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The Chromebook Pixel

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#481

Post by monochromatic »

mcantelon wrote: post #145
DigitalTurk wrote: post #71

The Verge has more pictures. http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/21/4013480/google-chromebook-... It looks an awful lot like a Macbook: Just witness the aluminum-like color and the black bevel around the screen. Where it looks different, it's uglier. The hinge looks particularly bad. And judging by the pictures it's an awful lot bulkier than a Macbook Air. Chrome OS strikes me as an underpowered OS. That is, there's a lot…

>Both these machines seem better than the Chromebook Pixel in every way Other than not having a touch screen.

A laptop having a touch screen is a bug, not a feature.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#482

Post by monochromatic »

picklefish wrote: post #105
ebbv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Microsoft has magnetic power connectors on the Surface tablets.

Hrmm. I don't know. I was just curious and looked it up. It appears that microsoft has their own patent for a magsafe-like connector: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/14/microsoft-magnetic-patent... from http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/19/microsoft-surface-power-c...

Microsoft having a patent on a magnetic connector of their own is unrelated to the question of whether that connector infringes Apple's patent.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#484

Post by ungage »

steve-howard wrote: post #390
watmough wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to put in a good word for the Samsung here. My wife's MacBook finally died, so she got a ChromeBook as a stop-gap, but in reality, it's really all she needs for basic surfing, Google Docs/Drive and watching CBS streaming (for stuff not on Hulu/Roku/NetFlix). It's cheap, adequately quick, easy to use and has all-day battery life, and charges up at night with the iPad and iPhone used by my toddler.

I'll grant you that if you only do one thing at a time, it works all right. I just tend to jump around a lot -- I use Tree Style Tab for Firefox just to figure out how I got somewhere -- and the Chromebook is a really bad machine for that purpose.

I doubt the Chromebook was ever designed for people like us. We demand far more from our technology and multitask in ways the average user simply doesn't. My Android tablet is nice, but I can't even open up 10+ new tabs at once on a whim and let them all load in the background without it dying.

And forget having them all loaded where I left them when I next return to Chrome.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#485

Post by reirob »

takluyver wrote: post #188
reirob wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you have that backwards: 3:2 == 1.5x as wide as it is high. That's more vertical space than 16:9 (1.78x) or 16:10 (1.6x).

You are absolutely right. Thanks for correcting. Then it seems like a a move in the right direction.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#486

Post by ungage »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #334
masklinn wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance? Question being, performances for doing what? What are you going to do with a chromebook to need the extra oomph?

WebGL? Web Workers? It's astonishing how out of touch the cynics in this post are with modern web technologies.

Modern doesn't mean "in use". I haven't seen much more than proof of concepts and demos when it comes to those technologies. Feel free to point out real-world uses if there are any that could benefit me.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#488

Post by iso-8859-1 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #379
akandiah wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benchmarks.

I don't know what benchmark would give an unbiased comparison.

Build your own benchmark. Measure whatever you want to do. Or if you insist on standardized testing, use something like SPECInt 2006. Results here: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2013q1/ (sadly no ARM results). Of course that is only for integer calculations, if you need fp, use SPECfp.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#489

Post by iso-8859-1 »

kunai wrote: post #347
vibrunazo wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are missing something. 2 things, actually. Cache and instruction set. Intel is still more powerful than ARM because of its instruction set.

What makes the x86 instruction set more powerful than ARM?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#490

Post by iso-8859-1 »

kevingadd wrote: post #446
codeka wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, but if you're doing WebGL development, the last thing you want is a laptop with one of Intel's awful integrated GPUs.

Please qualify your claims with a statement saying that you actually developed on the Intel HD series. Intel graphics are not what they used to be.
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