Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2015 Chromebook Pixel

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 657 posts

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#441

Post by simplyluke »

EC1 wrote: post #244
egonschiele wrote: post #172

I'm not sure why this is better than the cheapest macbook air?Similar battery life, similar processor. 4gb more memory, smaller hard drive. And the cheapest pixel is $100 more. What do I get for that $100? For me the downsides are: can only use apps from the chrome web store, no unix command line (maybe it exists and I don't know?). I'm really happy someone is trying to compete, but not sure why I would buy this.

I don't know a single person in real life that has a chromebook. Who is buying these?

People are - just not for anywhere near the cost of a pixel. Schools and parents of kids especially. They're super cheap and everything schools need to do is online.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#442

Post by jeena »

bduerst wrote: post #336
ortusdux wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always recommend getting a warranty through your insurance company. My wife got a surface pro, and in her hands I give it a 2 year half-life. We got a personal articles policy on it that is about 45$ a year, and it covers any situation except terrorism or government/cdc seizure. Those policies are a good read. Squaretrade was over 100$ a year and did not cover theft etc. Oh and no deductible. She broke the 60$ char…

I cannot endorse this more - I bought an additional 3 yr everything-covered warranty on an Elitebook, and it ended up saving me $1100 in repairs to the laptop. Even Squaretrade warranties are better than nothing.

Perhaps I am just lucky but I out of principle never buy any insurance if it is not required by law. If something breaks I either try to fix it myself or buy a new one. I never calculated it but I don't feel that I miss out or pay more in the long run. Quite the opposite, I have almost no running expenses and can invest the money others pay the insurence companies into new stuff.

The only exception of that rule are insurances which cover stuff I might accidentally do to other people.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#443

Post by etherael »

"The Cloud" Can Go Fuck Itself.

Addendum; If you ever want it to be taken seriously you must urgently fix two things.

1) Telcos. Being constantly subject to obscene per megabyte usage charges with miserable reliability and speed for access to your bulk storage in the cloud vs $100 per terabyte reliable and fast subscription for life easily portable local storage costs is utterly unacceptable.

2) States. Being constantly subject to unlimited invisible invasive personal data theft without oversight or justification is not an acceptable state of affairs. The existence of states guarantees that they will always insist on being able to do these things. The only potential solution to this problem without actually destroying states (Shock! Horror! ROADS!) is easy and perfect homomorphic encryption.

Until you fix these two (quite possibly unfixable) things, "The Cloud" is pipe dream marketing bullshit.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#444

Post by ripter »

atmosx wrote: post #439
ripter wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bought a ChromeBook for development (The $199 one). It's a super light linux machine that lasts for days. So I have all my dev tools and I can easily work on any git repo. I don't do any Chrome OS development. I tried using a tablet for this, but as an emacs users, I have very specific keyboard bindings that the tablets always had issues with.

Yes, you bought it and you 'hacked it' in order to make it 'usable'. Most developers will buy a MBA which is an order of magnitude faster with more powerful CPU and feautures MacOSX which has tons of software to enhance development (especially for CLI users). So definately no, developers are not a niche market for this toy-device althoguh I admit that I like my Samsung Chromebook (and Iinstalled xubuntu too on it...)…

I never claimed that developers are the niche market. And I didn't have to 'hack it' other than turning on dev mode. Ubuntu runs in a tab, just like everything else.

It fills a niche in my life, I never claimed it would help anyone else.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#445

Post by Alupis »

moe wrote: post #427
Alupis wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

What happens if that port fails or beaks? Your laptop stops working... I'm not a fan of their single-port decision either, but in fairness: Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks. No matter how many other ports it may have.

> 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 something), but I have other USB ports so life goes on. USB-C has the same center floating plastic bit -- just waiting for it to get broken off.

DC ports tend to be pretty robust, but do break from time-to-time. Apple's solution to this was the Magsafe connector, which avoided the issue for the most part. Seems like a step backwards for laptops to now rely on a single, potentially fragile port for everything.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#446

Post by jeena »

mdaniel wrote: post #438
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android apps will help fill some of the holes, but how likely is it that we'll ever get an Android port of the two apps I had mentioned previously, like Sublime and/or Eclipse? I suppose it's theoretically possible, but there are some programs that are, frankly, unlikely to ever leave the "desktop" OS's (i.e. Windows, OSX, Linux). Of course, I'm happy for Google to prove me wrong. I would have firmly thrown Photoshop…

Android port of the two apps I had mentioned previously, like Sublime and/or Eclipse I believe the Eclipse folks think that Orion ( http://www.eclipse.org/orion/ ) is the path out of that jam. I'm super stoked about that project, and think it may have real legs if they don't lose focus. That is their solution to your git need, also, unless one requires a dedicated git client to do rebases or other ninjary: https://gi…

What about the compile stack or webapplication stack like node or rails? I'm mostly just curious how this would work on such a OS.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#447

Post by mkozlows »

badloginagain wrote: post #413

Google develops a laptop that I have high interest in, but no use for. If they want to win the App Ecosystem war, they need to ensure that the developers have the tools to build in their ecosystem. Apple dominates because hackers love macbooks, and provide slick tools that only work in Apple's walled garden. This propagates down to the consumer level, as developers build products consumers love- with Apple taking in…

That's a fine perspective to have, if you are a corporation trying to own an ecosystem. Me, I don't like walled gardens, and ChromeOS's true platform isn't the Chrome App Store, it's the web. I'm good with that.

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#448

Post by Zak »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #341
Zak wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anybody complaining about the move to a single port type . Most of us in the tech world recognize that as a Good Thing. What many of us don't like is that you have to unplug the power adapter just to plug in a flash drive unless you have a dongle.

Hopefully the charger has 4x USB built in (2x normal + 2x type C)

It does not. Here's the adapter; the separate USB-C cable (one is required to use this adapter) Apple sells for $30 does not include a hub or extra ports either. I'm sure there will be some third-party option that does this.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ262LL/A/apple-29w-usb-c-...

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#449

Post by frio »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #408
frio wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem I have. Apple don't have docking stations; it's frustrating unhooking multiple devices so I can wander to a meeting room, only to hook them up again later. A single cable would be amazing (even more so if it was MagSafe, but oh well).

A USB 3 hub can fulfill any function a traditional docking station would other than extremely low latency I/O which most users don't care about.

That doesn't account for my screens, charger, etc. It's an admittedly minor concern, but I imagine it'll be very nice when I can just plug in a single cable :).

The thing I've come to appreciate better is that everybody needs different tools. When I was working as a Systems Engineer and needed to connect via serial port to ratty old servers, this new Macbook would have had me screaming. As a developer at my current workplace, I don't need infinite connectability, just portability :).

Re: 2015 Chromebook Pixel

#450

Post by jskonhovd »

I am glad they gave this model a reboot. If I was in the market for a new linux laptop, this would be a my number one choice over the XPS13 as a close second.

I am glad more companies like Dell and Google are supporting linux.

Post reply on HN