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Chrome OS has stalled out

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Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#81

Post by sudosysgen »

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.

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.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#82

Post by ghaff »

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 increasingly travel with a ChromeBook. There's very little on my MacBook that I have to run locally and I find that GSuite works pretty well offline. (And that's where a lot of my files would be even if I were carrying a full laptop.)

Yes, ChromeBooks make you somewhat more dependent on networks. But, truth be told, I'm not getting a lot done other than reading or maybe writing if I don't have a network connection anyway whatever device I'm carrying.

There's not much I do day-to-day on my laptop that requires anything other than a browser.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#83

Post by hajile »

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…

Intel's mobile chip prices are insane. The current "recommended customer price" for i5-7Y57 is $280. The i7-7Y75 processor price is $395 (only difference is a couple hundred MHz).

Compare the Macbook Air and the pricing isn't too bad. The air has 1 gen newer CPU (basically a refresh) and thunderbolt 3 instead of usb-c along with an extra inch of screen (pixelbook could add almost 1.5 inches if they shrunk the bezels).

With 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD, the list price of the two is the same ($1700 in the USA). Pixelbook also gives you a touchscreen (with good pen support), better keyboard, and (IMO) better trackpad while shaving off a massive third of a pound. Pixelbook is also completely silent.

Surface Pro X with 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD is $1800 and weighs almost exactly the same as the pixelbook once you add a keyboard. It includes a crappy Qualcomm 8cx processor.

Surface pro 7 with same specs is $1900 and around the same weight. It does include a G-series processor, but it's probably adjusted from the normal 15w TDP to a 12w TDP to save power (lowering actual base clock from 1.3 to 1.0GHz).

Cheapest Surface Laptop 3 with same specs I can find is Best Buy for $2000 for the 13-inch model. It weighs a touch more than the air, but once again, the G-series processor is a bit faster overall.

Pixelbook isn't cheap, but neither is the hardware or build quality. You can often find them on sale for much less though. $500-600 for the i3 version is very common. I picked up my i5 version on sale for $650 (marked down from $1300).

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#84

Post by chewz »

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'm using ChromeOS on Macbook Pro Retina 2015 and on Thinkpad x230 as a spare for just everything.

Thinkpad x230 is 10 years old and it's current market price is below $100, I think. Or you can get it for free from a friendly company admin. Except for screen estate (compared to Retina) x230 is everything I need. It still has in it another 5 more years or so.

So ChromeOS could be cheap and performant at the same time. Chromebooks are different story - never found one with price to performance/quality ratio that suits my wallet.

PS. I disagree that ChromeOS has stalled out. Can't wait till February for version 80.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#85

Post by Kipters »

hajile wrote: post #83
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…

Intel's mobile chip prices are insane. The current "recommended customer price" for i5-7Y57 is $280. The i7-7Y75 processor price is $395 (only difference is a couple hundred MHz). Compare the Macbook Air and the pricing isn't too bad. The air has 1 gen newer CPU (basically a refresh) and thunderbolt 3 instead of usb-c along with an extra inch of screen (pixelbook could add almost 1.5 inches if they shrunk the bezels)…

I checked the prices for the Surfaces on the official store before posting, the most expensive one was the Pro X + cover + pen at 1998,99 € (others were in the 1930-1960 range).

But my point was the same as yours: same price, better hardware, good screens + build quality and a capable OS instead of a full screen browser and mobile apps

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#86

Post by Kipters »

chewz wrote: post #84
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'm using ChromeOS on Macbook Pro Retina 2015 and on Thinkpad x230 as a spare for just everything. Thinkpad x230 is 10 years old and it's current market price is below $100, I think. Or you can get it for free from a friendly company admin. Except for screen estate (compared to Retina) x230 is everything I need. It still has in it another 5 more years or so. So ChromeOS could be cheap and performant at the same time.…

How does it run on the x230? With which specs? Android and Linux subsystems are working?

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#87

Post by jayd16 »

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…

Hmm how hard did you try? If you turn on the linux integration you can install a lot of things. If you turn on the Android integration you can install a lot of things. If you need a mac or windows machines...well no luck there.

To me, the biggest drawback is most Chromebooks (not even the pixels) don't have a good GPU not that you can't get things to run.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#88

Post by ReverseCold »

jonahbenton wrote: post #7

Meh. Nah. Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story. In terms of making use of the hardware, Android is a necessary stopgap strategy, but webassembly is coming to bring native app performance and security…

Yup, chromebooks are huge in K12, and there really isn’t any promising alternative. Even students at schools without chromebooks often buy them independently because of their low price. These things are a massive success, even if not in the way that google wants just yet.

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#89

Post by mikece »

This would correspond with the rumors that Google is quietly pulling engineering resources from Android and ChromeOS to work on Fuchsia which is supposed to replace both and be the Google IoT operating system of the future. It's rather open that Pixelbooks support the current builds of Fuchsia; what's less published but not hidden if you ask the Nest engineers that the Google Home runs on Fuchsia with its apps written in Flutter. Fuchsia's browser is Chrome and has an Android compatibility layer which allows running Android apps on Fuchsia (how long they keep that in is another question).

Re: Chrome OS has stalled out

#90

Post by phonon »

Kipters wrote: post #86
chewz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using ChromeOS on Macbook Pro Retina 2015 and on Thinkpad x230 as a spare for just everything. Thinkpad x230 is 10 years old and it's current market price is below $100, I think. Or you can get it for free from a friendly company admin. Except for screen estate (compared to Retina) x230 is everything I need. It still has in it another 5 more years or so. So ChromeOS could be cheap and performant at the same time.…

How does it run on the x230? With which specs? Android and Linux subsystems are working?

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