241–250 of 507 posts
A retina Macbook Air would have higher virtual density and resolution. This is only 1280x850 vs 1440x900 if you assume a 2x scale factor the way retina does things. It is nice, but 32GB, thicker and only runs a browser limits it compared to everything else out there: macbooks, windows, linux... even tablets and phones have 64-128GB now for much less and can run Chrome.
Where are the real specs? Google have gone and copied what Apple do, and just dumped marketing blurb everywhere. "Intel® Core™ i5 Processor (Dual Core 1.8GHz)" - What's the model number? There are numerous Core i5 processors and their performance varies, which one am I getting? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html 32 GB SSD - What kind of read/write speed? Standard SATA or mSATA interface? 4 GB DDR3 RAM - Is the R…
Chromebooks are definitely appliances. I only found two current Dual Core 1.8GHz i5s: http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&FamilyText=3rd... The SSD specs don't matter because you can't run anything that would stress it and officially it's not replaceable. Likewise, RAM is officially not upgradeable/replaceable.
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>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?
People are happy using Chromebooks as development platforms because they're $250 for an ARM laptop with long battery life, and you can hack them to run Ubuntu, not because Chrome OS has any merit on its own. Things that are cute on a $250 machine are not so cute on a $1,300 machine...
It's likely possible to even run Windows on this machine.
This is the first time ever I've seen a laptop design that is not a total Apple rip-off and looks classy. At least it doesn't scream "compromise" like 99% of all other non-Apple laptops.
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Exactly. ChromeOS is not for such powerful machines, because the OS itself is not powerful. So ChromeOS with a $1000 machine is far from a perfect match (at least it isn't yet, maybe 5-10 years from now). But right now ChromeOS is and should be for light web machines. And I've said it many times before. There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. I've said Google will almost surely mess up the pric…
There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance?
What's the point of a mobile chromebook if I won't use it ouside my home or my workplace? And last time I checked there isn't open WiFi in the streets.
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.
By "specs like this," I'm assuming you just mean the high resolution display. I disagree that a hi-res display is only useful or "meaningful" for development, design, or gaming. It's great for web browsing, which is my main usage for the iPad, and I happily upgraded from iPad 2 to the 3rd generation iPad just for the retina display.
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Chrome has a wonderful SSH client [0], and with a $5/mo Digital Ocean [1] (or other [2]) VPS for all your UNIX work, it's a perfectly capable dev machine. [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec... [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/ [2]: http://www.lowendbox.com/
2560 x 1700 display is a big deal for devs, but I think I'd find the extra $200 and get a Macbook pro.
Originally released October 2012
13.3-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2560-by-1600 (227 dpi)
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
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Plenty of people already do this with the $250 Chromebook, and even iPad. The $1,299 isn't for the 32GB SSD. It's for the 239ppi 2:3 multitouch Gorilla Glass display. It's for the 4GB of RAM. It's for the dual core Intel i5. It's for the impressively made aluminum chassis. It's for the 1TB of cloud storage. It's for everything a high-end cloud device should be.
If you're logging on to a remote server to do development,you're not taking advantage of the dual core i5 or 4GB of RAM. You're logged into an image that's giving you maybe 1 GHz of CPU and 512MB of RAM. You're buying a $1,300 machine to do development on a $300 machine, over a shitty internet connection.
I agree though that I probably wouldn't buy this for development work. But I do think that browser's are still better on beefy hardware than on gimped hardware.