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The Chromebook Pixel

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#401

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Zak wrote: post #341
j-b wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why pay $1,299 for a thin client OS even if it's running thick client hardware? I can run a browser and so much more in a macbook air or thinkpad in the same price range.

This has a far better screen than either of those objectively and a more preferable aspect ratio for many of us subjectively. Installing arbitrary Linux distributions on Chromebooks has been trivial in the past and almost certainly remains so with this one. Many people here would install their Linux distribution of choice on whatever laptop they bought anyway, so the shipping OS is a non-issue.

And Linux would boot at native resolution, making the contents of your screen microscopic and useless. Linux isn't ready for High DPI.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#402

Post by Cookingboy »

DanBC wrote: post #149
TillE wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, most computers are sub-$1000, probably sub-$500 web browsers.

Eh, not with that resolution. MacBook Pro = about $1,200 MacBook Pro Retina = about $1,500

And when you buy that Macbook you have the OPTION to use it for more if you need it, with the Chromebook you simply need a second computer.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#403

Post by mrb »

lutusp wrote: post #397
mrb wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am well aware that the battery life depends on the power required. My point (implied) was that the MacBook Air 13" has roughly the same hardware as the Pixel: same CPU, same GPU, same amount of RAM, same type (DDR3L), etc. The only significantly more power-consuming devices in the Pixel are the display and LTE hardware. So if you don't use too much these (eg. turn brightness down, don't use LTE), then shouldn't the…

Let me reply this way -- why would Google sell their unit short? What reason would they have to underestimate battery life? It occurs to me that, if they exaggerated battery life in normal usage -- typical user brightness settings and typical peripheral activation -- it might create a public relations disaster not unlike the infamous Tesla test drive. Also, even with the same battery technology, units won't necessari…

Everybody knows there is no industry standard to measure battery life (basically which workload to run when measuring it). For example Anandtech measured the MacBook Air 13" as having a battery life varying between 3 and 7.52 hours depending on the workload: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6063

So my point is that Google would not specifically have the goal of underestimating battery life, but just that it is almost guaranteed that they have different standards from Apple for measuring battery life.

The only way to fairly compare battery life is to have the same person/group run the same test on the 2 laptops. But even that is prone to human-error (eg. what if the tester forgets to disable LTE when testing the Pixel?).

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#404

Post by jimmaswell »

kunai wrote: post #400
gilgoomesh wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies build screens with more code friendly aspect ratios I hear this complaint a lot and I think it's based on a flawed premise. Taller aspects might be better on very small screens that only fill tiny portions of your vision but on bigger screens -- the sort you should be using if you're working regularly on a computer -- you want wider not taller. It's the only way to usefully use your field of view. This is…

May be true for desktops, but if you have ever tried to code on a 1366x768 14" laptop display, you'll agree. 8:5/16:10 or even 3:2 fill the horizontal field of view well while also delivering more vertical space. Even if 16:9 is theoretically better, why shouldn't we have a choice? Every notebook computer out there besides Apple has a 16:9 display, and I'm sick of it, and many others are as well. At least offer us mo…

I use Visual Studio on a 1360x768 display all the time, and it's not so bad. It does encourage writing the code better because you can't read large chunks at once.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#405

Post by wvenable »

codeka wrote: post #250
rayiner wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends what you're working on. If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL) then a beefy client is preferable to a beefy server. 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.

> If you're doing heavy client-side work (e.g. WebGL)

Really? If you're the one person in the world doing heavy WebGL this might be the product for you.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#406

Post by lutusp »

mrb wrote: post #403
lutusp wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me reply this way -- why would Google sell their unit short? What reason would they have to underestimate battery life? It occurs to me that, if they exaggerated battery life in normal usage -- typical user brightness settings and typical peripheral activation -- it might create a public relations disaster not unlike the infamous Tesla test drive. Also, even with the same battery technology, units won't necessari…

Everybody knows there is no industry standard to measure battery life (basically which workload to run when measuring it). For example Anandtech measured the MacBook Air 13" as having a battery life varying between 3 and 7.52 hours depending on the workload: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6063 So my point is that Google would not specifically have the goal of underestimating battery life, but just that it is almost g…

> ... it is almost guaranteed that they have different standards from Apple for measuring battery life.

Yes, most likely, which is why Consumer Reports articles are often such interesting reading.

> The only way to fairly compare battery life is to have the same person/group run the same test on the 2 laptops.

Yes, and (just to make it more scientific) the testers shouldn't be able to tell which laptop they're testing. Not so easy to do, but necessary for an unbiased evaluation.

I just think Google's battery life specification is most likely correct -- they have no good reason to over- or underestimate it. But I agree that an independent test would be useful.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#407

Post by josephlord »

mrb wrote: post #396
lutusp wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Google is being extremely pessimist when estimating the battery life to be 5h when their capacity is 59Wh. The battery life depends, not on the watt-hour rating, but on the watt-hour rating divided by the power required. More power, fewer hours. Maybe Google knows something about the actual power requirements that resulted in this estimate. Just as an example, if the unit requires 11.8 watts, then the batte…

I am well aware that the battery life depends on the power required. My point (implied) was that the MacBook Air 13" has roughly the same hardware as the Pixel: same CPU, same GPU, same amount of RAM, same type (DDR3L), etc. The only significantly more power-consuming devices in the Pixel are the display and LTE hardware. So if you don't use too much these (eg. turn brightness down, don't use LTE), then shouldn't the…

The screen and the greater graphics usage related to it is likely to be significant. It may draw much more power for any given brightness than an MBA.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#408

Post by sbrother »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #401
Zak wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has a far better screen than either of those objectively and a more preferable aspect ratio for many of us subjectively. Installing arbitrary Linux distributions on Chromebooks has been trivial in the past and almost certainly remains so with this one. Many people here would install their Linux distribution of choice on whatever laptop they bought anyway, so the shipping OS is a non-issue.

And Linux would boot at native resolution, making the contents of your screen microscopic and useless. Linux isn't ready for High DPI.

I'd argue that Unity looks much, much better on high DPI. I run it on an old crappy 1024x768 and a newer 1920x1080 of around the same size, and the icons/launcher actually look sane at almost double the DPI of the older screen. Unity makes the low-DPI computer look (and feel) like a toy, but I like it a lot on my new computer.

I'd agree with you if you're running Gnome 2, or KDE, though.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#409

Post by zevyoura »

polshaw wrote: post #307
CGamesPlay wrote: post #232

To help get context on this, I went back in time and looked at discussion about the initial iPad launch: - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081505 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081140 The first poll is especially telling. Overwhelmingly, people said they wouldn't get this device (2/3 of the voters). The initial iPad was obviously very successful. The complaints in the second thread are largely a mirror o…

1 in 3 people saying they want to get a new device is an extremely good result. IMO the ipad 1 wasn't that great either.

Indeed, it seems like a stretch to compare that discussion to this one, where I haven't seen a single poster who seemed eager to by one.
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