Google Chromebook Under $300 Defies PC Market With Growth

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-10/google-chromebook-under-300-defies-pc-market-with-growth.html

by Lightning • 13 years ago

101 127 13 years ago

bloomberg.com

kryten3• 13 years ago

Sorry but Chromebooks are a crap prospect for 99% of people and after about a week, any consumer will realise that.

That happens post-sale which means the sales figures are good.

They are lured in by the price and get screwed. That's all this shows.

Crap netbooks, no-brand PC accessories and appliances, landfill Androids and supermarket bubble-packed electronics fill the same market sector.

Edit: I stand by my comment :)

Zikes2• 13 years ago

I'm sure the massive rate of returns and refunds will prove you right.

tharrold2• 13 years ago

An anecdote from http://thecartoons.net/2013/06/24/why-i-didnt-buy-a-samsung-...

I asked a couple different Best Buy reps if the Chromebooks had a big return rate. "All the time," both said frankly. "They return it in a couple of days. They don't know how it works."

ambiate• 13 years ago

It is truly a shame the cost of the Pixel is so high.

During my Google Glass intro, I had the chance to use a Pixel during the meeting. My wife was more attracted to the Pixel than the Glass. They probably could have sold her one that day if they had pushed it on her.

abraininavat• 13 years ago

Do you realize that 99% of people use gmail, facebook, twitter, and play web games for 99% of the time?

gmac• 13 years ago

I don't think so. Don't compare the Chromebook with a laptop: compare it with not having the Internet.

A year or two ago, I set up a retired family friend with an old desktop machine running Ubuntu and Chrome.

He loved using it. Who wouldn't love the web if they'd never had it before? All he ever did was launch Chrome and browse websites. Sometimes he'd watch catch-up TV, but that was also through Chrome.

A while back, a failed Ubuntu upgrade left the machine unbootable, and I had to reinstall Ubuntu for him. More recently, the HD crashed.

So for his birthday we bought him a £200 Chromebook. It has exactly the same relevant capabilities as the old Ubuntu desktop, but it's small, light, low-power, and unlikely to get viruses or ask incomprehensible questions about software updates.

Yes, an iPad might have worked too, but it would have been a lot more expensive, less familiar, and lacking in Flash (which, if all you ever do is browse websites, can still be somewhat limiting).

pkulak2• 13 years ago

You're way off. Chromebooks fit cheap hardware with an appropriate operating system, such that performance is still acceptable. For example, that Samsung Chromebook with the ARM processor. It has a low-performance chip in it that only uses (I think) about 4 watts. So the battery can be tiny and it still gets very good battery life. Which means the whole machine can be very small, very easily. And it has a very nice trackpad and keyboard, with a reasonable screen. Samsung was able to cut costs in places that Chromeos doesn't _need_ it and make what is a very good machine for $250. Put Windows 8 on that thing and in two weeks the tray will be full of crapware icons and the whole thing will grind to a halt.

kryten3• 13 years ago

You can't get a decent general purpose computer for $250. You might get a laptop shaped kiosk device, but not a computer.

jrockway• 13 years ago

I traded in my Thinkpad for a Pixel. The Pixel is the only laptop I use. (I would say it's the only laptop I own, but my apartment is a veritable computer museum and several of the specimens are laptops.)

For me, the biggest problem with laptops is keeping them sync'd with my desktop. I could use a laptop as a primary computer, and with better expansion options than previously exited (USB3, dual Display Ports, etc.), but I still find laptops limiting, meaning I only use them when I can't have my desktop. My desktop has 6 cores, 4 drives, a high-quality sound card, a real serial port, etc. These things are all important for what I use a computer for, most of the time, and a laptop just isn't good enough to be my only machine.

Chrome OS solves the synchronization problem for me. The configurability is restricted more than my average Linux box, so there is less to concern myself about setting up. My browser settings and extension sync, the desktop background syncs, etc. I can take a brand new Chromebook and be up in running in 5 minutes.

That's the value proposition of Chrome OS for me. Once it is up and running, I can ssh to a real computer and browse the web, which is what I'd do with a ultra-excellent billion-core superlaptop 99% of the time anyway.

The other 1% of the time, I'd like to use a laptop for portable software-defined radio applications, and as it stands, Chrome OS is terrible for that. But since Chrome has APIs for talking to USB, serial ports, and audio, I'm actually working on supporting controlling my radio and analyzing the I/Q inputs as a Chrome packaged app. The advantage for me is that I'll have SDR functionality on any computer I encounter: you can install packaged apps from the webstore on Chrome OS, Mac, Windows, and Linux, and everything will Just Work.

Finally, the Pixel has the best screen I've ever seen on a computer.

Anyway, Chrome OS is nowhere near its full potential just with the APIs available today. I think as more developers write awesome web apps or Chrome apps, more people will use Chrome OS, further incentivizing developers to create even better non-desktop apps. But as it stands, I am 100% satisfied with the Pixel as my primary laptop, and I imagine many other people are too.

chinpokomon5• 13 years ago

I feel the same about my Pixel. I use the Remote Desktop Chrome app to log into any number of machines I've configured. If I need to SSH into another machine, there's an app for that too. I still use a "powerful" laptop as my work machine. but this is primarily because of the work I'm doing for a client. A significant part of my day I spend logged into remote systems; something I may start doing more on my Pixel.

mtgx• 13 years ago

I don't know how much it's in sales, but for what it's worth the Samsung ARM Chromebook has been the #1 bestselling laptop on Amazon for almost 9 months straight, since it came out last fall (I know because I've looked every now and then, and it's always been #1):

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-Comput...

But I don't agree with the last paragraph that Chromebooks are ready to go to higher-end. At least for the next few years, Chromebooks should stay sub-$500, with most of them being ARM-based and sub-$300, but with a bigger battery (even more important than upgrading the resolution, I'd say).

They last about 6-7 hours, but they have an embarrassingly small battery (about as big as the ones in 7" tablets). Double the battery size, keep the ARM processor up to date and the price under $300, and that should be the strategy going forward for the next few years for Chromebooks.

AUmrysh• 13 years ago

I think they can target both markets. Honestly, the Pixel seems overpriced for what it's intended to do, but if you plan on installing linux on it, you'll probably get your money's worth.

I think the lower priced chromebooks are a great deal, and they should stay focused on that part of the market. I genuinely never would have purchased a netbook until I saw that the chromebook had the hardware it does at the low price point it has.

jsnell• 13 years ago

You've made this incorrect claim about battery size a bunch of times here, and I've corrected you a bunch of times. At this point I'm starting to think that you aren't just genuinely mistaken, but have some kind of agenda. (Even if I can't figure out what it could be).

So for the Nth time, the ARM ChromeBook has a 30Wh battery. The Nexus 7 has a 16Wh battery. This is not "about the same", it's a factor of 2 difference.

What would be about the same is the 2012 MacBook Air (35Wh) -- a device that incidentally has almost the same form factor as the ChromeBook.

Now, Apple did manage to inch it up to 38 Wh in the latest release. Maybe Samsung will be able to do get similar relative improvements. But if you're genuinely suggesting that a low-end machine 11" super-thin laptop could have a 60Wh battery... Well, I just don't know what to say.

Roboprog• 13 years ago

At $200, it makes a nice second laptop that you aren't afraid to break/lose. It won't replace your "real" computer, but it's a better size for reading/writing email than a smart phone.

Glyptodon3• 13 years ago

Chromebooks are the only small, portable, sub $500 PCs that don't completely suck. No wonder they sell. Everyone else is trying to charge $800+ even though laptops are perceived as something that should be cheap because they have a high risk of being stolen, getting damaged, or quickly going obsolete. It's like Google understood what the Netbook wanted to be, while everyone else dreamed of being Apple (without the least bit of ability to actually be Apple).

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Yup. Probably the only other OS you could use to pull this kind of platform off would be Win8RT, but nobody wants to sell win8RT devices because they're scared of users freaking out when they find out their new Windows notebook doesn't actually run real Windows.

Chrome and Win8RT are the only OSes that are good for an ARM-based notebook form-factor, and the ARM chip is necessary to make this device not suck at this end of the cost spectrum.

That and frankly, I think we're all sick of supporting Grandma's windows machine, so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great.

I won't buy one, I don't need one, but I can see the niches it fills.

tomsaffell2• 13 years ago

so getting computer-illiterate people onto a "web-only" device is great.

I recently replaced my wife's aging MacBook Air with the Samsung/ARM Chromebook - she much prefers it. It doesn't overheat, nor require frequent restarts. But she has a Masters in CS, and works from the command line, so let's add to, "computer-illiterate people" , "..and people who dont want to spend time nursing their computer".

freehunter3• 13 years ago

The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. They're netbooks, but far too often they weren't powerful enough to even run a modern browser with the weight of the OS hanging off of it.

A Chromebook is really the only true netbook that's ever existed.

makomk• 13 years ago

That doesn't explain why companies killed netbooks though. A lot of the low-end full sized laptops are now running netbook-class hardware at netbook-level prices, with all the performance issues that goes along with it. You just can't get anything smaller than 15" anymore without either shelling out for an Utrabook or Macbook or buying a Chromebook.

antitrust2• 13 years ago

The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop.

I didn't have a problem with my Acer netbook. It's slow, but not horribly slow. The main laggard factor is the 1gb RAM, which is too little for a Windows 7 install.

However, I had to remove all the crapware first. If they didn't ship with those installed, they wouldn't make money from all those juicy contracts.

okaram3• 13 years ago

I disagree; I see two problems with netbooks:

1. People were expecting a laptop; they are not; however, they're decent computers (don't do video, don't run VMs ... :), and portability and price are really nice.

2. Laptops got cheaper, and netbooks didn't ; when the first netbooks came out, they were less than half the price of the cheapest laptops; now, they're about the same price :(

pkulak2• 13 years ago

A friend of mine recently bought some ~$500 laptop with Windows 8 on it. Buying a new toy like that should be fun, but when that thing showed up he just spent a week being frustrated with it. And I was very little help. I don't even understand Windows 8. I've recommend Chromebooks to people, at half that cost, and when they get it they immediately love it.

tharrold2• 13 years ago

Wonder how this jibes with this report.

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-claims-just-500000-chromeb...

I also wonder if Chromebooks are priced to make even an operating profit.

michaelbuckbee• 13 years ago

It's all in how you draw the lines: "Sub $300 laptops" is a very distinct (and I would think small) category of total laptop sales.

leephillips• 13 years ago

Maybe, but a used Thinkpad might be a better deal overall : http://lee-phillips.org/x31/

jdf3• 13 years ago

I feel like the Chromebook is actually a better experience than a laptop.

As a programmer, I honestly only use 2 windows: browser and shell. Running crouton to create chroot Ubuntu "images" I can have my normal full (text-based) dev environment, and alt-tab back and forth with the browser. Honestly it feels easier to use than Ubuntu - I don't use any of the builtin Google services (e.g. Drive), but they manage to stay out of the way.

It's pretty cheap, looks pretty reasonable, and comes in at a pretty low weight. The screen's not the greatest, but I'm not doing anything where that matters. So all in all a great dev machine.

Only caveat for me is that Dropbox doesn't have an installable app for ARM. I need to find something else that does a good job of seamlessly syncing my workspaces and NFS, rsync, etc don't fit as nicely as Dropbox.

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

What are you actually building that will run on this hardware? Are are you ssh'ing into a different machine?

I just can't see it possible to run anything that relies on the weight of the JVM or relies on external apps (Redis, etc). What web app can live without some sort of a data store (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc)? Let's not even get into if you need to compile anything. (Even if you're not working in C, compilation is sometimes necessary with gems/npm/etc)

The default answer seems to be just ssh into a dev machine, using the Chromebook as a dumb terminal. While it works, that destroys a classic workflow used by many, relies on Internet access, and adds additional cost (especially if you're a consultant). Even a cheap VPS adds at least $300 a year in cost.

Am I incorrect about running a full dev environment on the Chromebook? I'd love to hear others' experiences.

RexRollman2• 13 years ago

I appreciate what you are saying, as I had a CR-48 and liked it a lot. That said, unless you absolutely do not want to perform any configuration or just don't want to spend more money, I feel that the DIY route is better.

For instance, I recently bought a Lenovo x230. I have Arch Linux on it, along with Firefox and Ratpoison. I get pretty much the same thing as I had ChromeOS: a full-screen web browser in one window and a full-screen terminal in another. This configuration has none of the privacy concerns I have about using a Google product and I don't need Google's permission just to create a user account.

(Backups are a breeze too: just a few dot files. I use Firefox Sync to back up my bookmarks.)

thezilch• 13 years ago

$800, hahaha; my co-worker paid that much to simply repair his MBAir after being on the receiving end of a beer. They resale for more, so it wasn't a bad choice, but the idea of paying the original cost and then such a repair cost floored me.

If there is innovations to be had with laptops, it is resistance to common desk issues like spilt drinks. The device being cheap is parallel with these needs. Making something thinner and more proprietary and glued together is the wrong direction for me.

gcr• 13 years ago

Some high-end laptops do take those issues into account.

Here's a video of a Thinkpad drinking a full glass of water while playing a video: http://youtu.be/1SWi6LlFGjk

Here's a video of a Thinkpad taking lightning bolts from a pair of Van de Graff generators for a whole minute without any problems: http://youtu.be/JXsDfuVctFk

Resistance to common household wear and tear such as spilled drinks or being struck by lightning is certainly a rare quality in a machine, but it's not unheard of.

okaram3• 13 years ago

Sort-of, but you still have netbooks; I have an old netbook as my developer computer ! it has an Atom, which is slow, 2GB RAM, and an SSD; I dual-boot windows and Linux; can run Visual Studio Express, and of course, all Linux stuff (I even run Unity on Ubuntu). You can get an Acer netbook for about the same price of an Acer chromebook.

Also, we've just bought an Acer V5, 12.1" with touch screen, 4GB Ram, and an A6 processor; really nice, for $429 ; it's a sub $500 laptop that doesn't suck; basically, a slightly nicer netbook :)

Chromebooks are nice, especially for simple stuff, but there are nice cheap laptops too :)

kunai3• 13 years ago

I beg to differ. http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-X201E-DH01-11-6-Inch-Laptop-Black...

With Haswell, the Asus could really hit it big. Ubuntu, I strongly think, has its future as the sort of super-Chromebook. More advanced, but still manageable.

bitL2• 13 years ago

I have one of these since February and it's far better than any Chromebook - x64, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, extremely portable, and runs Ubuntu 12.04 LTS by default. No weird ChromeOS limitations, no push to cloud storage by all means etc. Just the keyboard could be better...

Glyptodon3• 13 years ago

I've thought about buying one of those repeatedly, but have been afraid that it won't play HD video smoothly or have decent battery life (the bigger issue; My netbook started out getting 7.25 hours and still gets 3ish years later). Obviously would immediately swap the spinner for an SSD, too.

I've actually been hoping that Haswell would revitalize the market for machines like this like you mention, but all it seems to have done (so far) is make every machine like this get a touchscreen thrown on it and marked up another $150.

ralphc• 13 years ago

How is it on power consumption? I'm using a n2600 netbook as a home server, always on but just for ssh & things, it has 2gb ram, I could consider an upgrade if it doesn't use a lot of electricity.

soundoflight• 13 years ago

The article doesn't seem to mention if this is cutting into the netbook/cheap pc market or if it is actual growth in this type of laptop.

Anyone have any ideas on this?

VLM2• 13 years ago

chromebooks own 25% of the market under $300. OK. So who's the 75% they're eating into, I know thats not apple. Go to amazon, and its ... nothing. There doesn't appear to be a sub $300 laptop market other than chromebooks?

Unless they're really twisting definitions and calling a $186 ipod touch a "laptop under $300 that isn't a chromebook"

I might have missed it in the article.

michaelt• 13 years ago

Netbooks like [1] perhaps?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AOD270-1375-Netbook-Processor-Esp...

VLM2• 13 years ago

Could be, but then instead of writing "Chromebooks have in just the past eight months snagged 20 percent to 25 percent of the U.S. market for laptops that cost less than $300, according to NPD Group Inc." they would have used the word netbook, or "electronic device" or something like that.

There is a marketing problem in that I have a nexus 7 tablet and a bluetooth keyboard. What's the marketing message differentiating my nexus 7 from a chromebook, other than the screen is a wee bit bigger on the chromebook and the apps on the nexus 7 almost perfectly match the apps on my phone? There doesn't appear to be a marketing message differentiating them.

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

A quick search on BestBuy.com turns up 5-6 PC laptops less than $300 (looking at only in-store options, not their listing of "online" laptops where they partner with other sellers). I see similarly priced machines in WalMart alot too.

abdophoto• 13 years ago

Do you guys feel that this suggests that computers will require less local storage and depend mostly on the cloud as we move forward?

awaghadashish2• 13 years ago

they might still have local storage, but depending on the cloud's a no brainer IMO The main issue here is can people do without native apps and only a browser. I think a lot will change when we have programming IDEs and Photoshop inside a browser.

chinpokomon5• 13 years ago

I agree. I haven't found all my desktop equivalent apps yet, but I miss them less and less with each passing day.

antitrust2• 13 years ago

Consumers know the pattern: over time, technology gets cheaper.

Laptops and desktops are not selling well because, at the same time there have been no huge leaps in actually useful technology, manufacturers are trying to upsell us toward fancier machines that don't actually help us do anything.

At this point, a regular laptop should cost as much as a cell phone and be about as efficient. Instead, we're getting $1400 "ultra-books" that aren't so ultra that anyone actually needs one.

evilduck• 13 years ago

An unsubsidized smartphone is often more expensive than a budget to midrange laptop.

awaghadashish2• 13 years ago

Just put Xcode in a browser and I am all for Chromebooks and I am sure it will happen one day!

eliben3• 13 years ago

It's hard to over-estimate the convenience of a laptop you never fear losing, breaking or seeing die some horrible way. Just take another Chromebook, login, possibly wait a minute for all your apps to sync (if you use large apps) and viola - welcome back to your computer. Viruses? hah.

And all that for half the price of an iPad.

This is the laptop parents can give kids and folks can give their elderly parents without worrying about spending too much time fixing it and removing viruses.

jmduke• 13 years ago

I think the Chromebook paradigm is going to take some time to catch on, but once it does it's going to be terrific for everyone. I can't wait til it spreads to other platforms (namely smartphones and gaming consoles) as well.

"Hey, my phone's out of battery. Can I check my texts on yours real quick?"

mehrzad• 13 years ago

Only if it's on my personal, secure, and private cloud.

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

Yep, ubiquitous laptops with centralised control from a single entity and fine grained tracking built right in. This is terrific for everyone!

ghswa2• 13 years ago

I'm looking forward to it spreading between platforms.

If I'm watching a movie on my linux laptop and the battery dies I want to continue watching from the same spot on my wife's ipad.

micampe• 13 years ago

Well, in that aspect you actually have a very close experience with an iPad: except for the device material value, you can toss it and get a new one to be identical just by signing in and waiting for it to restore the automated backup from last night.

throwaway1979• 13 years ago

One other exception: I gave my mom a Samsung chromebook and an iPad. The touch interface of the iPad is very intuitive for her and she uses it. The chomebook is being used as a paper weight. Btw ... I don't want to be an Apple fanboy here. I gave my wife's niece a cheap Android tablet and she loves it and uses it (mainly games, email and Internet surfing). I suspect a Chromebook would not be the right solution for her as well. I think tablets hit the sweetspot when it comes to content consumption devices.

The question then is the following: are chromebooks appropriate for content creation? I suspect the answer will be yes someday soon. However, the elderly and children market will not be the right audience for such devices.

eliben3• 13 years ago

Yes, the difference being the difference between an ipad an a laptop (full keyboard, larger screen, etc) and the price. Tablets are great but they can't replace laptops for all use cases IMHO.

vinkelhake• 13 years ago

I happened to get a Chromebook for free some time ago. At first I didn't think I'd have much use for it. At the time I did much of my casual browsing on a tablet. For "serious" stuff I had laptops.

I've found that it has displaced the tablet for most casual browsing. I think the main reasons is that while it's slow, it's still faster than a tablet. Having a real keyboard is very nice. It also works well as an SSH terminal.

mdm_• 13 years ago

I think the Chromebook looks interesting, but in Canada the major selling point (price) is moot. Right now on Amazon.ca the cheapest Chromebook is $399, while in the $349-379 range I can choose from several makes and models of fully-functional 15" laptops.

morgante• 13 years ago

I don't think this really speaks to any growth in that market sector. Rather, Google is just taking over the low-end sector with software which matches the abysmal hardware.

Basically we're looking at the bifurcation of the market. People who can afford it have Apple devices and everyone else will end up with Google products subsidized by advertising dollars.

rednukleus• 13 years ago

You speak as though Windows and Linux dont exist. Over 90% of the market use those operating systems. Did I misinterpret your comment, or do you really live in that much of a bubble?

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

At my local Best Buy, they're always sold out. A few times I've overheard conversations of folks checking it out. They just want a cheap laptop, and you hear the usual questions: "Can I hook up my scanner?" "Will it run Call of Duty?" "Can I sync my iPhone?"

I think it's a great device, and I'll likely buy 1 or 2 or a few. However, I don't think that the marketing communicates what it really is, and folks are getting burned as a result.

I wonder, when sales performance is reported, is this gross sales, or net after returns?

fishtoaster• 13 years ago

I bought one at bestbuy last week (as I was about to leave on a trip), and I definitely got the impression that most buyers didn't know what they were getting into. Several salespeople double-checked that I knew this was not a "normal laptop." One guy said they'd been getting a lot of returns from people not knowing what "chromebook" entails.

gwu782• 13 years ago

Let's say the user just wants the hardware and form factor. Can the user dd over ChromeOS and use their own bootloader and open source OS? Are these netbooks "remote controlled" by Google at such a low level that the user cannot "opt out"?

chinpokomon5• 13 years ago

You can install a dev bootloader, but the way it initializes the system is different than what you may be familiar with

gwu782• 13 years ago

Any pointers to read more about this?

FWIW, I'm familiar with BSD bootloaders. I can follow the Linux boot process, but haven't invested much time in mastering it.

saturdaysaint• 13 years ago

Yeah, they're my default PC recommendation these days for non-power users. Enough power for web/e-mail/streaming video, 6 hours of battery life, great form factor, and build quality that's shockingly better than just about any PC I've used before this year. I'd certainly recommend them to anyone looking for a second PC. My girlfriend and I have one in our living room sitting next to our more capable Macbook Air and I have little urge to upgrade to 2 high end systems.

nzealand• 13 years ago

Almost the perfect computer for Grandma.... except still no skype.

chinpokomon5• 13 years ago

I've haven't missed Skype yet. Voice calling in Gmail works perfectly for me on my Pixel. If I need Skype, I can use it on my phone. As an absolutely worst case scenario, I can use Skype through Crouton.

agent123• 13 years ago

Doesn't it concern anyone that this is a computer on which absolutely nothing is private?

kryten3• 13 years ago

Make it cheap and no one will care any more. Make it shiny and the tech pundits will slobber all over it.

It concerns me for reference.

The device is dangerous to say the least.

I wish Stallman would write about them as people might start paying attention to those of us who can see what is coming.

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

Well, no, the OS is software on which, arguably, nothing is private. But you can put a different OS on a Chromebook, and apparently plenty of people who are concerned about ChromeOS -- whether for privacy or other reasons -- are putting Linux on them and finding Chromebooks a good way to get inexpensive (or not-so-inexpensive, in the case of the Pixel) Linux laptops.

chinpokomon5• 13 years ago

It isn't any different than running Chrome on your other legacy platforms. Privacy comes in different forms. The content I place on my drive directly is private. Beyond that, it has the same privacy as your web browser.

uslic001• 13 years ago

My two best buys in the past year were a 200 dollar new chromebook for my oldest daughter and a 375 dollar new ASUS 11.6 inch touchscreen Windows 8 laptop. The Chromebook is the only computer in our house that has never crashed and never had a virus/malware problem. The ASUS Vivobook has worked great and I enjoy Windows 8 on the touchscreen. I hardly ever use my Ipad 3 anymore. I will never waste money on an Apple product again as I get a much better bang for my buck with the alternatives on the market now.

jvandonsel• 13 years ago

Two kids. Two chromebooks, plus a web proxy server I can centrally whitelist (squid). Great combination.

mmgutz• 13 years ago

Not sure why this is a surprise. Have we all forgotten how popular netbooks were? The Chromebook is a better netbook.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

Remember when netbooks were a thing, but the industry crushed them because there was no profit margin?

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

The devices had about 4 percent to 5 percent
share in the first quarter

That is really quite stunning in the context of the whole laptop market. I am kind of intrigued at how Google is pulling this off. There are so many good arguments against a Chromebook for most people. You can buy an ordinary laptop for similar price and just run Chrome and get the same thing but with more features. Even without that, this seems to violate the law that a new entrant into a market has to be not just better but compellingly better to get market share.

How is Google doing it? Are they going direct to pitch these to bulk buyers like academic, students, businesses, governments? Or are "normal" consumers actually wandering into Best Buy and choosing it over the Windows laptop right next to it?

kunai3• 13 years ago

How is Google doing it

A bit of both approaches, to be honest. People used to argue that OS X is the far better OS because of its dead simplicity, but that's falling flat on its face now that Chromebooks have arrived. No malware PERIOD -- no code can execute without some sort of complicated exploit, and if that wasn't enough, Linux runs at its base, which adds an extra layer of security.

The beauty of the Chromebook is its simplicity, and extensibility. It's practically a $249 Linux box for the power users -- load up crouton and off you go. For the consumers who never need to touch the Linux layer, they can use the top layer without ever seeing Linux, and enjoy computing nirvana.

Once NaCl is mature enough that most developers use it and once the Web Store populates with offline apps, watch this start to take off. It will ride on the same merits that drove OS X for over a decade, but it will fly higher.

Just you wait. This is the final redemption for desktop Linux.

metaprinter• 13 years ago

I bought the acer chromebook for my 5yo. He loves it for playing Lego games, watching YouTube and Kahn Academy vids, as well as using code academy and getting emails from gamgam.

I borrow it for business trips and works well enough. Best laptop I ever bought.

tmzt• 13 years ago

Is he playing Lego games in Chrome OS or are you running a different system on it?

habosa• 13 years ago

I have said it many times on HN and I'll say it again: I LOVE my Samsung ARM Chromebook. I'll just quote my previous comments:

It's $250 so there's no argument about buying X or Y netbook instead, you can barely get anything with a keyboard that browses the internet for that price. Also for that price you get 2 (3?) years of 100GB on Google Drive and 12 Gogo WiFi passes, which together are already worth over $250. So you can throw the device in the trash and still come out on top.

Now to the computer itself:

First, the battery life is awesome, 6.5 hours of solid use (WiFi model) and since it turns on from cold in ~7 seconds you can turn it off between sessions and not lose any power at all. If that's too long for you just close the lid, you'll lose about 1% per hour but everything resumes instantly when you open it (and I do mean INSTANTLY).

Second, the hardware is really excellent for the price. The keyboard is my favorite laptop keyboard out there (even against my MBP) and the trackpad is second only to Apple devices imo. It's the same weight/size as a MacBook Air but maybe 0.2" thicker. The only hardware downsides are the plastic chassis and the screen's somewhat bad viewing angles.

Third, it runs most of what you need right out of the box. I don't even have my in developer mode, you don't need that to use Google's Secure Shell and Remote Desktop Chrome extensions. It has an Offline version of Google Drive so you can keep your most important documents local and everything syncs when you're connected.

Fourth, it's stress-free. Because everything is synchronized to the cloud and the hardware is so cheap, you never have to worry about this thing. If it breaks (which it won't easily), just go to your nearest Best Buy, drop $250, and sign in with you Google account and you'll be back exactly where you left off (even down to the tabs you had open). I really can't recommend this device more highly. It's definitely not the right device for full-time development but as a companion to a larger laptop or a desktop it's a perfect second machine and much more useful than an iPad or Transformer-style tablet (I've had both).

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