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Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

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Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#111

Post by tmzt »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #104
brownbat wrote: post #89

10% of sales... to businesses ? Wow, really thought that would be the last safe haven, due to MS Office entrenchment. I guess it's not clear what businesses, or how they use the machines, but... if enterprises get comfy with Google Docs, we could be on the edge of a huge destructive shift.

Nobody wants to hand out Windows laptops to everyone in their business. Maybe a core of your company are Office power users, and maybe this is even half of your company, but the other half are idiots. These are people in your organization who need to be contacted via email, need to read documentation, but simply cannot be trusted with an actual computer. To these people, you give a Chromebook. Having seen inside a co…

Google really needs to send 2 of these things to every paying Google Apps customer with 50+ users.

They should also fix the VPN and support and, yes, add support for PPTP connections.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#112

Post by mark_l_watson »

jmduke wrote: post #7

I'd love a Chromebook equivalent of an iPad. All I do on my tablet at this point is surf the web (okay, and a little Candy Crush/King of Dragon Pass), and if Google could bring that level of build quality and polish to the tablet space it'd be incredibly interesting.

I do a fair amount of writing on my iPad (using leanpub and an iPad editor that works with dropbox files).

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#113

Post by nogridbag »

pmelendez wrote: post #75
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).

I've had the exact opposite experience. I develop on a MacBook Pro Retina, but I know little about the whole Apple ecosystem (ex Windows power user/dell tech). I purchased an Ipad mini for my mother and found it incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use. For one, she is unable to click 70% of the time even after using the device for several months. I thought it was user error, but even I have a hard time with it. From what I've seen observing her and attempting to use the device myself, the main issues I see are:

* All of the actionable UI items are too small

- Simple things like giving focus to the App store "search bar" are difficult for me, very difficult for her

- Clearing App store search bar by clicking the X is very difficult for me, impossible for her

- Install button takes 1-3 attempts for me, maybe 10 for her

* Use of icons instead of simple text

- I purchased the new iPad Air for her, hoping the larger size would make it easier to use. Embarrassingly, I could not even figure out how to install an app. I was searching for the "Install" button for ~30 seconds and even clicked the wrong icon once.

* E-Mail application randomly closes emails

- Once again I thought this was user error. She attempted to open several emails, and each time they would close immediately and return to the inbox. It turned out to be some bug in the mail application. Restarting the device didn't fix it.

On the other hand, she also has a Samsung Chromebook and has had absolutely zero issues with it. To be fair, it's a bit slow playing some facebook games and occasionally I wish I got her a normal windows laptop (for instance, the Optimum app is not supported, nor is the slingbox player).

Interestingly, I just gifted an iPad mini retina to my girlfriend earlier today and just went through the setup a few minutes ago. She attempted to install her first app which is marked "Free" and "iPhone only" (there is no iPad version). Upon clicking it, she had to log into her Apple ID (even though she just entered this information in the setup process). Next it said her ID was never used in the iTunes store (what's that?!?) and she had to register with her credit card (free app!?). After that dialog submit failed with two error messages (because I saw her click the Submit button twice), it returned back to the install screen. She clicked the Install button a second time, it forced her to enter her Apple ID and password AGAIN and then it started downloading. I thought iOS was supposed to be easy to use!? Even she kept commenting how difficult it is to use. She also has a Kindle Fire and never had any issues with it.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#114

Post by rasengan0 »

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…

QuickOffice reads .doc and .docx fine but borks on formatting and forget heavy editing. There are enough conversion and UX hassles that i'd say ChromeOS/Google Docs has a long haul to crack MS stack heavy enterprise. Funny thing is iOS and Android have better "apps" that handle MS formats.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#115

Post by xur17 »

rasengan0 wrote: post #108
faceponder wrote: post #72

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, wou…

That is another big plus for the Chromebook. They steal it and you're out $249, though in dev mode you're unsecured. But... My Samsung charger is a brick. Not sure about Asus. Battery life on ARM is 4-5 hrs, Intel better at 5-7hrs, but still no match against the tablets. For portability, you may be better off with a smaller tablet: Nexus 7 or iPad mini plus keyboard. I would give the edge to Android for easy access t…

The HP Chromebook takes a microusb charger.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#116

Post by georgemcbay »

pmelendez wrote: post #79
andybak wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who has used Windows (though not solely Windows) for a long time I'd say the "half-life" (like the much joked about instability and constant crashes) is something that used to be true but hasn't been true for quite a long time now.

Despite the terrible reputation it has, Vista is where Microsoft really started turning it around in a big way when it comes to stability, security, etc. (XP/Windows 2000 was obviously good too for moving the consumer OS to the protected NT kernel, but things really picked up in the subsequent releases).

My current Windows desktop system is running Windows 8.1 after in-place upgrades from Win7->Win8->Win8.1 (in place Windows upgrades being another previous no-no that now pretty much Just Works) and it still feels as zippy as the day I first started using it, despite having a hard-drive full of large RAW photos, videos, music, etc, and many dozens of apps installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, etc over the years.

All that being said, I own two different Chromebooks and I use them as mobile development systems running crouton and I really like them a lot and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone who isn't pinned to Windows due to other app constraints like needing Photoshop, Lightroom, games, etc.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#117

Post by yuhong »

andybak wrote: post #67
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).

I wonder if MS was to rewrite their binary file format reader/writer in MS Office (to for example be secure from the beginning) how long would it take for them to get it correct.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#118

Post by pedalpete »

skybrian wrote: post #94
pedalpete wrote: post #2

Over the last few days, I was looking at building an IDE as a Chrome Packaged App, but went with node-webkit due to the file I/O limitations of Chrome. However, for many apps, the combination of ease of building a Chrome Packaged App and the automatic cross-platform capabilities (anything that runs Chrome) will further strengthen the Chromebook market. The one thing I think is missing is more drool-worthy mid-priced…

Could you say more about file I/O?

Sure, I wanted to allow the user to select a folder, and for the app to read all the sub-folders and files. Unfortunately, from my experiments, I can open a file, but opening a folder using webkitdirectory hides the path to the folder, so I can't read the folder and it's sub-directories.

As I understand it, I could copy the files to the sandboxed filesystem API, but there are a few issues with working in an IDE environment which would break that usability, for example, grunt creating new files, etc. etc.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Happy to take this question to SA if that is a better venue where people would more likely look for the answer as well, if you've got a better solution.

As I said, I'm keen to do this as a Chrome Packaged App, though there are a few things like Grunt that I'll want to be running within the app, so node-webkit isn't a bad solution for the prototype.

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#119

Post by solnyshok »

nogridbag wrote: post #113
pmelendez wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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).

I've had the exact opposite experience. I develop on a MacBook Pro Retina, but I know little about the whole Apple ecosystem (ex Windows power user/dell tech). I purchased an Ipad mini for my mother and found it incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use. For one, she is unable to click 70% of the time even after using the device for several months. I thought it was user error, but even I have a hard time with it. F…

having just purchased my first ipad (mini retina) I am amazed that we had 99% similar troubles with it. Did you already find out about swipe (left-right) to delete item in the list? Horrendous. And having to enter creditcard info before installing free apps? arrgh. And password for free app installation...

Re: Google’s Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride

#120

Post by ceras »

kenjackson wrote: post #52
mg74 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bet Google is making is that the long tail of Win apps will be dwarfed by the longer tail of web apps. As always, the future will tell.

Web apps run on PCs too. The long tail is Visual Studio, SPSS, Excel, Illustrator, Photoshop, Audyssey, Matlab, Emacs, Call of Duty, VLC, etc... Tablets are a great secondary device. I think Chromebooks are too bulky and not feature rich enough as a secondary device. And simply can't replace a laptop as a primary. And with virtually no price delta, I just don't see the story.

> And with virtually no price delta, I just don't see the story.

What do you mean? I just bought a $199 Chromebook (Acer C720) with 9+ hours of battery life and weighing under 3lbs. It performs well for all day-to-day tasks (email, news/HN/reddit, Facebook, etc). I don't know of any well-performing Windows laptops at that price point, and Windows laptops come with the added complexity of using Windows: I like the minimal simplicity of ChromeOS (no pre-installed bloatware, no useless extra features complicating the UI, everything safely backed up in the cloud, and automatic updates).

And my Chromebook is absolutely my primary device: I rarely touch my Windows 7 / Ubuntu (dual-booted) laptop.

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