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2015 Chromebook Pixel

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Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#191

Post by higherpurpose »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #173
revelation wrote: post #148

Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult. We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide? Oh yeah, we'll top out storage at 64GiB.

What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not. In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charg…

For all of Apple's focus on "simplicity" and "elegance" in design and whatnot, the company sure makes you carry a shitload of ugly dongles and extra cables and adapters along with your iDevices.

Wouldn't they be more elegant if they would, you know...Just Work?!

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#192

Post by dublinben »

blfr wrote: post #168

How is ChromeOS? Can you get a decent terminal or terminal app? Install and keep up to date the basic terminal utilities (ssh, tmux, vim, rsync, etc)? What about other software? Is the browser like the regular Chrome? Can you play regular media files (flac, x264 mkv)? Are there any unpleasant surprises?

It's completely simple to get a real terminal/SSH running with Crouton.[0]

ChromeOS supports every common media format you'll come across.[1]

[0]https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton [1]http://www.chromium.org/audio-video

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#193

Post by dman »

Buge wrote: post #171
dman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install linux on it. I own the previous version of the Pixel and I run ubuntu on it and its close to perfect. Two things I would change are 1. Improve thermal cooling or move to a underpowered cpu. I have worked around it by rate limiting my CPU to not go over 800 MHz. With a few tweaks, it sips ~8.8W and gives me > 6 hrs of battery life. 2. Make the hinge a bit stiffer. My only other complaint is that it ref…

Is there enough storage?

I write C/C++ code on the machine, so my storage needs are minimal. If I was to guess my total storage footprint on the device would be less than 1 Gig over the base ubuntu desktop install. The machine has 64 Gigs of storage, which is more than enough for my needs.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#195

Post by yungchin »

zanny wrote: post #177
wahsd wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you just store all your data on the NSA cloud from your NSA terminal. To your point about he MacBook one port. They do offer a rather smart "splitter" dongle at $60-$90 that allows you to charge while I/Oing other data when that uncommon scenario uncommonly arises. I just don't get the whole Google approach. They think far higher of their "OS" than is warranted. They should have been selling this thing as a los…

If it had 256GB and Ubunutu it would be the Linux Macbook we need. A large portion of buyers will almost certainly be trying to run GNU/Linux on it anyway.

And not just any Linux notebook: assuming they don't change this from the last version, it'll be open down to the embedded-controller firmware. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMwOTY

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#196

Post by sspiff »

revelation wrote: post #148

Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult. We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide? Oh yeah, we'll top out storage at 64GiB.

Google is trying to push people to cloud storage, nothing new about that.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#197

Post by revelation »

egonschiele wrote: post #156
revelation wrote: post #148

Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult. We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide? Oh yeah, we'll top out storage at 64GiB.

The whole point of a chromebook is that the storage is in the cloud. I was surprised they offered so much storage.

That's great, but even at 1GBit over Google Fiber that has still less bandwidth than an actual SSD. And of course the most important part of why you use an SSD in the first place is latency, where cloud storage is significantly slower than 1995 spinning platter hard disks.

So even if I accept that the storage is in the cloud, it doesn't make sense since the hardware is clearly not there, but the software isn't either. I can't tell VMWare to use Google Drive for storage. It's a propietary data-dump, not an actual drive.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#198

Post by cdelsolar »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #188
ChuckMcM wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not. In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charg…

Right. Because my desire is to spend a fortune, only to have to spend another fortune to make it all just work.

because $1299 is a fortune

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#199

Post by thewordis »

blfr wrote: post #168

How is ChromeOS? Can you get a decent terminal or terminal app? Install and keep up to date the basic terminal utilities (ssh, tmux, vim, rsync, etc)? What about other software? Is the browser like the regular Chrome? Can you play regular media files (flac, x264 mkv)? Are there any unpleasant surprises?

I use Secure Shell ChromeOS app to connect to a DigitalOcean machine for all my terminal stuff. Works surprisingly well. The default ChromeOS terminal is far too restricted for me, and Dev Mode has quite a few hurdles.

The Browser is just like regular Chrome, only with better integration with the hardware, meaning power usage is better. You can play or open all files I've tried, though I haven't tried mkv. The battery life is phenomenal - it's changed how I view what it means to be portable as much as the iPad did.

Unpleasant surprises? I have to restart my ASUS Chromebook every few days because the wifi starts to fail. Something about my usage pattern fills up the 2GB RAM and the first symptom is spotty wifi. And the CPU isn't strong enough to smoothly Chromecast a tab with acceptable quality video. This Pixel should overcome both of those.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#200

Post by Cakez0r »

egonschiele wrote: post #156
revelation wrote: post #148

Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult. We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide? Oh yeah, we'll top out storage at 64GiB.

The whole point of a chromebook is that the storage is in the cloud. I was surprised they offered so much storage.

It seems like the first models where initially intended to be more of a thin client type deal, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this model (given that it can go up to an i7 with 16gb of RAM). The disk space is disappointing mark on an otherwise excellent ultrabook report card.
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