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The Chromebook Pixel

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#131
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And yet ChromeOS can't do any of these things. Am I just imagining all the posts I've seen on HN from people talking about being extremely happy using Chromebooks as development platforms?

How do you develop on this? I'm used to using Linux, command line, text editors, local installs of the product I'm developing for, virtual machines, etc... Are you simply forced into using ALL websites to actually develop and unable to use anything else? Seems strange to pay $1250+ to develop on a machine that cannot even run or test the code you write.

I use the Secure Shell extension to ssh onto a dev environment and use vim from there.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#132
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who "live in the cloud" with a 16GB iPad have very un-demanding needs. They're people like my mom, who take some photos and send some e-mails. They're not going to buy a $1,300 machine to do those things when a $500 iPad does them just fine.

That's the problem with speaking for the general population, you say "most people need more", someone else says "most people only need X" and the conversation goes no where.

You can make some inferences from the available statistics. The Chromebook is priced like an Ultrabook. Nobody is making any money off Ultrabooks, except Apple. Why would anyone spend as much as an Ultrabook to get a machine that does even less than an Ultrabook? I don't think this is that subjective of an argument.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#133

Am i the only one seeing this as a high-end computer with : - Linux drivers working out of the box - Amazing screens - Very easy to transform into a full fledged Linux development machine I hope it can fit the bill, certainly looks promising from that perspective ! Anybody has a link to full specs ?

Sadly, with 32 GB, it would probably end as only development machine, while with even 120 GB it could work as reasonable "home machine" too.

But otherwise yes, it looks great.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#134
post #24

Direct link to specs: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pix... (scroll down and click "full specs") I think it's interesting they chose a 3:2 aspect ratio. The price is a bit high for the specs you get, but I suppose a lot of that is the (multi-touch)screen.

The 3:2 aspect ratio is certainly interesting to Google but not to users. It is even less vertical space than with 16:9 or 16:10. So what good is that much horizontal space, apart for ads in a column left or right of the content.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#135
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it is purely amazing the specs for that price. The display specs are amazing, but storage is a paltry 32GB so I guess it's compensated there.

They also provide "One terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage, free for 3 years"

I need 1TB of fast storage, not on the other end of an internet connection, especially given that the cloud provider (or anyone that gains access to the cloud provider) can read my data.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#136

There are only three meaningful things you can do with a computer with specs like this: development, design, or gaming. And yet ChromeOS can't do any of these things. Perhaps this is a vanity product for the wealthy. But wealthy people are going to just surf the web on an iPad. I really don't get this product.

> I really don't get this product.

Reminds me of what every techie said about the iPad too.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#137

That is one beautiful laptop (note that it's not 16:9 either). I feel like we're missing something, there's no way Google would be blind enough to build such a powerful machine (vs existing Chromebooks) that's so limited by the OS. There's either something we aren't being told or Google's jumped entirely off the deep end. (Alternative: there's no way they could do a "Retina" Chromebook for reasonably cheap, but the N…

Discliaimer: I work for Google, but don't know about real strategy decisions about this. I think it's all about establishing more demand for web apps. Already I can do everything I need to in Chrome except for a nice development environment, though Cloud9 is getting closer, and music apps like Logic. Those are quite doable though, especially with the Chrome App APIs, someone just needs to get the ball rolling. The cu…

IMHO, all it needs for a decent developer environment is semi-sanctioned shell access and a package manager. I've been using the age-old SSH+tmux combo fine, all that's really hurting me is latency. I'm kind of surprised Google hasn't taken up the task of building their own web-app IDE (but not that surprised, if what I keep hearing about Google not allowing code checked out on laptops is correct it's hard to improve much on SSH).

I want this machine to work, I just don't see how it can without being self-hosting.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#138
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And yet ChromeOS can't do any of these things. Am I just imagining all the posts I've seen on HN from people talking about being extremely happy using Chromebooks as development platforms?

How do you develop on this? I'm used to using Linux, command line, text editors, local installs of the product I'm developing for, virtual machines, etc... Are you simply forced into using ALL websites to actually develop and unable to use anything else? Seems strange to pay $1250+ to develop on a machine that cannot even run or test the code you write.

I bet serious developers will buy these things for linux development

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#139

With 4GB of RAM, USB 2.0 (how do you even get that? what kind of oooold chipset are they using?) and only 32GB of storage, this thing is ridiculously overpriced and pretty much dead on arrival.

What do Chromebooks use their hard drive for, exactly?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#140

Am i the only one seeing this as a high-end computer with : - Linux drivers working out of the box - Amazing screens - Very easy to transform into a full fledged Linux development machine I hope it can fit the bill, certainly looks promising from that perspective ! Anybody has a link to full specs ?

I had the same initial reaction, but the killer is the hard drive : 32 or 64 GB SSD... That's a bit short to do local development. Maybe you can change it though.
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