The new Acer Chromebook

http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-new-acer-chromebook.html

by cleverjake • 14 years ago

55 77 14 years ago

chrome.blogspot.com

davidbrent• 14 years ago

Is there anyone on here from Google that could speak to how these are being used internally? Do they fit a business need at Google? Are they issued to specific business area? Anything! I'm looking for an excuse to buy a Chromebook, but can't seem to peg where it would fit in my arsenal.

jrockway4• 14 years ago

We use them as laptop replacements. Everyone has a desktop and we don't allow source code checked out to laptops, so the Chromebook (with ssh) makes a fine developer machine. It's also good for the non-engineers who use things like Google Apps extensively (and this is where it's targeted).

I have a ThinkPad but when it's time for a refresh I will probably use the Chromebook. I don't really like maintaining two machines, and the Chromebook works well enough as a work laptop without requiring me to do anything other than sign in with my Google account.

tcc619• 14 years ago

Do you have terminal access with your google version of chromebook?

Would be great to see a developer edition of chromebook with a native terminal app.

rm999• 14 years ago

Why not use a macbook air with ssh? Is it just because these are cheaper?

jordonwii• 14 years ago

Looks interesting, certainly. I'm curious why there's an HDD in it, though (and a big one, at that). I thought Google was gonna mandate smaller SSD's, for speed, and because the extra local space was unnecessary.

mtgx• 14 years ago

That thing seems to be built for using a fan, and being stuck on desk because of the thickness and terrible battery life.

peteysd• 14 years ago

3.5 hours of battery? For a laptop in 2012? Seriously?

cryptoz6• 14 years ago

I agree with the sentiment, but I've never used a laptop that had more than 2 hours advertised battery life (so, 1 hour in practice). My most recent purchase is a 2010 System76, so I'm quite out of touch, I know. I dream of having 3 hours+ of battery life on a laptop. That far, far more than I'm used to. Though, when tablets can do 10-20 hours, why is this stuck at 3? I agree, that does seem measly.

icefox2• 14 years ago

Installing flash block is often times the #1 way to improve your battery life.

mamcx• 14 years ago

Have not tried a mac?

My old macbook have 3+ hours on it on battery... The new ones are more impressive:

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/features.html#battery http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features-retina/#battery

aristidb2• 14 years ago

For a laptop that costs $199, yes.

UnoriginalGuy5• 14 years ago

And a Chromebook of all things. It isn't like this is a real operating system. For all the stuff you're giving up by having a Chromebook you'd think that it would at least be power competitive.

icefox2• 14 years ago

Users would probably compare it to tablets, the Kindle Fire gets 9 hours, ipad mini gets 10...

cryptoz6• 14 years ago

> It isn't like this is a real operating system

[citation needed]. How is Chrome OS not a "real operating system"?

ConstantineXVI2• 14 years ago

3.5 hours of battery life, not to mention I've never owned an Acer product that didn't fail horribly in a year. Spend the extra $50 for Samsung's.

Puer• 14 years ago

3.5 is a pretty disappointing figure, but I've owned several Acer products from monitors to net books and none have failed on me yet.

ConstantineXVI2• 14 years ago

2006: laptop, dead motherboard

2008: 2x laptop, chronic overheating

2009: Netbook, battery failed

2010: Desktop, DVD drive failing to open followed by the front falling off (wish I made that bit up).

walkon2• 14 years ago

They are misleading by specifically mentioning 1080p video playback performance when the display has only 768 vertical pixels.

cryptoz6• 14 years ago

It has video out. Also, the 1080p was mentioned during performance discussion, not screen resolution, so I hardly think it's misleading. The discussion was about video decoding power, which not only can this machine do, but it can do with purpose given the video out.

dman• 14 years ago

Which x86 machine shipping in recent times has had trouble with 1080p output ?

lancewiggs• 14 years ago

I for one was mislead - until I saw the comment above. While technically you may be correct, the acid test is whether a normal resonable uninformed person would be misled. This is probably not a community with too many of those - quite the opposite, and in a good way.

walkon2• 14 years ago

They should qualify their statement to indicate this resolution only applies when it is hooked up to a significantly better display. I don't think the anticipated typical use case for a Chromebook is to hook it up to better displays as some sort of media center.

capo• 14 years ago

Intel inside this one: http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/acer-c7-chromeb...

diminish3• 14 years ago

still waiting for the chromebook for hackers. expandable, 8 cores or more with arm processors, and dual boot with linux. google should understand that without giving hackers a choice, they can't go forward.

Edit: mainly google needs to create a developer and hacker community, of web developers to show a browser is enough to do everything for personal and business.

jrockway4• 14 years ago

Chrome runs fine on any Linux box. If you really want ChromiumOS, you can install that too.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

> google should understand that without giving hackers a choice, they can't go forward.

Why?

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

ChromeOS is really targeted towards non-hackers who need a zero-admin system.

But in any case, they all have a developer mode which allows you to install other OSes including Linux. My Samsung ARM Chromebook sort-of "dual boots" (there is no interactive boot manager, so to boot to the other side I need to load up the active side and then run a shell script which switches the boot partition), but the system boots up so fast this isn't much of a problem.

It only has 2 cores, though and I don't expect that to be a spec that gets pushed up much in the near future since there are current practical limits on how much more cores will help a browser.

diminish3• 14 years ago

I know Google is targeting non-hackers, and it is good. And that's the point I am elaborating. As an example, I a developer, need a light, fast, powerful laptop with 1650 or more screen width multiple monitor capabilities. I am not important as a target group but I influence hundreds of people around me. Now that I need to change my laptop, I have choices like MacBooks and Ultrabooks. I believe it would take Chrome OS forward quicker, if they offered a low profile powerful samsung chromebook for me..

lolnope• 14 years ago

Is there any word of a 3G version? The free 100MB/month is the only appealing thing I can see about Chromebooks right now.

Toshio• 14 years ago

Couldn't locate a price point anywhere in the article.

mrbuttons454• 14 years ago

$199 USD

mark-r• 14 years ago

"Starting tomorrow, the Acer Chromebook will be available for $199 in the U.S. on Google Play, BestBuy.com and rolling out this week in select Best Buy stores."

revelation• 14 years ago

Seems like a netbook with a neutered operating system. Heavy like a stone, gargantuan and with no battery to boot.

randomchars• 14 years ago

This would be great with a 2560x1600 display! That would explain the battery life too.

Obligatory questions: How much RAM does it have and what kind of CPU? (I know it says Intel Core but that doesn't mean much.)

frou_dh2• 14 years ago

I doubt the screens on any cheap laptops are up to much. I tried a ThinkPad X131 recently (11.6", ~£400) and the screen was garbage. Looking straight on, there was still colour fade between the top and bottom thanks to the low quality panel.

dchuk• 14 years ago

Seems like if you can easily pop in an ssd and get a reasonably well supported linux distro on there than that could make for a nice cheap little netbook. No idea what the processor really is or how much RAM it has though so I won't be taking that experimental plunge but I'm sure someone will shortly.

facorreia• 14 years ago

I'd like to see Google offer a low-cost laptop with Android instead of Chrome OS. It seems it would be much more useful. You can have Chrome in Android too, and a huge library of games and applications. If it had ssh access to the underlying Linux OS it would be fantastic.

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

Other companies have tried this; Android isn't good with a mouse.

honestcoyote• 14 years ago

I've got an Asus Transformer with keyboard dock, purchased over the summer. Using it as a laptop, the thing has one major bonus: with a fully charged dock and a fully charged tablet, I can get around 10-12 hours of use.

But in terms of programs I need to use every day, it's not very good. Apps are inconsistent about including keyboard shortcuts. There's sometimes a small delay when typing. I can have only one fullscreen window per app. The available office programs aren't very good (and I have to deal with docx/xlsx files every day). There's no decent version of LaTex. Using SSH is ok but that's not something I need to do very often. Using RDP to hook up with my office Windows box also works fairly well but I wouldn't want to do extended work that way. I guess for a use case which involves a lot of SSH and/or remote desktop, this might be a very good laptop due to the battery life.

Even though I don't own a Chromebook, I would suspect it's probably better as a laptop even with a reduced number of apps. Overlapping/tiling windows, keyboard shortcuts (presumably) for everything, better support for Google Docs. It only suffers by comparison in regards to the battery life.

thereallurch• 14 years ago

The 100GB of cloud storage is worth $5 a month/$60 year. I'm hoping Google starts throwing around storage with all their future devices. Maybe on the Nexus 4?

nostromo• 14 years ago

Honest question: is anyone buying these?

The Chromebook seems to be all about corporate strategy ("everything in the browser!") and not about creating something people actually want.

I'd love to hear about how I'm wrong however.

Edit: unsurprisingly, I seem to be wrong. :) The top selling laptop on Amazon is a Chromebook (http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/565108/)

UnoriginalGuy5• 14 years ago

The reviews are "odd." People name a ton of issues and drawbacks but then go on to say they love it and give it full stars.

The price is appealing but I cannot see much else that interests me. Some people were saying it cannot even make office documents, open video files, or audio. Those are big damn drawbacks.

Cowen• 14 years ago

I've been using the latest Samsung Chromebook as my primary computer for the past week.

So far, I love it. $250 for a tiny, zippy machine with great battery life that can do 99% of what I need, especially since it comes with ssh. On laptops, I usually hate every non-Macbook keyboard, but this one's keyboard is almost indistinguishable in feel from the Macbook Air's, so typing on it is a breeze.

It has some hiccups here and there, but considering that this machine hasn't even been available for a month yet, I expect those to get ironed out eventually.

fmstephe3• 14 years ago

I bought one. I purchased a first generation Samsung Chromebook. I have written about this here on HN before (too many times), but I think it is worth noting. My experience with my Chromebook runs like this.

I bought it because I thought I could use it to ssh (via the underlying terminal in developer mode) into my linode and work on the train each day to and from work. I bought the 3G Chromebook for this reason. When I got it I was very impressed. The build quality is really excellent, it is a piece of really well built commodity hardware. Plastic but excellent, hinge weight and great keyboard. The 3G was unworkable and I had to give up my mobile plans on day one (not the Chromebooks fault - I live in York and commute to Leeds, with bad 3G coverage).

So the next stage my Chromebook stays at home and overnight becomes the internet computer for the whole house. We watch TV on it, we do searches on it. It is fast, it is light and for surfing the internet it is just this always on service. Very good :)

During this time I played around with installing another OS on the Chromebook. But it was always difficult and I never dedicated the time to gritting through it. However, when the new Chromebooks came out I got all exited again and started looking into it again. In the mean time someone has set up a very easy to use install, with instructions, Ubuntu onto your Chromebook. I did this. Now I program every day on the train to and from work and I enjoy my Chromebook more than any computer I have owned before.

A caveat, I use my Ubuntu-ised Chromebook to hack Go code in vim. I am just using terminals and a browser. So if you want more than that from a laptop you may not enjoy it as much as I have.

This is just for hackers though. Does not explain why the new ones are so popular with the general public. But my wife is not in IT and she loves it (even with Ubuntu on it :)

r00fus• 14 years ago

> Plastic but excellent, hinge weight and great keyboard. The 3G was unworkable and I had to give up my mobile plans on day one (not the Chromebooks fault - I live in York and commute to Leeds, with bad 3G coverage).

Sounds like these kind of devices need a return period due to usability of wireless services. Was that even an option?

niels_olson3• 14 years ago

As a Cr-48 owner, the thought of buying another one crossed my mind yesterday. I like the hardware affordances so much I replicated them on the high end with Apple products. My daughter uses my Cr-48 now. It almost broke yesterday. During the diagnostic process, I considered just buying another one.

You see, I really liked running Ubuntu on my Cr-48. It pretty well convinced me to get the 4G iPad, just so I could have mobile data on my macbook. So I now carry a 4g iPad and 15" rMBP and gave the Cr-48 to my daughter.

Yesterday, my son dislocated (subluxed?) the Cr-48's screen hinge. Apparently the hinge mounting screws inside the case had worked themselves a bit loose and his action hyperextended the joint so far the plastic pieces of hinge interfered with each other so it wouldn't close. And the hinge was obviously loose. My daughter was hysterical until I took it apart (took about 2 minutes from incident to repair). During those two minutes, I seriously thought about getting another one. Because she loves it sooo much.

So, at least in terms of cheap, energy-efficient, light, mobile laptop, I think there's a market. ChromeOS, I don't know. I'm in the military, so a network-dependent OS is a non-starter for me.

For Christmas, I'm not sure I'm getting the kids any electronics. I'm tempted to get them iPad minis but I don't see them using tablets for anything productive, so an ultrabook makes more sense. But I see no reason to a) buy a laptop for a 7- and 10 year old kids, or b) buy a Chromebook, even at the price, if I'm only going to convert it to Ubuntu. In part because switching the BiOS is one headache more than I care to endure. In part because imposing an unsupported operating system on someone else just seems rude.

In the case of the Asus C7: no way am I buying any more spinning rust hard drives.

netcan3• 14 years ago

The hardware isn't really the novel thing here.

jahmed2• 14 years ago

My hinge is starting give me some trouble too. So far though the Cr-48 has held up pretty decently for being a 2 year old free laptop.

BillSaysThis• 14 years ago

That 100GB is only free for two years. No mention of how much it will cost in the third year.

And I was also not at all clear from the on page text that the 1080p playback requires a bigger/better screen: "high-definition videos play smoothly (yes, videos like Gangnam Style in 1080p, in case you’re one of the few left who hasn’t seen it)" doesn't even mention the actual screen resolution. Why doesn't an "extra bright" 11.6" screen can't do better than 768 vertical pixels?

netcan3• 14 years ago

I really do think this chromeOS project is a dud, at least for its original purpose of serving the non-techie lite-user. In my mind I'm always comparing it to Android & iOS based laptops that I expect to come sooner or later. It's less powerful

- Not The Simplest - The point of web as an OS was simplicity. No worries about "managing" your computer: installing programs and dealing with files. In reality doing everything through the web it involves workarounds. Bottom line is that iOS & Android have simplified using a computer more.

- Not as good at videos and music.

- Less Powerful - Web apps have goten powerful, but not as powerful as it looked like they would get circa 2009. You still can't do a lot of things with webapps. What if Mick-first-used-a-computer-in-2011 gets an ipod? He needs itunes. What if his daughter wants to skype him?

Bottom line is I don't see why people will want a laptop that does less than their phone.

isaacwaller• 14 years ago

To counter your examples, Google would like you to use Google Music and Google+ Hangouts, both of which work on the Chromebook. As long as you keep yourself confined to the Google ecosystem, the Chromebook is quite powerful.

micro_cam• 14 years ago

I thought the same until a couple coworkers and I got chromeboxes and google io. I don't code or even download images from my camera on it but it lives plugged into a monitor in the living room and the statelessness, fast boot and auto updates make it the perfect "forget about it until i need it for netflix or surfing the web" pc.

The window manager is also beautiful and I am hoping the os and ecosystem develop into something I can use for real work.

netcan3• 14 years ago

Sure. There are all sorts of niche applications where it would be great. I bet as public computers in hotel lobbies or similar they'd be great too.

That wasn't the intended purpose though. These were supposed to be computers for all the people for whom windows is too much computer.

The new Acer Chromebook

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