My only question: can you physically have a 512Gb ssd inside that thing? Anything else is irrelevant to me. The previous Chromebook pixel had the mini PCIe port used by the WWAN modem wired with only the USB lines, meaning you couldn't do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0_u8bjQFzg
I won't buy a chromebook pixel until I can at least get a decent storage. It doesn't have to be sold with this storage. The motherboard just needs the right tracks to the mini PCIe and mSATA support so that I can do it. Google might have saved 2 cents, but won't be getting a dollar from me and other people from this thread who say "this laptop would be absolutely perfect for me if it had more storage"
> * It's likely that it's still soldered to the motherboard which makes replacing or upgrading it impossible. Given that the Pixel can only be disassembled using suction cups and a great deal of force I'm not able to actually look inside to check. *
So it seems this "review" didn't even attempt to open up the laptop to check out the motherboard. Disappointing.
That's how reviews usually work. They evaluate a product to see if it does what it's supposed to do. They don't tear it apart and attempt to to repurpose it for some other use entirely.
I have the same opinion that you do - 64Gigs is just too minimal.
But if I can use that 64-gigs for OS/Apps, and mount my home directory on an SD card, I'm happy with that solution .. assuming that the SD card slot can hold a very fast SD (128Gigs or so) without physically protruding out of the case. Its not clear to me that this is so .. anyone know?
I actually think that the ability to host a larger SD partition is a good feature - it makes for backups and opsec in ways that my current rMBP, with its soldered-in Flash drive, cannot deliver. So that aspect is kind of intriguing to me ..
I'm not the guy you replied to, but come on. Install some big software like MATLAB or MS Office, oh no there goes several GB for each one. Set up a few VMs, oops there goes tens more GBs. Install some modern video games, multiple GB each one. And that's without even getting to the obvious culprits of pictures, music, and video.
64 GB would only work for a computer used almost exclusively for doing things on remote systems (browsing internet, working on remote servers, storing things on external HDs, etc).
VM's, mostly. Compilers, secondary. Blender, Inkscape. And then there's the big builds I do: the Linux kernel, rootfs, MOAI .. this all adds up and is quite space-filling.
If all I was doing is produce Word .docs and a few spreadsheets, I'm sure it'd be fine. But if you're a modern developer in the F/OSS world, 128gigs is barely enough to get rolling ..
I won't buy a chromebook pixel until I can at least get a decent storage. It doesn't have to be sold with this storage. The motherboard just needs the right tracks to the mini PCIe and mSATA support so that I can do it. Google might have saved 2 cents, but won't be getting a dollar from me and other people from this thread who say "this laptop would be absolutely perfect for me if it had more storage"