The Curious Case Of The Chromebook: Is It Really A Hit? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by walshemj » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:14 PM UTC

undoware wrote: post #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 administrati…

And everyone knows that Barbour is the way to go :-) style tip dont wear them with the Barbour enamel badge on very non U.

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

#42

Post by SyneRyder » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:15 PM UTC

A little anecdote to add - just before Christmas, I ran into a Google rep who was doing customer research at an electronics store, observing customers who tried a Nexus 7 or Chromebook & noting down what they were most interested in (then offering to answer questions about the devices).

Once I told him I was a developer, he loosened up and started talking about their marketing strategy. He said that Google is pushing Chromebooks hard in 2014, and have been frustrated by stores not using the marketing displays they provide. (Apparently my city is a test market.)

Most interesting to me, he said the main use case he was hearing customers ask about was video chat. (Something which probably wouldn't show up in StatCounter numbers.) Customers were most interested in Skype, but if they'd settle for Google Hangouts, then they were particularly interested in the Chromebooks. (He also said many older customers were buying the Nexus 7 purely as a Skype device.)

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

#43

Post by auctiontheory » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:16 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #38

thirdsight wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine until your Internet connection is down for 4 days and she's due an assignment that needs to be emailed or printed. The device is a lemon then. At least with a normal Mac/PC you can plug a printer in it.

Eventually (soon I hope) internet connectivity will be truly like electricity. I wonder how many arguments there were 100 yrs ago about how device X or activity Y were useless because "what happens when the electricity goes down"? Anyway it's a relevant argument today because as you say, we don't want the new "my dog ate my homework" to be "our internet went down and so I couldn't access my work on the cloud"

Eventually (soon I hope) internet connectivity will be truly like electricity.

I live in Silicon Valley, and based on my internet options (one sole unreliable option: Comcast), I have to say that we're far from the day that connectivity is like electricity.

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

#44

Post by thirdsight » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:21 PM UTC

plg wrote: post #38

thirdsight wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine until your Internet connection is down for 4 days and she's due an assignment that needs to be emailed or printed. The device is a lemon then. At least with a normal Mac/PC you can plug a printer in it.

Eventually (soon I hope) internet connectivity will be truly like electricity. I wonder how many arguments there were 100 yrs ago about how device X or activity Y were useless because "what happens when the electricity goes down"? Anyway it's a relevant argument today because as you say, we don't want the new "my dog ate my homework" to be "our internet went down and so I couldn't access my work on the cloud"

This is not going to happen. Internet connectivity is a race to the bottom. Think of all the effort that has been put into delivering a fairly unreliable service over existing copper rather than implementing FTTP. Oh and then charging as much as possible for it.

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

#45

Post by sown » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:21 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #39

kumarm wrote: 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:…

I've been slowly replacing every machine that I'm responsible for supporting (family members who ask me which computer to buy, and to please set it up) with a ChromeOS computer. Usually it's just a case of buying the new laptop and logging them in. Last week I found a used Chromebox for my dad to replace his WinXP desktop. It went well, but I did get bitten. I didn't know he even had a printer, and since you can't pl…

> I also had to _write_ two Chrome Packaged Apps (fun learning experience, haha) to replace the WinXP camera import wizard he was using and his photo slideshow screensaver.

Seems like a good startup idea.

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

#46

Post by adolph » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:22 PM UTC

Maybe the relevant question for this audience is "Chromebook: Is It an Addressable Market?"

I wasn't able to find an application in the Chrome Web Store with a price. Maybe the store for proper Chromebooks is different? Sure lots of things are freemium or charge on the services side. However, I was expecting at least a few applications that cost something. Are there enough Chromebook users and do they buy software/services?

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

#47

Post by thirdsight » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:26 PM UTC

deadhead wrote: post #40

thirdsight wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine until your Internet connection is down for 4 days and she's due an assignment that needs to be emailed or printed. The device is a lemon then. At least with a normal Mac/PC you can plug a printer in it.

Write the assignment using docs offline mode. Print it out or email it from school. Or from a friends house. Or from the countless places that have free internet these days.

a) Offline mode is unreliable. I know because I trialled it on a borrowed C720 last week. It's barely usable. Not only that you can't easily shift a document onto an SD for example in offline mode. Try it, then poke it in a PC and see what happens.

b) school doesn't have a public WiFi network and all the ethernet ports are MAC address locked to the workstations plugged in for security reasons. This is the correct way to do it.

c) We have ADSL here in the UK as the primary connection. When it goes bang, usually several exchanges are out. This happens surprisingly frequently. Friends will be down too, as will other free internet options. Your only option is to drive or get a bus 5+ miles away which just sucks.

Sorry but your solutions are bad as is the product.

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

#48

Post by bane » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:41 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #37

bane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? And what has the actual result been over time? Are we looking for confirmation anecdotes in the wrong places? It seems to me that many of those early stats turned out to be true. For example, Android devices dominates the global…

Not disagreeing with you, but it's interesting that iPhone still dominates Android in metrics that measure actual use (go check android vs iphone in your web logs, for example).

Yeah, that's true. I wonder if that's an artifact of the sites used by populations in different countries. A U.S. site would bias towards U.S. users which is not entirely dominated by Android devices.

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

#49

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:42 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #39

kumarm wrote: 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:…

I've been slowly replacing every machine that I'm responsible for supporting (family members who ask me which computer to buy, and to please set it up) with a ChromeOS computer. Usually it's just a case of buying the new laptop and logging them in. Last week I found a used Chromebox for my dad to replace his WinXP desktop. It went well, but I did get bitten. I didn't know he even had a printer, and since you can't pl…

If I knew how to make ChromeOs talk to my wifi printer (Lexmark s605, which does not seem to support CloudPrint) I'd free my mom from the "burden" that is her Acer AspireOne (too cramped, too slow) right now.

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

#50

Post by JAFTEM » Tue, Dec 31, 2013, 9:46 PM UTC

ajcarpy2005 wrote: post #6

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…

That's great and all, but I'm still confused why I would want one over a traditional laptop (or ultrabook) with OS X, Windows, or Linux unless it's purely to save money on a less expensive Chromebook model.