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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."
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.
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
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...
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'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.
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!
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.