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The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

forbes.com

11–20 of 71 posts

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#11

Chromebooks actually can be viable for coding. Firstly, Crouton lets you operate Linux and switch instantly between ChromeOS and Linux. Secondly, you can use an online IDE through Chrome. Thirdly, you could remotely operate in Windows using either a personal machine or a hosted Web server and this could be either through Linux or Chrome. This would enable using Visual Studio, for instance. I think the Chromebook Pixe…

Check out the caret text editor. It's like STT.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#12

While this is a rehash of exactly the pattern we saw as Android grew ("Shipments not sales. Haven't seen one in a coffee shop. No one in my family. Some web stat source says..."), with the same players regurgitating their old hits, I do wonder why people trust StatCounter so much? StatCounter relies upon subject sites adding a bit of code that reports back to StatCounter, giving them their metrics. Curious, I inspect…

Regardless of Statcounter, counting only the commercial channel sales, that too only preconfigured(most enterprise sales are customized big orders) and not counting retail sales skews the statistics by a lot. Chromebooks may be outselling Macbooks, but looking at only ""US B2B sales using distribution partners." is downright misleading.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#13
The Curious Case of Forbes: Does anyone there use something OTHER than Windows?

Seriously, guys. You reek of dad. Your ability to predict and understand the tech market is undercut by the demographic of reporters needed to furnish reporting to your markets. This is why you all understand Burberry a lot better than Blackberry, and that a lot better than any of the devices that have come out since the Bush administration.

I am replacing you with a tiny shell that accepts PayPal from Microsoft.

Thank you.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#14
The money quote:

NPD’s numbers would have us believe Chromebook’s were nearly 50 times more popular (9.6% of the market vs. 0.2%) in a segment that grew 25% from last year. That’s rather remarkable as it would suggest sales increased perhaps sixtyfold.

What else grew 60x this year, besides bitcoin and chromebooks?

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#15
post #4
post #3

I don't think it's all that surprising. If my daily routine consisted mostly of email and simple documents (i.e. not code) I'd buy one in a heartbeat. They're great little machines. I had a chance to play with the Pixel version and it's really nice. Cold boots in something like 7 seconds. Chiclet-style keyboard, nice touchpad, etc. Truthfully I'm not sure my next laptop won't be a chromebook anyways: Surely it's poss…

My daily routine consists of code and I still enjoy my chromebook. It has ssh, so I don't need to wipe everything to do the little bit of coding I need to when I'm on the go. It's not a replacement for my desktop machine, but still worth the $250 bucks.

Have you checked out Nitrous.io? https://www.nitrous.io/

Haven't had a serious need for it yet but it makes a Chromebook more attractive to me for sure.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#16
My daughter is using my CR-48 beta Chromebook. She watches Youtube videos, uses Wikipedia, writes stories in Google Docs, and plays Flash-based web games (which are admittedly quite slow on the CR-48's hardware).

There's really not much she's missing out on. I don't have to worry about the drive crashing (docs are saved in Google Drive), her pressing a button she shouldn't, or downloading malware. It's a really great device for children and anyone that spends most of their computer time online.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#17
post #3

I don't think it's all that surprising. If my daily routine consisted mostly of email and simple documents (i.e. not code) I'd buy one in a heartbeat. They're great little machines. I had a chance to play with the Pixel version and it's really nice. Cold boots in something like 7 seconds. Chiclet-style keyboard, nice touchpad, etc. Truthfully I'm not sure my next laptop won't be a chromebook anyways: Surely it's poss…

I got a Pixel at IO, and my wife won one of the HP Chromebooks in the "Give a Chromebook" contest Google ran earlier this year. We use them so much - they're our go-to machines for most things (I'm on my desktop for work, but any time I'm not in my office I'm on the Chromebook), and we have desktops that we can jump to if we need heavier work. However, most of our email/social networking/music/youtube/netflix/recipes/general googling happens on them.

Chromebooks aren't full replacements for how we use computers, but they're 95% of the way there, and given how inexpensive and light they are (not to mention how freakin' fast they are to boot/wake) they're an amazing complement to most computing cases.

My dev setup for years has been a Windows client working against a Linux box on my LAN. This works great with the Chromebook because I can just SSH into my Linux box and work in vim - the lack of computing power or storage doesn't bother me because all the real work happens on my beefy server, but I can still hang out on the couch with my boys and code.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#18
I Bought 2 Chrome books.

1 for my daughter. Only purpose she can use is Gmail (email and keep in touch with Aunt's and other relatives overseas). Occasionally she uses youtube and her school website.

1 for My Dad to read new papers online.

Both of them love it and its the only computer they use. I am sure none of them show up in any stats.

Edit: I must add Why I bought Chromebooks for both of them. Their uses cases:

1. Only activity is online. No use with offline computer.

2. Not Tech savvy enough to deal with AntiVirus.

3. Limited Use and hence need cheaper option.

Chromebook fits perfectly in both scenario's.

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#19
post #18

I Bought 2 Chrome books. 1 for my daughter. Only purpose she can use is Gmail (email and keep in touch with Aunt's and other relatives overseas). Occasionally she uses youtube and her school website. 1 for My Dad to read new papers online. Both of them love it and its the only computer they use. I am sure none of them show up in any stats. Edit: I must add Why I bought Chromebooks for both of them. Their uses cases:…

[deleted]

Re: The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit?

#20
I'm actually thinking about going from a MacBook Air and Mac Mini setup to Mac Mini and Chromebook setup.

The limitations of the Chromebook might actually be a good thing to remove distractions for me. I've been trying using Nitrous.io(https://www.nitrous.io), and although I miss not being able to use Vim shortcuts, I've been somewhat productive with it. I'm hesitant to pay for the service now. And I wonder if I I would be better served if I installed Linux instead (even though I hear that you have to do a weird dev boot sequence every time?).

Invitation link to Nitrous.io, if anyone would like to try https://www.nitrous.io/join/X01nmhYHezs

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