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2015 Chromebook Pixel

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Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#311

Post by primigenus »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #266

Owner of a last-gen Pixel here. I don't see myself upgrading any time soon, but as far as refreshes go, this one seems to address most of my complaints, namely: - More RAM - Better battery life / charge time - USB-C ports Here's what I'm not sure if it will fix: - Overheating (original Pixel gets HOT on the top-left corner where I'm guessing the CPU resides) - OpenVPN support (ChromeOS does not support simply loading…

Why do you say Google will "never fix" the "lack of apps"? What do you call adding support for running Android apps? Clearly they are working on addressing this, even if they're not there yet.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#312

Post by chatmasta »

jrockway wrote: post #123
Splendor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so. If they haven't locked the bootloader down on this one I'll be buying one.

The bootloader has never been locked on any ChromeOS device.

I have a Samsung chromebook 2 and as far as I know I cannot install linux on it. I believe this is due to the chip architecture however, and my understanding is eventually it should be possible. Am I incorrect in any of this?

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#314

Post by ansible »

X-Istence wrote: post #278
cssmoo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's somewhat subjective. Personally I wouldn't pay more than $300 a machine and consider $1299 to be pretty extortionate amounts of cash considering the rate of depreciation. Hey everyone I just worked 2x the time to pay for something shiny with no productivity gain! (I use a shitty old X201 with 4Gb RAM and an SSD from eBay connected to a monitor I skip dived because it was 5:4 ratio)

A friend of mine just sold his 2009 MacBook Pro for $1500, he originally purchased it for $2400 IIRC. That's only $900 worth of deprecation in 6 years.

Someone must have really loved that particular model. You can get an Apple-refurbished 2013 15in MBPr for that much.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#315

Post by revelation »

kbenson wrote: post #275
revelation wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 3:2 display with an i5 upwards and minimum of 8GiB of RAM. That doesn't particularly fit into the simple web browsing and document processing crowd, who would presumably be much better served with something like the Intel Core M Apple uses, which could easily yield twice the battery runtime at a zero cost for these usecases. It also costs >$1k, so theres that.

Here[1] is a break down of a core M and i5 mobile processor. I don't know if they are the specific processors, but there are some interesting differences, mostly around cache size, graphics chip, and graphics capabilities (the i5 has more hardware decode capabilities it seems). That said, since they are advertising 12 hours of battery, it's not like it's a slouch in that department. 1: http://ark.intel.com/compare/84…

The most important part is TDP, 4.5W versus 15W. Now sure, both processors tick all the boxes, but at the end of the day, you get performance as you put watts in (certainly when you are comparing processors as similar as these two).

So the M will perform perfectly fine for YouTube, web browsing, office etc. but it will suffer significantly in benchmarks (and subsequently any high load / long time situations). Which is a very good tradeoff to make since you get 1/3rd of the power consumption but can run all the important usecases, if the office is what you're targeting.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#316

Post by w0rmwood »

AustinDizzy wrote: post #186
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's marketing strategy for the Pixel isn't geared towards the "hacker" and developer type, it's more geared towards students and people who solely use their computers for simple web browsing and document processing. Offering 1TB+ of online storage is enough for all your office/school documents and all the photos you could ever want for the average person. If Google were making hardware only for developers and th…

How is this true? They specifically say in their own marketing material that this is a machine for "power users".

Power users are not a group that mostly just does "simple web browsing and document processing".

I see your point in general but I don't personally feel that they market it that way.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#317

Post by billconan »

dferlemann wrote: post #19

I don't get it anymore... 8-16 GB RAM for what? I have not used Chromebook. Do you all use it for gaming? For serious computation? with only 32-64 GB SSD? For this price, it would be nice to be able to upgrade SSD though. Then I will also want to install a Linux distro or Windows on it.

I have the same question. it seems that all chrome apps are 32bit applications. what could use 16gb memory?

I feel that this notebook will sell better if it had ubuntu installed and 256gb ssd.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#318

Post by ceejayoz »

kryptiskt wrote: post #228
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've done it many times before: * Original iMac (all-USB, no floppy disk drive) * MacBook Air (no CD drive) * MacBook Pro (no Ethernet) People have gotten used to it each time.

The original Air had one USB, didn't work out very well.

Didn't work out very well?

The original Air basically created the "ultrabook" market and ended the netbook one. I doubt anyone at Apple is disappointed in it.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#319

Post by kissickas »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #266

Owner of a last-gen Pixel here. I don't see myself upgrading any time soon, but as far as refreshes go, this one seems to address most of my complaints, namely: - More RAM - Better battery life / charge time - USB-C ports Here's what I'm not sure if it will fix: - Overheating (original Pixel gets HOT on the top-left corner where I'm guessing the CPU resides) - OpenVPN support (ChromeOS does not support simply loading…

Google will never fix the lack of apps? I thought they were making progress towards enabling most Android apps to function in ChromeOS?

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#320

Post by Sodman »

Owner of a 2013 Chromebook Pixel here - This new model definitely excites me. I've switched between running Debian natively on boot and running Ubuntu in crouton. As a Java/Web developer, my main gripes with the original Pixel are:

-4GB RAM is uncomfortable. Usable, but you need to manage what's running

-Battery life isn't great... I was seeing ~3-3.5 hrs during my 'real use'.

-Overheating - Gets very hot when doing cpu-intense tasks

-Charging time feels like it takes forever.

-Hinge is a little loose and the F-keys are weird, but neither are a deal breaker.

This 2015 model seems to fix almost all of this, with the possible exception of overheating... I guess time will tell. Chances seem high that these will be given out at I/O 2015, but if I can't get a ticket for that I'll still buy one of these immediately. Crouton has come a long way since 2013, but I'm hoping they keep the 'legacy boot' option from the first model - That way you can boot into native linux with ctrl+L or ChromeOS (and later crouton, if needed) with ctrl+D.

If this laptop was 15", it would literally be my dream laptop, however it still checks enough boxes to guarantee that I'll buy one.

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