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Chrome OS has stalled out

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Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#51

Post by inetknght »

eloisant wrote: post #41
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.

> For me the selling point of Chromebooks is that it's a stateless computer, so not much can go wrong.

Do you really think that's the case?

> Also updates are really smooth: done in the background, just have to do a quick reboot and you're done.

How are there updates if it's stateless?

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#52

Post by mattlondon »

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 agree.

I recently (6-9 months ago perhaps) got a cheap one - I think it was about 150GBP new. So very cheap, but its CPU is some celeron thing that frankly sucks for modern websites with their heavy javascript payloads. If you tried to open gmail + google calendar + a google doc, it slowed down to an absolute crawl - like 5-10 wall-seconds to change tabs, things visibly redrawing on the screen etc and things slowly loaded in. It becomes incredibly frustrating to do anything web-based except perhaps read one single tab at a time - forget anything interactive. (That said, my wife has one that also has a celeron that she uses almost exclusively for netflix and it seems fine for that)

I think that the cheap celerons that the cheapest chromebooks get just are not good enough - I've had chromebooks for years and years ago those chromebooks with weak CPUs (sometimes obscure ARM ones even) were totally fine and would zip along without issues, but now the weakest celerons just do not seem to be able handle modern web UIs.

So that puts us in the sad situation where if you want to buy a chromebook, you need to consider one with a non-celeron CPU, but those then tend to be really expensive in comparison (e.g. double or triple the price of a celeron one), at which point you might as well just buy a windows one (or even a macbook air or something similar for not much more).

It is a shame - I don't know the bulk trade prices, but I am guessing that the difference between the weakest possible celeron and something less-crap like a base pentium thing is probably only like $10-15, but would make a huge difference to usability, but you just don't seem to be able to buy anything without jumping up to Intel i5s for an extra £500 etc

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#53

Post by Pigo »

pjmlp wrote: post #44
Pigo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I guess I used sandbox incorrectly, the apps are still running in a sandbox. What I meant was before Crostini, you had to load xfce in a shell or dual boot into it. Now the Linux apps run inside the Chrome OS. You also don't have to boot into a developer mode, or anything like that.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#54

Post by iamnothere »

tytso wrote: post #8
pgrote wrote: post #6

Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then. It quit receiving updates in June of 2019. Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is probably negligible given the platform. I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to $1000 there was nothing close perfor…

The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware. [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel and requal everything. But newer userspace sta…

It would be nice if there was an unsupported (but still Google-distributed) "community" channel you could switch to on old hardware. Like how you can change to beta or developer channels if you want to test the new versions. This would be something that prosumers could use, if not the mass public. I feel like having the hardware simply "expire" when it is still functional probably results in a lot of e-waste.

You can install something like Gallium if you have the patience, time, and skill, but not everybody does.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#55

Post by soared »

pgrote wrote: post #6

Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then. It quit receiving updates in June of 2019. Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is probably negligible given the platform. I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to $1000 there was nothing close perfor…

8th gen i3 chrome book for $450. Stunning how many people hold incorrect beliefs on pricing for chrome books. 2013 was probably 4th gen, so you get a massive upgrade. 69 seconds of googling found this -

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-2-in-1-14-touch-screen-chrom...

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#56

Post by soared »

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…

That’s a pixelbook, the MacBook Pro of chromebooks. Like others have said, you can get a new chrome book for <$150.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#57

Post by williamstein »

The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2].

I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chromebooks since 2013, including all of the Google flagship models, since I use them as my main dev machine and at tradeshows. My next laptop is either going to be a Dell XPS 13 with Linux or (shudder) some random Windows 10 laptop.

[1] "1080p on a 13.3-inch display works out to 166 pixels per inch, a far cry from the 235 ppi on the first Pixelbook and the impressive 293 ppi on the Pixel Slate. Google does offer the Go with a 4K screen, but that option is only available if you get the top-of-the-line model, which costs an eye-popping $1,399." https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-revi...

[2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I searched youtube for stress test videos about the 3a and could only find one where somebody's pixel 3a shattered after being dropped 1 foot; in comparison phones like iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S10plus have dozens of videos with high end equipment testing dropping under rigorous conditions.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#58

Post by shantly »

lllr_finger wrote: post #27
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…

That's probably more directed towards the sub-$300 market, which has at least a handful of options. I've got my wife, kids, and parents all on these devices because they're cheap and easy to use. I'd prefer spending $300 on something like a refurbished Thinkpad for myself, but realize that might not serve my family's desires.

Used business workstation desktops are a friggin' steal right now, if you don't need the portability. Like if you want to do the old-school shared "family computer" situation. Or just want one really powerful machine for your home server junk, rather than a stack of (way more expensive for similar total memory & performance) Raspberry Pis.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#59

Post by brewdad »

pjmlp wrote: post #39
ailideex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got one for my mom and I'm very happy with how low maintenance it is.

Are you also happy that your mum's stuff lives on Google servers? 'Cause I steer my folks away from such stuff.

My Dad is in his 70s and lives the RV life now, usually from 3 time zones away. He's not going to run his own backup servers and I don't want to take 4am support calls. Google works fine for his use case.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#60

Post by therobot24 »

williamstein wrote: post #57

The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2]. I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chrom…

>> [2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used.

I've got a 3a and haven't experienced this. My kid has dropped my phone everywhere (from the cart at the grocery, from his high chair, his car seat, etc.) - note the phone isn't playing anything, he just likes to hold it and pretend he's talking to 'oma' or 'gigi' - and I just have a cheap rubber cover. To each their own though.

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