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Why You Should Worry About the Future of Chromebooks
dcblogs writes "PC manufacturers may try to corral Chromebook, much like Netbooks, by setting frustratingly low hardware expectations. The systems being released from HP, Acer, Lenovo and Samsung are being built around retro Celeron processors and mostly 2 GB of RAM. By doing so, they are targeting schools and semi-impulse buyers and may be discouraging corporate buyers from considering the system. Google's Pixel is the counter-force, but at a price of $1,299 for the Wi-Fi system, reviewers, while gushing about hardware, believe it's too much, too soon. The Chromebook is a threat to everything, especially PC makers, as its apps improve. Compare Tweetdeck's HTML5 version with its native app. Can you tell the difference? It might be a year or two before Adobe delivers Web-only versions of its products, but if it doesn't it will be surrendering larger portions of its mindshare to users of Pixlr, Pixel Mixer, PicMonkey and many other interesting and increasingly capable tools."
I think it is the price that is the problem.
I have looked a couple of times. (Planning on dropping a real Linux on it.) But every chrombook I have seen was at least $100 too expensive for what you get. For the same money, or in some cases less, you can get a real full laptop.
I freely admit to being a cheap bastard.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
But every chrombook I have seen was at least $100 too expensive for what you get. For the same money, or in some cases less, you can get a real full laptop.
I consider my $250 Samsung Chromebook was money very well spent. I fly a lot for work --two roundtrips per month-- and am usually stuck in tiny "economy class" seats. I can open up the chromebook and actually type on it while sitting on a plane, even tiny regional jets. I usually can't open my regular notebook computer up on a plane because it is too big to fit between me and the seat in front of me.
The Chromebook also came with a dozen free Gogo passes. Gogo passes currently cost $14 each, if I buy them prior to my flight.... so the dozen free passes are woth $168 to me.
The Samsung Chromebook is $250. The Acer C7 Chromebook, with a 320G hard drive, is $190. I purchased the Samsung for my wife when her laptop died. She's been very satisfied with it. She likes the size and weight, that it boots rapidly, lack of a fan, relatively cool operation, and that for her usage patterns the battery lasts all day. Outside of work all that she does on a computer is email and consume content from the web, so the Chromebook fits her needs extremely well.