

Reviewing the $250 Samsung Chromebook as a Developer - omni
http://blog.travisthieman.com/reviewing-the-250-samsung-chromebook-as-a-developer/

======
city41
I received the same Chromebook on Thursday, and also gave Crouton a shot. I
pretty much completely agree with this review. Although I've since ditched
Crouton and returned to the verified OS, at least for now. Overall the machine
and ChromeOS are very pleasant, and I hope this style of computing keeps
growing and catches on.

The hardware is very impressive for $250. I especially find the keyboard and
trackpad very functional, much more so than many PC laptops that cost 4x as
much or even more.

The wifi issues are very annoying, and I suspect they are at the hardware
level and probably not fixable. I would have gladly paid another $20-50 or
whatever it would have taken to get a better wifi chip in the machine.

Another alternative to Crouton is using dev_install, which is how Chrome OS
developers get a decent dev environment going on their machines. I've not yet
tried this, but plan to.

I truly hope to eventually find myself using ChromeOS as it was intended and
still developing with it. This basically means using something like Cloud9.

Oh and another thing I am finding nice about this machine is it's a great test
bed for HTML5 games. The current game I am working on crashes on the
Chromebook if I enable sound, I suspect I am loading too many sound files and
running out of memory. It's good to have a handy "lower end" baseline to test
things with.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I _really_ wish ChromeOS would let me pin bookmarks
to the taskbar. You can only pin apps, not websites.

~~~
djeikyb
I might not have bought this machine if I'd known about the wifi problems. I'm
in an apartment with eight to ten ssids visible on each channel. My other wifi
devices work great, but the chromebook frequently lost connection. As in, lose
connection, try-fail, try-fail, try-fail, try-succeed just long enough to load
another page, repeat. I've mitigated the problem somewhat by boosting the
signal strength (thanks to tomato+linksys-wrt54gl).

Other than that I'm pretty happy with it. I do spend most of my time in the
ssh app..

~~~
VLM
"I do spend most of my time in the ssh app."

Is there a decent VNC client?

Also is this a "real" SSH client like I can X-window forward and share ssh
keys or just a "sorta SSH" like I'm better off using ajaxterm?

For portable use I've been using a very old netbook with android-x86 installed
for some years now, but I'm not too happy with the (pitiful) battery life and
I've used the heck out of it so I'm sure the battery is not long for this
world. So its either a new chromebook or something like a new android tablet
with a bluetooth keyboard is in my near future. Its probably going to be the
tablet/keyboard route unless something/someone convinces me a chromebook would
be better.

~~~
djeikyb
> Also is this a "real" SSH client like I can X-window forward and share ssh
> keys

First, I use Google's Secure Shell app [1]. X-fowarding does "work", but (and
I'm using the default window manager) the wm doesn't give you access to the
window. I just see it briefly. I haven't had problems using ssh keys. Port
forwarding options work great.

> Is there a decent VNC client?

If by decent you mean a client not requiring you to hit third party servers,
not that I've found.

I'm optimistic about both these problems being fixed, one way or another. If
by neither Google nor chrome app, then by installing your own software and
switching between x servers.

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-
shell/pnhec...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-
shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo)

------
mkdir
_> Unfortunately, there seems to be no option to change the way apps are
opened._

If you right click on an app's icon, you can select "Open as window" or "Open
maximized", both of which emulate the traditional model. Unfortunately,
maximized apps _always_ feature a pair of floating buttons (unmaximize and
close) in the top right corner.

I bought my Chromebook in a desperate attempt to satiate my urge to buy a
much-more-expensive MacBook Air, and I'd say it's working.

To be honest, I spend most of my time in the SSH app, but web browsing is
surprisingly smooth given the machine's price. The extra-wide (and extra
tall!) left control and left alt keys are a welcomed touch, and, like Travis
noted, battery life has been better than expected.

------
obilgic
250$ Samsung Chromebook is the greatest mobile device I have ever owned. I
hope they release new version of it every year with 250$ price tag but
lighter, smaller, faster and with longer battery life. I will buy that new
version every year.

~~~
mtgx
Their goal should be 10h of battery life for this year's model, which would be
easily achieved by increasing its tiny battery. Unfortunately, I think they
will have other priorities with it, which means they'll have to keep the
battery tiny again to cut costs and be able to use the other stuff they plan
for it.

If I were to build the next Chromebook, I'd put 802.11ac Wi-fi in it, increase
battery life to 10h, use a quad core 2 Ghz Cortex A15 chip, and probably leave
the resolution the same for this year (so it doesn't nullify the 50% bigger
battery I'd use), but use a higher quality IPS panel. And probably try to
increase the quality of the build, too, a bit, as long as it costs me as much
as they did last year. I think all of those are doable for this year's $250
Chromebook.

~~~
jsnell
The battery is comparable to that in a macbook air (30 vs 35 Wh).

------
andrewflnr
The thing I was most worried about was battery life. It must have been a
different one where the advertised battery life was 4 hours. 6+ hours for $250
is much more tempting.

~~~
justinschuh
The $200 Acer model is the one with the low battery life, in large part
because it has an HDD.

~~~
ecspike
You can also upgrade the Acer to a SSD and you might be able to upgrade its
RAM.

------
fierarul
Just the other day I connected an external display to my Acer C7 Chromebook
and I was able to use both displays just fine (even tried an 1080p video on
the external one).

So this problem that you cannot extend the desktop on the 2nd display looks
like a device issue, not an OS one.

~~~
xmodem
This is an ARM device - may very well be a hardware or driver issue -
hopefully one that can and will be fixed in a software update.

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somecallmechief
While I haven't tried Crouton, I've been able to get quite a lot of
Development work done on my Chromebook thanks to tools like Cloud9. If you
opt-in to the dev channel for ChromeOS, updates start coming in much faster
(and generally very stable at that).

~~~
omni
Thanks for the advice, I'll look into using Cloud9 and the dev channel.

------
sasvari
Anybody around running archlinux ARM [0] on it and kind enough to share his
experiences and insides?

[0] <http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook>

~~~
djeikyb
I tried with a usb stick. Couldn't get to bash prompt, think it might be
hanging looking for root on an sd card. Since the instructions say use an sd
card, assuming it's my fault. Chrooting seems to work just fine..except the
networking seems messed up. Can hit ip addresses, but not domain names. But
here again, I'd guess it's some dumb mistake that a little rtfm and
troubleshooting should fix.

~~~
1SaltwaterC
Non configured /etc/resolv.conf. A common issue with chroot setups.

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Sambdala
I think a lot of the negative experiences can be avoided if you try to stay in
ChromeOS as much as possible.

I think some of the hardware issues are also device-specific as I have an Acer
C7, and I haven't run into any of the issues he's mentioned.

The point of the Chromebook is you're accessing everything from the cloud on a
thin client. A lot of the personal gains I've found from using my Chromebook
is that I'm not setting everything I use up in such a way that I can access
everything I use from any computer connected to the internet.

The fact that it's a super-cheap and super-small laptop that's great to travel
with is just a bonus.

~~~
omni
It does seem likely that the ARM Chromebook is having some device-specific
hardware issues, both due to its cost and because it is lagging behind the
other devices in terms of getting OS updates.

------
pwnna
I don't remember exactly, but isn't there an option to completely get rid of
ChromeOS and install ubuntu? Does that work better?

I'm thinking of buying some as gifts, but preloaded it with Ubuntu instead. Is
that feasible?

~~~
brigade
There's ChrUbuntu, which is easy to install but gives a barely functional
trackpad, no sound, and a 75% chance of hanging on wake.

Supposedly 13.04 is significantly better, but upgrading is stupidly hard and
I've yet to manage to do so (currently trying to figure out how to work around
a known bug in Plymouth.) But even then, OpenGL ES may or may not work yet,
and unity apparently doesn't work in 13.04.

~~~
ariwilson
Those issues have all been fixed (well I never heard of the hanging on wake
issue) FYI.

<http://www.whatthetech.info/samsungchromebook/>

~~~
brigade
Not in the default (or default-updated) 12.04 ChrUbuntu install, unless
something has changed in the last 6 hours.

Also using the Arch files only half fixes the trackpad - using the physical
button is still very finicky compared to Chrome OS.

The hang on wake issue I see might be "Auto-suspend/closing lid crashes
Ubuntu" in your list, which lists no known fix.

And your workaround [1] for audio is explicitly dangerous with the stock
kernel (I know Marcin Juszkiewicz's kernel for 13.04 has a fix so you won't
melt your speakers, but it seems ChrUbuntu hasn't adopted it as of two weeks
ago)

[1] [http://www.whatthetech.info/fixing-sound-chromebook-
chrubunt...](http://www.whatthetech.info/fixing-sound-chromebook-
chrubuntu/comment-page-1/#comment-228)

------
irmbrady
> _The keyboard has dedicated volume and brightness keys but lacks media
> player buttons._

A very minor point to take away from the article; but do people actually use
the media player buttons on their keyboard? I use brightness and volume
buttons all the time; but I do not ever recall using the media buttons on my
laptops/desktops in the same way as I would on other media device (phone, mp3
player, etc).

If I wish to switch song on my laptop, I tend to open my media player and
select one which I actually want to listen to, rather than be at the mercy of
shuffle.

~~~
OnionChamp
The ability to control your media player without opening its window is great,
but you don't need dedicated buttons for that. I've been using global hotkeys
for it for years, with the following pretty handy configuration: shift+alt+s
for play/pause, q and a for prev and next song, x and c for volume down and
up, and z for play random song.

------
ecspike
I've had the machine since December and crouton since early February after
trying Chrubuntu and Bodhi Linux. It has worked fairly well.

I haven't had the Wi-Fi problems besides not wanting to connect to my cell via
Wi-Fi tether. And every monitor I've tried has worked.

I have noticed that the chroot can cause the battery to falsely report. Other
than those minor issues, it has become a reliable coffee shop coding machine
for me.

~~~
omni
Did you have to make any changes to get external monitors to work well? Mind
going into detail if you did?

------
bhickey

        Apple offers both matte and glossy finishes on their notebooks
    

This has not been the case for years.

~~~
omni
Ah, looks like you're mostly right. They don't do that anymore, but when I
bought my MBP in early 2012, I did have the option. I'll correct the article,
thanks.

~~~
bhickey
Hrm. I thought they dropped the option in mid-2011.

~~~
pyre
Maybe they just did an excellent job of convincing him that he had a choice,
and funnelling him to the only option available.

~~~
bdc
A chapter from Henry Ford's playbook

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deepGem
My chromebook doesn't suffer from the WIFI issues reported in this article.
One key issue with the crosh from a developer perspective is the lack of a
copy and paste option. You can't copy content from another chrome window into
the crosh terminal. Seriously affects development but then it also indirectly
let's you type and remember commands :)

~~~
Sambdala
I have no issues using a two-finger tap to paste content into the chrosh
terminal.

------
saturdaysaint
Funny, I just talked to a consumer that called his new Chromebook "useless"
due to wi-fi problems; since I hadn't heard of this, I assumed he had a bad
router. Being an inherently connected device sure makes this a more
showstopping issue.

------
ahi
Sort of sounds broken. I expect $250 devices to work as advertised.

