Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#61

Post by jay_kyburz » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:14 AM UTC

Google Docs let me down when it mattered most.

I really wanted to go all in on Google Apps and have been using them exclusively for the last year, but at the start of december I started negotiating a large contract and I had a solicitor drawing up some documents for me.

Both the solicitor and the large company I was negotiating with were sending me .docx files and Google docs was failing to number the paragraph correctly.

This let to quite a bit of embarrassment and was forced to go out and buy Office for mac. If I was using a Cromebook I would have to buy a whole other laptop.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#62

Post by theg2 » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:15 AM UTC

onedev wrote: post #13

ladzoppelin wrote: post #8

So basically Chrome OS is like Microsoft windows only with less features, less control, less software, hardware dependent and developed by an advertising company? Doesn't Chrome OS resemble an IPad challenger rather than a Windows/MacBook substitute?

It's an incredibly lightweight OS that covers 90% of usage scenarios and runs well on portable ~$200 hardware. That's the promise of a Chromebook. The thing I think you're missing is that many people are replacing usage of their main computer with tablets and similar devices. So yes ChromeOS/books can be seen as a competitor to an iPad, but the ENTIRE space (e.g. tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks) is competing agains…

My Dell Venue 8 Pro is pretty fantastic at near that price point and is a full desktop OS. Granted its a tablet and not a full Laptop but its a great piece of hardware and Windows 8 really shines on it.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#63

Post by adamors » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:17 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #61

Google Docs let me down when it mattered most. I really wanted to go all in on Google Apps and have been using them exclusively for the last year, but at the start of december I started negotiating a large contract and I had a solicitor drawing up some documents for me. Both the solicitor and the large company I was negotiating with were sending me .docx files and Google docs was failing to number the paragraph corre…

Did you try LibreOffice? It's somewhere between Google docs and MS Office.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#64

Post by wepple » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:17 AM UTC

ancarda wrote: post #15

When Chrome OS was first announced, I wanted to try it out. Unfortunately every time I try, I can't get it to run in VirtualBox. The hexxeh builds are old (April 2013) and there's no ISO I can download. Has anyone else had success in running a recent, stable build in VirtualBox?

Why not grab VMware?

I got the hexxeh build running fine on VMWare (Workstation, but it should work fine in Player) a couple of days ago.

All I had to do was change ethernet config in the .vmx file as it wasn't picking up the virtual adapter.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#65

Post by eliben » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:19 AM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #21

it's honestly impossible to decipher the validity of the claims without seeing the sales breakdown of chrome books. how many of them were given away for free but counted as sales?

Why would Amazon give away laptops for free? You can verify the claim in the link by just going to Amazon and looking at the best sellers in the laptop category.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#66

Post by grandeb » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:19 AM UTC

I find the numbers hard to believe and looks like PR more than anything else. Am on my phone right now, so can't check the numbers. What's the catch?

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#67

Post by andybak » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:19 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #61

Google Docs let me down when it mattered most. I really wanted to go all in on Google Apps and have been using them exclusively for the last year, but at the start of december I started negotiating a large contract and I had a solicitor drawing up some documents for me. Both the solicitor and the large company I was negotiating with were sending me .docx files and Google docs was failing to number the paragraph corre…

I'm conflicted here. Handling MS Office formats correctly is so essential to so many people that Google Docs really needs to do better here.

On the other hand it's such a shitty format that getting it right is a gargantuan task. LibreOffice doesn't get much credit here either and I'm not aware of any other 3rd party clients that do much better (correct me if I'm wrong).

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#68

Post by andybak » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:21 AM UTC

theg2 wrote: post #62

onedev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an incredibly lightweight OS that covers 90% of usage scenarios and runs well on portable ~$200 hardware. That's the promise of a Chromebook. The thing I think you're missing is that many people are replacing usage of their main computer with tablets and similar devices. So yes ChromeOS/books can be seen as a competitor to an iPad, but the ENTIRE space (e.g. tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks) is competing agains…

My Dell Venue 8 Pro is pretty fantastic at near that price point and is a full desktop OS. Granted its a tablet and not a full Laptop but its a great piece of hardware and Windows 8 really shines on it.

I'm sure it is but how will it run after 6 months of use by a non-technical user. The 'Windows half-life' kicks in and most Windows PC's I've ever seen have been almost unusable after a year or so of such usage.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#69

Post by whyrusleeping » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

cshimmin wrote: post #56

gkoberger wrote: post #41

Bought Chromebooks (and Chromecasts) for all my tech-illiterate family members in order to cut down on having to provide tech support, and it's been amazing. No issues so far, and everything just works.

I do nearly all my work on remote machines, writing code in Vim over SSH. Could chromeOS work for someone like me? Is there a decent terminal app for chromeOS? I don't want a PuTTY-like utility that allows me to open sessions; I'm looking for a tabbed terminal that allows me to run basic linux commands locally and ssh into remote machines...

I do a lot of remote work with my chromebook, their basic terminal "app" is pretty nice, but I installed crouton (ubuntu) along side chromeOS and it works beautifully for me.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#70

Post by s3r3nity » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #61

Google Docs let me down when it mattered most. I really wanted to go all in on Google Apps and have been using them exclusively for the last year, but at the start of december I started negotiating a large contract and I had a solicitor drawing up some documents for me. Both the solicitor and the large company I was negotiating with were sending me .docx files and Google docs was failing to number the paragraph corre…

This. The Chrome store is ridden with lame and/or spammy apps that haven't met the bar I was expecting, and therefore you pretty much _have_ to use Google Apps for everything. For most individual use cases it seems ok, but enterprise-level adoption requires good substitutes for apps like Powerpoint, Word, and Excel. (Hell even as a contractor I wouldn't trust my work in Google Apps, as I've been burned before as well.)