
The new Acer Chromebook - cleverjake
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-new-acer-chromebook.html
======
ConstantineXVI
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
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.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
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).

~~~
morsch
Well, we believed you, but that still doesn't make it more than a streak of
bad luck. (The plural of anectode...)

That said: _2012 Computer Reliability Report: Lenovo Most Reliable, Acer Least
Reliable, Apple Declined_ [http://ctwatchdog.com/finance/2012-computer-
reliability-repo...](http://ctwatchdog.com/finance/2012-computer-reliability-
report-lenovo-most-reliable-acer-least-reliable-apple-declined)

~~~
sliverstorm
_The plural of anecdote_

... is data, right?

~~~
johnchristopher
The quote:

Anecdotes often refer to the exception, rather than the rule: "Anecdotes are
useless precisely because they may point to idiosyncratic responses."[18] Even
when many anecdotes are collected to prove a point, "The plural of anecdote is
not data." (Roger Brinner[19])

The source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence>

~~~
sliverstorm
Oh, I know, I was just being flip.

------
nostromo
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/>)

~~~
niels_olson
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.

~~~
netcan
The hardware isn't really the novel thing here.

~~~
fmstephe
You are right that the hardware isn't novel. But for me it is 100% of the
reason to actually buy one. Nothing new in hardware but solid, practical and
inexpensive quality.

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

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
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.

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

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

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
It isn't "general purpose."

~~~
cryptoz
Sure it is. What makes it not general purpose? You can write and execute
programs on it. How much more general purpose can you get?

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
You can? From all the reviews I've read it runs web-"apps" things. I've never
read that it can run software developed for the platform specifically.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
You can run Native Client code on it, just as you can in Chrome the Browser.

<https://developers.google.com/native-client/>

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

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

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Netbooks with an Atom CPU. Or at least my one struggles a little.

------
davidbrent
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.

~~~
jrockway
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
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.

~~~
huggah
There is no "Google version". Internally, we use the same SSH app that you
would use, which works great. It's _not_ a terminal: you can't do anything
locally. But it's a perfectly decent developer environment as long as all you
tools and editor are terminal or web applications (mine are).

------
netcan
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.

~~~
micro_cam
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.

~~~
netcan
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.

------
facorreia
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.

~~~
honestcoyote
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.

------
jordonwii
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.

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

------
dchuk
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.

------
BillSaysThis
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?

------
randomchars
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_dh
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.

------
thereallurch
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?

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

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

------
capo
Intel inside this one:
[http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/acer-c7-chromeb...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/acer-c7-chromebook.html#specs)

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

~~~
mark-r
"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."

------
diminish
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.

~~~
georgemcbay
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.

~~~
diminish
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..

~~~
ceejayoz
That's like saying "I'd buy a Toyota if they'd turn it into a Lexus".
Chromebooks aren't intended to compete with Macbooks or Ultrabooks.

~~~
diminish
I develop/Ace-based development IDE+ Firebug/Chrome Dev tools everyday for
Ruby/Python/JS development. And for online web developer, who target web
development, Chromebooks have the potential to become a web development
machine too.

The Toyota/Lexus metaphor is totally pointless. As a developer and proponent
of web based IDEs, I believe that a platform needs its developers on itself in
the longterm, not on some other platforms.

