[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Why Google bothered to make the Chromebook Pixel here

[Jessielivermore]

Why would anybody buy this thing. It can't run the majority of software available and your locked into google for everything. Google likes to steal and copy from others. Larry and Sergey stole the idea of backwards search from Mr. Li who went on to found Baidu. They bought android. Google has invented nothing proprietary and they are still an ad company. 98% of their revenue comes for selling good old fashioned ads.
For the same amount of money, I can buy a magnificent touch screen windows 8 machine. We have been using win8 with Lenovo touchscreens, the dell one 27 touch screens and the Surface Pro ( which incidentally can replace my laptop and iPad). Win 8 is a fast fluid, intuitive system which is extremely powerful and rock steady reliable. And it boots up in 9 seconds. The Surface is instantaneous. With these machines, I can run the most productive and powerful software available, not subpar nonsense like google docs, etc. The chrome book is ridiculous- I'll stick with the beautiful win8 or or the apple MacBook Pro. These are Tate of the art powerhouses, not limited glorified net books like the junk google pedals.
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[priyank018]

The answer lies in the device's "For what's next" tagline.

[landsw]

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Google likes to steal and copy from others. Larry and Sergey stole the idea of backwards search from Mr. Li who went on to found Baidu. They bought android. Google has invented nothing proprietary and they are still an ad company.

really? your bash against google is theft? yet yet... you use ms products. the king of moneyball, who will throw fortunes at any market they want to get in. no one, but no one, has every copied, bullied and stolen like ms. ever. and certainly no one has ever played moneyball like them. yet this doesn't seem to bother you.

[KaliNPaige]

There's just no point in this computer... The specs are only about as good as any mid-range laptop (an i5 and 4 GB DDR3 ram), which is perfectly fine, but is excessive if you're just going to be running web applications! Even my aging Motorola Xoom is able to use stuff like Google Documents, play games such as Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, and do what a portable device is meant to do with no lag at all. And that device has a 1 GHz dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM. Even if we were to overlook the flaws of being limited to web apps, what brings up the price so much? A touch screen with an extremely high pixel density display. I do love this part of the laptop, but if you're only going to be using the machine on the go for things such as editing an office document, checking email or social sites, or playing the occasional game or YouTube video, then this adds an unnecessary burden to the price. Even if somebody were to put a real, not-limited OS on it, the puny 32 GB SSD on the PC limits it from being of any use. Windows would eat up 20 GB of this from the start, rendering it nearly useless, and while you could probably find a nice lightweight Linux distro such as Puppy Linux to go on this, you're still crippled by a puny hard drive capacity anyway.

[JackNFranFarrell]

A spectrum of personal computers supports a spectrum of organizational ranks and sizes: 5x8 for mobile grunts. 8x13 for platoon leaders with HDTV screens. 8x13 with 4xHDTV for field grade leadership conferences and 21x34" or larger 4xHDTV for flag level leaders with aides to schlep large, user facing monitors with 3 microphones.

The Chrome Pixel stakes out the crucial high/middle ground in the battle of 2014. Chrome Book Pixel has taken the high ground early in 2013. Meanwhile Penn, the Jeb Stewart analogue is riding around contributing nothing to the defense of Microsoft's Office monopoly.

[mrb186]

Hey! I'd buy one.... For $250

[LiveBrianD]

Thing is, if you're spending $1000 or more on a laptop, chances are you want it to do more than run a web browser. If you get an SSD, boot times under Windows or a regular linux OS shouldn't be a problem either in comparison. I wish more laptops had such high res displays though... (if Google can make Chrome support high DPIs under OS X and Chrome OS, why not Windows?)

[yangj08]

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Why would anybody buy this thing. It can't run the majority of software available and your locked into google for everything. Google likes to steal and copy from others. Larry and Sergey stole the idea of backwards search from Mr. Li who went on to found Baidu. They bought android. Google has invented nothing proprietary and they are still an ad company. 98% of their revenue comes for selling good old fashioned ads. For the same amount of money, I can buy a magnificent touch screen windows 8 machine. We have been using win8 with Lenovo touchscreens, the dell one 27 touch screens and the Surface Pro ( which incidentally can replace my laptop and iPad). Win 8 is a fast fluid, intuitive system which is extremely powerful and rock steady reliable. And it boots up in 9 seconds. The Surface is instantaneous. With these machines, I can run the most productive and powerful software available, not subpar nonsense like google docs, etc. The chrome book is ridiculous- I'll stick with the beautiful win8 or or the apple MacBook Pro. These are Tate of the art powerhouses, not limited glorified net books like the junk google pedals. 0

I was agreeing with you up until you started gushing about Win8. I am still firmly in the "Metro is a usability disaster, give me my borkin' Start Menu and Aero back" camp. My laptop came with a $15 for Win8 Pro offer, and after trying it for two weeks I am firmly convinced that without the option to make Metro completely go away (I mean all of it- even in "desktop mode", I don't want a quarter of my screen obscured when I'm trying to connect to a WiFi network, what's wrong with the popup menu from 7?) $15 is all it's worth, and maybe not even that. I spent three hours downgrading that thing, but everything is finally back to normal now.

[agrippa]

It seems to me that this Pixel is made For very affluent people, People who are trendy and want something different. People who laughed at the price, and say is that all? It's more of a status symbol for people, Not very many people will buy one, Not regular people anyways, However in a few months you start to see these pop-up in really expensive cafés Or high-level boardroom meetings. I could afford to buy one right now if I wanted to but why would I? I am neither trendy or affluent, And I surely don't want To be a slave to a connected web-top, I can go ahead and tether any of my current existing devices with my smartphone And be connected, Hell my Galaxy note 2 can do pretty much all the Pixel can do. I do have to commend Google though for making this statement They are showing everyone that yeah we can walk toe to toe with Apple as well, We got two operating systems and our own hardware that can match Apple's quality And appeal.
Between Samsung and now Google, Apple has a real big fight on their hands.

[thewazak]

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Between Samsung and now Google, Apple has a real big fight on their hands.

Only if Apple wakes up and actually does something new.
At the moment it looks like the battle is over. Even "down and out" Nokia's Lumina beats the pants off the outdated iPhone.
Maybe Apple will surprise us all by beating MS to introducing a single cross platform OS. But even that is if Chrome/Android don't get there first! .

[brainout]

thewazak, on 22 February 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

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Between Samsung and now Google, Apple has a real big fight on their hands.

Only if Apple wakes up and actually does something new.
At the moment it looks like the battle is over. Even "down and out" Nokia's Lumina beats the pants off the outdated iPhone.
Maybe Apple will surprise us all by beating MS to introducing a single cross platform OS. But even that is if Chrome/Android don't get there first! .

The single cross-platform OS, is the internet itself. An MS Word user, I write a lot of complex exegetical stuff which I have to upload to the net in pdf format, or in html, so Mac and Linux users can also read the material. Videos are in Youtube, and of course those are converted from Linux videos or Windows videos. For my clients, they get emails and pdf files, which are created in whatever I happen to be using, and then converted.

So in that sense, I can understand a Chromebook for a lot of users. The cheaper version is utilitarian, the expensive one caters to those who like the finer construction and higher resolution. You know: Thunderbird wine versus a fine Merlot. If you don't drink wine, neither is of interest. If you do, chances are you'll become picky about the quality.

My concern about the Chromebook is its reliability when offline. There are problems viewing/editing your stuff when not online. Many glitches can occur while online, or glitches occur to GETTING online, so this is a real problem. Even so, a person who doesn't want to maintain a computer would be attracted to a Chromebook versus a tablet or Ultrabook, etc.

My other main concern is Chrome as the browser. It's horrible. The only thing good about it, is that you can set all the cookies to run for only session, and that's what it does. Everything else about it is dysfunctional or limited. Google is notoriously fickle about the software it creates and supports, dropping a line of software or functions without warning, or with little warning. I'd not want my browsing experience, dependent on Chrome.

This post has been edited by brainout: 23 February 2013 - 01:03 AM

[QuidProQuo101]

Horrible Chrome browser??? What are you talking about? Have you even checked out the Chrome Web Store? I used Firefox and IE exclusively over the last 10 years and just recently (about one month ago) decided to try Chrome again...after having fun downloading free apps at the Chrome web store and tweaking things to my liking, well, I haven't used Firefox or IE since! In fact, I like my iPad a lot, and setting up my desktop with Chrome has closed the gap between my tablet experience and my desktop. I'm thinking a Chromebook Pixel might very well be my next laptop purchase.

[Selden]

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Why would anybody buy this thing. It can't run the majority of software available and your locked into google for everything.

Why would anybody buy a Rolex? My $30 Casio calculator watch is accurate to within 1 second a week. But people do buy high end watches. Sometimes a sheer pleasure of experience is sufficient justification.

Other than the browser, Chrome OS does not lock you into anything from Google. You can use anything that's available over the web, which includes an increasingly large number of productivity applications.

[Selden]

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My other main concern is Chrome as the browser. It's horrible. The only thing good about it, is that you can set all the cookies to run for only session, and that's what it does. Everything else about it is dysfunctional or limited.

I was with you up to this point. I started using Chrome about 3 years ago, and within a week, I had abandoned Firefox and Safari. In my experience, Microsoft has never made a decent (let alone secure) browser, and the current version of MSIE has the worst UI yet. But, "good" is what's good for you; for me, that means the Chrome browser.

[cc3d]

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Google likes to steal and copy from others.

Really lame. Name ONE tech company that didn't leapfrog off of other's inventions/developments. Apple? Admits it. Facebook? (classmates, MySpace), Yahoo (Alta Vista)

[JackNFranFarrell]

Managers with 25-75 professionals want to conference with their peers, direct reports for status, kicking off task forces, wrapping up task forces, monitoring construction, design reviews etc. When they are done with a meeting the want the product to look exactly the way they left it. They can, three months from now edit docx, xlsx, and pptx products and save them in encrypted form on the cloud using Chrome Browsers that act like Chrome Books on Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, Android devices, and actual Chrome Books and Chrome Book Pixels. Since rank has its privilege, Managers will use laptops or Chrome Book Pixels.

[JordanBrownauyl]

Quote

Why would anybody buy this thing. It can't run the majority of software available and your locked into google for everything. Google likes to steal and copy from others. Larry and Sergey stole the idea of backwards search from Mr. Li who went on to found Baidu. They bought android. Google has invented nothing proprietary and they are still an ad company. 98% of their revenue comes for selling good old fashioned ads. For the same amount of money, I can buy a magnificent touch screen windows 8 machine. We have been using win8 with Lenovo touchscreens, the dell one 27 touch screens and the Surface Pro ( which incidentally can replace my laptop and iPad). Win 8 is a fast fluid, intuitive system which is extremely powerful and rock steady reliable. And it boots up in 9 seconds. The Surface is instantaneous. With these machines, I can run the most productive and powerful software available, not subpar nonsense like google docs, etc. The chrome book is ridiculous- I'll stick with the beautiful win8 or or the apple MacBook Pro. These are Tate of the art powerhouses, not limited glorified net books like the junk google pedals. 0 •Edit•Reply•Share ›

....THAT'S WHAT THE ARTICLE WAS ABOUT!

...Did you even read it?

[dbagby1]

"Now, let's see if other manufacturers take Google's bait and try to flush out the middle. "

I think you mean 'flesh' out the middle. Hard to flush something that isn't there.

[MacNewton]

And ye,t Apple iPhone out sells Nokia every day of the week!

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Even "down and out" Nokia's Lumina beats the pants off the outdated iPhone. .