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2015 Chromebook Pixel

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Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#591

Post by 72deluxe »

jsz0 wrote: post #531
chetanahuja wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again" Yup. It's more than just funny. The number of people I know who are carrying around "our thinnest, lightest macbook yet" with a bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop is HILARIOUS. As for me, I'm carrying around a 2012 Macbook Pro (the last model with a non-glossy screen). Even though my work involves dealing with iOS projects etc., my next laptop will…

> bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop They would have to carry around somewhere between 30 to 50 adapters to reach 2 pounds. I'm excluding the power adapter since that's a baseline for any laptop.

But doesn't the giant bag of fiddly adapters become more cumbersome than just a laptop with everything built into it? Like your parent, I am running a non-retina 2012 MBP and it's great - no need for an array of tangled adapters. It's all in there.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#592

Post by 72deluxe »

What is odd about this Chromebook is that it has ports and decent hardware, but abysmal storage (I have 50GB of MP3s, let's not get started on videos, documents, source code and compiled software) and a crippled OS. It's like a toy, but a toy that is dependent on a remote toy (the "cloud").

I don't understand how the break away from mainframes to microcomputers has come full circle where we now use very very very powerful microcomputers to connect to effectively mainframes (the "cloud"). Surely the liberating part of microcomputers was the ability to be untethered/unshackled and do stuff locally, not do stuff locally for a little bit or to some extent and then resync periodically. Many of the people using chromebooks for development (from what I can tell) SSH to another machine to do work on a remote server (with X or VNC or something like that), which reduces the extremely powerful local microcomputer to a dumb library terminal. It's stupid.

Client/server stuff keeps getting reinvented and it's annoying. I prefer to be a client when I choose, not a permanent client at the mercy of the server.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#593

Post by dijit »

moe wrote: post #462
phaemon wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you had 2 USB-C ports, and you could charge from either side. That would be pretty cool actually.

And even cooler if it could charge twice as fast when you plug both in.

but very bad for the battery if you do that.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#594

Post by ash »

darcyparker wrote: post #364
mmastrac wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could even triple it with the new 200GB SD cards, but the performance won't be that great. Not so bad for storing documents and large media, I suppose. Any idea if it uses one of the many standard-ish SSD SATA or PCIe interfaces?

You can upgrade the NGFF drive in many other chromebooks. I suspect you should be able to do the same for the new pixel. For example, see bubble 4 in the image at the bottom of this page: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... I upgraded my ngff to 128GB on my acer c720P chromebook.

This option doesn't seem to be available in Pixel. SSD is soldered.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#595

Post by jeeva »

riquito wrote: post #466
Alupis wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking. I've broken USB ports before on laptops, usually by crushing the floating center plastic thing (USB cable gets ripped out weirdly or so…

> That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking. By design it allows at least 10000 cycles of insertion/removal. Using it 8 times a day every single day you'd need about 3.5 years to end them. It's probably ok for most workloads.

Speaking from a helpdesk perspective, user-caused breakages are rarely by design.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#596

Post by hobarrera »

IMHO, a single USB port is an awful idea

I keep my mouse pluged in permanently. With a single port, I can't use my mouse while charging (unless I carry around a USB hub, which just proves my point).

The same goes for the latest MacBook.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#597

Post by masklinn »

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…

Having two of them on opposite side as the new Pixel does is certainly convenient, even more so because the port is flexible: you can just plug your stuff in whichever port is more convenient in terms of distance/position. Have a power plug to the left? Plug it to the left port. To the right? Plug to the right port. That is by far the main reason why I'm bothered by Apple's MB and its single Type C, while having a single one may be sufficient having one on each side is significantly more convenient.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#598

Post by hobarrera »

benihana wrote: post #299
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…

At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again. How many times has Apple done this in modern times? Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports? Remember how mad everyone got when Apple replaced their old, thick connector on the iPhone 5? Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size. Nobody…

> Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports?

Not really. What outrage? Floppy and Optical drives were dropped when they were already old. I remember some people complaining about the lack of USB, but you can get a thunderboltethernet adapter when you purchase it. Also, an ethernet port itself if thicker than the laptop itself, so it's understandable.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#599

Post by hobarrera »

Alupis wrote: post #392
benihana wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again. How many times has Apple done this in modern times? Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports? Remember how mad everyone got when Apple replaced their old, thick connector on the iPhone 5? Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size. Nobody…

> we'll all be so happy with the obvious (in hindsight) decision to switch to USB-C. I don't think the issue is the inclusion of USB-C -- in fact, USB-C offers a lot . I think the issue is only having one connector on the entire laptop. What happens if that port fails or beaks? Your laptop stops working...

Also, only one device connected at a time, and not devices if you're charging.

Forget about using a mouse a these laptops.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#600

Post by iSnow »

shirro wrote: post #521
X-combinator wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engadget says it's STILL impractical - http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/11/chromebook-pixel-review-2...

I managed to work on a Chromebook for a few months. I was doing a mixture of web frontend (Angular) and Go based backend. I was using terminal for most things tmux, shell, vim, git, ssh which is how I work on my MBP anyway. Postman for api testing and I found some chrome apps for screenshots and other little things. It was all quite good. The only apps I really missed were Inkscape and Gimp and I could run those unde…

>In the end I stopped because the hardware had reliability issues and the screen wasn't all that great.

That's not exactly a glowing endorsement, considering the price, why would you want to work on it full-time then?

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