The Chromebook Pixel • Hacker News Board

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#461

Post by colin_jack » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 9:53 AM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #348

colin_jack wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent some time with cloud9 convincing myself it was usable and bought a chromebook only to find that aswell as chromeos being a massive let down c9 ran like a dog on it. Main thing is it was ridiculously slow, the same actions taking noticably long on the chromebook compare to my laptop.

It's interesting to see all the people on here saying that there's no point to having a beefier machine to "just browse the web" and then see your comment which would appear to indicate that there is a need for more performant web-browsing devices. How much did you pay for your laptop?

Its ancient and these days massively underpowered but i could sit and do sid by side operations in cloud 9 and the laptop would always complete noticably faster. For example i would be debuggin and i would ask to go to hte next step and in the laptop it was immediate, on the chromebook i might wait a second.

Very very odd and very unexpected but it made cloud9 totally unusable for me. Chromeos is also horrible for nearly everything else i do, even reading pdfs, so i cannot think of any reason to shell out for another machine with it installed.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#462

Post by rdl » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 9:56 AM UTC

MrVitaliy wrote: post #300

jonknee wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that logic I don't know how Apple sells so many of its MacBooks. They're all expensive and have "specs like this", but the vast majority are not used for development, design or gaming. I can see the appeal of a small (thinner than a MacBook Air), well constructed, blazingly fast laptop. If I could run 1Password on it I would be very tempted to take it for a spin, with the LTE it would make an excellent travel m…

MBAir is best dev laptop I ever had. Its super light, plenty of power and space for most app development and within reach price wise. Also, I suggest you look up Linus's rant about how he loves Mac book air and SSD for kernel development.

I wish the MBAir had 4G/LTE built in. That (and the higher res screen, and the platform security hw) are the things I like about the Pixel.

I'm sure Apple will Retinize the MBAir in 2013 or 2014. I just don't get why LTE chipsets don't appear in any Mac products. I have a VZ MiFi and it's such a pain by comparison -- I'm fine paying $10/mo to Verizon for each mobile/etc. device I have.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#463

Post by rplnt » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:06 AM UTC

Shish2k wrote: post #454

Zak wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have 4:3 or even 5:4, but I'll take any steps in the direction of square as positive.

If tall thin windows are better, why not have a widescreen with two windows side by side?

Because there's no space / it would be too small. We're talking about sub-15" display here. So while wide display is great in 22"+, it sucks for everything (except movies maybe) on smaller devices.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#464

Post by Einherji » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:09 AM UTC

ccozan wrote: post #455

Orva wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually comparing Arm versus x86 is really like comparing apples to oranges. One is RISC, other is CISC. One is good with running multiple threads on single core with highly sophisticated branch prediction, other concentrates having many low powered cores each hoarding threads. And this is very, very crude simplification. Benchmarks tend to be always favor other camp, depending which attributes you are testing.

Actually Intel chips are since long RISC based, with a CISC translation layer. The real difference is in the more advanced pipeline, prediction and cache and and of course the 32 vs 64 bit + other architectural features. Hence the intel chips use a lot more power than an ARM based processor.

This is not exactly true. In most cases intel's chips are more power hungry but the low power atom processors bring better performance than an ARM cortex A9 while still having lower power consumption. (mostly by racing to sleep faster) And this is a three year old architecture i'm talking about.

link for the curious:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myt...

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#465

Post by bvdbijl » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:13 AM UTC

calebegg wrote: post #185

bvdbijl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty sneaky to call it 3TB....

Where do they say that?

Oh, now it says

    Since this Chromebook is for people who live in the cloud, one terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage*

It used to say 3 TB

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#466

Post by HNLogInShit » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:29 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #58

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.

Not to mention yet another shitty glossy screen.

And does this thing have a Delete key? Yeah, there are Chrome computers that don't have a goddamned Delete key. Unbelievable.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#467

Post by rplnt » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:32 AM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #417

bitcartel wrote: post #108

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…

Are you certain these are 3rd gen core chips?

Probably not since they are using some old chipset.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#468

Post by shrughes » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:45 AM UTC

hmottestad wrote: post #378

I feel there is far too little discussion here on the screen. This laptop screen is amazing. Since we today have light, fast, power efficient and sturdy laptops. The next big thing, is the screen. A TN screen on a laptop is just sad. My first Macbook pro felt horrid just because I was used to a PVA desktop screen. I kept adjusting and adjusting the screen. If you take a moment to appreciate your crummy laptop screen…

Meanwhile, plenty of TN screens are fine -- the 15.6" FHD 95% NTSC gamut screens floating around out there are great, the 13.1" FHD screens on the Vaio Z were great, and meanwhile many IPS screens have a shimmer effect when you move your head off-center, or have weak color gamut. The only good IPS screens are found on some Elitebooks and Precisions.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#469

Post by iSnow » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 10:59 AM UTC

Kerrick wrote: post #344

cube13 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the OS is cloud based, so you don't need the processor power or the RAM. That's the entire point of ChromeOS.

You do for things like WebGL, client-heavy web apps, and other wonderful upcoming web technologies. The point is that this laptop should last you until it physically wears out, not until it becomes obsolete.

Considering the intel integrated GPU, this seems doubtful.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#470

Post by medikoo » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 11:02 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #58

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.

well.. 64GB limit of internal memory, makes this device not capable for any serious development, design etc. work.