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Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

techcrunch.com

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Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#71

Post by whyrusleeping »

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

#72

Post by faceponder »

I've been looking into buying a Chromebook for some backpacking I'll be doing in Southeast Asia this summer. The portability and battery life are a big plus, and I like that the devices are cheap enough that I wouldn't have to worry about it getting damaged. However, I've also been considering getting an iPad mini instead.

Anyone with experience traveling with these devices care to share some input? Specifically, would a Chromebook still be useful (and worth the weight) if I might only have WiFi a couple times per week?

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#73

Post by gkoberger »

rkudeshi wrote: post #54
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.

What do they do for Office-type documents and photo management? Google Docs and Picasa?

In my family's case:

Word: Google Docs is more than enough for the type of documents they work on.

Photos: Photos are taken on the iPhone and shared directly via FB/etc. No need to touch a computer.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#74

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#75

Post by pmelendez »

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.

>"for all my tech-illiterate family"

For all my tech-illiterate family I bought an Ipad which pretty much worked in the same way (Not need to do tech support and satisfied their needs).

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#76

Post by happyasian »

grandeb wrote: post #66

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?

Sad to see you modded down for just asking a question, but you're right.

>according to the latest numbers from NPD, Chromebooks accounted for 21 percent of all laptop sales and almost 10 percent of all computer sales to businesses in 2013.

It's only "preconfigured" laptops, which probably excludes many sales because a lot of people go to the OEM sites, say Lenovo and configure a laptop there. Also, it's US only and probably counts the Chromebooks that Google is discounting a lot, for example $99 for some schools.

Also, other big news is that Mac sales(not sure if absolute or as a percentage) seem to be dropping.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#77

Post by cbhl »

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…

If you just wanted to read the .docx files, an Office 365 subscription with Microsoft's online .docx reader would probably have sufficed.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#78

Post by glennos »

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…

Has anyone tried QuickOffice? Google bought the company/app to bulk up its office doc editing abilities. It's been on android for years and from what I can see, it's now built in to ChromeOS. Perhaps this covers the more complex documents.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#79

Post by pmelendez »

andybak wrote: post #68
theg2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until four months ago I was running windows 8 on my 5 years old laptop with no problem. I upgraded it with 8.1 just because I wanted to try it and still I hadn't seen the first problem, so in my experience that "windows half-life" isn't more than a myth.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#80

Post by cbhl »

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?

Booting Chrome OS in a VM will likely disappoint, since you won't have graphics acceleration (Aura will be slow) and you'll be using the BIOS boot method (which chainloads to one of the GPT partitions containing the kernel and is generally slow compared to a direct uBoot (ARM) or Core Boot (x86_64) boot).

If you're in America, I'd recommend trying a Chromebook out at a local Best Buy. Failing that, throwing an old Hexxeh USB build on a USB key and booting it will give you a first approximation, but you'll miss out on things like the proprietary EME extensions that enable Netflix and other little details that make Chromebooks usable.

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