Slashdot Mirror
Here Come the Chromebooks, As Google and Intel Cozy-Up On Haswell
MojoKid writes "News from Intel (and Google) today includes an announcement that more Chromebooks are on their way to market packing Intel's Haswell processors. The new chips are designed to consume less power, thus preserving battery life for an all-day charge, while still offering better overall performance. Google notes that there are schools in over 20% of school districts across the country that now use Chromebooks, and with prices for some of the machines dipping as low as $199, deploying fleets of these machines in academia is an attractive option. What's interesting is the alignment between Intel and Google now, which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit, as yet another major competitor to the Windows operating system seems to clearly be coming into focus. Intel-Google partners including Acer, ASUS, HP, and Toshiba will be rolling out Chromebooks based on Haswell soon, and they'll collectively be sporting more variety of form factors."
NSA's best friend.
I had a netbook and I mostly liked it, but it was also cheap. It was under $200, but it was a real computer, I didn't have to run a cut down OS on it to get it to run properly. Sure, some things didn't work well because it was running a 900mhz celeron, but it did an admirable job, even when I wasn't connected to the internet.
It's a shame that MS had to kill the devices. They were rather nice.
Could always just replace it with a full blown Linux distro. Problem solved.
And if what most people need is a bicycle, and a Chromebook covers their needs it's a competitor. If people buy these instead of something from Microsoft, it is definitely a competitor.
It may not be as general purpose as Windows, but it might show people they don't really need Windows. And that should at least worry Microsoft.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
11" display
After 87 clicks, it appears that both the Acer 11.6" and the HP 14" have a 1,366 x 768 resolution. Better than the netbooks at n x 600, which was functionally useless for many software packages, but it looks like Intel still has the vendors by the balls on offering what they insist are "Ultrabook" resolutions, which cost an extra grand.
A 12"-ish fooBook with all-day battery life is "shut up and take my money" territory for me, and has been for the past decade, but so far nobody is biting (and I don't care if I have to replace ChromeOS to get it). I tried three generations of netbooks, but in the end they wound up as extra DNS servers. I love how the phablets have more resolution than the notebooks these days...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Chromebooks are great for their target market, your parents. They work extremely well and boot up in seconds. You'll never receive another tech support call. Most cell phones today are worthless without connectivity. I'm sure you could go as far as using only the phone part and installing apps manually but what is the point? Different products are designed for different purposes and trying to use something for which it is not intended is being dumb. "Look I put Linux on a Chromebook, the wifi doesn't work and its command line only but who cares it boots!"
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Oh, definitely -- we got the mother in law a Nexus 7, because what she really needed was something simple, which connected via wifi, and allowed her to get to the web and her email.
For many many people, these will probably cover everything they'll ever need to do and more.
I'm saying it's more limited in that it wants to be connected to the internet all the time and is highly dependent on the Google stuff. But for a lot of people, that is still probably all they'll need.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I bought a Chromebook for my mother-in-law. For her, it's absolutely perfect: she can't break it too badly, there's essentially no risk of malware, updates are installed automatically, and it's got a keyboard. All she needs to do is read email, look at pictures of her grandson, and surf the web.
As for me, I want a Chromebook Pixel, but wiped and running a full distro of Linux...the hardware is gorgeous.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
which should cause folks in Redmond to smart a bit
For those of you who are new here, "Redmond" is a reference to the Microsoft (headquarters in Redmond, Washington). "Microsoft" is a company that used to be terribly important to most users of computers, but is becoming less so over time.
I wonder how long people will care enough about Microsoft to know what "Redmond" means. It's been years since I read an article that used "Armonk" to refer to IBM.
I suspect that this usage is just to avoid saying the same company name over and over. When the day comes that Microsoft isn't mentioned in the news that much, nobody will bother to call them anything but "Microsoft".
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Why in god's name would you push ARM over Intel? You only use ARM when the power envelope calls for it. Intel spanks the ever loving shit out of ARM in everything but power consumption and Intel is working hard at that too.
Good-bye
I don't know; I think Mr. Harley and Mr. Davidson did pretty well by that concept.
I've already started seeing the increase in Chromebook usage in schools. I work for an educational supplements company as lead on a digital textbook platform. This time last year we had a lot of questions about iPads but nothing about chromebooks. Now, this week alone, I've talked to two teachers who said they were getting full sets of chromebooks for their students and wanted to make sure our software would work with them. Faster processors and cheaper prices is just going to keep increasing their hold on the market. Schools are going to take the cheaper route given two similar options, so I'm not surprised to see them going with these instead of iPads.
I've got an Acer Chromebook running Crouton and XFCE4. Best little devbox I ever had, especially for $199 bucks. It used to be that you had to give up verified boot (and the automatic patching that implies), but no longer.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Because it's "Good Enough" performance for most people, and it gives you the ability to go over a full day in battery life with a fanless device.
My wife & mother in law both have Asus Transformer tablets and love them. They are fast, thin, and have great battery life. They love being able to use their android apps across devices.
My wife hates her work laptop as it's a boat anchor and she only gets about 3 hours of unplugged use out of it. ARMs performance is getting better, while Intel's power use is getting lower. It will be interesting to see where the graphs finally cross.
Actually... yes Malware is already available for devices like these... Its a multi-platorm, multi-government malware called NSA-ware(TM)... you can't leave home without it... but please don't tell anyone.... they might think we live in Soviet Russia.
Like a chromebook Pixel?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The Chromebooks look nice for certain situations, and I've been tempted to pick one up.
But why haven't there been any good ChromeBoxes?? I have unused monitors and keyboards sitting around, and there's plenty of cases which need a larger screen and a real keyboard.
If you can sell a full notebook with LCD, keyboard, and battery for $199, where is the $49 Chromebox?
Samsung's efforts have been a complete joke. Over $300? Really? Dell sells "real" computers for less. With Windows, even.
Supposedly the new Chromebox from ASUS is based on Intel's "Next Unit of Computing". That thing starts at about $200 with no RAM.
If Roku can sell an ARM box capable of decompressing Full HD streams for $49, why can't Google get one to run ChromeOS?
I installed Crouton on a Samsung Arm Chromebook, and it has since become my main computer. Basically, it is the best of both worlds, in my book. Hassle free web experience (including Netflix), and I can flip any time to a "real" computing environment (there must be limitations with chroot. . . just have not found any for my use yet. mplayer over sshfs would have been a deal breaker, but it works perfectly fine . . .).
I am very content, but the price was so cheap there is nothing stopping me from trying out a Chromebook with Haswell or whatever comes down the pipe. Good times.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Is there an IDE that a ChromeBook can work with that would allow me to develope in PHP/Python? With Debug and Breakpoints? That would be useful.
You'd be mistaken...
http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.ca/2012/12/bodhi-armhf-alpha-for-samsung-chromebook.html
There's a more recent build of that particular distro for it, but that's the instructions for how to do it. That's not a chroot, it's a native boot. You can, if you choose, nuke the chrome partition entirely and go fully native.
My problem with this is that if you do you're stuck with a new laptop with 2GB of (probably soldered on) RAM. I was really interested in these because all I really want is a light Linux haswell laptop with 9-10 hrs battery life. This though, it's really not a usable machine these days once you move away from google's OS.
You can always get the HP Chromebook which has a 14" screen. Same resolution as the 11" Samsung Chromebook so everything is "bigger" and provides a workable "large print" option.
The main problem with getting one for older folk is screen size. It works fine for me and my kids, but big screens with large type is really useful. I'm sort of suprised Google didn't supply a "large print" option.
I've also seem complaints that while remote desktop to PCs is supported, remoting into the Chromebook is not. Anyone who's tried helping their nearly-deaf technology challenged parents over the phone understand the issue.
Thankfully, it appears Google is working on adding that particular feature.
I've been pushing family members to chromebooks for awhile now. Hook the thing up to an external monitor and they are happy. I agree on the remote desktop issue. I can't remote in to some of them!
The original netbooks had tiny SSD drives - which were a new thing at the time, and of course, were only big enough to handle a stripped down distro of Linux. So you couldn't use those netbooks as a small standalone laptop. That is, until Microsoft decided that you had to be able to load XP on them. The tiny SSD drives got replaced with 160 GB hard drives, and the things became a little less of what they were intended to be (ultra-portable, quick to boot and indestructible). But yeah, they also became cheap standalone laptops at that point. Until they started eating into laptop sales and MS and the OEMs started making them less and less attractive.
The funny part is that some Chromebooks (from Asus, I think) also had those 160GB drives, and could be easily reworked into Linux laptops. I think they were essentially existing netbook designs with Chrome OS replacing the crippled Windows 7 starter edition that they had been strong-armed into loading onto their netbooks. Best of both worlds: a non-crippled full desktop OS (with netbook UI variants) - or Chrome. No need to pay (or settle) for Win7 starter (is there a Win8 starter edition for netbooks today?).
Either way, the netbook has been vindicated. It's not a 'compromise' - it's what people want. Small, cheap, ultra-portable and indestructible is where todays market sweetspot lies. And for many people, that's an iPad mini or a Nexus 7. But even if you need a desktop machine a Chromebook fits the bill for many people, and geeks can even load Linux on them. Sure, there's still a market for pricier ultrabooks and the like, but pricier is relative. The $1000+ computer market is an ever shrinking one.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Re screen size, TFA mentions an ASUS ChromeBox, although I can't find any detail about it yet, but hopefully it'll be VESA mountable to keep things tidier.
It looks like a great form-factor, but "up to 5 hours" is the same as my laptop, with a similar i5. Almost there, though; I'm personally willing to lug a double-thick battery in something like that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Linux doesn't need a BIOS to boot off of. Windows does. Windows has all the dumb BIOS, UEFI and ACPI dependencies. Linux can use ACPI but certainly runs without support for it enabled. Windows versions starting with Vista won't install at all on a non-ACPI system AFAIK.
I run Linux on a Guruplug with the U-boot bootloader. And I know coreboot can directly load a kernel + initrd and hand over control like a good bootloader is supposed to do.
will they run my windows apps?
There are Windows apps?!? Does anyone actually use them?
Linux on the Surface Pro is dead easy (disable secure boot - a simple and well-documented procedure - and then install as normal). What are you smoking (reading)? All Win8 devices with Secure Boot are required (by Microsoft, of all people) to allow the user to disable Secure Boot and/or add their own signing keys.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...