I've been contemplating getting a laptop for a while now to have more mobility when working at home, but then comes along the Chromebook, which I just found about today. Here are the features http://www.google.com/chromebook/#features The Chromebook is not meant to be a replacement for a laptop. It really depends on what your requirements. If you don't need it for gaming and pretty much only use the internet for email/video/web browings/google apps etc then its certainly an attractive option. Chromebooks boot up in like 8 seconds. You don't have to worry about backing up your data, its all stored remotely. Also, because all of your personal data and documents are stored remotely "in the cloud" you don't have to worry about software upgrades. There is a lot to like about getting this for business purposes. The only downside is you wouldn't be able to run apps like Photoshop, but not being a graphic designer, that doesn't worry me one bit. Ohh yeah, more importantly, its going to be cheap in comparison to a laptop. I think $300-$600. As you can tell, I'm excited
I put in an application but haven't heard anything back. I really hope I get one though, this is a product I'm willing to truly beta test, rather than just say I want to test to get free product.
What beta testing? The Chromebook will be released on June 15th in the U.S. and at a later date for us Aussies.
I'd trust Google hardware as much as I trust those kiosk computers at airports/malls. There's no way I'd ever use one for work/personal stuff... which kinda makes it useless as a personal computer. My data belongs to me.
I guess there are privacy issues if you are paranoid The price is a bit of a deterrent as well for what it is. I'd imagine the suppliers had something to do with this, because its competing with its own product line.
Chrome book definitely is something that is going to excite you for heavy Internet use only. If you are a guy who spend time offline doing stuff like multimedia designing on photoshop, then forget of owning it. Lets wait and watch what price,the google comes up with.
Two things that would concern me (from the Chrome OS privacy notice): - Chrome OS tries to avoid sending information that identifies you personally. - Crash reports, however, can contain information from files, applications and services that were running at the time of a malfunction. Probably not a big deal for most people though (especially the Facebook generation).
I'm now wondering if I should wait for the Chromebook or just get a Netbook. My understanding is that the Chromebook will have better performance and a bigger screen but will be limited in what it can do. Am I missing anything obvious?
I reckon it's worth considering a cheap netbook running something like EasyPeasy, or even Puppy. I have an OLD EeePC 901 that dual boots EasyPeasy and XP. Does everything I want in Linux (browsing, email, FTP, YouTube, general stuffing around), plus I can always boot into XP if I desperately need to use a Windows only application (Photoshop etc).
thats one thing i dont like about it all being stored online because if your on 3G it will use quite alot up just getting all the documents and then putting them back on the web
Yeah you definitely need a fast internet connection with a lot of bandwidth to consider getting this. However, you can also store files on an external HDD you don't have to store everything in the cloud.
ah thats better but you will still need to get a external HDD if you dont have one and how big is the size of the internal HDD and can you store files on it?
I think the internal HDD will be 16GB you don't necessarily need an external HDD you could also get a USB flash drive for storage. Yeah you can store files on the internal HDD the reason it is so small is because you can basically store everything in the cloud and its only needed for the operating system and a few other files. I'm still unsure if I should get a netbook or wait to get this. The better performance of the Chromebook and the cloud technology does kinda appeal to me.