Google Wants Its New Pixelbook to Win the Laptop and Tablet Battle (fortune.com)

Google is once again trying to make a big splash with laptop computers, this time with its new Pixelbook. From a report: Google debuted its Pixelbook, a new laptop-tablet hybrid during its Pixel 2 event in San Francisco on Wednesday, a high-end version of its barebones Chromebook laptops that rely on Google's Chrome operating system (OS). Google hopes its new Pixelbook, which sells for $999 to $1,649, will give it a viable challenger to Apple's MacBooks and other premium laptops. With Google's low-end Chromebooks, the company supplies the OS while third-party companies like HP Inc. and Dell build the devices. But Chromebooks are bulky, short on processing power, have limited storage, and are incompatible with Google's new Pixelbook stylus pen for drawing digital images on touchscreens. Matt Vokoun, Google's director for Chromebooks, emphasized that his company is serious about the Pixelbook. Although Google previously sold both high-end laptops and tablets, they were mostly "demonstration-oriented," he said, meaning Google didn't produce many of them and that they were instead for showing to potential manufacturers to get them on board with the idea.

Comments

Not at those prices

[Rockoon]

If you want to win "the laptop and tablet battle" you are messing with the wrong end of the price spectrum.

Re:Not at those prices

[ctilsie242]

This is a pretty expensive thin client. For a little bit more, I can buy a MacBook with 16 gigs of RAM, an i7, and 512 GB of SSD. It won't be a barnburner, but it definitely can do whatever tasks are needed when being remote. To boot, if I do not have Internet access, I'm still free to work offline without being tied to the cloud or running in a limited offline mode. I could buy a Surface laptop and at have similar functionality.

For me, Chromebooks have their spot... as Citrix clients and thin clients for the VDI. $1000 for what is basically a dumb terminal? I'll pass.

Re:advertising company

[jareth-0205]

I would rather not get my hardware and OS from a company that generates over 90% of its income from advertisements.

Apple and Windows/amd64 OEMa have their issues but they do at least, for the most part, treat teh person buying the device as the customer, not the person buying the spy data.

*sigh*, this trope is getting pretty dull. Why are you willing to trust *any* company? Do we actually have any evidence of Google acting badly with people's data? Should be some by now. I get that modern tech trends are worrying - but I can't bring myself to be any more scared of Google than Microsoft or Apple, especially since MS have turned into a data company now too.

Re: Well, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Look everybody, swillden is back to shill for his bosses again. Tell me more swillden, I'm all ears. Your pragmatic objectivity is what I come here for.

Re: advertising company

[93 Escort Wagon]

I have to admit, with the direction that Microsoft and Google are going, that Apple is getting more and more attractive every day.

Funny thing is (and I say this as a Mac user since 2003) - as Apple takes a privacy stance which appeals to the technologically literate, they simultaneously seem to be designing their laptops to be less useful to that same group.

10-15 years ago, there seemed to be a big movement to Apple laptops by Unix sysadmin / programmer types. I believe that was part of the reason interest in Apple laptops started to take off among the young college crowd.

Maybe they think laptops are dying as a business... but they sure seem to be squandering the technical fan base they once held.