Chromebooks Now Selling

[drawkcab]

failboat

[earthpigg]

I'll share an example of a firm that could potentially benefit from this:

A firm that is not an e-business (yeah, they still exist), has a very limited IT staff, 30 employees in a department with 30 traditional workstations, but 5 employees from that department are on the road at any given time, and those employees need reliable internet connectivity while on the road for basic tasks that are nonetheless very critical and requiring a reasonable measure of information assurance (the shared hotel "business center" workstations are a non-option for IA reasons).

5 laptops shared by 30 employees in turns, something like this could be ideal for the given department for many reasons.

This firm isn't hypothetical, a good friend of mine works there. They visit clients, aren't uniformly all that tech-savvy, and private medical information isn't something that should be accessed or communicated on a public computer (gotta love them usb keyloggers that any maid can purchase from amazon.com and um... ya know... "dust" the back of the computer desk).

[akand074]

Yeah, at that price, $500, i'll just stay at my prediction that I think Chromebooks/OS will fail. Why not price it around $150-200? I know, you can install another OS on it but c'mon . If it really is, like most are saying, a web browser that sits on top of a kernel, I dont see this thing taking off as GOOGLE would hope, especially if one of their notebooks is priced at $500.

Well it's 499$ for the 3G model and 429$ for the Wi-Fi only model. They also have Atom dual cores, bigger screens with still a nice thin/light design. Not to mention the 16GB SSD is almost surely quite a bit more expensive than 160GB super slow HDDs when considering the bigger bulk of purchases for the HDDs as well. So I mean overall, it's not really a surprise to have cost a bit more than most netbooks. I'm sure prices will drop as time progresses and more competition starts. Netbooks were more pricey when they first came out too.

On a related note. I would imagine you can purchase a cheap netbook and install chrome on it if you'd like? Though the HDD would be a waste and wouldn't run as well as one designed for chrome, but none the less. I mean it's still cheaper than a tablet, it's kind of like a tablet alternatives to those who would be typing more often. I think a 399$ Wi-Fi price would be nicer.. I'm sure it'll be on for that on sale. But thinking about it for an average user who might buy a netbook (from what I've seen) they may buy it for 349$ for a decent one, and then have to get their windows anti-virus program, and possibly upgrade to windows 7 home premium from starter because starter is so cut down it doesn't even let you change your background, perhaps other software like microsoft office etc etc and you could potentially go way past the chromebook price. Where as the chromebook is a more complete package without the need for those extras. Not to mention that you'll never have to worry about paying a tonne to upgrade to Windows 8 then 9 then 10 etc or it becoming obsolete once Windows 8 comes out. Chromebook is definitely a better investment for long-term usage.

Just speculation and opinions on my part. I think chrome OS is a good idea, and has it's audiences, but I really do worry about how well it'll do in the market, and how that'll affect google. Only time will tell, I'm sure Google knows what they are doing.

[Dustin2128]

Well it's 499$ for the 3G model and 429$ for the Wi-Fi only model. They also have Atom dual cores, bigger screens with still a nice thin/light design. Not to mention the 16GB SSD is almost surely quite a bit more expensive than 160GB super slow HDDs when considering the bigger bulk of purchases for the HDDs as well. So I mean overall, it's not really a surprise to have cost a bit more than most netbooks. I'm sure prices will drop as time progresses and more competition starts. Netbooks were more pricey when they first came out too.

On a related note. I would imagine you can purchase a cheap netbook and install chrome on it if you'd like? Though the HDD would be a waste and wouldn't run as well as one designed for chrome, but none the less. I mean it's still cheaper than a tablet, it's kind of like a tablet alternatives to those who would be typing more often. I think a 399$ Wi-Fi price would be nicer.. I'm sure it'll be on for that on sale. But thinking about it for an average user who might buy a netbook (from what I've seen) they may buy it for 349$ for a decent one, and then have to get their windows anti-virus program, and possibly upgrade to windows 7 home premium from starter because starter is so cut down it doesn't even let you change your background, perhaps other software like microsoft office etc etc and you could potentially go way past the chromebook price. Where as the chromebook is a more complete package without the need for those extras. Not to mention that you'll never have to worry about paying a tonne to upgrade to Windows 8 then 9 then 10 etc or it becoming obsolete once Windows 8 comes out. Chromebook is definitely a better investment for long-term usage.

Just speculation and opinions on my part. I think chrome OS is a good idea, and has it's audiences, but I really do worry about how well it'll do in the market, and how that'll affect google. Only time will tell, I'm sure Google knows what they are doing.

I didn't know it had an SSD; wouldn't that be kind of a waste? I mean, since everything's in "the cloud" (read: out of your hardware and hands), it seems like you'd need 1GB max to load the thin operating system.

[akand074]

I didn't know it had an SSD; wouldn't that be kind of a waste? I mean, since everything's in "the cloud" (read: out of your hardware and hands), it seems like you'd need 1GB max to load the thin operating system.

Probably for cacheing. Like if you watch a 1080p movie online you might need to cache quite a few GBs. Manufacturing costs for smaller sizes are probably negligible in difference as well. On the bright side, for people like us, we could definitely use 16GB for an Ubuntu install without filling it up if you are still using it for the same type of tasks you would a chromebook anyways. But I can imagine it's safe to have that much size just for temp files/cache.

[Canime]

Sounds cool. I would buy one, but I have my eye on a HP one coming up.

[Thewhistlingwind]

Probably for cacheing. Like if you watch a 1080p movie online you might need to cache quite a few GBs. Manufacturing costs for smaller sizes are probably negligible in difference as well. On the bright side, for people like us, we could definitely use 16GB for an Ubuntu install without filling it up if you are still using it for the same type of tasks you would a chromebook anyways. But I can imagine it's safe to have that much size just for temp files/cache.

Rendering things takes cache like no other.

I have an idea, a machine with 16GB of RAM, and you use 90% of it as a ram drive, with a "state save" external to export your data.

I'd like that.........(And it's the only way to justify $500)

(I am aware that such a machine may very well be useless for most people.)

[Bart_D]

This thing is a useless toy. I can't see the majority of users doing serious work on it.

[gnomeuser]

I tend to prefer nettop type machines and luckily these are in the pipeline for ChromeOS.

I am fairly excited about the concept, I think it is a great play for enterprises. If we are going to migrate away from WinXP, migrate to the platform with a future, the web and provide your employees with simple lenses to that.

I think this is going to be a surprising hit over the coming years.

As for me buying one.. perhaps a nettop once they come out but of the "new" OS offers, I am most excited about WebOS and desperately want to give it a fair go as a desktop system. Right now I am broke, so stuck on this netbook for better or worse.

[akand074]

This thing is a useless toy. I can't see the majority of users doing serious work on it.

How many people actually do serious work.. haha