Live data from Hacker News

Chromebook

google.com

41–50 of 323 posts

Re: Chromebook

#41

Have they published price of these laptops anywhere? I can't find any info at Amazon/BestBuy or official website http://www.google.com/chromebook/chromebooks.html

$28/month/user with Google Apps & Support for business $20/month/user for students. (from the Engadget live feed)

I can't see the laptop itself not costing anything. The per month is on top of the laptop cost I take it?

Re: Chromebook

#42

Heh, I was amused that on Firefox that Javascript that does that whole stupid "fade in" crap took longer than 8 seconds to load :-). Note to web designers, its not studly its worthless bling, please don't give in to the temptation to do that stuff. From a product perspective it does have some nice benefits for the non-techies. I'd love to get my parents something that they could carry around to read email and view pi…

Much more difficult for that to work on iPad. It takes Chrome seconds to sync everything for a particular user. Since iPad apps aren't served on demand ala web apps, you'd have to download every app belong to the guest. Much wasted hard drive space. The iPad will remain a personal device, like a phone.

I don't think anyone is (yet) asking Apple to support any Mobile Me user to log into any iPad and see all their stuff. Just a way for multiple people to use one. Or for me to be able and make my iPad available to someone without also giving them access to all my email and Dropbox contents. Sort of like OS X...

Re: Chromebook

#44
post #7

This is a game changer. I plan to get one for my 6 year old daughter. I have started her on Khan academy for math (I have been watching the vids myself - they are fantastic)

It's not going to work for my kids till I can put some filtering on the web browser. They really don't need to be clicking on ads and whatnot yet.

Re: Chromebook

#45
I can't imagine anyone buying this and being happy unless they are already intimately familiar with the device ahead of time. Too many limitations, with virtually no big upside functionality or user experience (unlike the iPad that makes up for limitations with some huge upside).

As I'd mentioned before I can buy an ASUS Eee PC with an AMD C30 processor for $289 and be able to use the browser of my choice, sync my iPod/iPad/iPhone, play WoW, use Skype, hook it up to my TV in the dorm, use MS Office, Visual Studio, emacs, vim, etc...

It just feels like a half-baked implementation. The price point on this needs to be a LOT cheaper. Like $100 or free for a netbook, and make the money up with targeted advertising based on them being locked into Chrome. Otherwise this doesn't seem recommendable.

Re: Chromebook

#46

The data service ( http://www.google.com/chromebook/#features-connectivity ) looks nice for people who don't do a ton of streaming. In fact, if chromeos has ssh, it would probably do for my work laptop at something better than a netbook + verizon dongle, and a whole lot cheaper. (well, I think right now it's $60/5gb, and I rarely hit that).

ChromeOS has SSH built in without having to flip the developer switch. (Ctrl-alt-T to get a 'terminal' then 'ssh user@host')

Re: Chromebook

#47
post #30

Guess I'll have to drive down to the US to get one. Canada is somehow always excluded from new google projects. I'd like them to tell us which laws or limitation cause this. Crappy ISPs and Mobile networks?

A couple years ago the Google Summer of Code had a restriction on citizens from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Quebec.

Language laws, I think, were the culprit in that case. Not sure about this one though.

Re: Chromebook

#48
post #22

Google is still planning on making Chrome OS installable on other hardware, right? I already have a thin and light laptop that I'm pretty happy with - hopefully I can install Chrome OS from an image onto it to tinker with.

I am surprised that Google does not publish a version of the OS which runs on VirtualBox/whatever with special hardware (not even sure what it would be) emulated. Imagine how many software folks would show off the OS running a company's internal apps. Making it easy for potential customers to sell something internally is a cheap and effective sales strategy.

Re: Chromebook

#50
post #11

They don't seem to be priced any better than similar Windows machines, although it's hard to find exact comparisons since most things with Atom processors only go up to 10" screens.

Same price as a windows laptop but much cheaper to support.

For anyone who's the the family tech support guy, it's almost worth buying these for your relatives just so you don't have to deal with cleaning up their malware infected, bloated PCs every 6 months.

Post reply on HN