Google plans touchscreen Chromebook for 2013 - report Undeterred by the luke-warm response its partners have had launching their browser-only Chromebook laptops, Google is set to hit the market with a touchscreen version at the end of 2012, according to reports from Taiwan. The 12.85in notebook will be the Chocolate Factory’s first own-branded effort, with Taiwanese OEM giant …
Use it as an information-station OS, sell it to bus companies for the timetables, but why even bother with this dumb terminal shite when Android exists?
Hell, why not just use Chrome, and have it as an OS that works as a layer over any other OS? Would be a damn site more useful than the current "your computer is a browser" crap.
But not everyone needs a proper computer.
I've had a (secondhand, slow) Chromebook for a couple of months and the only thing I can't do is use Citrix Receiver, but that appears to be my company setting things up in a haphazard fashion rather than a failing of the device. Turn on, get email, browse websites, chat, turn off, plenty of battery left.
I've taken it to seminars and workshops and the reaction when people pick it up and have a play is generally positive.
The Samsung Series 3 Chromebook is an excellent bit of kit. Boots in seconds, a keyboard makes it more useful than a tablet. I suddenly find I am using it more than my desktop. It would seem I use a browser (including web mail) more than I rip DVDs, play games, edit photos/video etc.
Performance browsing the web has no issues whatsoever. ARM processor, no fan, hardly any heat. This is what a Netbook should have been from the start.
...and just slap a real Linux distro on it. I'm especially interested in the Samsung ARM Chromebook for exactly that reason. Can't see that touchscreen would do me any favours when I have a perfectly good pointing device; my only complaint is that hardly anyone uses the StinkPad-style nipple pointers - so much better than a trackpad...
They need to continue pounding on the ChromeOS nail. You see, Android is a fluke. It was intended to tide them over on the mobile space (giving them an entry against the BlackBerry behemoth), while they worked on their real project: the take-over of the PC market and expansion of their online ad/search business with an always-on, browser-only, cheap netbook-like PC.
That was the plan. The world would use cheap netbook PCs that ran *everything* on the browser, and required a constant connection to (guess what?) Google for all it's services, not the least web search. This is where Google makes its money from, remember? Up until 2006 or 2007 every tech company was banging on about how The Web will be the platform of the future.
All roads would lead to the Web and they all would pass through Google.
Then something weird and unexpected happened: the iPhone and then the iPad showed how mobile was to be, and it wasn't the mighty Web. It was small devices, running native myriad applications, including games. Android--the free, open source side project, of all things--became immensely popular. Who knew?
So Google has tried since then to follow through, but they just can't shake it: the world does not want an always-on, web-browser-only cheap netbook. The world wants smartphones and tables that include the web as a mere addition to the many other features they have, most of them including native applications.
Android keeps getting more popular and ChromeOS keeps falling deeper into obscurity. But they can't let that happen, you see, because (and here's the secret, so pay attention), THERE IS NO MONEY ON ANDROID.
-dZ.
You'd have thought google would have noticed that. Or maybe you are just wrong.
> the world does not want an always-on, web-browser-only cheap netbook he world wants smartphones and tables
What do you see the difference to be here? I see a slightly different form factor, and not a unique one, it's a tablet with a keyboard. I take it you have been on the web recently, it's not just documents in plain html. As for native applications you have those on chrome.
>THERE IS NO MONEY ON ANDROID.
Yeah, but Android devices still steer people towards money-making Google services, which alternatives, such as iOS, are trying to get away from (see iOS 6 maps, rumours of an Apple search engine).
It is only an accident of history that we associate x86 machines with keyboards, storage and 'productivity' applications, and it isn't set in stone. Likewise, if the work you do on a computer is emailed to someone (rather than printed), then you require a data-connection anyway to finish your job. Even really processor intensive stuff, such as rendering, can be work out as being more cost-effective if you rent the resources. There is also the case of "I only need to do this particular task once, but it requires a feature only found in the premium $500 version of the software... If only I could rent it for $20 for an hour".
"Then something weird and unexpected happened: the iPhone and then the iPad showed how mobile was to be, and it wasn't the mighty Web."
Er no. Most things were done via software before 2007, on phones, PCs and other devices. And most things continued to be done on software after that.
In fact, let's not forget that the original iphone couldn't even *run* 3rd party software. Indeed, all I heard from Apple fans in the early days was how wonderful the iphone was, because it could access web pages! (Never mind that that wasn't anything special, either.)
And by 2010, when ipad came out, Android was the dominant smartphone OS, and with hundreds of thousands of applications.
Yes, there were people thinking that everything could be done on the web before 2007. Just as there continue to be people thinking that everything can be done on the web today. Sorry, nothing's changed, no matter how much you try to revise everything to be all about Apple.
> Up until 2006 or 2007 every tech company was banging on about how The Web will be the platform of the future.
That is what Netscape said around 1994. Miscrosoft, who hadn't noticed the internet at that point, realised that this was something they had to kill, and quickly. So they got Spyglass to write IE and set up MSN as an alternative to the internet, one they could control, and set off to destroy the unbeliever (in desktops forever).
Eventually, after MS has held back computing for a decade and a half with the same old desktop stuff, the web as a platform has been coming and MS are late and trying to run to the front of the movement and wave its 'follow me' flag - yet again.
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