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Chrome OS has stalled out

androidpolice.com

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Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#41

Post by eloisant »

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…

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.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#42

Post by avian »

Kipters wrote: post #32
utopian3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some models in the $200-400 USD range, occasionally they have a sale, but their specs are pretty awful, even by smartphone standards. I don't think I've seen a pixelbook priced at 1999 €, I wonder if that's higher due to cost of tax/tariff/import?

I can see the seller is from the UK, according to hocuspocus it's one of the countries where it's officially sold. I'd expect some markup from them, maybe higher shipping fees, but since it's still within the EU there shouldn't be anything else. I forgot to mention that in Italy prices already include taxes, so 1999€ is exactly how much I would pay.

I’ve seen Pixel phones sold on Amazon UK and shipped to EU countries where Google doesn’t officially sell them at almost 2x markup.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#43

Post by darren0 »

I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in ChromeOS.

I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious work I do. The more frustrating part is my kids have Chromebooks and as they've gotten older they've become a real detriment. They can't accomplish anything on them beyond school work. My kids are showing a lot of interest in graphic design and programming and both tasks are too hard or almost impossible on a Chromebook.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#44

Post by pjmlp »

Pigo wrote: post #34
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…

I knew what I was getting into with my Pixelbook when I bought one in 2015, they are a lot more than every other Chromebook. But I thought it would be fun, and the $900 was less than I'd spend on some of my other devices. All I would say is that thing still still runs and looks like it did the day I bought it. It's a solid device that runs everything through the usb-c port (which was still new back then). The specs a…

Linux apps run inside a sandbox, as shown at Google IO 2019.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#45

Post by dgellow »

> In 2019, a public space, restaurant, or even a shopping center without free Wi-Fi is basically unconscionable.

The author isn't familiar with Berlin's cafes and restaurants ;)

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#46

Post by pjmlp »

ajross wrote: post #37
Kipters wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I can see some Acer, Lenovo or HP options in that range, but all of them are equipped with Celeron N4xxx CPUs, 4 GB of ram and 64 GB eMMC, not exactly stellar... I would consider a 500-600€ device with a decent screen, 8 GB and a (swappable?) disk to try ChromeOS out, I feel I'd be wasting money if I were to get a sub-300 one

So... you want a high end laptop? Those are available, even with ChromeOS installed. But they're not any cheaper. Hardware is hardware. When people talk about price being an advantage for Chromebooks, they mean at the low end, where the OS can operate well on hardware that Windows doesn't tolerate, and where the windows license fees become a significant part of the selling price. Try a comparison of devices around $3…

That is what I paid for an Asus Netbook 1215B, delivered with Ubuntu LTS.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#47

Post by deltron3030 »

darren0 wrote: post #43

I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in ChromeOS. I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious work I do. The more frustrati…

Try Codesandbox and Figma (both run in the browser) with your kids. Figma is really underrated as a general graphic design tool, the pen tool for vector shapes is top notch, and you can use blend modes for images. Google fonts are already integrated, it can be used to learn e.g. logo design.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#48

Post by Kipters »

ajross wrote: post #37
Kipters wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I can see some Acer, Lenovo or HP options in that range, but all of them are equipped with Celeron N4xxx CPUs, 4 GB of ram and 64 GB eMMC, not exactly stellar... I would consider a 500-600€ device with a decent screen, 8 GB and a (swappable?) disk to try ChromeOS out, I feel I'd be wasting money if I were to get a sub-300 one

So... you want a high end laptop? Those are available, even with ChromeOS installed. But they're not any cheaper. Hardware is hardware. When people talk about price being an advantage for Chromebooks, they mean at the low end, where the OS can operate well on hardware that Windows doesn't tolerate, and where the windows license fees become a significant part of the selling price. Try a comparison of devices around $3…

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 leaps over any Chromebook I can find, and those are real laptops that can do any workflow.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#49

Post by zamadatix »

pjmlp wrote: post #38
zamadatix wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not targeting the general purpose OS market it's purpose built for specific kinds of customer use cases. Once you get past that it makes a lot of sense. Well not as in "it makes a lot of sense for you personally to go out and by" but it makes a lot of sense why it exists and sells so much.

That is the thing, it doesn't sell at all outside US School system, as the article points out.

Decently popular at SMB as well.

The point is it doesn't need to outsell Windows it just needs to have markets it targets and updates for those markets. That it doesn't have updates for markets it doesn't target is irrelevant unless they've maxed out all the markets they target (they haven't yet).

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