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$149 Chromebooks

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Re: $149 Chromebooks

#341

Post by lostlogin »

tracker1 wrote: post #279
TheTaO wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google. Is it that or is it just an effort to stay relevant? If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it? There are tons of tablets from HP/Dell that cost 100-200$ and run full windows OS and have comparable specs to the Chromebooks. As far as I know they are selling quite well…

For my mom/grandmother/dad... They're all using chromebooks... not for the reduced cost, but because the environment is more secure, and fits their needs. So the answer is maybe.

Your grandmother picked a platform to be secure? Grandmothers these days...

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#342

Post by flinty »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #317
ssmoot wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the vision that I recall. Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea. A lot of cool things came out of Sun. I don't think this was one. Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.

> Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea. I'm pretty young, so I was woefully ignorant of this. However the more I read about it, the more it sounds like 'Cloud computing' and 'internet of things'. In fact, Chrome OS isn't too far from their Java Internet Terminal idea. > Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts. I have. My main IDE, and p…

any good sources on sun's history?

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#343

Post by boulos »

amaranth wrote: post #339
fpgeek wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... If you can port VLC to Chrome OS with ARC, I wonder what happens if you try to shove Firefox for Android into it. Are there fundamental roadblocks that would prevent it from working, or would you just end up with a slow and buggy waltzing bear?

I suspect their sandbox doesn't allow code generation since they statically verify you aren't using instructions they can't protect against and that would break it. That means that while you could probably get a Firefox running, it'd be with a Javascript interpreter, not a JIT.

While I don't work on any of the related pieces, it should be noted that NaCL has dynamic "check this code" support precisely so you can JIT-compile code and execute it safely.

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#345

Post by millstone »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #288
scholia wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chromebooks in Q3 2013 had at best a 1.2 percent share of the PC market and a 0.76 percent share of the combined PC-tablet market." Latest IDC figures show Chromebooks continue to struggle http://www.zdnet.com/article/latest-idc-figures-show-chromeb...

You can spin it all sorts of ways. Keep in mind the 'PC' market includes all those legacy Windows XP computers which are languishing in peoples homes, businesses, corporations, etc... Chromebook sales are a much bigger part of current PC sales. And vendors do keep expanding their Chromebook lines. If it was a failure they wouldn't.

The "PC market" refers to current sales. "Installed base" is the term for the metric that includes the languishing WinXP machines.

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#346

Post by [deleted] »

zer0rest wrote: post #306
melling wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Microsoft should ignore this because there's no money in it. Still, it's nice that a couple billion new people will be able to afford their first computer.

it's an awful computer

[deleted]

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#347

Post by [deleted] »

guelo wrote: post #142

16GB storage is pathetic. I think of these as terminals connected to the giant Google mainframe in the sky. The System Administrator will be monitoring your activities.

[deleted]

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#348

Post by bandrami »

KeytarHero wrote: post #266
nightpool wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I upvoted this, but on reflection I think this is wrong. Here's why: - Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing any operating system to be loaded on them. - ChromeOS follows the same open source model as Chrome—Most core features open, with things like Flash/Wildvine/API keys held secret. - There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chr…

> There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS" Exactly - ChromeOS is a browser. "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS" makes about as much sense as "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chrome" or "Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer". ...or it would have made that little sense before Mozilla wrote…

> Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer

Sure they could; it would just be an ActiveX control, or whatever they call that this week.

Re: $149 Chromebooks

#349

Post by georgemcbay »

threeseed wrote: post #280
georgemcbay wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are kind of conflating a few different issues here. iDevices are locked down for the purposes of Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users. Chromebooks are locked down for end-user security and ease-of-administration. Chromebooks allow the end-user to unlock the bootloader and/or run them in developer mode if they really want to do that (and this is al…

> Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users. There are legitimate benefits to having a locked down platform which Apple (and developers/consumers) have decided is worth the negatives. There are zero viruses or malware on iOS compared to quite a few on Android. The quality of applications is significantly higher on iOS because (a) developers have a consiste…

I honestly don't see any real benefits of Apple's lock-down approach compared to ChromeOS's lock-down approach. Users who want the full security of ChromeOS can use it as it ships and be happy, users who want to live on the wild side can fairly trivially (but with enough effort that they don't do it on accident) break the locks.. best of both worlds, user gets to decide how much they want to live in a locked box.

I don't disagree that there are benefits to the consistency of the Apple ecosystem versus that of Android, but all of those benefits are rooted in Google's lack of control of what phone vendors do with the OS (though they have been working to change that), not lack of control of users or app developers.. the entire jailbreaking ecosystem proves that such freedom doesn't harm the people who want the safe thing, it is just a shame they are forced to constantly fight against the phone vendor (on the Apple side) to keep things open whereas Google (usually -- they've been uncharacteristically dickish with Chromecast hardware) usually goes out of their way to allow the user to run free if they want to.

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