

A revisionist history of the best laptop at any price: the Cr-48 - niels_olson
http://wherein.posterous.com/a-revisionist-history-of-the-best-laptop-avai

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niels_olson
tl;dr: buy a Cr-48 on eBay for $225, put a bigger hard drive in for $120,
follow Todd Vierling's recipe for Ubuntu with 3G, and have yourself an amazing
laptop for $350.

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DustinCalim
OK, I like this article because I've been using my CR48 solely since I
received it.

Firstly, it is not a dual core machine; the production Samsung/Acers are, the
CR48 is single core, hyperthreaded.

I went a similar path with Ubuntu; although I just created a new stateful
partition and access the ChromeOS Kernel. This allows me to dual boot when
needed. After 8 months, I can tell you, it is not needed. I code and it is
just not possible in ChromeOS with the current webapps available.

I have considered switching to full Ubuntu because ChromeOS chose to use a
32bit kernel for whatever reason(compatibility?). However, the processor can't
support more than 2GB ram, even with a 64bit OS so I'm open to opinions.

I haven't used the 3G card yet, so I can't speak on it. I am considering
swapping it out for a Broadcom HD Decoder so I can watch 720p and hopefully
1080p videos without choppiness.

Did you notice a performance increase when you swapped to a larger HD?

As for battery life, ChromeOS is a little better, but with Ubuntu, I routinely
get 7 - 8.5 hours. There are some Ubuntu tweaks for SSD drives that I've done
as well. Out of the box Ubuntu is setup for platter drives.

Overall the CR48 has some quirks but is an awesome machine, and I love the
design of it more than the production models. I was able to buy an extra one
of Craigslist for $150 as a backup. The closest competitor I think is the
Macbook air 13" which costs 9x more(!)

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niels_olson
> single core, hyperthreaded

thanks for the correction

> Did you notice a performance increase when you swapped to a larger HD?

No. Although the left palmrest tends to be a bit warmer!

> Ubuntu tweaks for SSD drives

Do tell? What?

> I love the design

This. I really like having an "unbranded" machine. I don't need big, glowing,
ostentatious branding on my pants, why do I need it on my computer?

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DustinCalim
No prob, I'd like to get a hold of a production Chromebook to see the impact
of an actual dual-core processor.

Here's a SSD tweaking link: [http://www.howtogeek.com/62761/how-to-tweak-your-
ssd-in-ubun...](http://www.howtogeek.com/62761/how-to-tweak-your-ssd-in-
ubuntu-for-better-performance/)

The CR48 does raise some eyebrows when you pull it out;

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teyc
This reminds me of how totally ADD Google was before Larry Page became CEO. It
just started all sorts of shiny puppy projects, or even bought companies like
Piknik to support those puppies [1]. Google today is a much more focussed
animal. It is Google+ and social.

Given the Motorolla acquisition and the massive growth of mobile, I guess
Android is still safe for now.

[1] <http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Video+Gallery>

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sp332
I had a pretty similar experience. Chrome on ChromeOS was unusably laggy. It
would pause for 1 second every time I opened a new tab, and sometimes 2 full
seconds before it would scroll. But after I flashed the ROM and installed
stock Ubuntu on it, Firefox lagged much less. I eventually gave up on it
because the wi-fi driver was buggy and would drop the signal every 5 minutes,
but if I could fix that, I would be very happy with it as a web-browsing
"appliance".

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niels_olson
I would give it another go using Veirling's recipe. I use it as my primary
laptop at this point.

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haridsv
I gave mine to someone who just started learning web programming and it has
been great! Using shiftedit with dropbox for creating and editing files, and
the battery life on it is amazing. But, i agree, ChromeOS is mot for everyone.

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ebbv
Interesting, and I would love to play around with a Cr-48 (maybe I'll get one
off eBay), but I am so tired of people mis-using the term "brick".

Bricking a machine means _it is permanently ruined_. You cannot turn a brick
back into a computer. Thus the term bricked it.

If you just need to reinstall the OS, that's not bricked. You just nuked it.
It can be rebuilt.

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niels_olson
corrected, thanks.

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retroafroman
Any HNewsers still have one laying around they're not using and want to get
rid of? I'd like to upgrade from my 3 year old netbook. Email is in profile.

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Dejital
Has anyone had luck installing Linux distributions other than Ubuntu? I'm
thinking Arch Linux may be great for this.

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niels_olson
Once you flash the BIOS, I suspect Brad's driver fix would work regardless.

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weirdkid
Did the component tear-down price justify the Chromebook's low price, or was
Google subsidizing them?

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skystorm
The Cr-48 discussed here was given out for free (sort of like a beta tester
program), so that was by definition subsidized. ;)

And as far as I could tell, the "actual" Chromebooks that went on sale later
one have been priced comparable to their non Chrome OS counterparts, so I
don't think there were any subsidies in play.

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drivebyacct2
I can agree that Ubuntu is vastly better than ChromeOS. Chrome in Ubuntu is
far faster than Chrome in ChromeOS. That having been said, the rest of the
environment is still too slow for my taste, even with a conservative window
manager, and that's with me shelled into my server for compiles and the like.

Also, I've not fired it up since my free subscription expired, but the latest
version of Ubuntu very happily sees and offers to enable the 3G card.

(final note, if this spurs anyone to google "install ubuntu on cr-48", I will
advise you that opening the cr-48, taping the bios-write-protection to disable
it, and installing (32-bit) Ubuntu from a jump drive is vastly easier than the
other two options which require VirtualBox and/or replacing the user
filesystem in place with scripts that haven't been updated for some time)

