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Limitations and All, Chromebooks Appear To Be Selling
puddingebola writes "A number of different websites are commenting on NPD's consumer research numbers that claim Chromebooks are getting 20-25% of the sub-$300 PC market. From the article: 'The NPD says that Google's Chromebook has now gained 20 to 25 percent of the sub-$300 laptop market in the U.S. That's a huge gain for a computer that's only been on the market for two years. It's even more impressive when you consider that Chromebooks were seen as nothing but a self-serving experiment on the part of Google for the first year of their existence.' Stephen Vaughan-Nichols is also blogging about this over at ZDnet. While the PC market shrank again in the second quarter of 2013, Chromebooks seem to have grown."
Got a Samsung ARM Chromebook. Perfect little netbook. Boots in 5 seconds, all day battery, 1 kg, plenty fast, does everything I need it to do. Can load linux in chroot environment if I want/need more functionality (hardly ever do). Prefer it to a tablet for browsing and media consumption.
Outside of a minority of technically minded folks, most people never wanted local storage in the first place. They don't want to understand it, manage it, back it up, or deal with it in any way. That simple fact is one of the key drivers toward cloud computing, web apps, and away from the local-storage model of computing.
People's data is generally safer in the cloud than locally. Yes, yes, we all know that those service can go away. But the fact is that even so, it's still safer than Joe Schmoe trying to keep his data safe locally.
So the market is pushing heavily in this direction, driven by the demand of the consumer masses. It's a slow transition over time, but eventually, that's going to be where the economies of scale are. Sure, workstation-type computers will still be available for the few people doing CAD, etc, but they will be far more expensive and not generally purchased by most of the general public. This is already starting to happen, and it's only going to accelerate.
I know very few people who really want a PC any more. They virtually all prefer tablets, smartphones, and so on.
OK, only about 100 of them, but a small blip. I'm wondering how many of these were sold to schools or for other mass consumption functions. As a school principal, I see that chromebooks--limitations and all--are still a much improved value over a $1200 windows laptop. (yes $1200 after the kid-proof warranty). I know i could roll my own, but I would rather bring back my librarian, nurse, music teacher, and instructional aides before hiring a sysadmin to make linux laptops go.
Chromebooks have all the "it just works" of a mac at 20% of the cost. They are tamper-proof out of the box and lightning fast for 99% of things that students use the computers for.
The only thing I think is a gaping limitation is the lack of IP printing without a middleman. It's kind of stupid that i need to have an XP machine running somewhere in order to print. Organizations looking to supplement their hardware options with chromebooks shouldn't need to buy special printers to go with them.
I have one, and it is pretty good for what it is. I think I am going to pass it down to my mother.
Just about no effort to admin the machine, fast enough, and simple.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Chromebook == Awesome
Bought my mom one when they first came out. A year later she accidentally stepped on it, ruining the power connector. They cheap enough that I just decided to buy her a new one. She logged in and all her stuff was just there. Completely seamless. And of course, I don't have to worry about her getting viruses.
I almost bought the new ARM Chromebook instead of a new Macbook Air, but I had to go with the Air and OS X so I could run examination software. Chromebooks definitely rock, though. I spend most of my day in terminal windows. I still use mutt for e-mail, and tin for reading newsgroups, when I'm not working or browsing the web. The ARM Chromebook is like a dream come true. I'm pi$$ed I was stifled by the man.
Chromebooks most certainly are self-serving products for Google. Just because they aren't selling on the same scale as Android doesn't make them charity devices.
To really use a Chromebook do you need to have a Google account? Yeah?
Will you be bombarded with ads? Sure?
Are the two complaints I just listed above huge bones of contention for Windows 8 & 8.1 (substituting Microsoft's online services for Google's)? YES.
So just because the Google version is "free" does that make it insanely great while a Windows machine is full of spyware? Not necessarily. A Chromebook running real Linux is nice, but a better-specced Windows notebook that also runs real Linux can be quite a bit nicer.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I've seen these percentages reported a lot of places, but I have yet to be able to find anything that lists actual sales numbers. Without knowing how big the market for sub-$300 PC market is, it's a meaningless measurement. For example, if 50 million sub-$300 PCs were sold, 25% is a really respectable number. If two million sub-$300 PCs were sold then the 500,000 total sales are quite disappointing.
Linux-based Netbooks were killed by MS right when they were fixing to take off. Maybe this means we are finally to a point MS can't just kill off competitors easily any more.
Chrombooks don't make much sense to me...but it seems like a good thing that someone can launch something with a OS with a tiny market share, and it actually sell well enough to keep making them.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
They wouldn't do that, though. Would they?
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I fly a lot for work --two roundtrips per month-- and have been carrying my Chromebook as a second machine, to supplement my corporate laptop. Being a corporate machine, I do not have admin rights to the laptop and my employer tells me they reserve the right to monitor what I'm doing with it, so I assume the laptop has spyware on it.
The Chromebook gets used for my personal stuff in the evenings, when I'm in my hotel room - I figure that my employer doesn't need to know what I'm buying/selling on ebay, nor do they need to know what political sites I read, nor do they need to know what stories I'm submitting to slashdot.... nor do they need to know that I prefer big breasted brunettes.
When flying, I almost always sit in tiny "economy class" seats - the chromebook works well in those seats. I can actually open it up and actually type on it while sitting on a plane, even tiny regional jets. I usually can't open my corporate notebook up on a plane because it is too big to fit between me and the seat in front of me.... and that's before the jerk in front of me reclines back into my space.
The Chromebook also came with a dozen free Gogo passes. Gogo passes were costing $14 each, if I remembered to buy them prior to my flight.... so the dozen free passes were worth $168 to me. All in all, I consider my $250 Samsung Chromebook was money very well spent.
I couple years ago I bought an Acer Aspire One with Win7 loaded on it, but if I walk into a big box store, I only see Samsungs and Acer C7s (which are just rebadged netbooks from a year ago).
He's definitely not a nerd, and just a windows guy.
He likes it, he says its nice and light, cool, and runs quite a long time on the battery. Most of what he does is just internet stuff so that works.
He cant print directly to his printer, but he can go through his windows PC. Mainly he sees it as a great travel laptop as if its taken he can recover via Google and its not a major financial loss. I think for those who have a desktop and need a capable yet inexpensive travel laptop, this will probably hit the mark.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
People's data is generally safer in the cloud than locally.
At $10 per gigabyte to upload and $10 per gigabyte to download over a cellular network in the United States, this safety has a substantial cost associated with it.
The thing really redefines instant-on. It wakes up while the lid is being opened (Samsung Chromebook).
Oh, and I can surf the web too. It is vying for the coveted spot on my nightstand. :)
It is basically a iPad minus all the sexy touch screen things. Built on solid reliable technology using well understood tested input devices and formats. And more open too. No wonder it is growing. I am actually thinking of getting a second and a bluetooth keyboard+thumbwheel to serve as the streaming device for the home theater. It has HDMI out and works with Amazon videos, Netflix.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Much like MS can afford to introduce something that is a loss at first, Google can too.
They see a long term plan for these as more and more people move into the 'media consumption' arena, but still want an attached keyboard.
Personally i'm glad we have more ARM options.. i'm tired of x86.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I picked up an Acer C7 to keep at a second office for occassional use. For what I do, Chrome OS doesn't cut it, so I installed the Chrubuntu distro in a separate partition. The only real complaint, I guess, is that the keyboard is cheap and doesn't have much "feel" to the keys. Lots of other minor complaints (Unity stinks, Gnome 3 stinks) but managed to work around them all. Wired ethernet and VGA connector for external display were used heavily (sorry Samsung, you don't have either - a big negative.) Biggest surprise was that the Celeron processor actually has decent performance.
Having said that, my intent was actually to see if Chrome OS could be tweaked so as to do all the things I need, and the chroot'ed version of Linux may be the way to go to get new software installed. A project for the future.
She's got a windows box which is in bad shape. I've got two ChromeBoxs running Ubuntu.
The safe, quick-boot, always updated, easy to manage seems like it's perfect for the "only need the web and email" crowd.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Tinker with an older EEEpc and it is obvious that WindowZ abuses the hardware budget. A tight linux distro and a darn quick browswe and Bob's your uncle.
Nothing magic about Chrome given the recent Firefox improvements.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
So you got a dozen free Gogo passes and turned in the cost on your expense account anyway. Well played Sir, well played.
Seriously, the Gogo passes would really help. Thanks for sharing that one.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
1 Samsung Arm CB + x2go + Chrubuntu (13.10 xubuntu) =
full access to running programs on my home Linux PC from anywhere, with HUGE battery life, at less than 2 lbs and $250. With x2go I can run applications remotely, and the chromebook only has to handle the UI, not the actual processing. As a result, I can run Intel apps and it feels pretty fast, even from 2000 miles away. If the computer gets stolen, it's only a loss of $250 as opposed to the thousands a lightweight laptop would cost, and the data is on my home computer, not the cb...
x2go btw is amazing, tunneling linux application's interfaces through ssh, so they feel like they're running on the chromebook, but aren't. If you can set up ssh, you can set up x2go.
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
To expand local storage on the chromebook, if that is what you want.
Also at Walmart.
The motto of Google engineers was supposed to be 'don't be evil', but Google is an unwieldy monster that is putting Microsoft to shame. Android was supposed to be GNU/Linux based, but it is teaching the Windows OS a few things about DRM. Anyone for a machine that runs a free libre operating system?
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
I was one of the lucky many who got a free Cr-48. I've used it pretty much every day since December 2010; as others have noted, it makes a wonderful second computer, or a "don't care" travel laptop, or something that your relative with a porn/click ALL THE LINKS habit can't break.
The '48 is crap for playing movies, though; anything more than 360p resolution is annoyingly choppy. Probably a non-Atom Chromebook would do just fine.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I install Crouton to them and add a few packages and voila!.. they have a super lightweight netbook with Mac mouse gestures, SMB share support, office tools, and printer support. They actually have several iPads and iPad 2s and the Chromebooks get passed around like tablets. They are so much more versatile than the tablets. I'll be recommending them for these reasons.
I bought a Samsung ARM Chromebook a few months back. While it's absolutely perfect for web browsing on its own and its battery performance is exemplary, I find myself using it less and less. It's not because I mislike the machine, nor is it that I cannot do the majority of my work in a browser, it's simply that I prefer to have separate applications for separate tasks. I now just use a netbook with Arch Linux instead. I still recommend the Chromebook openly, though. It's a fantastic device with excellent build quality for the price and, as a web browser, it's not to be beaten any time soon.
Given the rise of non-Windows tablets and non-Windows 'phones, it seems the great, unwashed masses may finally have realised they actually *don't have* to buy a Windows PC any more.
The old arguments about 'I've heard of Windows and Apple, but I haven't heard of this Linux thing' and 'If it doesn't run Windows, how do I buy software for it?' have been seen as irrelevant. Being aware of Android, average people now know they can exist and use a computer productively without involving MS/Windows or Apple.
And it's going to be cheaper and just as easy or even far easier to do so.
The growth doesn't mean anything. You can grow in a shrinking market if you're new. The idea of having to be on all the time and having google try to lock my data into their services which may or may not disappear or be the same any time in the future is not appealing to me. It's even less appealing to hand my data over to a company in bed with the NSA which it would appear Google are.
For those of us on Slashdot, we've seen Google sliding down the slope from "Don't Be Evil" and a single bar of text ads besides your email that pulled data exclusively from that particular email, to today's monstrous data mining, privacy obliteration machine. Its really frustrating because if it wasn't for this abhorrent behavior, Google services are otherwise high quality. Though there have been people who have seen the signs of the increasingly pathogenic information gathering for years, Snowden's information provides proof that one shouldn't even consider trusting Microsoft, Google, Apple and other major tech companies; in all cases they've been completely compromised by US Gov't agencies and/or or corporate interests.
With this in mind, why should it even be a discussion about a "cloud" comprised of and controlled by these monolithic entities. Yes, I gather that there are benefits for Chromebooks and/or cloud storage, but knowing what we know, is there really any question that it isn't worth continuing to feed the machine simply for a little more convenience? This doesn't mean we need to discount the user desires that drive people towards Chromebooks and the Cloud, but what about offering alternatives that fulfill many of these same convenience factors without giving approval to the abhorrent behavior of these corporations?
For instance, how about focusing on and enhancing technologies like OwnCloud, which is FOSS, can be hosted anywhere you choose, and gives access to many of those same convenience functions that drive people towards "The Cloud". I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to roll up a desktop Linux distribution that was designed from the start to sync with an OwnCloud (and similar technologies) instance to give the same "Chromebook" experience of sorts. FirefoxOS also appears promising and could easily mesh with OwnCloud and other technologies.
The issues facing our privacy today, assaulted by moneyed private interests and government overreach alike, may seem insurmountable, but we can make a stand and resist. I'm pragmatic enough to know that it isn't feasible to ask Joe User to act like a cypherpunk, but there are technologies that are increasingly user friendly that can both protect a user's privacy and have access to the ease of use they crave. If a significant part of the population started rebuking the use of these privacy invading technologies, it would start to "hit them where it hurts" - in the wallet. Imagine if Xbox One sales were way below normal projection, with letters from potential users citing the Microsoft's kowtowing to the NSA and data miners alike as a reason they refuse to put a always-on camera in their home. Imagine if businesses gave up using services from Microsoft and Google because of the privacy implications? If there was a major downturn in search and application use in the face of users changing their behavior? If encryption was applied by even a relatively small percentage of the general public? Though these changes won't be enough by themselves to stop the financial/corporate/government overreach, they'll at least show people are paying attention - something that right now, is still in question. As long as those in power can frame the debate on their own terms and see that the populace is willing to continually accept these increasing breaches of privacy, liberty, and the common good, nothing will change.
Refusing to buy a Chromebook is a small act of protest, but these everyday decisions made by millions of Americans (and those the world over) add up. Lets not encourage complacency and ignorance.
If one messes around with a Chromebook, and then some Windows 8 type device, the difference is startling (in favor of the Chromebook). Chromebooks out-Apple Apple by just making it easy to do the things most people want to do. The voice recognition is really, really good. Windows makes it surprisingly difficult to do *anything*.
2011 - netbooks sell like crazy
2012 - people realize netbooks are unusably slow, have too small of a screen, and have double the failure rate of laptops plus no shops will fix them
2013 - people buy Chromebooks and tablets
2014 - people realize they can't run any useful software on a Chromebook and it's a single-use style device that lives in its own little fairy magic land and stop using it. They also realize that you can't type on tablets so they're useless for almost everything.
2015 - Microsoft realizes they fucked up and releases an actually good Windows 9 and everyone buys PCs
You can see these devices are not popular in any look at Web usage and server logs. We already know the low-cost notebook (aka netbook) market has been decimated by $329 and $399 iPads that are essentially netbooks done right, plus C apps and iPod features and high-end build quality thrown in. Claiming 20% of that price point in clamshells only in mid-2013 is a very, very small victory. Consider the entire price point and you immediately ask why these Chrome OS systems aren't tablets and why they have no C apps. Those features are the bulk of what is selling at that price point, both as primary systems for some users and secondary systems for others.
Adblock Plus, Ghostery and WOT all work just fine on Chromebooks.
And I have Samsung ARM Chromebook and I love it. It is my travel computer. I have no fear leaving it in the hotel room, breaking it or whatever.
I can do research for hiking and sightseeing in Goofle Maps in the evening and have all starred places and stuff on my phone the next day.
I can share it easily with my wife so we need only one computer when traveling.
And if something happens to it, another one is just $200, and I just log in on a new one and all my stuff is there.
and frankly, for the average non-technical user, that's enough.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!