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Google Ponders About a Chromebook Pro (venturebeat.com)
Google is currently surveying people about what a Chromebook Pro should be like. VentureBeat's report cites two people who recently shared the development on a forum. One user was asked the question, "How would you think a Chromebook Pro is different than a Chromebook?" whereas the other user was asked, "what a Chromebook Pro should be like in [his/her] opinion and what type of people would want to use it." From the report:The word "Pro" would imply a high-end laptop running Chrome OS, just like, say, the MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 4. But there are many other companies -- Asus, Dell, HP, and Samsung, among others -- that make Chromebooks, along with Google. It isn't clear from these survey questions if Google is thinking about making a Chromebook Pro itself, just as it has made high-end Chromebook Pixel laptops, or if Google is just wondering how consumers would perceive a Chromebook Pro made by a third party. Meanwhile, Google last month published a job posting entitled "Quality Engineer, Chromebook Pixel," suggesting that a third generation of that device could be on the way.Chromebooks are becoming increasingly popular. They outsold Mac for the first time in the United States earlier this year. The majority of the Chromebooks available today, however, pack in entry-level specifications, giving users very limited choice. Though we have seen devices like Chromebook Pixel, a range of high-end Chromebooks could entice even more customers.
Just give it a bigger display and a stylus.
And next year forget about the bigger display.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
No hidden management engine. As little binary blobs as possible. Runs well with free video drivers.
C'mon, Google. You're big. You can pull it off.
Show us you are *not* the NSA.
Give me a trackpoint and I will buy it. Touchpads suck, period. I don't care who makes them I have never seen a touchpad that was anywhere near as good as the trackpoints I have had on my laptops over the years.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Now with more advertising, tracking and analytics, and sold at a premium price.
The cust--er, product should pay for the privilege of having all their personal information harvested for advertisers.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
1. Longer service life - I want both the hardware and software to be supported for more then 4-5 years.
2. No advertising - If this is a pro model then its probably aimed more at a work computer. So do not spam be or hit me up for upgrades or anything else during business hours for sure.
3. Ability to turn off all telemetry
If they did just those three things I would probably buy one. Until then I just torture my kids with them.
"Google Ponders About a Chromebook Pro"
The word "ponder" essentially means "think about". Since there's already an "about" in the meaning of ponder, you don't ponder about a thing. The correct usage would be "Google Ponders a Chromebook Pro".
You're welcome.
Do the people who use a Chromebook create anything or are they simply consuming web content? If they are consumers, there is literally no reason to create a Pro version of the device.
If they actually create lasting useful content that has meaning, then perhaps there is a reason to have a Pro version of the device. I'm doubtful.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
The Chromebook served a segment of the population that needs a cheap, lightweight laptop with decent battery for browsing, email and some light document editing.
Basically, it replaces the netbook, sitting squarely between a tablet and a full size laptop in terms of intended functionality.
Given that, a Chromebook Pro doesn't seem like a very interesting proposition. The bump in specs means a bump in price, and that will put it in direct competition with others in a market that is already saturated with (better?) choice, with the downside that it is tied to the Google platform, meaning, no Windows applications.
One should not dismiss this last point, since this, in turn means that you've just lost a large segment of the market that uses Laptops for content creation (CAD, music, etc) and gaming, which are the ones that likely would consider buying an expensive laptop.
Apple got away with it a long time ago thanks to a pretty decent hardware/software combo plus a rabid fan base that built a great ecosystem around the macOS platform. But Google isn't Apple: people just aren't THAT invested into the Google ecosystem - if there even is such a thing - to consider shelling out the bucks for a "good" laptop running the "wrong" software.
If ChromeOS could run a slicer and something like Pronterface, I'd be happy.
For now, Windows 10 is the viable solution. Dual-boot to Ubuntu, better. GCodePrintr could be one part of that.
But I can use my M8 when I retire it, as a controller, and not bother with another notebook-sized device where space is already tight. I can velcro the M8 in place.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I want cheap, but well integrated hardware a la Air. I can bare with soldered on components, as long as it reduces the price.
Tegra X or higher end arm chip. Small bezel oled 10 to 12". _LPDDR4_ 8GB for longer standby, reasonably sized single chip SSD like the latest Samsung's offering, working USB3.0 type c usb, huge batteries
Touch screen, 11 inch, 3K display, softcover keyboard, large internal storage, 64GB? apps to cache whole web pages for browsing without the net, media storage and playback.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How about running a full Ubuntu system, while still supporting all Chrome and Android apps?
None of the current chromebooks come in 17 inches. Which is a pro size Same goes to Apple, which discontinued its 17 inch products.
If it had a 17" display (QHD at minimum, 4K preferable), user-swappable drives and RAM, and a decent GPU, and it would be infinitely superior to everything else on the market.
Keep in mind that Chromebooks are basically regular laptops, $100 cheaper because of the lack of Microsoft tax. Google could break even on the 5% using Crouton and profit off of the 95% that would use ChromeOS.
I'm a SRE at a large (non-Google) tech company, and I have a Chromebook Pixel as a secondary system I use all the time, at work and at home. It's incredibly useful and I'm quite happy with it (with ChromeOS in developer mode, which just gives me a shell that's occasionally useful). The idea of high-end Chromebooks makes a lot of sense (for some people) even though I couldn't've guessed it would before I had one. Still, right now to me "Pro" is just a word. It's unclear to me how it'd be different from what I already have.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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I find trackpoints utterly unusable. Using them to guide the pointer is like trying to guide a drunk across a busy road using sign language from 2 miles away. A trackpad is much better, but the small trackballs that used to be incorporated into laptops back in the day are far superior to both.
I'm so thankful for being a Canadian, because we are smarter and better than the Europeans and Americans.
And you forget "Modest", too...
Rolls Eyes.
Cheap powerful laptop that runs Linux. Sorry, I couldn't come up with a better subject than my comment.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
They're not intended for that use since they're subsidized web browsers. A bit like the Kindle Fires.
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I agree. I don't know quite what the difference is, but other touchpads have always annoyed me greatly. I'm always hitting my Acer touchpad with my palm. The position and/or something else about my Macbook Pro touchpads have avoided that.
I thought the Chromebook Pixel was already some kind of high-end hardware, am I wrong? What more could you want from a $1000+ laptop that runs an android-flavoured OS?
You may have conflated the Chromebook Pixel, which runs Chrome OS, with its successor the Pixel C, which runs Android. To which did you refer?
If you're referring to the Pixel C More than one window on the screen. The Pixel C doesn't have and won't get any form of split-screen multitasking. From Devindra Hardawar's review on Engadget: "Using one app at a time is [...] no way to get through a day's worth of computing." Using a computer is more difficult if you cannot see a document and the notes you are taking on that document at once. What good is a full-screen calculator? If you're referring to the Chromebook Pixel The ability to write and test code on the laptop in a language other than JavaScript. A Chromebook can be switched from OS verification mode to developer mode for use with Crouton, but every time you turn on a Chromebook in developer mode, its firmware prompts the user to "press space to re-enable OS verification". If you happen to be at the machine, you can press Ctrl+D to skip the prompt, but if anybody else turns it on, they'll probably press Space in an attempt to "be helpful". And because a mode switch wipes the drive, you'll lose all work that you haven't yet backed up as well as the use of the Chromebook until you can get back to a desktop or traditional laptop with which to reinstall Crouton.A powerfull Chromebook "Pro" would be the opposite of the whole Chromebook concept that is build around small, cheap, easily replaceable machines that are basically restricted to run a browser.
So if you want to do anything "professional", put it into the backend as that's where the chromebook horsepower should reside.
e.g. upgrade Google Docs to something that doesn't make you miss a local office anymore. I'm sure that running MS Office will be named more than once when asked what a "pro" laptop should be able to do., but then you have plain old local OS/software instead of the Chromebook-concept.
bickerdyke
So, the "pro" version of Chromebook should behave like a normal BIOS or EFI x86 PC. It should allow for booting via USB, and the installation of whatever I want to put on the damn machine.
But then, what would be the difference between a Chromebook and a regular PC Laptop be?
bickerdyke
The name.
I find it puzzling that not a single vendor goes to market a laptop with a fully free as in freedom software stack, including the initializing program or BIOS.
Programmable components apart from the CPU, say hard drive controllers or 4G modems, should be isolated with an IOMMU.
The last laptops that don't tread on your freedom are from 2008: https://libreboot.org/docs/hcl...
Is this problem too hard for corporations with billions of R&D money at their disposal?
Are they forbidden to develop hardware that doesn't subjugate the user's freedom by 3 letter agencies?
Or, is it simply that most people do not care?
"I tried everything" clearly not. For one thing, this affects all but the oldest chromebooks, so it's not like you're the only one with this issue. ChromeOS does not use a standard BIOS, although it can emulate one. If you want that, enable it. I've had three Chromebooks so far. Mostly I've been using crouton for linuxy tasks, but I was always able to enable USB boot, and once I went so far as to install a full Debian system. It's not that hard, especially compared to the process involved in getting an actual ChromeOS development system set up. I'm not going to say that there may not be some sort of benefit to their tech stack and toolchain, they certainly seem to be doing well on the security front, but for being better-selling than Mac OS in the laptop market, there is practically no development of ChromeOS outside of Google. I believe that this issue and the BIOS issue both stem from their choice of tech stack.
The worrying part is that this seems to be SOP at Google -- it's an open platform, anyone can develop for it, you just have to go down to the basement with a flashlight and some climbing gear, and look for the disused lavatory with the "Beware of the Leopard" sign on it.
The word "Pro" would imply a high-end laptop NOT running Chrome OS. "Pros" tend to not like being crippled or locked in.
It's an interesting idea... I mean, I certainly looked at Chromebooks before but took a pass on buying one due to the low hardware specs. I've worked in I.T. for decades - and it's a fairly regular thing to run across a 5-6 year old notebook computer that someone is happy to get rid of free. Spend $20 on a new battery for it from some vendor on Amazon and maybe upgrade the RAM or swap in a new SSD, and you have a laptop that performs at least as well as any Chromebook for very little money. (And you recycled something existing, instead of buying more gear. Arguably a good thing.)
But I have a feeling the appeal of the Chromebook as it stands today is the low price-point. You get something that looks modern, is relatively thin and lightweight, and for less money than the Windows laptops they're selling everywhere. They're good enough for schools (their biggest customers) too.
If you beefed it up to deserve the "Pro" moniker - how would that affect the price? IMO, the vendors selling the "nicer" Chromebooks with more RAM and so forth are already nearing the price points where you wonder why you'd still buy one instead of a full-featured notebook on sale, running Windows 10.
So I think the obvious answer here would be something like "fancier and faster hardware". That's the the traditional kind of difference between the "normal" and "pro" version of laptops (e.g. the Macbook Pro ran the same stuff as the Macbook, but was faster hardware in a nicer case).
But it seems to me that the more interesting ideas would not be about a "Chromebook Pro" but a "ChromeOS Pro". Could they, for example, take the best parts of ChromeOS, Android, and Linux desktop distributions to build a real competitor to Windows and macOS? Could they achieve a better balance of appeasing both basic users and power users? Could they get 3rd party vendor support? -- not just for things like Adobe CC or Microsoft Office to run natively, but for things like 3rd party RMM providers. Could they make it so you have the easy option to use the OS while opting out of Google's apps and services, using Dropbox as your basis for storage, for example? Or could there be an easy way for administrators to have all the data stored on internal file servers? Could you substitute another SSO for the Google sign-in?
Maybe Chrome can already do some of these things. I've only played with it a little, and don't know if there are non-obvious fancy things you can do. But you get the idea.
Let us edit videos, run photoshop and run the Unix command like and it would make a lot of developers happy.
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Make sure it has "Pro" on it in big letters so I can impress all the hiptarded fucksters at Starbucks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Another potential option: Chromebook and a Linux VPS.
If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to leasing a VPS and using it as an app server through SSH, X11, VNC, or RDP from your online Chromebook. This might be useful for someone who is online all the time, such as someone who A. drives, B. rides transit in an area where transit provides Wi-Fi, or C. already subscribes to a tetherable cellular data plan and has more data allowance left at the end of the month than he knows what to do with. (Someone like me would have to subscribe to cellular data in order to enter category C.) How much data per hour does X11, VNC, or RDP over an SSH tunnel typically use, so I can go to Ting.com and calculate the cost of this fourth option?