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SCROOGLED! Chromebooks get 21% of holiday notebook sales

Charlie Wilkes

Illuminator
Charlie Wilkes
Joined
Dec 8, 2009
Messages
4,177
Three of the four best-selling laptops on Amazon are Chromebooks.

http://www.techradar.com/news/mobil...-to-take-google-chromebooks-seriously-1211128

I just ordered one, the Acer C720. It cost $200 and will replace the ancient Gateway with Bodhi Linux that now resides on my kitchen table.

I am also considering a selection from Microsoft's Scroogled store, so I can show the world that I'm tired of having my digital life monetized by Google.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Scroogled/categoryID.67575900

All profits go to charity! This is too amusing.
 
Surfing the internet, word processing, social networking and chat programs, watching internet videos, and portability.

In other words, everything half of the population (in my estimate) uses a computer for. Not one of them? Well it's a good second computer for those things at a cheap price. Still not one of those like me? That's ok. For other people they're just fine.
 
I have a friend who needs to get on the Internet, but that is really the only thing he does with a computer. The Linux rig I have set up for him is an old computer with 1/2 gig of RAM and that's just not enough these days, so the browser sometimes crashes. A Chromebook should be perfect for him and for other people who drop by sometimes to use my Internet.

My tenants who are here for the weekend are high school teachers, and their school has purchased a fleet of Chromebooks for the students, who have Google accounts they use for school work. They are cheap, they work, and they are hassle-free.
 
I know a lot of Linux folks who bemoan the tend back to centralised SaaS... But I have found that Google Chrome basically is my OS already. The only thing I do offline anymore is multimedia in OSX and gaming in Windows, both of which aren't options on a $200 laptop anyway. For me this enables OS hopping all the time.

The Chrome App Store has been a bit slow to develop, but it's purpose has always been unclear, especially since many "apps" are just bookmarks. There are more apps that have native bits, and offline as well, but those are still developing.

I am interested to see where it goes. Many have speculated, and some officials have mentioned, that it merging with Android somehow in the future. It is still very young.
 
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Tsukasa Buddha said:
I know a lot of Linux folks who bemoan the tend back to centralised SaaS... But I have found that Google Chrome basically is my OS already. The only thing I do offline anymore is multimedia in OSX and gaming in Windows, both of which aren't options on a $200 laptop anyway. For me this enables OS hopping all the time.

The Chrome App Store has been a bit slow to develop, but it's purpose has always been unclear, especially since many "apps" are just bookmarks. There are more apps that have native bits, and offline as well, but those are still developing.

I am interested to see where it goes. Many have speculated, and some officials have mentioned, that it merging with Android somehow in the future. It is still very young.
Click to expand...

My hope is that Chrome will expand as a desktop environment. I'm like you. Chrome already covers most of what I do. But some of what I do is not amenable to residing on a server and I don't want it to. My Internet connection is good enough for youtube and Netflix. It's not good enough for capturing a VHS tape with the Cineform codec, and I don't see how Google will profit by running a comb filter that takes several hours on my laptop. But it is annoying to have to depend on an a clunky Windows environment for those kinds of tasks.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
My tenants who are here for the weekend are high school teachers, and their school has purchased a fleet of Chromebooks for the students, who have Google accounts they use for school work. They are cheap, they work, and they are hassle-free.
Click to expand...
My nephew is in middle school and he uses Google apps for his schoolwork. He got a Windows notebook for Christmas because he simply has to be able to play Minecraft and a variety of Steam games. :)
 
Babbylonian said:
My nephew is in middle school and he uses Google apps for his schoolwork. He got a Windows notebook for Christmas because he simply has to be able to play Minecraft and a variety of Steam games. :)
Click to expand...

Exactly. There's a good article in Forbes about this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timwors...otebooks-and-10-of-all-computers-and-tablets/

Quote:

Everyone buys Windows because everyone buys Windows. Because that is true then everyone develops for Windows and so the loop closes.

Google is on the cusp of breaking this cycle. Steam is also trying to break it by developing their own version of Linux to run their games, and they are working with AMD and Nvidia to get better Linux drivers. Will those games and drivers also compile for the Chrome OS? I don't think Steam would care, because their business is licensing games rather than the OS. But they don't want to be walled into an "app store" where they have to fork over commissions, so maybe they will run into a conflict with Google too. It depends on Google's willingness to understand that one company cannot adequately serve every important market and should sometimes collaborate rather than trying to compete. That is a premise MS has never accepted.
 
At my office we've been using the SaaS method for some time, and we recently expanded that to having scores of virtual desktops on thin clients. Buggy little pieces of rejected matter.

As it is, I don't see myself buying a Chromebook. I do hefty A/V editing, and built a brand-new rig for that purpose. It also plays all of my Steam games in glorious ultra quality, so I'm quite pleased with the investment. The PC market may decay on the casual consumer side, but gamers and creators require much better rigs.
 
kookbreaker said:
Maybe not?

the tl;dr: Chromebook sales are still super-strong but the 21% figure maybe way overstated.
Click to expand...

I got the factoid wrong in my subject line, because I thought it was a measure of holiday sales rather than B2B sales for the year.

Oh well. These things are finding a niche, and I can see why. My Chromebook arrived yesterday. It will be just right for my housemate, who does not understand computers at all and is purely interested in email and web content.

I immediately saw two major problems:

1. I had to boost the power on my router because of the weak wifi card. Once I did that (and accepted the incremental toll on my home power system, which would not be a factor in the civilized world) it worked fine. That is lame for a computer that is completely dependent on an Internet connection. This thing is going to live on a table with a line of sight to my router about 40 feet away. Until I boosted the router, I could not hold the connection. I would not want to travel with a CB, or at least this model, if I depended on public wifi at all. But I could always use my phone as a hotspot.

2. The media player utterly reeks. I plugged in a "spy pen" that shoots motion jpeg with 16-bit PCM audio in an AVI container. I could play this in DOS, but it crashed the CB media player. I don't think users will stand for this over the long term, and it will really hold back their market share if they don't fix it. All they have to do is support a decent open source player like VLC, if they aren't going to develop a good one themselves.

The CB provides no access to the file system except the user's home directory and of course the Google drive. Apparently there's a hardware switch for "developer mode" that provides root access. After dealing with Linux in the hands of my friends for the past year or so, I don't think I will flip that switch. I will let Google take care of whatever is under the hood.

I got 100gb of storage on my Google drive as a perk for buying this thing.

As a web browser, this CB is excellent, smooth and powerful.

The build quality, screen, keyboard and touchpad are all fine, despite what fussy reviewers say.

This thing is in no way a replacement for a PC. As a replacement for the funky laptop my housemate and various hippie friends have been using to cadge my wifi, it should be just the ticket.
 
LTC8K6 said:
How is a chromebook better than a tablet?
Click to expand...

It has a keyboard.

I don't see a touchscreen interface as inherently better than a K/M setup. It is a way to create a functional UI without the physical encumbrance of a K/M, but for someone who is sitting at a desk or in a comfortable chair, that's not an issue. Certainly I prefer a keyboard for writing emails and posting in online forums like this one.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
It has a keyboard.

I don't see a touchscreen interface as inherently better than a K/M setup. It is a way to create a functional UI without the physical encumbrance of a K/M, but for someone who is sitting at a desk or in a comfortable chair, that's not an issue. Certainly I prefer a keyboard for writing emails and posting in online forums like this one.
Click to expand...

It's not much for a case with a BT keyboard if you really need one for your tablet. $20 or so.

It didn't take me long to get used to the touch screen keypad, though.

When you are at home, you can have the keyboard. when you are roaming, you can leave it behind.

http://www.amazon.com/MoKo-Samsung-...sr=1-7&keywords=galaxy+tab+case+with+keyboard
 
Denver said:
I saw my first Scroogled commercials today, and the Microsoft web site:

http://www.scroogled.com/chromebook

They must be worried.
Click to expand...

Our insurance rep had a Samsung chromebook to use to sign us up for Obamacare. I kept wondering why she didn't either just move to a tablet, or get an actual laptop. It was basically a bulky tablet with a keyboard.
 
LTC8K6 said:
How is a chromebook better than a tablet?
Click to expand...

1. Price. A 10" tablet will be twice as much.

2. Keyboard and mouse interface.

3. Full web browser with Flash.

LTC8K6 said:
It's not much for a case with a BT keyboard if you really need one for your tablet. $20 or so.

It didn't take me long to get used to the touch screen keypad, though.

When you are at home, you can have the keyboard. when you are roaming, you can leave it behind.

http://www.amazon.com/MoKo-Samsung-...sr=1-7&keywords=galaxy+tab+case+with+keyboard
Click to expand...

That is just a keyboard, not a keyboard and mouse. And Android doesn't take full advantage of keyboards.

LTC8K6 said:
Our insurance rep had a Samsung chromebook to use to sign us up for Obamacare. I kept wondering why she didn't either just move to a tablet, or get an actual laptop. It was basically a bulky tablet with a keyboard.
Click to expand...

Device/OS recognition failure.
 
Chrome is the browser on my Galaxy 3 8" tablet. It's a great browser. It was also the browser on my Nook, which I sold.

I can't put "mouse" and "portable" together in my head.

I have the tablet, and I have a laptop. There's no gap between the two for a chromebook as far as I can tell.

There's nothing wrong with the chromebooks, mind you. I just don't see where I need one. The OS seems okay, what I've seen of it.

I have had the tablet for a while now and I surf a lot. If flash isn't supported, it hasn't made any difference whatsoever to me. I haven't even noticed. HTML5 is filling in well, I guess.
 
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