Live data from Hacker News

Chromebox

google.com

291–300 of 305 posts

Re: Chromebox

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Apple shows that showing specs is not necessary: http://www.apple.com/macmini/ If specs help sell the things, by all means Google should include them. Whether they are "relevant" or not. Also note that the info that it is _not_ an Intel Atom CPU is highly relevant IMO, because the Atom is slow as molasses.

Agreeing with you here. Apple is great at identifying context. A lot of people don't realize that Apple does "sell specifications", because they're mostly exposed to Apple's advertising, which rarely uses specification. However, when you get to their website, they recognize that you're probably looking for more detail. That shows an understanding of context. There's another contextual difference they play as well. Ha…

I love it how one of the titles for iphone is simply 'Mega megapixels.'.

"What does your phone have?" "Oh yeah, it's got Mega megapixels."

Re: Chromebox

#293

I think this would be a great product, in a world where iPad and tablets with Android and Windows Mobile don't exist. Google should work on fixing and polishing Google TV instead instead of this if they want to work on set top boxes. Even with the updates late last year, Google TV compared to the competition is still lagging especially in the UI / UX department.

You mean that weird box that's way more expensive than others and ships with a kludgey qwerty keyboard for use in your living room? They should just call it a wrap on that one too.

Yeah it is a piece of garbage compared to everything else. Now it looks like every TV manufacturer will be using it as their TV's OS, so things may change in the future. TVs will resemble the Android phone landscape.

Re: Chromebox

#294
post #73

This is a terrible page and the product manager of this thing should be ashamed. The inmates are truly running the asylum. The technical specs are completely irrelevant to the interests of the majority of consumers. This page needs to show what this is capable of without the foreknowledge of what Chrome OS is or is capable of or what Googles other offerings are. Sell me a story! Tell me why my life is going to be bet…

Yes, Apple shows that showing specs is not necessary: http://www.apple.com/macmini/ If specs help sell the things, by all means Google should include them. Whether they are "relevant" or not. Also note that the info that it is _not_ an Intel Atom CPU is highly relevant IMO, because the Atom is slow as molasses.

No one thinks the iPad 3 is too slow and any modern Atom processor is quite a lot faster so it shouldn't be a problem at all. These machines are extremely limited by the OS so hardware limitations are a distant concern in my opinion.

Re: Chromebox

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure I've seen guides to put Ubuntu on the various Chromebooks and it just took flipping some kind of dev switch to get access.

Just a note: there are three levels of access in the CR-48: regular (out of the box), dev mode (flip the switch), unprotected (open it up, take out the mobo, tape over a contact to disable bios protection). The guides that don't require flashing the BIOS are nightmares. Awful, awful hackish nightmares. I say this as someone who did it. It's much easier to open it up, but a piece of tape over some contact, flash the B…

Shame really, you'd think that if you were producing a device that ran linux anyway, you'd be able to pick up a few extra sales by letting enthusiasts do their own thing with it. Since you're not paying Microsoft anything you've got a bit of wiggle room to be competitive pricewise too. (At the very least you'd think that Google employees might like something to run Goobuntu on).

Re: Chromebox

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note: there are three levels of access in the CR-48: regular (out of the box), dev mode (flip the switch), unprotected (open it up, take out the mobo, tape over a contact to disable bios protection). The guides that don't require flashing the BIOS are nightmares. Awful, awful hackish nightmares. I say this as someone who did it. It's much easier to open it up, but a piece of tape over some contact, flash the B…

Shame really, you'd think that if you were producing a device that ran linux anyway, you'd be able to pick up a few extra sales by letting enthusiasts do their own thing with it. Since you're not paying Microsoft anything you've got a bit of wiggle room to be competitive pricewise too. (At the very least you'd think that Google employees might like something to run Goobuntu on).

It's all about trusting the integrity of the machine. With the signed BIOS, and the trust chain of ChromeOS, you can be quite sure that you're booting what you expect you're booting.

Re: Chromebox

#297
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you comparing this to Android? Also, I've never heard of an Android set-top box.

> Also, I've never heard of an Android set-top box. Google TV (aka Logitech Revue, Sony Internet TV, LG Smart TV). They've been at your local Best Buy type store for years. They're Android 3.0 STBs, or in the case of the Smart TVs starting to come out, built into the TV.

The "LG Smart TV" box isn't (usually) Android, it's LG's own Smart TV platform.

(LG has announced GoogleTV/Android support, and showed samples at CES this year but AFAIK isn't shipping them yet).

Re: Chromebox

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, I'm pretty geeky. But I haven't been following Chrome in detail, so I don't have a clue what this box is for or what it actually does. Reminded me of this: http://www.theonion.com/video/sony-releases-new-stupid-piece...

You weren't immediately aware that this was a desktop version of the Chromebooks that you've probably heard of?

Not at all.

Re: Chromebox

#300
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I've never heard of an Android set-top box. Google TV (aka Logitech Revue, Sony Internet TV, LG Smart TV). They've been at your local Best Buy type store for years. They're Android 3.0 STBs, or in the case of the Smart TVs starting to come out, built into the TV.

The "LG Smart TV" box isn't (usually) Android, it's LG's own Smart TV platform. (LG has announced GoogleTV/Android support, and showed samples at CES this year but AFAIK isn't shipping them yet).

http://www.google.com/tv/get.html

The LG TV with Google TV (Android) has been available for ~5 months at least. Amazon started selling it in February.

Post reply on HN