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The Chromebook Pixel

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#271

Post by Einherji »

vibrunazo wrote: post #262
Teckla wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance?

It's an i5 processor, 2 cores at 1.8ghz. New generation arm processors, for example the tegra 4, is quad core at 1.9ghz. Wouldn't it be both more powerful and have more battery life, if it had waited for the tegra 4? Or am I missing something?

Yes you are missing something. Processor performance is not simply a function of number of cores and clock speed. There are vast differences between arm's architecture and x86.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#272

Post by anonymous »

bnegreve wrote: post #198
vladev wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how Linux desktops will handle the screen - I imagine lots of tiny, unreadable text.

I a pretty sure the font size isn't hard coded in the kernel ;)

The text console fallback would suffer though - it is using 16px font by default and might put the display in highest-res mode on bootup. Then again, you can just change the text console resolution.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#273

Post by MatthewPhillips »

codeulike wrote: post #139
revelation wrote: post #56

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?

Is this a serious question?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#274

Post by scarlson »

codeulike wrote: post #139
revelation wrote: post #56

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?

ChromeOS, Ubuntu, movies, music, books, web caching.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#275

Post by thechut »

jbail wrote: post #14

So, it is real! It looks awesome, but at $1,299, I don't think it's priced well. That's $100 more than a 13" MacBook. I just don't see that much value in a Chromebook at this point in time.

Don't see it as a direct competitor with the Macbook Pro or Retina. If anything it is trying to be higher end Air.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#276

Post by [deleted] »

codeulike wrote: post #139
revelation wrote: post #56

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?

[deleted]

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#277

Post by neverm0re »

rbanffy wrote: post #243
rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I believe it's much easier to hack this one to run Linux than any ARM-based Chromebook. It certainly has enough memory, storage and processing power to be a decent development machine (provided you avoid heavy IDEs). It's likely possible to even run Windows on this machine.

It's already braindead easy to put Linux on the ARM Samsung Chromebook. One of the first things I did was to assemble my own personal Linux distro and besides having to copy some blob files out of the original ChromeOS image, it's all very straight-forward stuff and I pulled up about a hundred packages I wanted including an X.org stack without fuss. The compile speeds are adequate if you aren't cross-compiling, I've certainly put up with worse.

I personally have little interest in the Pixel based on the specs. I think X86 is excessively 'big iron' now for a majority of needs and I find the lack of USB3 is mystifying. The screen looks interesting, but it's nothing I actually /need/ and certainly not worth another thousand bucks. I've personally taken to just using X86 for storage/cross-compile servers for the rest of my cheap ARM/MIPS/etc. crap and I've made it a point to stop buying expensive hardware. What $250 buys you now is actually pretty ridiculously awesome.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#278

Post by ropiku »

baddox wrote: post #264
strongvigilance wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine "specs like this" is referring to the Core i5 rather than the display.

The i5 is hardly a gratuitous CPU. It's a fairly mid-range CPU. The phrasing of the first comment sounds like it's talking about some completely over the top system, like a 12 core Mac Pro.

But we're talking about something used to surf the web. An ARM is still powerful enough and will use way less power.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#279

Post by brown9-2 »

Kerrick wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you pay $1,300 to log into a $5/month remote box with 20GB of storage and 512MB of RAM?

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.

What is the point of all that RAM though if you are using SSH?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#280

Post by jonknee »

elarkin wrote: post #160
rayiner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you pay $1,300 to log into a $5/month remote box with 20GB of storage and 512MB of RAM?

Well, you probably would not get this chromebook if you were only going to use SSH. You'd buy the $250 one.

Unless you wanted the gorgeous 2560x1700 display... Many people have paid close to the whole computer's price just for the screen (I'm typing this on a 2560x1440 screen that I paid $999 for).
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