Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Chromebooks Have a Lucrative Year; Should WinTel Be Worried?

Posted by timothy on from the hey-as-long-as-you-can-snapchat dept.

Chromebooks, and ChromeOS have come a long way, and this year two of the best selling laptops at Amazon are Chromebooks. Computerworld calls it a punch in the gut for Microsoft. "As of late Thursday, the trio retained their lock on the top three places on Amazon's best-selling-laptop list in the order of Acer, Samsung and Asus. Another Acer Chromebook, one that sports 32GB of on-board storage space -- double the 16GB of Acer's lower-priced model -- held the No. 7 spot on the retailer's top 10. Chromebooks' holiday success at Amazon was duplicated elsewhere during the year, according to the NPD Group, which tracked U.S. PC sales to commercial buyers such as businesses, schools, government and other organizations. ... By NPD's tallies, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all U.S. commercial notebook sales in 2013 through November, and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012; last year, Chromebooks accounted for an almost-invisible two-tenths of one percent of all computer and tablet sales."

3 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Amazing $200 Linux laptops by CdBee · · Score: 5, Informative

    should be noted that at the current time the touchpad is not supported in Linux distros, so it must be used either entirely from keyboard shortcuts, or with a usb mouse/trackpad/rollerball. Still a great deal but thats quite a failing in a laptop that doesnt have a touchscreen (unless you buy the C720P touchscreen version which is 50% more expensive)

    --
    I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
  2. Acer C720 - best kept Chromebook secret by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Acer C720 Chromebook is Intel Haswell-based, and perfectly compatible with most Linux distros.

    Phoronix did an awesome review of linux on the C720 several weeks ago, and in short: it's awesome. It runs everything you'd need - movies, internet, USB 3.0, streaming, 7-8 hours of battery life. There is some issue to work out with the touchpad, but it's possible to run most distros out of the box with an external mouse, or by applying a kernel patch. This is temporary though - I'd expect the touchpad to be incorporated in due time.

    For $199, there's no better laptop on the market for Linux.

  3. Touchpad kernel patch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you wipe ChromeOS with Arch Linux, there's a patch available for the C720 touchpad. They even have the touchscreen working for the C720P. I know they're working on getting the patches to work with Ubuntu, Mint, etc.

    Alternatively, you can just run Crouton to duel-boot alongside ChromeOS...which solves the touchpad issue.