get as many GMail accounts as they want.

Re:No.

[swillden]

It looked like I was logged out, because I had to log in back to gmail on another tab

That doesn't necessarily mean you were logged out. There are states in which Google thinks you need to be re-authenticated before you're allowed access to private stuff (in case you're not actually you!), but that's not the same thing as having logged out.

As for the extension, linky? Sounds interesting.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keep-my-opt-outs/hhnjdplhmcnkiecampfdgfjilccfpfoe?hl=en

Storage!

[onyxruby]

Google should know better than to gimp the storage! Nice netbook, looks like it could be useful right up until you get to the point about storage. 32 GB for the base model or 64 GB for the upgrade model. It has a nice screen, I like that, but in the real world most people don't live in the cloud, they live off their hard drive!!!!

Google, quite being cheap and give people a hard drive that isn't the same spec I would have gotten from a model 5 years ago, okay? Just because you live in the cloud, just because your users utilize the cloud, doesn't mean that your users live in the cloud. Why is this so hard to understand?

Re:Storage!

[JDG1980]

Google should know better than to gimp the storage!

Google does this on purpose with all their devices, because they want you to live your entire life "in the cloud" (i.e. no data security and no privacy). This is why most newer Nexus devices don't have SD card slots. At least the Chromebook Pixel has one so you can add external storage for your stuff.

The real question is whether the Chromebook Pixel has its SSD in standard mSATA format, or if it uses some proprietary crap like the Macbooks do. If it's a standard mSATA drive, it wouldn't be hard to upgrade – you can get a decent 256GB mSATA drive for less than $200, and you're still paying less than you would for a comparable 15" Retina MacBook Pro.

That said, you can fit Windows 7 on the default amount of space – I've run it for a while on a 30GB SSD boot drive on one of my systems. The install comes to 10-15GB before adding any extra software. Of course, you need to keep all your actual data on a different drive.

Re:Storage!

[farble1670]

Just because you live in the cloud, just because your users utilize the cloud, doesn't mean that your users live in the cloud. Why is this so hard to understand?

google doesn't have a lot of interest in giving you a nice system to run linux. it only pays off for them if you use their cloud services. they aren't going to jack up the price / lower their profit margin to add hardware that doesn't support that end.

Re:Storage!

[the_B0fh]

Exactly. If you don't have good Internet access, you're not their target market.

Re:Storage!

[EGSonikku]

Except for only a $200 difference the 13" MacBook Pro Retina is giving you a much faster CPU, 2x the RAM, and 4x the storage right out of the box.

You know Google is full of shit on the pricing when they make Apple look reasonable by comparison.

Re:Storage!

[kqs]

For a chromebook, no. For Google Fiber, yes. And then you can buy a chromebook.

Re:Storage!

[ceoyoyo]

Whenever you're confused about something Google does, ask yourself how it helps their business, which is targeted advertising.

Makes Android and gives it away!? Oh yeah, now they get access to your phone.

Makes a notebook with a tiny hard drive that only runs web apps?! Oh yeah, now you have to store all your stuff on Google's servers where they can look at it.

Google Docs and the Cloud Problem

[ideonexus]

What keeps me from buying into the Chrome OS is the idea of having everything in the "cloud." A few months back I switched to Google Docs for all my writing, and the experience hasn't been the best. On my laptop, I've got local versions of all my docs, so it isn't too big a problem, but on my tablet, the local versions won't work unless there's an internet connection. I live just outside of DC, but Verizon's DSL is still unreliable. Many times I'm writing and docs looses the internet connection and freezes up, making me sit there waiting until it can sync my last edit with its servers.

What's worse is that Office 2013 is starting to go the Cloud-drive route too, so Word freezes up when I'm not connected to the Internet. You know what else freezes up when I'm not connected to the cloud? Mass Effect 3, right in the middle of my game play. Even though all the content is on my hard drive.

I am all for the cloud, but developers need to make sure their products work when I'm not connected to it. I have no intention of shelling out a $1000-plus dollars for a device that turns into a brick when I'm riding in a car just because my hot-spot can't get a cellphone signal.

Re:Taking a queue from Apple

[Tough Love]

The only good thing about Google beating on this dead horse till the end of time is, it's a great source of decent Ubuntu laptops.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[rwa2]

Hmm, the price would make sense if they actually had a nice video card in there...
But an Intel HD 4000 ?

I'm not expecting that to keep up with the high-res display. Though I guess with all of the touchscreen smudges, it wouldn't matter as much...

Re:But who will have the last laugh when ...

[punkrockguy318]

When Google unveils the other super secret project it has been keeping under the wraps, the Google WiMax Nationwide (tm) project that gives Wi-Fi access to all Chromebook Pixel users for free, who will be laughing? Pixel users get 50GB data per month, Nexus users 10 GB/month, all other Android users get 2GB/month free, Wi-Fi calling using VoIP is included too. If you need more data than that the planned rate is something like 1$/GB or something. Non Android gmail users pay 5$ a month for 2GB/ month. Non-Android Non-gmail users pay some 20$ a month for 2GB/month.

How accurate are the numbers? Where did I get this info? Well, I am just day dreaming, hoping this comes to pass, and everyone thinks I have a super high level mole inside Google organization. That should be worth some 15 minutes of fame, should it come to pass, that is.

When? Don't you mean if? Do you have any links whatsoever to back this up? And anyway I don't think I would be bummed out if Google rolls out WiMax and i wasn't an early adopter on their netbook...

needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that price

[Joe_Dragon]

needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that price also flash size is small.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[h4rr4r]

It should not be a problem. I have a very similar built in intel card driving a 1366x768 and a 1920x1080 screen at the same time.

Chromebook = cheap?

[WhackAttack]

I thought the whole point of a Chromebook was a laptop that was affordable and practical...not very affordable anymore...

Re:Chromebook = cheap?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Nope, that was never the intent of the Chromebook or Chrome OS. Google wants to create an OS for the masses, meaning that while the OS could be used for cheaper devices, its also just as obvious they want to target high-end devices with this. The only reason the first few Chromebooks were cheap was to get developer support behind them.

I think its a smart move as it will blow away the misguided assumption that Chrome OS was intended as a cheap alternative to other platforms. Chrome wasn't trying to create a OLPC kind of platform.

Also there is nothing to suggest that this will be the ONLY Chromebook sold by Google or others, so there is no reason why Google can't offer a state-of-the-art device to showcase all that Chrome OS can do while still offering cheaper devices.

Re:Chromebook = cheap?

[Eskarel]

Google's intent with ChromeOS is to create an environment where they have no competition for their services so they can have all your data and all your personal information for ever and ever and ever. To support this end they created an OS where their applications get to run native code but no one else's do. Google's offering will be faster than anyone elses offering because Google gets to cheat. They're essentially creating the FSF's worst nightmare but because the client is creative commons, no one is noticing and a few people are even cheering.

iOS is less locked down than ChromeOS and all of Microsoft's proprietary format tricks put together still gave you more control over your document than Google Docs does.

Will fail like Nexus Q

[rsborg]

A chromebook for $250-$500 sounds like a pretty good deal ($250 for those unsure about a laptop that only runs a web browser, $500 for those who like the chromebook concept and want better hardware). Why would I pay 4x more than the entry-level model - what kind of product marketing group signed off on this?

A 13" retina-class Chromebook for the same price as a MB Air (which has better specs aside from the screen and runs a real OS) just sounds crazy.

Re:Will fail like Nexus Q

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Thank God for capitalism.

I don't think Google is going to take over the world with this thing, but there are a whole slew of people with highly disposable income, you know, nerds that get paid well for being nerdy. This is the kind of device that nerds will drool over, I am. That's the beauty of capitalism, you can pretty much sell anything at any price and there will always be a market for it, even if you don't get it.

Nexus Q was completely misguided however. It wasn't a Google TV product yet could connect to a TV and it was described as some vague social networking platform for music or video. Google didn't even know what the hell it was so they couldn't market it properly and were completely out to lunch with the price and design of the thing. But Google knows exactly who they are targeting with the Pixel.

I would be considering it, if...

[aklinux]

... I hadn't just gotten a Samsung Series 5 550 about a week and a half ago. I don't regret my purchase, so far anyway. My life was already in the cloud, I just went with it ;)

Cheaper than 3 years of 1TB Google Drive Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

At current prices, 3 Years of 1TB Google Drive Storage (that they throw in for free with every Pixel purchase) goes for 12x3x49.99=1799.64.

Basically you get a laptop for free and some discount if you prepay for it.

Seems like a good deal (if you *need* that kind of storage)

Yes, but...

[bored]

Only if the HD and RAM are upgradable with standard parts, and the can be replaced. And no, using a soldering iron or a heat gun doesn't count, especially if there is a large likely hood of damage.

Until then, I consider $1300 to much for a disposable laptop. That was my problem with the macbook. Although, I probably would have dropped $1300 for the retina mac even with its failings.

I would be ecstatic if they put that display (with a matte coating) on an actual netbook. My netbook has standard RAM, harddrive and a replaceable battery. Its only real weakness is the crap display. I can put up with the CPU being a little slow, but the display is the killer.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[Bill Hayden]

But an Intel HD 4000 ?

I'm not expecting that to keep up with the high-res display.

It doesn't seem to be a problem for the Retina version of the MacBook Pro 13", which uses the same chip.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[SJHillman]

Given how well my Intel HD 3000 has been handling games on a dual-monitor 1920x1080 / 1440x900, I wouldn't scoff at the HD 4000 even if it only shows a minor improvement over the 3000.

Re:Well..

[EGSonikku]

The 13" Macabook Pro Retina starts at $1499.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro

For that you get:

2.5GHz Core i5
8GB RAM
128GB SSD

And out of the box you can run OS X, Windows, or Linux.

So for $200 more than a Chromebook you get 4x the storage, and an actual OS and apps.

Seems a no brainier to me, assuming you HAVE to have a super HD display.

Price point

[Jazari]

I can see that a ChromeBook for $400 or less makes a lot of sense and would interest a lot of people. It's a nice extra computer for the living room or for a vacation. But at over $1000 I wonder what the market will be? It's too expensive to be just a toy and it's not powerful enough to be used as your only machine.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[AmiMoJo]

Intel 4000 graphics are more than adequate for 2D and some occasional web based 3D. 4GB of RAM is fine for running a browser and a few other mobile style apps.

Look at it another way, plenty of 11" Ultrabooks in that price range come with Intel 4000 graphics and 4GB of RAM, yet cope with the demands of Windows reasonably well.

Re:But who will have the last laugh when ...

[gl4ss]

ask your imaginary friend for some magic beans and remind him that a few city blocks in nyc isn't a nation..

I'm willing to support linux OEMs

[ikaruga]

too bad Chrome OS is just too gimped. Such a wasted opportunity. While the insides are not stellar the screen looks great. I'd gladly pay that price if it had a real linux distro with manufacturer support. That kind of screen is for professionals graphical and coding apps, not facebook, twitter and youtube.

Re:I'm willing to support linux OEMs

[EGSonikku]

If you'd gladly pay that price for the screen get a Retina MacBook Pro, and then put whatever OS you want on it.

$200 more than the Chromebook Pixel, but you also get MUCH better hardware (double the RAM, 4x the storage, and much faster CPU).

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD212LL/A?

Re:I'm willing to support linux OEMs

[ikaruga]

Actually that is exactly what I did. My biggest issue so far with MBP however is that I can't get some hardware to work optimally(Nvidia Optimus being the prime example). The initial set up was also a huge mess. Sure I could just use a VM, and for most work that is what I do, but for graphics nothing is better than native performance. It would be really nice if Apple released bootcamp for linux.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[geekboybt]

For what it's worth, the 13" Retina MBP has roughly the same resolution and only the HD 4000.

You won't be playing any high-end, full 3D games, but it'll be just fine for Chromebook needs.

If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[EGSonikku]

Get a Retina MacBook Pro.

Lets compare:

13" Chromebook Pixel
1.8GHz Core i5
4GB RAM
32GB Storage
5 Hour battery
Only runs Chrome
$1,299

13" Retina MacBook Pro
2.5GHz Core i5
8GB RAM
128GB SSD
7 Hour battery
Can run OS X, Windows, or Linux
$1,499

Seems to me that extra $200 gets you a LOT more bang for your buck. And if you don't care about the display then that same cash gets you a much better hardware spec'd laptop from many other places.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[gman003]

Good.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[aristotle-dude]

The chromebook also comes with a 2 year Verizon data plan, which I am assuming is adding a chunk to the cost. Would be cool if they offered it without that also.

No, that is the base model being quoted which is 32GB storage Wifi model whereas the 64bit model is LTE on verizon.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[0xABADCODA]

It comes with the wireless modem, not a data plan. You still have to buy a 'day pass' for however much that is or add it to some wireless plan (article says $10/mo to add it to existing plan).

You'd probably be better off just tethering a MacBook Pro to your phone anyway.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[EGSonikku]

And OS X is an OS, and Chrome is a web browser (no matter how much Google pretends it isn't).

And they have nearly identical screens.

2560x1700 (Chromebook)
2560x1600 (MacBook)

So yes, it still makes far more sense to get the MacBook for $200 more to get the much faster CPU, 2x the RAM, and 4x the storage, and a legitimate OS.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[AmiMoJo]

For my mum I'd get the Chromebook because it is easier to use and harder to break.

For myself I'd get an Ultrabook. Better spec, cheaper, better screen. Yeah, better screen, because the effective resolution of a retina display at 200% scaling (for optimum image quality) is lower than full HD and text isn't any easier to read (looks a bit sharper perhaps).

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[DrEldarion]

It runs ChromeOS, not just Chrome. There's a difference there, though it's subtle. Also, there's no reason you couldn't install Linux on this thing. People are already doing it with current computers. ... but there's no reason this Chrome be a "real OS". Do a quick search for Native Client and you'll see. I've played Bastion in my browser using it, and if I wasn't in Chrome, I'd have no reason to believe it wasn't native. As more and more applications get written using it, this distinction will become nonexistent.

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[cras]

My laptop comparisons nowadays:

Apple laptop:
MagSafe

Non-Apple laptop:
Non-MagSafe

Until some laptop has MagSafe or similar I won't even consider it. I remember too well when I used to trip over the power cords and drag my laptop on the floor. Or break the power plug because it got twisted when moving the laptop in a bad direction. Or stepping on the power plug and breaking it. (Yeah, I don't treat my laptops all that well.)

Re:If you HAVE to have a Retina/Pixel display...

[cheesybagel]

1) It wasn't invented by Apple

2) If I stepped on my power plug it would be more likely I broke my foot not the plug.

why the hate on integrated video?

[Chirs]

Unless you're gaming, integrated video is fine. It'll drive multiple monitors, it drives modern UIs with all the graphical effects enabled, it plays basic games just fine. It'll do hardware-accelerated video decoding, proper HDMI support, etc. Plus it uses less power than dedicated video and has better Linux driver support.

I've got two 2yo laptops at home with integrated Intel video and given my current usage pattern I haven't had any issues with either of them. The only caveat is that I don't do gaming.

Competing with their customers?

[CODiNE]

I keep wondering when Google's hardware offerings are going to sour their relationships with their partners.

Maybe Android is too big now for phone and tablet makers to take their ball and go home, but Chrome OS could be stillborn from this.

Re:Competing with their customers?

[codemachine]

I'm not sure that this $1400 laptop is really competing with the sub $500 chromebooks made by their partners.

I think there would be more concern if there was a Motorola Nexus or something, but so far they've had others manufacture the Nexus devices.

don't maximize your windows!

[Chirs]

If you don't want one app to use the full width of your monitor, then don't maximize the window. This seems pretty basic.

On the other hand, reading PDFs fullscreen on a big monitor is great if you set the viewer for two-page side-by-side viewing.

Re:Well..

[the_B0fh]

$1349 for the cheapest 13" Retina display.

http://appleinsider.com/mac_price_guide/#%23

$50 more only if you do comparison shopping. :)

How much can I mod it?

[edmicman]

My initial questions are:
What is the effective resolution? I.e., 1388x768 or whatever? It doesn't actually display at that resolution, does it?
Can you replace the HD?
Can you wipe it and run another OS like Linux or Windows on it?
What 'touch' features does ChromeOS use?

Seems like it might be a sweet little portable dev machine, that's not a Mac. Why is it that the only ones coming out with hires laptop displays are Apple or Google? Where's my 14" Lenovo with that resolution?

Pricing strategy

[DogDude]

Clearly, they're using Apple's pricing strategy. It's a Business 101 classic: many customers WANT to spend too much on stuff. Those customers see high prices as some (twisted) source of prestige. As a retailer, I see it every day. There are products that you can sell MORE of if you increase the price.

Re:Pricing strategy

[EGSonikku]

Apple makes a $1299 computer that can only run a web browser?

Re:Pricing strategy

[thetoadwarrior]

At least a macbook air works fine without the internet and serves as more than an email and youtube device. Google is just taking the piss.

Re:Pricing strategy

[thesandtiger]

It isn't always because of prestige. Many people equate higher prices with higher quality, the assumption being that the product has to be worth it because how else could they sell it for more?

It isn't he worst metric to use, either, even if it isn't always true.

Re:Gee whiz

[aristotle-dude]

Similar form factor and specs to a Mac Book Pro .. and guess what .. similar price. Take that you Apple Apologists .. um .. err .. [Facepalm]

Right but half the ram (4GB versus 8GB) and a quarter of the storage (32GB versus 128GB) for only 200 dollars less than the 13" rMBP. Shouldn't it be a lot less considering that it does not come with a fullblown OS and apps?

Schmidt

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that everyone has a different reason for leaving Google.

For me it was Schmidt's statements about identity and privacy that pushed me over the edge. His total disdain for the rights of others made it very plain that his world is not my world, and it made the source of Google's developing evil very clear. We had to part company.

Hell no to touchscreens on laptops!!!

[Xaedalus]

As a proud member pervert in good standing of the Congregation for Appreciation of Internet Pr0n, I must heartily decry, deride, protest, and shake every conceivable appendage I can muster at the idea of a laptop having a touchscreen. I care not for access to dev mode and ease of conversion to Linux, nor do I care about comparisons to MBR, MBP, or any other model in its market class, nay; what I care most about is that when I am using internet on my laptop for the purpose that the Good Lord Snookums intended--the transmission of digitalized lewd images at 0.999999 percent of c to my eyes for transitional enlightenment of my load--that any incidental contact of whatever airborne fluids I may be generating will not hit my screen and be registered as input. I have a hard enough time keeping my screen nice and clear as it is, I really do not need the fruit of my loins sending me to yet another morally dubious website when I'm not yet done with the one I'm on! So NAY! I say! Nay to touchscreens on laptops! I will NOT be a consumer of this product!

As a side note, I do not use my iPad for this very reason... well, that and my wrists tend to get crimps in them.

Re:Well..

[derGoldstein]

He meant mecca books

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[derGoldstein]

Those 11" Ultrabooks come with a copy of Windows, so you can actually do something useful.

I wouldn't say "lol @ poor people" but...

[Anonymous Coward]

$1300 doesn't sound outrageous if the build quality and features were decent for an ultraportable nOtebook.

With an i5 CPU (Note: the "i5" in it is only a 1.8GHz dualcore) and a hi-rez touchscreen it sounds OK at first. But the reason you spend this kind of money for an Ultraportable is because a $500 netbook can't hack it. and that's because your Outlook inbox has been archived a dozen times and is still pushing 2GB. And while the home office network can do 20MbPS up/down you're in the field (hence the Ultraportable) and the exchange server really sucks over a 1.5Mb/256Kb connection. Oh wait this Chrome and it only has a 32GB HDD. So I'm not sure what it is good for. I don't need an i5, 4GB RAM and a hires screen for "cloud stuff", I can do that on my phone.

Really your just paying $1300 for an "I'm Stupid" sign.

Re:I wouldn't say "lol @ poor people" but...

[Fri13]

Sorry but you are paying to get a 3:2 ratio custom made 13" display with high resolution (2560x1700) and that resolution demands CPU and RAM.
Chromebook are for WWW browser, those who are fine with 1280x800 or 1366x768 displays can go and "enjoy" web.

What was problem with netbooks? Their 1024x600 resolution display at 10" screen. They were very capable for $250 computers for many things, but WWW was just terrible to use if WWW designer didn't follow the idea that page needs to be scalable to any resolution and there is no any kind hovering elements what limits visible page (all those twitter, facebook etc "share" panels are terrible).

Macbook Pro is great by look but its use really is terrible as its sharp edge on front really causes lots of pressure to wrist. Still the feel when laying hands on that computer feels great.

And you do know that you can even install Windows or other Linux distribution than ChromeOS to it? Yes the windows eats most of the computer anyways, but if there would be a way to have swappable SSD, it would be many geek wish.

That screen... It just is so much better than any 16:9/16:10 what is out there.

Re:I wouldn't say "lol @ poor people" but...

[spike hay]

Netbooks used to be cool but they almost invariably have the same 1.6 Ghz atom and 1Gb of ram that they did 5 years ago. And they are actually more expensive than they were 5 years ago. 1 Gb is ok if you use LXDE or Openbox and don't go too wild with firefox tabs, but it kind of bites.

Upgrade the screen to 1366x768 and give it 2Gb and I'll bite, though. It really sucks that there apparently is no market for cheaper =12" laptops. The 1024x600 is usable once you get used to it, but it's never good.

Re:Taking a queue from Apple

[the_B0fh]

I will have to say - instead of flamebait, there should be a "misguided" mod.

Not everyone wants or uses a $500 laptop.

I have a $5000 windows laptop and a $4000 retina display. I love my retina display much much more.

Re:Super expensive?

[EGSonikku]

How so? The 13" Retina MacBook Pro does costs $200 more, but for that $200 you get:

2.5GHz i5 instead of the Chromebook Pixels 1.8GHz i5
Double the RAM (8GB)
4x the Storage (128GB SSD)
Longer battery life

Seems to me it's the Chromebook that's a ripoff here.

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD212LL/A?

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[rwa2]

OK, but
2560x1700 = 4 MP
1920x1080 = 2 MP
1366x768 = 1 MP

And you're probably only doing something full-motion video or 3D intensive on one of those screens at a time.

I'm pleasantly surprised it made it to the "High End GPU" list, albeit pretty far down.
http://videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

And yes, I'm pretty happy with the Intel GPU in my wife's $400 Toshiba Satellite. And I'm looking forward to when Intel is a more serious contender in the GPU arena with solid OSS drivers. But the only reason I'd pay more than $1k for a laptop would be to get a half-decent nVidia or Radeon onboard. For most of what I would do on high-end hardware, I'd rather have higher FSAA & FPS than more pixels, but I'm strange like that.

Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

Could somebody for freak's sake use REAL keyboards on a notebook, not that flat and pseudo-designish new keyboard crap, where your fingers have no side support and slip around?

I'd gladly pay 1500 for real and quality hardware (15" please 1400x1050, please!) - but not for apple-sideshow-crap.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[ColdWetDog]

Those 11" Ultrabooks come with a copy of Windows, so you can actually do something useful.

Is that a feature or a bug?

Re:Super expensive?

[aristotle-dude]

What would you call Apple's offerings? The chromebook is a steal by comparison.

What are you smoking? The base model 13" Retina Macbook Pro is only 200 dollars more than the base model Pixel but has twice the ram and four times the storage.

The only thing it has is a slightly higher resolution screen at 2560X1700 versus 2560X1600 on the 13" macbook.

The Macbook comes with a real OS and content creation apps (garage band and iMovie) as well as iPhoto for retouching photos.

Re:A laptop with a touch screen?

[ChunderDownunder]

Touchscreens are part of the latest ultrabook spec, so get used to it...

Google Native Client

[tlambert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client

Then compile and run anything you want on your ChromeBook.

Re:Google Native Client

[theVarangian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client

Then compile and run anything you want on your ChromeBook.

Why bother? If the specs are good enough buy it for the hardware and install Fedora ... or whatever your favourite distro may be.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[smegfault]

The HD3000 in my Thinkpad E330 runs 3D games quite well on a 1920x1080; don't see what all the disappointment is all about. If you want something that will run Skyrim at full HQ in Retina quality you shouldn't have bought a Chromebook in the first place.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[jbolden]

I'm sure it is a problem. I have the 15" rMBP. The Nvidia 650M can have problems keeping up with 5mp. The Intel 4000 definitely lags if you force the laptop to use integrated graphics. I would never buy the 13" rMBP for that reason.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[jbolden]

Not for 5mp is it isn't. Most websites aren't designed well for that sort of dpi. The OS / video card has to do a lot of manipulation. The 11" ultrabooks don't have nearly that many pixels nor do they have to do the complex manipulations of scale.

I have a rMBP which has the Intel 4000. Integrated graphics suck. I would never buy this machine without the Nvidia 650M and while I love this machine I gotta tell you even the 650M ain't quite beefy enough that I don't sometimes notice video lag.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[derGoldstein]

Touche.
Also, the link to your website doesn't work. Change the ".htm" to ".html".

Re:Well..

[ThorGod]

while true, you don't get a touch screen on the Mac. So, it's basically consumption vs production.

Re:Well..

[bondsbw]

But that's only 3 hundredths of a cent per pixel.

Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[jdev]

I'm not clear what the hardware is worth, but people are ignoring why this is priced so high. What nobody mentions is the laptop comes with 3 years of 1TB Google Drive storage. If you check out pricing for that much storage, you are looking at $50/month, which translates to $600/yr or $1,800 for 3 years.

So if you are a Google Drive power user and need a ton of storage space, this thing is a bargain. You get the storage at a discount and a nice free laptop. Sure, that seems like a crazy amount to spend on cloud storage space but this thing isn't exactly a laptop for the masses.

The big question here is who needs that much cloud storage space. It sounds like something that would be nice to have, but I wouldn't spend $600/yr. I'm not the target audience though.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[jdev]

Here, 1 TB of always-available, portable storage for $99.99, perhaps less if you shop around for a discount.

Yes, portable hard drives are almost exactly like cloud storage. Except for the reliability. And the convenience. And ease of sharing. And accessibility. But besides that, it's exactly the same.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

So $1700 for three years for the 'bonus' of being reliant on someone else's uptime, requirements to be online, adding extra points of failure into the stack, and being able to send links to files instead of files in emails?

Fools and money and their parting being soon and whatnot...

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[Anonymous Coward]

Portable hard drive...

+1 reliability vs. TheCloud
+1 convenience vs. TheCloud
+1 easy of sharing vs. TheCloud
+1 accessibility vs. TheCloud

I'd take local storage over even infinite cloud storage any day.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[Patman64]

Here, 1 TB of always-available, portable storage for $99.99, perhaps less if you shop around for a discount.

Except for the reliability. And the convenience. And ease of sharing. And accessibility.

And unless you live in Kansas City, you aren't going to be able to fill it up in those 3 years. ;)

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[bemymonkey]

+1 reliability vs. TheCloud

If you manually back up regularly. Something I hardly ever do for external drives...

+1 convenience vs. TheCloud

Oh really? Carring your external hard drive across a continent and an ocean in your bag and having it be subjected to searches for illegal content when entering certain countries is more convenient than just accessing your files over the web when you get there?

+1 easy of sharing vs. TheCloud

See above, but replace "accessing your files over the web..." with "sending a download link?"

+1 accessibility vs. TheCloud

Huh?

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[tehcyder]

+1 convenience vs. TheCloud

Oh really? Carring your external hard drive across a continent and an ocean in your bag and having it be subjected to searches for illegal content when entering certain countries is more convenient than just accessing your files over the web when you get there?

No one's saying there aren't uses for cloud storage, but that is a bit of an edge case. Most people aren't globetrotting superstars who need access to their data from inside North Korea.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[bemymonkey]

True, but the same thing applies when trying to get data to someone across town. Would you rather get in a car and carry a hard drive over there or send a link? Especially when it's a tiny file that takes 10 seconds to download on a modern broadband connection?

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[ignavus]

Here, 1 TB of always-available, portable storage for $99.99, perhaps less if you shop around for a discount.

Yes, portable hard drives are almost exactly like cloud storage. Except for the reliability. And the convenience. And ease of sharing. And accessibility. But besides that, it's exactly the same.

In what universe is the cloud more reliable than a local drive? I can sit in a train in the underground and use my 1TB portable drive with confidence. I cannot get internet access there for love or money. This is a real use case for me. Internet access is only reliable at work and to a *lesser* extent (less in speed and uptime) at home. I cannot even get a 3G signal inside my house, only slowish ADSL2+ (I live more than three miles from my nearest telephone exchange). The cloud is not at all reliable outside those two locations. My portable drive is reliable everywhere, and it is never congested with other users sharing inadequate bandwidth.

The cloud is my biggest reason for not buying a ChromeBook. Gaaah!

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[BasilBrush]

If you manually back up regularly. Something I hardly ever do for external drives...

Manually? OSX backs up automatically, every hour. And will include external drives when they're plugged in. Has that functionality not been included in Windows and Linux yet?

Of course you need more total space on your backup drives than the drives you're backing up.

For that, I get to selectively restore any version of any file or set of files from my backups. Does your cloud solution offer that? Or is it just a disaster recovery system?

Carring your external hard drive across a continent and an ocean in your bag and having it be subjected to searches for illegal content when entering certain countries is more convenient than just accessing your files over the web when you get there?

If you have dodgy files, you probably don't want them up on the cloud either.

Personally I'm not always connected to the web, so cloud solutions are worthless to me.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[hobarrera]

I can't think of any real use for so much cloud storage for a single user. Also consider the fact that it would take days, or weeks to upload/retrieve that much data. External disks take minutes.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[rtfa-troll]

If you think your reliability for keeping data is better than Google's you are insane. Unlike Microsoft, famed for the Sidekick data loss caused by destroying the backups they were keeping on the same SAN as their originals, Google actually backs up to tape and has demonstrated the ability to use them several times.

On the other hand, what you should be scared of are the privacy implications. There is a massive difference between sending email through gmail; where your email client will actually have been checked for what garbage it puts in files; and using local applications which are probably failing to zero stuff in files. I would never use Google drive without making sure I encrypted it.

Actually, by preference you should send your gmail with GPG, however that does rather spoil the search feature. That's another discussion though.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[default luser]

True, but the same thing applies when trying to get data to someone across town. Would you rather get in a car and carry a hard drive over there or send a link? Especially when it's a tiny file that takes 10 seconds to download on a modern broadband connection?

Well then you have a small file that's already solved by email attachments. If you have a medium file that's already solved by free cloud storage offerings (Google's free cloud offers 5GB, so does Dropbox). You can get even larger storage if you care to take chances with less savory companies (e.g. MEGA offers 50GB free).

Want to store your music online? You have many different options (Google, Apple, Amazon)!

Want to store your videos online? Upload them to Youtube and make them private (15 minutes free for everyone, but a channel in good standing can upload up to 20GB files).

There's really no need for people to pay for gobs of money for cloud storage, unless they're one of those people stuck in a corner case (need mobility, and lots of storage accessible anywhere). For most other people, the free cloud is more than enough to to provide the flexibility you need while still primarily using local storage.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[Kiwikwi]

Most people aren't globetrotting superstars who need access to their data from inside the USA.

FTFY. But of course, Google's cloud is subject to the same kinds of search.

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[spike hay]

And my Comcast internet is limited to 300 Gb/mo and the speed sucks balls. Most people are in fairly similar situation. A "cloud" drive ain't that useful. CLOUDS!

Re:Pricing Is For Cloud Storage

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, all of those. Plus not being spied on.

I'm not really sure why you'd want to pay Google to let them have your data.

Re:Well..

[ThorGod]

Yeah, I'm not sure it can run many apps, yet.

I've wanted a touch interface to a laptop for years. Why? Why not. A mouse is not the best way to record information.

What were they thinking?

[Ol Olsoc]

"You'll never ever see another pixel in your life," says Chrome VP Sundar Pichai.

Considering that the name is Chromebook Pixel, they might want to rethink that marketing talking point.

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

On if you can hack it ... a way of getting a MacBook Pro workalike

But OSX doesn't support touch screens so that kind of defeats the purpose of buying this machine. You can build a cheaper hackbook.

without giving money to either Apple or Microsoft then I'm for it.

Personally I'm much more concerned about what Google gets from me than either Apple or Microsoft. That's why I'd never use any Android device, and if Chrome were the last browser on earth I'd surf the net with wget.

Re:Well..

[viperidaenz]

You know that arrow thing you control with that touch pad? You can do that with your finger on the screen with a touch screen.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[viperidaenz]

and I'm looking at a 1680x1050 screen right now, driven from a USB video card. It works fine. It can't do shit beyond basic 2D but it works.

Re:Cheaper than 3 years of 1TB Google Drive Storag

[dfghjk]

You know a 1TB drive goes for about 80 bucks now...and you own it. No one you don't know looking at your stuff or holding it for ransom down the road and you don't have to access it through a soda straw that you pay a continual toll for.

Hard to understand the foolishness of paying $1800 for a 3 year rental of something that costs less than a 100 bucks, much less paying a huge price for a machine that is useless without it. This reads like a justification but it just points out how stupid this is.

Actually

[Lirodon]

This isn't my first time contribution. Forgot my password, but then saw you have a Twitter login option now. More convenient But still, $1300 for a web browser. Are you serious? A Macbook Air costs that much and can do the same and more. Heck, an Ultrabook is just as thin and does that too with Windows. Leave Chrome OS to the netbooks and specialized budget devices, please..

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[Hadlock]

You get what you pay for. This is a metal case (vs plastic on most laptops, or cardboard+ if you're buying HP) with an absurdly bright (400 nit vs 200-250), high res IPS screen (TN is what you see in laptops bought at best buy, terrible viewing angles, etc). The only thing this laptop doesn't have is a Thinkpad style clit-mouse (trackpoint) and drainage holes in the keyboard (Thinkpad and HP enterprise grade laptops). Looking at the construction this laptop should last you a long, long time even as a travel user.

Re:Well..

[countach]

Yeah... and that pretty much sucks, because you can't see the damned arrow with your fat finger on top of it.

Other advantage of 10" screen

[tepples]

I carry my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 laptop in a messenger bag that happens to be just the right size for a laptop with a 10" screen. This way it's easy to carry and to whip out and do some hobby coding while riding in a car or bus. Does that make an employee of Intel or Microsoft? I didn't think so.

Developing applications for iProducts

[tepples]

If you're not a Mac fan, you generally don't give a fuck about OSX

Developing applications for iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad doesn't require being a Mac fan. It only requires owning a Mac.

OSes that enforce all maximized all the time

[tepples]

If you don't want one app to use the full width of your monitor, then don't maximize the window.

Unless your operating system isn't designed for any window management policy other than all maximized all the time. I know both iOS and Android assume this, but Ubuntu for tablets is trying to break this with the "side stage" that can run a phone-sized app in a third of a tablet's screen.

Monthly transfer cap

[tepples]

[A terabyte of space on a server] Seems like a good deal (if you *need* that kind of storage)

And if you can even upload and download that much data. A lot of residential Internet plans limit the customer to 100-300 GB of Internet data transfer per month, and satellite and cellular ISPs are even stingier because of the massively shared last mile: 10 GB/mo for Exede, 5 GB/mo standard for VZW or AT&T.

Re:Well..

[viperidaenz]

But when the arrow is your fat finger, you don't need to know where it was to move it to where you want it.

Finally! A laptop with a proper display!!

[jampola]

3:2 Aspect ratio for normal people who use their laptop to actually work and not watch movies! I can plug a sim card into it and code where ever I want. Sublime Text will look absofuckinlutely gorgeous on this. Color me excited.

Re:Well..

[guises]

Where can you get a Macbook that runs Windows or Linux out of the box? You can run desktop operating systems on this too, the differences aren't as great as you're implying:

Pixel:
1.8Ghz Core i5
4GB RAM
32GB SSD (or 64GB on the LTE version)
2560 x 1700 screen (vs. 2560 x 1600 on the Macbook Pro)

for $200 less. And the Pixel is lighter and thinner. Ultimately, it depends what you're planning on using this for. You're not going to be playing games on either one of these, so you can work out whether you really need the extra CPU and RAM. I'll grant that a 32GB HD might be limiting even if you're just doing office stuff.

Re:lol @ poor people

[lxs]

Not for a house. For a facebook terminal it's a lot of money.

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[Psyborgue]

So far as I know the newer intel integrated gpus all have hardware h264 encoding and decoding built in so full motion video shouldn't be a problem. Benchmarks also indicate the 3d performance isn't horrible, although still not what you'd get from a dedicated solution. For a notebook where battery life is more important than performance, it's a good choice.

USB 2.0???

[azrael29a]

Only USB 2.0 ports in a pricey 2013 laptop? Hello, the year 2000 called and wanted its technology back!

Re:Well..

[BasilBrush]

I've wanted a touch interface to a laptop for years. Why? Why not.

Because any amount of use will be very tiring. With a mouse, trackbad or trackball, your arm is rested on a surface most of the time. Raising it up to point to the screen every time you need to select something will prove painful in time.

Also because your screen will be constantly covered in finger prints.

And because desktop/web operations often require more accuracy than is easily managed with a finger. Those as design for tablets and phones crosses over, that requirement is lessening.

Note the Chromebook Pixel includes a trackpad. Google know you're not going to be using that touch screen most of the time.

Re:Well..

[BasilBrush]

A touchscreen is quicker (if you discount the distance moved from the keyboard) and direct manipulation is more instinctive. Which is why tablets and touchscreen phones have become popular.

However, it's also a lot less accurate. Which is why tablets and phones have big targets for touches.

If the ChromeOS, it's apps and the web pages you use are all designed for touch, then touch will be OK.

Except for the fact that reaching up to touch a laptop screen will be tiring. The screen will tip backwards every time you touch it. And the screen will always be filled with fingerprints.

There are pros and there are cons.

Good job Google have included a trackpad. That's what'll get used most of the time, once past the novelty period.

Re:Gee whiz

[fa2k]

Similar form factor and specs to a Mac Book Pro .. and guess what .. similar price. Take that you Apple Apologists .. um .. err .. [Facepalm]

It's a better form factor (3:2 screen), worse specs, but a higher resolution, and 200 bucks (~13 %) cheaper. Not a clear winner, but it will be superior for some. I'd consider it if I could add RAM and swap the SSD, because of the nice aspect ratio and the lack of a huge corporate logo on it.

Re:But who will have the last laugh when ...

[the_B0fh]

So, you think that Google will sell you a Nexus at near cost, and give you super subsidized WiMax rates or even give it to you for free?

I wasn't aware Google is set up as a non-profit organization. Now I can truly believe in their Dont Be Evil motto!

Re:missed pun

[the_B0fh]

No! The chromebook is not a steel! It's aluminium!! Or Aluminum for Americans!

Re:wow, that's a ton more expensive than I expecte

[hobarrera]

An Intel HD 4000 is a pretty good graphics card, it can even play some quite recent games pretty well. Also, it's well documented and has drivers for more OSs than any ATI/nvidia card.

Re:Well..

[rtfa-troll]

Err.. much as I used to love the interface, you wouldn't catch me dead using OS/X. I would plan to run Linux on it. My experience with MacBooks is that I don't trust the Linux device drivers that much so that's another reason this would be better.

Re:Well..

[rtfa-troll]

N.B. I'd definitely compare against the LTE version. 2.5GHz Core i5 that's a battery vs speed trade off where normally I will go for more battery and a lighter (LXDE?) desktop 8GB RAM that's a difference ; however I plan to run Linux so I'm not as concerned about that. 4 is normally plenty for me. 128GB SSD vs 64G that's again a noticeable difference but again using Linux tends to mean more is shared from program to program so you end up with more free

Against that you have: built in LTE; a better screen with more vertical pixels (these are worth much more than horizontal to me) and touch (which isn't worth much to me). The main killer for me will be if it has proper Linux device drivers. I don't trust MacBooks on that.

In the end, all things being equal I think I might go for the MacBook. The thing which clinches it for me is that Apple is such a strong patent supporter. To me that means that they are setting out to destroy the earnings of all individuals which work with computers and that makes them an enemy. As long as Google isn't actively suing people who are uninvolved in the patent racket then that's enough of a difference to clinch the deal.

$1,300 expensive?

[loufoque]

Seriously?
I don't remember buying a decent laptop for less than that.

Re:$1,300 expensive?

[cheesybagel]

So you never bought laptops from any other company than Apple I gather.

Re:$1,300 expensive?

[loufoque]

I don't buy iCrap.
I buy laptops from Lenovo. I've bought a few from Dell as well.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[dreamchaser]

Modern Windows will run as well on this hardware as Google Chrome would on a TRS-80. The efficiency of the software counts too.

Oh please...you're saying Windows won't run on an i5 with 4 gigabytes of RAM and integrated graphics? Put down the crack pipe.

Re:needs more ram as well 4gb is small at that pri

[symbolset]

With only 32GB of storage? By the time they've loaded it up with crudware, antivirus, given you a restore partition, you're looking at -10GB to put your stuff on. That's not running well.