
HP Unveils Premium Chromebook: 3K Display, Intel Core M, 16 GB of RAM and USB-C - msh
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10291/hp-unveils-premium-chromebook-3k-display-intel-core-m3-16-gb-of-ram-and-usbc
======
malkia
Everytime I've got 3200x1800 laptop, I wanna go back to 1920x1080 or
1920x1200.. Why well, personally, it's not worth going more than that. There
is VRAM being wasted, gpu, cpu cycles, etc. and then software is not perfect -
some of it would scale well, some others won't... Bought for my son Windows 10
laptop with 3200x1800 - lots of Qt applications would not scale properly, the
minecraft launcher too. Maybe it'll be better on linux, chrome, and surely it
was solved problem on OSX, but I still don't see the point.

The big thing was moving from 1024x768 to 1920x1080, and 4K displays are great
- but when they are big, not for laptop.

~~~
msbarnett
> Maybe it'll be better on linux, chrome, and surely it was solved problem on
> OSX, but I still don't see the point.

Most of my use of a laptop is for programming, which means a lot of time
starring at text. The _far_ crisper text display on
Retina/UltraHD/4k/whatevermarketingterm monitor feels much nicer to read for
hours on end, for my money. It's a lot more like reading print.

I feel like I'm squinting when reading jagged lower rez text on my 1920x1080
external monitor, in contrast

Diclaimer: I use OS X, so I don't run into the scaling downsides you see in
other OSes, and those are significant and would probably turn me off of 4k
displays.

~~~
malkia
So Chrome & OSX probably solve this somehow, but all my chromebooks have
crouton, and yes Windows'10 support for 4K displays is not there yet. Most of
the apps work, but then there are some that don't (Electronic Arts's Origin
client, which is written in Qt was not scaling properly, same for Minecraft
Launcher, there are other examples too). Also in the "4K" mode I would often
see screen tearing in some games (if they can't stick to 30 or 60fps), but
that's more due to the 4x pixels that needs to be drawn. For that I've hard
switched my son's laptop back to 1920x1080 - so it still looks kind of crispy,
and things look well.

~~~
vox_mollis
I think you're missing parent's point. The benefits of staring at text all day
with >30yo eyes also applies to Linux. I use Arch and Fedora on high-dpi
displays and I'd sooner give up programming than ever return to ~72dpi.

Parent isn't talking about most apps, they are referring to terminals and
IDEs, for which use case high-dpi is absolutely critical, and outweighs the
occasional inconvenience of poor scaling outside those apps.

~~~
malkia
But that's where I disagree, especially when comes to terminals. I'm so used
to seeing the pixels, that it doesn't bother me, but even then hinted anti-
aliasing helped quite a lot to solve this. What I'm really missing (and hence
my heavily opinionated answer) is that there are lot of people that might just
started coding on higher DPI monitors/devices, and to them going back would be
terrible.

I started on Apple ][ :)

~~~
rayiner
I'd hate to go back to the eye-strain inducing fuzzy low-res CRTs we had to
tolerate back in the day. I can look at my rMBP screen all day without getting
a headache.

------
chatmasta
I wanted to make the cheapest possible development machine I could, assuming I
did all my work on a remote server. So I bought a Lenovo 100s for $80 from
Amazon (ok, it was $160, but I signed up for the Amazon credit card for the
discount). It's one of the lowest end chromebooks you can get.

But it's awesome. The google docs/sheets/etc features are nice, and it's
perfectly capable of web browsing. For development, if you work in the cloud,
using Vim on a remote server, all you need is an SSH client.

For fun, I put Kali linux onto an SD card and I can use crouton to switch to
the Kali chroot. So I can literally plug in an SD card and have a totally
fresh "development machine" for $80.

It's great for traveling in developing countries because if it gets stolen,
I'm out $80, not $1500.

~~~
ben174
If opening a new credit line and getting a hard hit on your credit report is
worth $80, fine. But in absolutely no way was that a product discount. Amazon
credited you $80 for opening a credit card with them. All credit cards have
rewards. But it had nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of that product.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I agree the 80 dollar discount is irrelevant to the Chromebook but...

Is signing up for a credit card and for your credit report? I would have
thought that as long as you pay it off promptly each month it's an overall
benefit to your credit score?

~~~
jljljl
Every time you apply for a new card, you get a hard pull. Credit agencies
don't like too many hard pulls in a short period of time because it looks
reckless to open so many new lines of credit at once.

It's unlikely that opening a new credit card from time to time will do serious
damage to your credit. And over the long term, having a lot of credit
available can be beneficial to your credit score.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Why do people in US care about your credit score? What difference does it
really make? Genuine question.

Here in Australia it seems the banks want to shovel credit cards down our
throats no matter how much debt we are in or how bad we are at paying.

~~~
yolesaber
The credit score is used for all sorts of things in the US, from the interest
rate on your mortgage to qualifying for renting to even some employment
checks. It's fucked up, especially since the formula for calculating the
'score' differs from one agency to another and is deliberately kept obscured.

~~~
nitrogen
It also seems kind of like voodoo; scores change up and down over time with
zero change in behavior.

~~~
yolesaber
Yeah that's why I really don't pay attention to it. Plus the fact that it is
so easily gamed: if a party wanted to (such as a realtor or someone else with
access), they could just run hard credit checks on you all day and tank your
score.

To illustrate how fucked it is, I use a credit tracking app from my bank and
it consistently reports scores of 700 and above yet I've had realtors tell me
they weren't sure if I could get an apartment because of my credit score -
showing up with enough cash for the first six months of payments quickly
resolved that issue.

------
manaskarekar
Does anyone know what is the possibility/progress of having full fledged
compilers and interpreters running on Chrome OS in the future? Or is that
never going to be reality, because of the goals of ChromeOS?

It is a great OS, but very light on software development options.

I know there is always Crouton or a native linux install, but out of the box
support would be awesome.

~~~
Mikeb85
Developer mode. Chrome OS is Gentoo underneath. Most people just use Crouton
because Ubuntu/Fedora/whatever are the go-to Linux distros.

~~~
mbreese
Well, isn't Crouton also a more stable way to play with a Chrome OS system? If
things go wrong, can't you just blow away the Crouton chroot and keep the
stock Chrome OS install (with updates) intact?

~~~
fmstephe
That is the case. I personally love Crouton for development on a pretty old
chromebook.

------
jamespo
I run crouton on my chromebook but really if you intend to run desktop linux
don't get a chromebook, even at boot waiting for the "developer mode" beeps
are annoying besides the other compromises (small native storage etc).

~~~
jdeibele
I bought a 2013 Chromebook Pixel from somebody. One of his reasons for selling
it was that he had enabled developer mode and his child hit the space bar on
boot up. That wiped all of his work. He was going back to a laptop.

~~~
jessaustin
Did you tell him about DVCS?

------
akhilcacharya
My biggest problem with these Chromebooks is actually the limited local
storage - this hardware with more local storage would be a killer linux
machine.

~~~
giaour
In a lot of chromebooks, the storage is replaceable. It's just a normal-sized
SSD that happens to have a very low capacity.

~~~
rrego
Most chromebooks don't have replaceable storage. Acer seems to be the only one
making new chromebooks with replaceable storage. Also, eMMC isn't an SSD

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chrome_OS_devices/Chrom...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chrome_OS_devices/Chromebook)

------
jzymbaluk
I'm looking at getting a new laptop this summer, and I've been leaning towards
a Dell XPS 13, but this chromebook is intriguing to me. I had a an Acer c720
chromebook for a while and I had a really good experience running Chromeos and
Ubuntu through Crouton. Having 16 gb of RAM is an important feature to me, and
I'm disappointed the non-touch XPS 13 doesn't offer it. I'm probably also all
right with having limited on-device storage because usb 3 is fast and external
storage is cheap.

How capable is the Core m7? Is it hefty enough to drive a KDE desktop
smoothly? What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings?

~~~
nacs
> What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings?

It uses an integrated Intel graphics chip -- it won't be able to do any decent
gaming.

At the 16GB price point of this thing ($1k), you could get a more conventional
laptop instead of Google Chrome/Pixel OS systems and get a lot more power and
flexibility out of it.

~~~
stordoff
> > What about playing light linux games like Civ 5 or Crusader Kings?

> It uses an integrated Intel graphics chip -- it won't be able to do any
> decent gaming.

Depending what you mean by decent gaming. I've played Civilization V on Intel
Graphics (HD4000 OSX & HD4400 Windows), and it runs fine on the lower end
settings. Not ideal by any means, but the newer Intel Graphics chips are OK
for some games.

------
nv-vn
Still no more info on storage? I'd buy the $499 model in a heartbeat if it had
a 32GB SSD (or if it was upgradeable). The fact that they haven't released
those details yet makes me think the number will be rather unimpressive.

~~~
tomku
According to the Ars article[1] I read, all models have a 32gb eMMC storage
drive.

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/hp-and-google-are-
mak...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/hp-and-google-are-making-a-
premium-13-inch-chromebook-for-499/)

------
blinkingled
Now you can run 16 Chrome tabs at once!

Joke aside if Google get the ChromeOS Android merge or more desktopification
of ChromeOS done soon this will be a good to have Chromebook.

~~~
jdeibele
Run lots of tabs with [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg)

I saw this extension recommended on another thread and it's worked out very
well for me. It suspends tabs that aren't being used after X amount of time,
normally 1 hour. Activity Monitor on my Mac showed a huge difference in CPU
activity.

~~~
DiabloD3
They're working on enabling tab discarding (from mobile Chrome) on the
desktop. Check out the tab discard experiment, but it doesn't have automatic
discarding yet, just manual through chrome://discard.

They want to add dom state serialization before they enable automatic
discarding.

------
woodcut
What i would love is a 11-12" chromebook that has ~8GB of ram and an
expandable SSD option, a good screen and is military spec so it can take a
beating when i go travelling.

My current macbook has a very narrow operating environment (10-35 degrees
centigrade) and can't withstand being taken camping on the beach.

------
dave2000
I want a chromebook but all the ones I've seen are the price of a good laptop,
or crap. Why can't I pay £200 for a good one? What about £300 then? Nice
screen, 6 or 8 gigs of ram, a cpu more powerful than in the average phone?
They seem very expensive for what they are (a midrange phone in a laptop body,
as far a I can tell).

------
andmarios
16GB of RAM for running Chrome. Sounds about right!

------
rocky1138
This hardware looks great and the specs are bang on. How well would this run
Kubuntu?

~~~
dyladan
I would guess it would run it fine. My C720 has significantly reduced specs
from this and I don't notice any problems with ubuntu mate

------
rch
How is a Core M considered premium?

~~~
jsmith0295
It's faster than you'd expect, despite the very low TDP. I have the base model
2nd gen 12" MacBook, and I haven't had any issues with anything feeling slow
on it.

~~~
artimaeis
I've been looking at the 12" Macbook line since it released and I'm curious
how it performs dev work - do you run XCode on it? How's the form factor
working for you overall?

Sorry to derail the topic - just genuinely interested in the thoughts on that
hardware!

~~~
jsmith0295
I primarily use Atom and do JavaScript + Laravel development (with a Homestead
VM always running!) and for that it performs quite well. I haven't tried
running XCode yet, but from what I read before I bought it, I doubt it will be
much of an issue.

------
bitL
Can you completely strip Chrome OS from these Chromebooks? Including BIOS-
specific stuff like automatic rewriting of modified base system? So that you
could boot straight into Linux without worrying your OS will be gone if you
forget to press some key upon boot?

BTW, flash-based storage (likely eMMC) for >$1k is just eek.

~~~
VonGuard
The last premium Chromebook, the Pixel, yes you could install Linux and just
boot into it.

Problem was, Linux... Debian was not ready for this device, especially the
high res screen, which made the UI in Linux super duper tiny. Debian saw the
screen as a giant regular resolution screen...

Lots of edge cases like this, especially with touch screens.

~~~
bitL
Thanks! I was asking because I would like to have a dedicated "retro" machine
for running all 8-bit/16-bit and console emulators and a Pentium 4405Y would
be capable of running all of them smoothly (Baytrail/Braswell are too slow);
32GB eMMC would be sufficient as well.

~~~
VonGuard
Frankly, if yer looking for a portable way to play emulated games and old
computer stuff, the nVidia Shield Portable is amazing. It's like someone at
nVidia saw all these GP32's and weird handheld emulation devices and said,"
geez, we could make that actually work."

Alternately, an Intel NUC or a compute stick works, too. As do Raspberry Pi. I
would caution against making this kinda device into an emulator box. You want
generic hardware.

~~~
bitL
For Dolphin you really need something based on Core M or better to run
smoothly (CPU intense). I have a Shield TV and never considered it for it;
8-bit/16-bit would run there smoothly I am sure though. If Pipo KB1/KB2 had
Core M, they would have been ideal both performance and retro form factor-wise
;-)

------
devereaux
3K display?? If only the keyboard had IBM style page up/page down keys next to
the arrows, at this low price I would buy it right now. All I want is
something I can use to SSH, with a great screen and keyboard. Bonus points if
it has LTE, a stylus, or is between 12 and 9 inches.

I can't shake some learned habits, so I decide on the keyboard first. The
closest thing I could find was the latitude 13, but the price is a bit high.
For that much, I might as well get a Lenovo Yoga 13 with the AMOLED display
when it becomes available.

But then it gets too big. The best laptop is the one that follows me around.
At the moment, my eyes are on the Ideapad miix 310. Looks like it has a great
keyboard, and LTE. But no 3k. And no 16G option. (and no upgrade possible).
16Gb of RAM would let me do the crazy things I sometimes do on the side...

------
DiabloD3
Dear industry: I want a 7" tablet that has 2GB to 4GB of RAM, and costs $99. I
do not care about battery life (will always be tethered to charger), storage
(so 16GB for Android or 32GB for Windows is fine; the absolute minimum either
can realistically not choke the tablet to death with), and CPU/GPU is I only
partly care about (Cherry Trail era x86 SoCs used in some Windows 7" tablets
are fine, and they go for $99 to $199).

The reason why I ask for that? $99 gets me 1GB + 16GB usually, I have to go
the whole way up to $199 or more to get 2GB. Modern OSes just are not really
suitable for 1GB, I don't know why these devices even exist, they can't
actually be used.

~~~
FreakyT
My Amazon Fire works pretty well flashed to stock Android, certainly worth the
$35. Once you get rid of the Amazon bloat it runs swimmingly, even with only
1gb of RAM.

~~~
agumonkey
I've read a few reports of sluggishness ? are you a frugal user , or are
amazon apps sucking cpu ticks ?

~~~
DiabloD3
I have an original generation Kindle Fire, with the 512mb of RAM.

Yes, even back then, I forcibly reflashed it with a community build of
CyanogenMod (started with 4.0 when Amazon's was based on 2.3, now running 6.0)
because of how bad Amazon's default ROM murdered performance, even before I
ran anything.

~~~
agumonkey
Interesting, the actual model might really be worth 50$.

------
Taylor_OD
It's so hard for me to suggest people get a chromebook. I've had mine for
close to two years and still find myself avoiding using it at all costs.

It's fine for writing on but that's really it.

~~~
ktamura
Really? Do you code for a living? I ask because I am a technical marketer at a
startup (i.e., I have to read some code, but mostly my work is done inside
Gmail and Google Docs) and could totally work fine on a low-end Chromebook
when my Thinkpad was out for a week in repair.

~~~
Taylor_OD
I'm not a developer. The most frustrating part of the chromebook is having to
be connected to the internet to do almost anything. I have desktops for
everywhere I'm usually working but laptops for me are mobile devices.
Sometimes/often I dont have wifi but still need to get work done. Sure google
docs kinda works offline but its not great.

------
mtgx
I wonder what a 3k display will do to I assume the rather weak GPU on the Core
M. It was only 2 or 3 years ago that Core i5's integrated GPU could barely
handle the retina Macbook.

------
djfergus
>> HP offers its Elite USB-C Docking Station ($149), which plugs in to a USB-C
port on the PC and enables to connect up two Full HD displays, Gigabit
Ethernet as well as multiple USB Type-A devices, such as keyboards or mice.

Good to see high quality USB-C docking stations coming thick and fast. Wonder
how much testing they have done on the Macbooks for compatibility...

~~~
kingosticks
I'm a bit surprised the dock isn't generating more interest at the stated
price point. You'd pay a lot more for the non-thunderbolt USB 3 Dell dock so
it seems like a good alternative. I've no experience in these docks/adapters,
won't they be compatible and just work (with an Xps 13, for example)?

------
gohrt
It was unveiled last week, and anandtech cited sources:
[http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/28/hp-
chromebook-13/](http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/28/hp-chromebook-13/)

------
Osiris
Now, if I could only get a normal laptop with those specs. PC laptops are so
hard to find with resolutions >= 1080p, let alone a decent SSD.

------
AdmiralAsshat
So is this designed to supplant the Pixel line, or just provide a "premium"
Chromebook designed for businesses, rather than developers?

------
itg
From the title, I thought it was going to have only a single usb-c port like
the macbook, thankfully it has 2 usb-c ports and a usb-a port.

------
oldgun
Looks like really decent hardware for a Linux laptop though.

------
joelthelion
How good is GNU/linux support on chrome books?

------
mrmondo
Core M? That's 2015 tech, using selling points such as 16gb of ram is weak as
16 Gb is so common these days, why are they talking about '3k' rather than PPI
or another volumetric measurement of density. Just feels a bit old news?

~~~
kayoone
16GB RAM is not really common in laptops, especially Chromebooks. The new
Macbook had 4GB last year and 8GB this year. For the price it is a pretty good
offering if you fit into the (probably small) customer base.

~~~
mrmondo
What? My 2011 MBP shipping with 16GB, yes I chose it over the 8GB option but
it shipped with it! My desktops both have 32GB because... RAM is really cheap
and it really makes a difference when you're running a lot of VMs / Containers
etc... or you know, any of the web browsers available in 2016 that are all
awful thanks to javascript and friends

