Slashdot Mirror
Google's Pricey Pixel Gets USB-C and a Lower Price
The Register reports that Google's high-end Chromebook Pixel has gotten a few spec bumps, and a lower price. It's still a touchscreen with a resolution of 2,560 × 1,700, but now that screen is backed by 8GB RAM (rather than 4) as a base configuration, and the system is equipped with a Broadwell Core i5 chip, rather than the Ivy Bridge in the first rev. The price has dropped, too; it may still be the most expensive Chromebook, but now it's "only" $999 on the low end, which is $300 less than the first Pixels cost. ($1300, though, gets an i7, 64 gigs of SSD instead of 32, and 8GB of RAM. Perhaps most interesting is that it adds USB type C, and (topping Apple's latest entry) it's got two of them.
I'm a bit disappointed with the 64GB storage.
I would get one of these for as a Linux laptop, but I want 1TB, like my Macbook.
If the wise denizens of /. can tell me I just need to plug thing X into slot Y to get that, I'll send in my order.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Close that parenthesis! I can't take it for much longer, it hurts, please!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
<sarcasm> Yes, but don't forget, it's running everything through a web browser, so it NEEDS the beefier specs. </sarcasm>
Besides, their next version will be $17,000 and have a fake gold-ceramic housing. Give them credit, though - it'll still be more useful than an Apple watch.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The pixel is endorsed by Slashdot folk hero Bennett, was coded by female H-1B visa workers, uses the latest technological advances in graphene, interfaces with Tesla vehicles and can end global warming. SystemD makes all of this possible.
Actually that means it runs Linux natively, which is kind of a big draw from my perspective. I'm considering getting one, but will not be running ChromeOS on it if I do.
Being superstitious is bad luck.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
... it only lacks a good web browser.
Right now on my work PC, Excel.exe, which I'm using to reformat the giant big-ass Excel sheets I keep being given by another department into a form I can easily load into our DB, is taking up 14M. Firefox is coming in at 567M (and, to be honest, that's the smallest I've seen it in a while, but OTOH I did restart it recently and it only has a few tabs open.)
So... actually... it makes sense that a device that requires you use the Google office apps rather than native apps, would require you use considerably more memory and power.
Yes, it's ridiculous, but think of it like this: how optimal do you think a Google spreadsheet, implemented over JavaScript, the DOM, and XML, in turn implemented over various abstraction layers that eventually get down to C++ and some kinda linkage to the native widgets of the underlying OS, is, compared to a Microsoft/GNOME Spreadsheet implemented directly in C++, with a little abstraction but not a lot between that C++ and the underlying OS?
TL;DR: A device that forces you to run desktop apps inside a web browser will always need more power than a device that allows optimized apps to run.
Which is probably why we shouldn't be heading in this direction.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
has 16GB, not 8GB, of RAM.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
But is the case 3D-printed?
Chrome comes with NaCl plugins for google docs, sheets and other things to make them faster. Yes, google docs and sheets use (I believe mostly) native code when run inside chrome (you can disable the plugins that do that). The javascript is for the other browsers.