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Chrome OS has stalled out

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Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#111

Post by hylaride »

dontblink wrote: post #110
zouhair wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think relying on a third party and especially one that is as fickle as Google to do the most basic workload is a sound idea. I won't be surprised if Google kills Chrome OS in the near future, as they killed a lot of stuff already[0]. I don't trust Google anymore. [0]: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Honestly this trope is tiring. FUD.

FUD is exactly what it is, with good reason given Google’s habits with “poorly” performing products lately. Mind you, in chromeOS’s case it’s easy to go back to a regular computer.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#112

Post by kbenson »

zouhair wrote: post #106
andrewmutz wrote: post #73

I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker. At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do their job. The OS is a slightly better web…

I don't think relying on a third party and especially one that is as fickle as Google to do the most basic workload is a sound idea. I won't be surprised if Google kills Chrome OS in the near future, as they killed a lot of stuff already[0]. I don't trust Google anymore. [0]: https://killedbygoogle.com/

While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful, as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large number presented on that site) were beta products.

I clearly remember telling people that asked me about whether they should worry about it saying beta on some Google product I had recommended that Google always leaves stuff in beta for years and not to worry. Well, now we all know better. I'm not happy about it, but I don't feel like I can blame them for that either. They were pretty up-front about services being beta in most cases.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#113

Post by panarky »

Kipters wrote: post #25

I often see price being cited as a selling point for Chromebooks, but I have never found them to be really cheap. Maybe it's a regional thing? Looking now on Amazon (.it) I can find a Pixelbook equipped with a measle i5-7Y57, 8 GB of ram and 256 GB SSD for 1999 € . That's crazy. For that kind of money I could get a 10th gen i7 (where applicable) 16 GB ram/512 GB SSD Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 or Surface Pro X (i…

You won't see much difference with high-end hardware because the OS license is a smaller percentage of the total.

The big price differences are on low end hardware where the greater resource requirements of Windows make it uncompetitive.

I use a Chromebook as my daily driver, and I'm happy to spend on good hardware. For my needs, Chrome OS is far superior to Windows and Mac. Hard to beat the security, Linux integration and battery life.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#114

Post by freeone3000 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #108
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's fantastic. Unless it runs Excel, that seems unlikely to apply to the enterprise in general.

Microsoft Excel has a web-based version and Google Sheets is pretty good. So unless your enterprise needs spreadsheet features that those don't have, it's fine.

Which are: VSTO plugins, pivot tables, equation editing, database connectivity, import-from-file, document protection, ... The list goes on. Excel on web is not at feature parity with Excel on desktop.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#115

Post by black3r »

bscphil wrote: post #91
Kipters wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is 500€ (tax included) considered high end? The first result searching for "laptop" with a 8 GB ram filter on Amazon.it is an HP 14s, with an i5-8250U, 8 GB of ram and a 256 GB ssd priced at 599€. The third result is the same but with an AMD A9, for half the price (349€). I would buy any of them with ChromeOS at that price (I'm interested from a developer point of view, especially for the Android subsystem) That's le…

> is 500€ (tax included) considered high end? These days it's upper middle for the U.S. I would say. For example the new top-of-the-line Dell consumer laptop, the XPS 13, starts at under $1000 (900€). When I got an XPS nearly a decade ago, it was a model they had at a considerable discount (as I recall it was an overstock situation or something) and it still cost me $1350. As far as I can tell, low-end, mid-end, and…

it's confusing when you write that XPS 13 starts at $1000 (900€), because in USA you're used to write prices without tax and in Europe we're used to write prices including Tax, which you have to pay when you're buying it as a consumer, at the time of purchase.

So let's look at the actual prices: In the US XPS 13 9380 starts at i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD for $949 listed price. In Europe the same configuration starts at around 1200€, but they are also lower configurations (i3, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD) priced at €949, just so that they can list a lower "starting" price, even though that configuration is almost unusable.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#116

Post by Ygg2 »

kbenson wrote: post #112
zouhair wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think relying on a third party and especially one that is as fickle as Google to do the most basic workload is a sound idea. I won't be surprised if Google kills Chrome OS in the near future, as they killed a lot of stuff already[0]. I don't trust Google anymore. [0]: https://killedbygoogle.com/

While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful, as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large number presented on that site) were b…

Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech. If Ad tech fails, all their other sources of revenue won't be able to pay for their other services, so the fear they'll cut them is warranted.

Disclaimer I use Google services, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#117

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

andrewmutz wrote: post #108
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's fantastic. Unless it runs Excel, that seems unlikely to apply to the enterprise in general.

Microsoft Excel has a web-based version and Google Sheets is pretty good. So unless your enterprise needs spreadsheet features that those don't have, it's fine.

The kinds of people who rely on Excel to do their job assure me that Google Sheets is not even remotely sufficient and the web-based Excel isn't quite there either.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#118

Post by derefr »

andrewmutz wrote: post #73

I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker. At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do their job. The OS is a slightly better web…

> At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications.

And interestingly, Google has a clear "complementary solution" to ChromeOS for software-engineering use cases: Google Cloud Shell (https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/), which gives you a "personal POSIX environment as web-app."

I feel like ChromeOS and GCP have an obvious idiomatic relationship to them, sort of like Windows and Azure do.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#119

Post by nikisweeting »

sudosysgen wrote: post #81
eloisant wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the selling point of Chromebooks is that it's a stateless computer, so not much can go wrong. Also updates are really smooth: done in the background, just have to do a quick reboot and you're done. Since I migrated my mother to a Chromebook, she no longer breaks anything and I no longer have to do tech support.

You know, all those same things are true of a lightweight XFCE or Mate Linux desktop. They've been true for over a decade now. Incidentally, I put Xubuntu on my grandma's computer for a few years.

How is Xubuntu in any way stateless? It has a full local filesystem with a package manager and everything, lots of ways it can be messed up, no?

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#120

Post by andrewmutz »

Ygg2 wrote: post #116
kbenson wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful, as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large number presented on that site) were b…

Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech. If Ad tech fails, all their other sources of revenue won't be able to pay for their other services, so the fear they'll cut them is warranted. Disclaimer I use Google services, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives.

If your other preferred client is the Mac, you have the same challenge with Apple. Their entire mac product line is only 10% of their revenue.
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