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Are Chromebooks Responsible For PC Market Growth? (theverge.com)
From a report on The Verge: IDC claims the PC market is "up slightly," recording its first growth in five years. It's a tiny growth of just 0.6 percent, but it's a flattening of the market that Microsoft and its PC maker partners have been looking for after years of decline. While percentage growth looks good on paper, it doesn't always tell the whole story. Over at Gartner, another market research firm that tracks PC sales, the story is a little different. Gartner claims PC shipments declined 2.4 percent in the recent quarter. There's a good reason for the disparity between IDC and Gartner's figures, and it involves Chromebooks. IDC's data includes Chromebooks and excludes Windows tablets, even machines with a detachable keyboard like the Surface Pro. Gartner counts Windows-based tablets as PCs and excludes Chromebooks or any non-Windows-based tablets. Without IDC providing the exact split of Chromebooks sold vs. Windows- and macOS-based machines, it's impossible to know exactly how well Google's low-cost laptops are selling. However, IDC also claims that Chromebooks are doing well with businesses. The US commercial PC market "came out strong mostly backed by growth of Chromebooks," says IDC. Gartner has no opinion on Chromebooks as the company refuses to track them as PCs.
Obviously this depends on how you count, which was my response even before reading the fine summary:
If you are counting Wintel PCs then it makes sense to count windows tablets and not count non-windows-based whatever, definitely including Chromebooks. But whatever else is true, if you are counting PCs, then it makes absolutely no sense to not count Windows-based tablets, which are just PCs with a wacky form factor. That only makes sense if you are counting desktops, but then you also have to exclude Windows notebooks. So, WTF, IDC?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In our business (Mimetics), we use Chromebooks a lot and the low end Chromebooks (2 GByte DDR & 16GByte SSD) are excellent for our application (Chrome Extension) as well as a classroom tool for students. I would argue that Chromebooks are better in the classroom than traditional PCs and I can see many applications where ChromeOS devices would be a better solution in a work environment than a traditional PC.
But, I would be reluctant to call a ChromeOS device as a "PC" because:
- They need to have a network connection to access user data
- Local file systems (ie USB drives) are absolutely painful to access and work with (the paradigm is to use GDrive storage and anything else is work)
- There simply isn't enough memory/drive space available for anything other Extensions which are measured in the low tens of MBytes
- Applications are limited to Javascript (although I'm hoping Webassembly will be an option in the near future) with browser built in debug tools with a somewhat convoluted load/test process. A full featured IDE for application development is nothing more than a dream at this point
A surface table, which can operate on its own, generally has many 10s to 100s of Gbytes of storage and can run traditional apps, even without keyboards seems ore likely to match the traditional definition of a "PC".
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
People who don't realize what kind of computer they are buying might also not realize what OS is running even after they start using it. For those people, the Chromebook probably does what they need, and with fewer hassles.
At my work every necessary app is browser-based, and Chrome is becoming the enterprise standard. Even my terminal sessions are usable in Host On Demand. Except for document generation...
A Chromebook would actually serve. Office whatever can be web based.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No, what people who don't know what OS they're running need is a web browser for Facebook, Twitter, and email.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
So a ChromeBook is like the games console of Google cloud stuff.
That's not true at all. The ChromeBook is not even close to being as locked down as a games console. You don't need to give anyone money or even get anyone's software blessing to put your ChromeBook into developer mode, at which point you can load whatever you want onto it. You just have to [effectively] do a little dance, which is slightly annoying but not prohibitive. And since you can run Android apps on a Chromebook, and those apps include more than just gaming or audiovisual entertainment apps, it's clearly a general-purpose computer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My Chromebook runs Debian and I use it for software development. How is that not "general purpose?"
If anything, my Windows 7 desktop is the "appliance" since I pretty much only use it for gaming.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Chromebooks are perfect from many situations. I recently replaced my dad's Windows PC with a chromebox and it's made both of our lives much better. Twice a year his PC would be a bogged down mess even with malware / anti virus software. No longer an issue. It's been 6 months and all is good.
Zoid.com
Chrome OS apps are glorified web pages, so you can develop them on anything that can run Chrome itself and edit text.
My Chromebook does run GCC, in Crouton.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Lines are getting blurred and definitions of things need to be rewritten.
Like how couple other bodies in our solar system were discovered and we had to redefine Pluto.
So maybe the chrome book is a "Dwarf PC", netbooks aren't really notebooks. Still my Wyse terminal has 4GB of RAM and dual boots to Windows 7 and Mint. Is it still just a terminal?
Definitions seem to matter though, it has real life implications in accounting and record keeping. For example, I can't claim my dog as a dependent but he depends on me.
A year ago I was facing the decision to replace my aging MacBook Air with one of Apple's expensive but pathetic newer models and decided to get a Chromebook (Asus Flipbook) instead for much less money. Best decision ever!
Not only is the Asus faster than my MacBook (which seems to have gotten slower with every Apple update) but I have access to my Android apps plus apps written for the Chromebook. I use Google docs for all of my wp, presentations and spreadsheets (and great collaborative workspaces).
I've installed Crouton for the times when I need Linux for programming, etc. Just a tab switch from ChromeOS to Linux. Remarkably fast.
Couldn't be happier.
For my uses, it's definitely a PC and does everything I need.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
That would make an iPad, an android tablet, or pretty much any smartphone a notebook...
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."