If you're doing a kiosk application, you need a separate display and input device anyway, so why not just get a cheapie desktop and throw a full distro on it? This way, you can have it completely stand-alone - no net connection required.
Honestly, just stick your phone in your pocket, and problem solved! It's not exactly a huge task to take your phone out.
Is that a cellphone in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
You're not supposed to have the antenna of the cell phone that close to your body. The phone has to boost its strength to maintain contact with the tower (even when you're not talking on the phone, it's talking to the tower). Also, if you have anything metallic (keys, coins), same situation. I got a low-grade burn from my first cell phone that way.
I'm pretty sure there is a market for a super efficient netbook that is easy to setup.
I agree 100% - it's the same market that is buying the Droid and other smart phones.
With their tiny screens, netbooks aren't good for anything more than light duty web browsing and checking your email, so they're no better than smartphones, just bulkier and more inconvenient. If you already have a decent desktop and/or laptop (and who doesn't?) you'll buy a smartphone instead.
And seriously, who's going to do a spreadsheet or word processing on a netbook? Between the teeny keyboard and the teeny screen, you're going to have worse wrist and eye problems than if you spent all day surfing for pr0n. Students? They wouldn't be caught dead with one of these. Too limited. Too ghetto:-) "Gee, to bad you couldn't afford a real computer."
The talk so far is that it's going to have very limited hardware support, that printer support is going to be a real b*tch, and that it's only going to accept updates from the web - if, on boot, it doesn't checksum properly, it'll reload everything - so forget about jailbreaking it.
In other words, it's a TIVO! Blech! (and this is allowed under GPL v2, provided the source is made available).
At lest, from the articles I've read, this is the plan, though they were careful to tout that as a "feature" and not a limitation. I think it has to do with them wanting to guarantee that they get the hits for search, rather than you modding it (though there's no reason why anyone with half a brain can't browse through a search proxy and get search results from elsewhere).
I just don't see businesses going for it. Students certainly won't - having one of those will be like being the only kid who has to wear kmart when everyone else is into name brands. Even the Winbox owners will be able to look down on them. Plus it'll clash with their smartphones:-) The average user? First time they come across something that doesn't run, they'll return it, because they simply don't know any better than to expect it to "just work with everything."
You're right - it's not all about money, but a lot of it is, and there's no "natural constituency" for this product in an already-crowded field. 2 years ago, it was different. 2 years ago, they might have had a chance.
1. The study controlled for all those, and still found that people who got flu shots were twice as likely to get the flu in subsequent years. It does appear to be a causative agent, and there is at least one biological mechanism that would explain it.
2. Of course "in it's current version." But if we wanted to talk hypothetical, it would still apply for the average case (though perhaps not for outliers, obviously)
3. It *IS* hard to catch this flu if you take all the right precautions. Those precautions include refusing to work with a sick colleague in a small, poorly ventilated office? You'd have to be sick (or stupid) to agree to do that, since you have the legal right to refuse, and getting sick yourself will end up costing you more $$$. Screw that! Someone's sick and contagious and doesn't want to leave? Call me when they're gone. And don't you DARE try to dock my pay. It's up to the employer to make it clear that sick workers do NOT come in to work, or they will be sent home immediately, since providing a healthy workplace is part of their duties.
Quality wrist watches don't "weigh a ton." That's an indication of cheapness, of substituting bulk for quality. More than half the population are women, and they don't want or need something bulky and heavy to make a "statement" - light is right, thin is in.
The clock on the dash is also the radio tuner display... doesn't work quite the way you think:-)
Yes, but what's the cheapest NEW (not refurb, not factory-remanufactured, or open-box special) cell phone you can buy without a plan, unlocked, not tied to a provider? It's going to be a lot more than $10.
And for the same price, I can get a Droid. 854 x 400 screen, super portability. Oh, AND it makes phone calls.
So, since I need a cell phone anyway... gee, Droid kills that market segment.
And I can already get a standard netbook for $250.00 retail, no favours asked, minimum purchase quantity of one. By next fall, when ChromeOS goes retail, that same netbook will be better and cheaper. It'll still do everything that ChromeOS-based books do, and more. So, how are they going to compete on price and make a profit? Battery life? If it can't do almost everything a regular netbook can do, it's an apple-oranges comparison, and it will lose. And, if you're talking arm cpu, why not just buy an arm-based netbook with a full linux distro instead of ChromeOS-crippleware? You can be sure that the same factory that makes the ChromeOS-based ones will offer better ones for more $$$.
So why do I need ChromeOS? Why do I *want* ChromeOS. Full-featured netbooks that do everything ChromeOS does PLUS run any custom business apps that they business has paid for that need to be run locally, and not in a web browser, are $250, retail, no favours, minimun quantity of 1.
There's zero business case for these things. By next fall, that $250 netbook will be $200, and even better. So, are they going to sell this at $1%0? People will go - for $50 more, I get a full-featured netbook. $100? At $100, the manufacturer well have to be subsidized - the problem being that people who buy $100 netbooks are a crappy market for advertisers - they're already self-selected as being the cheapest of the cheap and the poorest of the poor.
ChromeOS computers are to use when your not at a desk.
Absolutely not. That's what we have smartphones for.
for when you want to look something up from the living room,
smartphone, laptop (which connects to my 50" plasma video and audo), surf the web with my Wii (even does youtube).
add some cool software to remote your other computers and you can download software and music that you see while watching tv.
again, smartphone, laptop, Wii
Computers aren't couch devices. i also don't know about you but even when playing a computer game I sometimes have to look things up online. walk=throughs, etc. So your playing your xbox on your large HD tv, and you forgot that cool combo. chromeOS is designed for that. a small touch slate tablet and you can have that information at your finger tips.
Again, smartphone and laptop both do this. there's no market for ChromeOS devices. None. It's dead, Jim!
At that point, why bother with a ChromeOS "appliance". Netbooks are already down to $250, regular price, no favours, no special discount, no lock-in, and they can do everything that the proposed ChromeOS boxes are supposed to do.
So, when it comes out in the fall of 2010, the price of a full-featured netbook with even better specs will be even lower (can you say sum-$200?). No business is going to go for a limited-function box for the same price, so they'll have to cut it. How low will they go? Nothing less than a $100 price difference will even get looked at in a business context, especially since just the cost of getting people to change the way they work is going to be more than $100 per user.
then there's the "it doesn't support the one piece of software I need" thing - which will be even worse if everything is browser-based. Businesses aren't going to pay tens of thousands of dollars to port their custom apps to run in a browser so they can go out and spend even more money shifting to lower-spec equipment than they already have now.
Businesses that need local servers are already running them. Yes, they're porting many apps to the web - but that doesn't mean they'll go out and buy some underpowered POS to access them when they already have better equipment, and saddling new hires with that same underpowered POS that doesn't run all the software they need to do the job just won't work. Google made a mistake making ChromeOS browser-centric. A *big* mistake.
Alex: For $100, "specific segment of hardware that Google is aiming for".
Me: Who are people too cheap to spend $200 on a netbook?.
Hey parents of new college freshmen, here's a $200 laptop that'll take notes in class, play movies and TV, do email, surf the web, and run both google's online office suite and Microsoft's so your kid can do homework. Oh, and it'll have a hundredth of the virus issues you other kid's HP laptop did. You're welcome.
"Gee, thanks, but it doesn't run the software I need for my classes. Can you return it, and I'll put the money towards a mac | linux | winbox ? Also, I need something with a bigger screen, and more storage. This doesn't cut it."
Alex: The answer is "it obsoleted ChromeOS a year before ChromeOS was supposed to be delivered"
Me: What is Droid?
You think ChromeOS is a bad idea, but porting a cell phone OS back to PC is an obvious success? Really?
I think you had a brain fart on that one. I'm saying it's a FAIL.
Alex: The answer is "Business".
Me: Who won't be using ChromeOS?
Hey businesses who moved all their internal apps to ASP.net years ago, here's a $200 client for all of those. You'll never have to roll out software to it. Enjoy.
"Here's a free linux DVD that converts your obsolete hardware to a thin client."
... and...
"ChromeOS is missing the plugins and functionality I need!"
Alex: They both don't let you run your apps your way.
Me: How is a ChromeOS-based computer like a Tivo?
Open source operating system. What can't you do your way?
You also have access to Tivo's source code. Way to miss the point, and good luck with that.
Alex: The answer is, "100 times as much."
Me: How much more profit will Apple make off each computer it sells compared to vendors of ChromeOS-based computers.
Why can't people make money off of these machines? Hardware suddenly becomes unprofitable when you install ChromeOS on it?
Netbooks are already razor-thin in terms of profit margin. Manufacturers have to sell 100 (or more) netbooks to net the same profit Apple makes off of 1 laptop. Look at Apple's cash balance. they NET 10% profit on every sale. A $2000 laptop is $200.00 NET, after all expenses. Netbooks? $200, 5% gross margin. Say 2% net. That's $4.00. So, to compete, a netbook running ChromeOS has to be even cheaper, which means even lower margins. That $4.00 per unit becomes $2.00 - or even less, because at the lower end, even a small incremental cost will kill you. 1 warranty support call kills the profit from a dozen other sales. 1 return kills 100. What are you going to do - try to refurb an returned ChromeOS "appliance" - they're just too damn cheap to be worth the effort.
ChromeOS bonus question, "We welcome our cloud-based data overlords", "In Soviet Russia, Chrome browses YOU" and "You can have my data when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
Me: What were the three most popular ChromeOS privacy FAIL slogans?
Again, it's an open source OS. If you don't like Google's shit, point it somewhere else. What's the problem?
Open source has nothing to do with ChromeOS being a FAIL. Both my desktop and laptop are linux boxes. I'm thinking that I really want a Droid for my next cell phone. But ChromeOS? There's no business case for it. Thin client? Sun already mined that with SunRay. Netbooks? The market is already saturated, with full-featured ones at the $250 price point. So, are they going to sell this for $100? By the time it comes out in the
Yes, it's already a flop. If the Droid hadn't come out, maybe I'd be a little less harsh, but the fact is that this is a "solution" with no problem. Everything that ChromeOS can do, a smartphone can do, a Wii can do, a netbook can do, a desktop can do, a computer recovered from the dumpster can do...
Who is the market for these things? Certainly not netbook users. For a couple of hundred bucks they'll be able to get a much more full-featured "real netbook." 2nd computer for business users (which is what the PC world article pitched it as)... totally ridiculous. They'll use a smartphone before they use that. Or they'll add a second monitor and use the same apps that ChromeOS makes available on a second screen, if it's screen real estate and productivity that are the issues. People too poor to spend $200 on a netbook? So, if they can't come up with $200 for a netbook, what makes them think that they'll be able to pay for net access fast enough to support downloading their apps every time they boot? And no advertiser is going to want to pay for their search queries. Dead market.
They're going to have to really change direction with this. Make it into a general OS, with Chrome as the default browser. Otherwise, forget it. Stillbirth.
I buy cheapie watches because of the dogs. I've dropped my cellphone quite a lot of times while walking them, including a couple of times when I just wanted to know the time, so every time I want to just look at the time, a watch makes it that much less likely that the next fatal drop will happen *now*.
2. Your cell phone was probably subsidized by your cell phone company, if you bought it new. Try buying a new cell phone without a plan, and no subsidy. they'll be more than $10.
3. I don't need to recharge my wrist watch every few days. How many days can you talk on your cell phone run without a recharge?
4. Does your cell phone fit conveniently on your wrist like a watch? Or would you have to duct-tape it?
5. Is your cell phone as light as a watch?
6. Can you make calls on your cell phone without some sort of plan, even if it's pay-as-you-go? I can still tell time with my watch - no plan needed.
7. My watch doesn't have "dead zones" where it stops telling time. Does your cell phone have dead zones where you can't make calls?
8. I don't have to worry about my watch interrupting an important meeting with an embarrassing ring-tone.
9. If someone steals my watch, I don't have to worry that they have a lot of my contacts.
10. A thief can't run u a big bill for me on my watch.
11. I don't have to back up my watch.
12. It's legal to look at my watch while driving.
I have both a cell phone and a watch. Each one has its own place. Maybe you've heard of the concept - "right tool for the job."
Here's some logic: For 152 people to have died from it, 152 would have had to have caught it. The 145 others who died, didn't have H1N1; they died of other causes. So, it wasn't "highly contagious" or "rqapidly spreading through the population" - 152 people didn't catch it and die in the initial outbreak. 7 people caught it and died. It's mildly contagious, and it's less severe than the regular flu.
When my daughter came back from Mexico, she was worried. I told her that I story was complete BS (before the truth came out) - it was totally illogical, went against how diseases like the flu spread, and had all the signs of echo-chamber over-hype. She said "Are you sure?" and I said "If someone wants to pay for me to spend a month vacationing in Mexico with my dogs, I'll go tomorrow. There's pretty much ZERO risk. Just observe normal sanitation." The price of pork dripped because of the stupidity of "swine flu" so I stocked up on bacon and pork souvlaki. And it isn't even swine flu.
If there's one thing we've learned from this, it's that neither the media nor the government will get it right. The media will hype it for $$$, and the government will always be in CYA mode.
If you read the stories about the "features", the whole idea is that you never work locally - all your data resides on Google's servers. This "feature" is supposed to mean that there's no administering the machine - it "just works." It also means that every time you want to do something, you have to download the app AND the data. Read the latest reviews. They're pushing this as a big win for business users. I see it as a major fail. No business is going to want 100s (or thousands) employees all sucking bandwidth first thing in the morning to re-download all their apps.
This is going to be a repeat of the SunRay. Nobody in business is going to want to downgrade from an autonomous pc to this piece of crap. And a lot of businesses are barred by statute from hosting their data on facilities outside their control, and especially outside their state/province of jurisdiction.
HDs are sealed, you dumb piece of dogshit -- smoke doesn't get in.
No, they're not, and never have been. Take a look at the label on one of them - "Warranty void if this hole is blocked" - it's for air to get in or out - every time the drive cools down, air is sucked in. Blocking the hole voids your warranty.
Western Digital's warranty does not cover Products which have been received improperly packaged, altered, or physically damaged. Products will be inspected upon receipt. You can view additional examples of the warranty limitations below by clicking on the available links.
Alterations
* Counterfeit label(s)
* Customer added jumper wires
* Incorrect PCBA/HDA pair
* Labels have been switched:
True Western Digital label on non-Western Digital drive
True Western Digital label on different capacity Western Digital Drive
* Labels exhibit tampering
* Label missing standard printing such as UL or capacity
* Missing barcode or top cover label
* No tape seal - (non-authorized data recovery sticker)
* Serial number on top cover does not match barcode on end
* Western Digital labels or breather filter holes obscured by customer applied stickers
Either you've never held a hard drive in your hands, you can't read, or you're dumb as dogshit. Your call.
[X] Convenient. You don't have to pull them out of your pocket or purse to see what time it is.
[X] You can get them dirt cheap (under $10) so if they break, get wet washing the dishes, fall in the toilet - no big deal. Try that with your cell phone.
[X] One for day and one for evening wear - they are a fashion accessory.
[X] If they get rained on a bit, big deal. Most are water-resistant.
[X] It's harder to steal a wristwatch than a cellphone
[X] It's harder to forget your wristwatch on the roof of your car, at home, or at the office than a cellphone
[X] I might be convinced to buy a CowboyNeal writstwatch as a joke item, but never a CowboyNeal cellphone.
So buy him a Wii. Internet (via wifi), photo sharing, real-time video conferencing, web surfing (including webmail, etc), font size VERY highly scalable (yes, it browses slashdot and plays youtube videos) - plus it's quiet (no hard drive), you can store data locally on SD cards, low-energy (17 watts), the console is relatively portable, and he can play games with it even when the net is down. It covers the "cheap low power computer market" just fine, and you don't have to buy a new display.
Cats can transmit Toxoplasmosis, which is an infection that has exhibited mind control over certain animals.
Yes they can, and the proper precautions are easy enough to take - don't eat cat shit, since that's how it's transmitted.
Don't let pregnant women clean kitty boxes, wear rubber gloves when you clean the litter, use bleach to clean the container and let it dry before refilling it, and don't let it accumulate cat clay. Or do like I did - teach the cat to go outside.
Who knows - maybe it makes infected people like cats WAY too much - it would explain all the cat ladies out there - you know, the ones with 27 cats in the house - and 81 more outside.
Since you never turn them off, they give you instant access to whatever you want. The computers running ChromeOS would have to be turned off between uses. after all, energy-miser components don't come cheap, and if there's one thing we already know about ChromeOS, it's targeted at CHEAP! One of the advantages in almost every article is the cost savings wrt licensing.
If they're going to make it as energy-efficient as a smartphone, it would end up costing as much as an unsubsidized smartphone ($600 and up), because advertisers won't pay for click-thrus from people who are too cheap to spend even $200 on a netbook, so forget about subsidizing it with advertising.
1. First off, the taxes collected on smokers don't come near covering the costs associated (direct and indirect). Priced a lung transplant lately? And yes, even in the USofA, a lot of these are paid for by the government.
2. Unlike smoking, for which there is no "safe level", alcohol *in moderation* has benefits to the human body (and that's why other animals either make their own booze or like fermented products such as silage that's been sitting in the silo for months on end - talk about milk from contented cows:-)..
3. Here, dui isn't just a fine - it's a criminal record. We take drinking and driving seriously.
4. Viz cars and pollution - I park mine in the winter months (which, btw, are the ones that it's the most polluting). Parked it in September, as a matter of fact. I use public transit in the winter, and next spring I'm seriously thinking of switching to a bicycle or quadracycle. Also, the car has a catalytic converter. Are you ready to install a catalytic converter on your cigarette exhaust?
5. I have never cared about "professional sports." A ban on the political crapfest that is the Olympics wouldn't affect me either.
Look, if you already don't smoke indoors, you're half-way there. Why not give it up entirely - for YOU. You're the one who will save the money, not have to go outside in the middle of winter at 3 am to satisfy a craving that you really wish you could sleep through, not have your clothing smell, be able to taste your food better, etc.
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If you're doing a kiosk application, you need a separate display and input device anyway, so why not just get a cheapie desktop and throw a full distro on it? This way, you can have it completely stand-alone - no net connection required.
Is that a cellphone in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
You're not supposed to have the antenna of the cell phone that close to your body. The phone has to boost its strength to maintain contact with the tower (even when you're not talking on the phone, it's talking to the tower). Also, if you have anything metallic (keys, coins), same situation. I got a low-grade burn from my first cell phone that way.
Don't have to take it out of your pocket to look at it and accidently drop it or put it down and have it stolen?
I know someone who dropped not one, but TWO cell phones in toilets.
I agree 100% - it's the same market that is buying the Droid and other smart phones.
With their tiny screens, netbooks aren't good for anything more than light duty web browsing and checking your email, so they're no better than smartphones, just bulkier and more inconvenient. If you already have a decent desktop and/or laptop (and who doesn't?) you'll buy a smartphone instead.
And seriously, who's going to do a spreadsheet or word processing on a netbook? Between the teeny keyboard and the teeny screen, you're going to have worse wrist and eye problems than if you spent all day surfing for pr0n. Students? They wouldn't be caught dead with one of these. Too limited. Too ghetto :-) "Gee, to bad you couldn't afford a real computer."
The talk so far is that it's going to have very limited hardware support, that printer support is going to be a real b*tch, and that it's only going to accept updates from the web - if, on boot, it doesn't checksum properly, it'll reload everything - so forget about jailbreaking it.
In other words, it's a TIVO! Blech! (and this is allowed under GPL v2, provided the source is made available).
At lest, from the articles I've read, this is the plan, though they were careful to tout that as a "feature" and not a limitation. I think it has to do with them wanting to guarantee that they get the hits for search, rather than you modding it (though there's no reason why anyone with half a brain can't browse through a search proxy and get search results from elsewhere).
I just don't see businesses going for it. Students certainly won't - having one of those will be like being the only kid who has to wear kmart when everyone else is into name brands. Even the Winbox owners will be able to look down on them. Plus it'll clash with their smartphones :-) The average user? First time they come across something that doesn't run, they'll return it, because they simply don't know any better than to expect it to "just work with everything."
You're right - it's not all about money, but a lot of it is, and there's no "natural constituency" for this product in an already-crowded field. 2 years ago, it was different. 2 years ago, they might have had a chance.
And thanks for the compliments :-) ./me blushes
1. The study controlled for all those, and still found that people who got flu shots were twice as likely to get the flu in subsequent years. It does appear to be a causative agent, and there is at least one biological mechanism that would explain it.
2. Of course "in it's current version." But if we wanted to talk hypothetical, it would still apply for the average case (though perhaps not for outliers, obviously)
3. It *IS* hard to catch this flu if you take all the right precautions. Those precautions include refusing to work with a sick colleague in a small, poorly ventilated office? You'd have to be sick (or stupid) to agree to do that, since you have the legal right to refuse, and getting sick yourself will end up costing you more $$$. Screw that! Someone's sick and contagious and doesn't want to leave? Call me when they're gone. And don't you DARE try to dock my pay. It's up to the employer to make it clear that sick workers do NOT come in to work, or they will be sent home immediately, since providing a healthy workplace is part of their duties.
Quality wrist watches don't "weigh a ton." That's an indication of cheapness, of substituting bulk for quality. More than half the population are women, and they don't want or need something bulky and heavy to make a "statement" - light is right, thin is in.
The clock on the dash is also the radio tuner display ... doesn't work quite the way you think :-)
Yes, but what's the cheapest NEW (not refurb, not factory-remanufactured, or open-box special) cell phone you can buy without a plan, unlocked, not tied to a provider? It's going to be a lot more than $10.
Or buy a cheap $10 one for day-to-day use, and a nice one for evenings out.
And for the same price, I can get a Droid. 854 x 400 screen, super portability. Oh, AND it makes phone calls.
So, since I need a cell phone anyway ... gee, Droid kills that market segment.
And I can already get a standard netbook for $250.00 retail, no favours asked, minimum purchase quantity of one. By next fall, when ChromeOS goes retail, that same netbook will be better and cheaper. It'll still do everything that ChromeOS-based books do, and more. So, how are they going to compete on price and make a profit? Battery life? If it can't do almost everything a regular netbook can do, it's an apple-oranges comparison, and it will lose. And, if you're talking arm cpu, why not just buy an arm-based netbook with a full linux distro instead of ChromeOS-crippleware? You can be sure that the same factory that makes the ChromeOS-based ones will offer better ones for more $$$.
So why do I need ChromeOS? Why do I *want* ChromeOS. Full-featured netbooks that do everything ChromeOS does PLUS run any custom business apps that they business has paid for that need to be run locally, and not in a web browser, are $250, retail, no favours, minimun quantity of 1.
There's zero business case for these things. By next fall, that $250 netbook will be $200, and even better. So, are they going to sell this at $1%0? People will go - for $50 more, I get a full-featured netbook. $100? At $100, the manufacturer well have to be subsidized - the problem being that people who buy $100 netbooks are a crappy market for advertisers - they're already self-selected as being the cheapest of the cheap and the poorest of the poor.
FAIL.
Absolutely not. That's what we have smartphones for.
smartphone, laptop (which connects to my 50" plasma video and audo), surf the web with my Wii (even does youtube).
again, smartphone, laptop, Wii
Again, smartphone and laptop both do this. there's no market for ChromeOS devices. None. It's dead, Jim!
At that point, why bother with a ChromeOS "appliance". Netbooks are already down to $250, regular price, no favours, no special discount, no lock-in, and they can do everything that the proposed ChromeOS boxes are supposed to do.
So, when it comes out in the fall of 2010, the price of a full-featured netbook with even better specs will be even lower (can you say sum-$200?). No business is going to go for a limited-function box for the same price, so they'll have to cut it. How low will they go? Nothing less than a $100 price difference will even get looked at in a business context, especially since just the cost of getting people to change the way they work is going to be more than $100 per user.
then there's the "it doesn't support the one piece of software I need" thing - which will be even worse if everything is browser-based. Businesses aren't going to pay tens of thousands of dollars to port their custom apps to run in a browser so they can go out and spend even more money shifting to lower-spec equipment than they already have now.
Businesses that need local servers are already running them. Yes, they're porting many apps to the web - but that doesn't mean they'll go out and buy some underpowered POS to access them when they already have better equipment, and saddling new hires with that same underpowered POS that doesn't run all the software they need to do the job just won't work. Google made a mistake making ChromeOS browser-centric. A *big* mistake.
"Gee, thanks, but it doesn't run the software I need for my classes. Can you return it, and I'll put the money towards a mac | linux | winbox ? Also, I need something with a bigger screen, and more storage. This doesn't cut it."
I think you had a brain fart on that one. I'm saying it's a FAIL.
"Here's a free linux DVD that converts your obsolete hardware to a thin client."
... and ...
"ChromeOS is missing the plugins and functionality I need!"
You also have access to Tivo's source code. Way to miss the point, and good luck with that.
Netbooks are already razor-thin in terms of profit margin. Manufacturers have to sell 100 (or more) netbooks to net the same profit Apple makes off of 1 laptop. Look at Apple's cash balance. they NET 10% profit on every sale. A $2000 laptop is $200.00 NET, after all expenses. Netbooks? $200, 5% gross margin. Say 2% net. That's $4.00. So, to compete, a netbook running ChromeOS has to be even cheaper, which means even lower margins. That $4.00 per unit becomes $2.00 - or even less, because at the lower end, even a small incremental cost will kill you. 1 warranty support call kills the profit from a dozen other sales. 1 return kills 100. What are you going to do - try to refurb an returned ChromeOS "appliance" - they're just too damn cheap to be worth the effort.
Open source has nothing to do with ChromeOS being a FAIL. Both my desktop and laptop are linux boxes. I'm thinking that I really want a Droid for my next cell phone. But ChromeOS? There's no business case for it. Thin client? Sun already mined that with SunRay. Netbooks? The market is already saturated, with full-featured ones at the $250 price point. So, are they going to sell this for $100? By the time it comes out in the
Yes, it's already a flop. If the Droid hadn't come out, maybe I'd be a little less harsh, but the fact is that this is a "solution" with no problem. Everything that ChromeOS can do, a smartphone can do, a Wii can do, a netbook can do, a desktop can do, a computer recovered from the dumpster can do ...
Who is the market for these things? Certainly not netbook users. For a couple of hundred bucks they'll be able to get a much more full-featured "real netbook." 2nd computer for business users (which is what the PC world article pitched it as) ... totally ridiculous. They'll use a smartphone before they use that. Or they'll add a second monitor and use the same apps that ChromeOS makes available on a second screen, if it's screen real estate and productivity that are the issues. People too poor to spend $200 on a netbook? So, if they can't come up with $200 for a netbook, what makes them think that they'll be able to pay for net access fast enough to support downloading their apps every time they boot? And no advertiser is going to want to pay for their search queries. Dead market.
They're going to have to really change direction with this. Make it into a general OS, with Chrome as the default browser. Otherwise, forget it. Stillbirth.
I buy cheapie watches because of the dogs. I've dropped my cellphone quite a lot of times while walking them, including a couple of times when I just wanted to know the time, so every time I want to just look at the time, a watch makes it that much less likely that the next fatal drop will happen *now*.
1. GBP 10 is not $10.
2. Your cell phone was probably subsidized by your cell phone company, if you bought it new. Try buying a new cell phone without a plan, and no subsidy. they'll be more than $10.
3. I don't need to recharge my wrist watch every few days. How many days can you talk on your cell phone run without a recharge?
4. Does your cell phone fit conveniently on your wrist like a watch? Or would you have to duct-tape it?
5. Is your cell phone as light as a watch?
6. Can you make calls on your cell phone without some sort of plan, even if it's pay-as-you-go? I can still tell time with my watch - no plan needed.
7. My watch doesn't have "dead zones" where it stops telling time. Does your cell phone have dead zones where you can't make calls?
8. I don't have to worry about my watch interrupting an important meeting with an embarrassing ring-tone.
9. If someone steals my watch, I don't have to worry that they have a lot of my contacts.
10. A thief can't run u a big bill for me on my watch.
11. I don't have to back up my watch.
12. It's legal to look at my watch while driving.
I have both a cell phone and a watch. Each one has its own place. Maybe you've heard of the concept - "right tool for the job."
Here's some logic: For 152 people to have died from it, 152 would have had to have caught it. The 145 others who died, didn't have H1N1; they died of other causes. So, it wasn't "highly contagious" or "rqapidly spreading through the population" - 152 people didn't catch it and die in the initial outbreak. 7 people caught it and died. It's mildly contagious, and it's less severe than the regular flu.
When my daughter came back from Mexico, she was worried. I told her that I story was complete BS (before the truth came out) - it was totally illogical, went against how diseases like the flu spread, and had all the signs of echo-chamber over-hype. She said "Are you sure?" and I said "If someone wants to pay for me to spend a month vacationing in Mexico with my dogs, I'll go tomorrow. There's pretty much ZERO risk. Just observe normal sanitation." The price of pork dripped because of the stupidity of "swine flu" so I stocked up on bacon and pork souvlaki. And it isn't even swine flu.
If there's one thing we've learned from this, it's that neither the media nor the government will get it right. The media will hype it for $$$, and the government will always be in CYA mode.
If you read the stories about the "features", the whole idea is that you never work locally - all your data resides on Google's servers. This "feature" is supposed to mean that there's no administering the machine - it "just works." It also means that every time you want to do something, you have to download the app AND the data. Read the latest reviews. They're pushing this as a big win for business users. I see it as a major fail. No business is going to want 100s (or thousands) employees all sucking bandwidth first thing in the morning to re-download all their apps.
This is going to be a repeat of the SunRay. Nobody in business is going to want to downgrade from an autonomous pc to this piece of crap. And a lot of businesses are barred by statute from hosting their data on facilities outside their control, and especially outside their state/province of jurisdiction.
No, they're not, and never have been. Take a look at the label on one of them - "Warranty void if this hole is blocked" - it's for air to get in or out - every time the drive cools down, air is sucked in. Blocking the hole voids your warranty.
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp
Either you've never held a hard drive in your hands, you can't read, or you're dumb as dogshit. Your call.
[X] Convenient. You don't have to pull them out of your pocket or purse to see what time it is.
[X] You can get them dirt cheap (under $10) so if they break, get wet washing the dishes, fall in the toilet - no big deal. Try that with your cell phone.
[X] One for day and one for evening wear - they are a fashion accessory.
[X] If they get rained on a bit, big deal. Most are water-resistant.
[X] It's harder to steal a wristwatch than a cellphone
[X] It's harder to forget your wristwatch on the roof of your car, at home, or at the office than a cellphone
[X] I might be convinced to buy a CowboyNeal writstwatch as a joke item, but never a CowboyNeal cellphone.
So buy him a Wii. Internet (via wifi), photo sharing, real-time video conferencing, web surfing (including webmail, etc), font size VERY highly scalable (yes, it browses slashdot and plays youtube videos) - plus it's quiet (no hard drive), you can store data locally on SD cards, low-energy (17 watts), the console is relatively portable, and he can play games with it even when the net is down. It covers the "cheap low power computer market" just fine, and you don't have to buy a new display.
Yes they can, and the proper precautions are easy enough to take - don't eat cat shit, since that's how it's transmitted.
Don't let pregnant women clean kitty boxes, wear rubber gloves when you clean the litter, use bleach to clean the container and let it dry before refilling it, and don't let it accumulate cat clay. Or do like I did - teach the cat to go outside.
1/3 of people are already infected. What - you don't welcome our parasitic cat-shit-dwelling mind-controlling overlords?
Who knows - maybe it makes infected people like cats WAY too much - it would explain all the cat ladies out there - you know, the ones with 27 cats in the house - and 81 more outside.
Since you never turn them off, they give you instant access to whatever you want. The computers running ChromeOS would have to be turned off between uses. after all, energy-miser components don't come cheap, and if there's one thing we already know about ChromeOS, it's targeted at CHEAP! One of the advantages in almost every article is the cost savings wrt licensing.
If they're going to make it as energy-efficient as a smartphone, it would end up costing as much as an unsubsidized smartphone ($600 and up), because advertisers won't pay for click-thrus from people who are too cheap to spend even $200 on a netbook, so forget about subsidizing it with advertising.
1. First off, the taxes collected on smokers don't come near covering the costs associated (direct and indirect). Priced a lung transplant lately? And yes, even in the USofA, a lot of these are paid for by the government.
2. Unlike smoking, for which there is no "safe level", alcohol *in moderation* has benefits to the human body (and that's why other animals either make their own booze or like fermented products such as silage that's been sitting in the silo for months on end - talk about milk from contented cows :-)..
3. Here, dui isn't just a fine - it's a criminal record. We take drinking and driving seriously.
4. Viz cars and pollution - I park mine in the winter months (which, btw, are the ones that it's the most polluting). Parked it in September, as a matter of fact. I use public transit in the winter, and next spring I'm seriously thinking of switching to a bicycle or quadracycle. Also, the car has a catalytic converter. Are you ready to install a catalytic converter on your cigarette exhaust?
5. I have never cared about "professional sports." A ban on the political crapfest that is the Olympics wouldn't affect me either.
Look, if you already don't smoke indoors, you're half-way there. Why not give it up entirely - for YOU. You're the one who will save the money, not have to go outside in the middle of winter at 3 am to satisfy a craving that you really wish you could sleep through, not have your clothing smell, be able to taste your food better, etc.