Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chromebook

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 323 posts

Re: Chromebook

#81

Post by r00fus »

Something that's not confidence inspiring from the site: "Get everything you need directly from Google, including support - online, email and phone."

Contrast with the current CEO's views on support http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/3/

"...Denise Griffin, the person in charge of Google’s small customer-support team, asked Page for a larger staff. Instead, he told her that the whole idea of customer support was ridiculous. ..."

If Google is truly going to support these devices, they're going to need a paradigm shift from Page's pre-existing "support doesn't scale" attitude... and bring their A-game.

Re: Chromebook

#82

Post by blhack »

Am I missing something here?

It's ~$400 for a laptop, then $28/mo to use it?

What are you getting from this that I'm not already getting for free from google?

Or is it $28/mo and the hardware is free...?

Re: Chromebook

#84

Post by kenjackson »

cryptoz wrote: post #76
kenjackson wrote: post #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 iP…

Most people don't want a choice of browser or to worry about syncing different accounts or running WoW on every single computer they buy . Most people want to browse the web without virusus or hassles or intrusive software updates. It's very very clear that this is not meant for full content creation and gaming and a giant desktop experience. This is meant for the web on the go. If you don't want it, that's fine. But…

Let me be clear. I'd love this device for free. Or like I said, even $100 I could see it being a fair price. But when you price at the same price of a netbook that performs really well (the new ASUS Eee Pcs are pretty darn impressive beasts for a $289 machine), with all of its limitations, it just doesn't make sense.

This needs to be more like a Kindle. A device you get even if you already have a laptop and an iPad. The price needs to be way lower.

Re: Chromebook

#87

Post by eggbrain »

rryan wrote: post #23
eggbrain wrote: post #16

A little pricy for me to be honest. Is an all day battery and 100MB of 3G data a month worth giving up a whole lot of features over a netbook? For some, maybe. But for me, no.

Those "features" of your netbook aren't actually features (and some are even anti-features, e.g. viruses, not auto-updating) for someone like my parents, or for students at a school or employees at a business. To start, it seems this is aimed squarely in their direction.

This doesn't make sense from a bunch of different perspectives.

Yes, with the Chrome computers, you might not get viruses. But that would be the same as if you got any Linux Netbook that they sell, and would still have many more features than the Chromebook.

You also bring out a lot of anti-features with the Chromebook as well. When you give this to your parents, and they ask where their little blue "E" is, or where their Spider Solitaire is, what will you say? What about those students and businesses that require to have certain software on their system, that the Chromebook doesn't support? Suddenly you exchange technical problems like getting rid of viruses with explaining how to do things in a new environment, with new rules.

And at the end of the day, is it worth it? For me, I'd rather take that $450 dollars (or $350) and buy a fully functional PC that can run all my favorite software and also get me access to the web.

That is not to say, however, that I would not buy one in the future. If they brought the cost down ($150 would be almost an instant buy for me), and/or had a fully matured "app" store if you will, I would probably change my mind. But I look at it, and the only key features I see are the great battery life, and free 100MB 3G access a month, and a whole lot of negatives and unanswered questions (Are they going to have bad customer service like they did with the Nexus? Are they going to give up on this like the Wave, or keep pushing it?)

Re: Chromebook

#88

Post by watty »

stanleydrew wrote: post #74
kenjackson wrote: post #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 iP…

" The price point on this needs to be a LOT cheaper. Like $100 or free for a netbook..." But that's exactly what they've done with the monthly hardware/software subscription for businesses and universities. The hardware is free. You just pay $20-$30 permonth.

I consider myself extremely unlucky with laptops but even mine last 2+ years. The Google notebook for two years would cost $480 - $720! This notebook is heavily reliant on Google Services (unless you hack it) so I was expecting them to go much cheaper and make up the $$ on service usage and ads.

Re: Chromebook

#90

Post by stanleydrew »

ebiester wrote: post #73

Perhaps someone with a CR-48 can enlighten me... how does one get their photos from their camera to the cloud on one of these?

They went into a bit of detail during the keynote. It's worth checking out a video if you can find one. It's towards the end, in the last 20 minutes.

Anyway, the gist is, a web application (say, Picasa, or Facebook) can register as a file handler for certain kinds of file types (say images) and then handle the upload from the client. A little contextual menu comes up when you plug in a sd card or whatever that asks you which (if any) file handler you'd like to deal with the files.

Post reply on HN