back to article First there were notebooks. Then tablets. And now ‘book tablets’

Google and Acer have given the world its first Chromebook Tablet. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 takes Google’s OS, slices off its keyboard and runs it on a 9.7-inch tablet that has an utterly anodyne design. Under the hood you’ll find an OP1 CPU that bonds dual-core Cortex-A72 and quad-core Cortex-A53 silicon, plus 4GB of RAM …

  1. JakeMS

    Bootloader locked?

    Is the bootloader locked or are there any methods in place to prevent you from changing the OS?

    It would be interesting to have one of the "book tablets" that was as free to use as a desktop computer where you could put any OS on it.

    In particular I'd go with Fedora on it, just for kicks :-D.

    I really dislike the way modern devices are becoming more and more locked down though, so I'm hoping one day all that just stops and they give you a device and say "Here you go, do what you want with it".

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Bootloader locked?

      I think you mean:

      But can I wipe it and put a PROPER linux on there?

      1. Steve the Cynic

        Re: Bootloader locked?

        But can I wipe it and put a PROPER linux on there?

        At which point you get a firm lesson in the validity of Linus T's swearified rants about non-discoverable buses on ARM devices.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Bootloader locked?

      "are there any methods in place to prevent you from changing the OS?"

      Do you mean the sort of things you find if you search for Linux on Chromebooks"

  2. Sampler

    Point?

    Why ChromeOS not Android? Seems the elephant in the room not addressed in the article.

    1. colin79666

      Re: Point?

      Because then in an education environment you manage it just like your other Chromebooks. Google provide this for free where as Android needs expensive MDM, much like Apple.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Point?

        @colin79666 "Google provide this for free"

        Have you had your head stuck up your ass for the past week and a half?

        Google do not provide anything for free, they exploit you in every way they can to make sure you pay far more than you would ever guess.

        If you want the amount in money terms, how about this for a rough & ready calculation::

        Google share on online ad spend in 2017 £4.43B

        Number of employed in th UK, Nov17 - Jan18 32,248,000

        That's £137.37 per working person, assuming that advertising spend is part of a business cost passed on to the consumer of good/services via higher prices.

        Yes, your frre Google anti-social media costs you £137 a year, with almost as much again added by Fecalbook.

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Point?

      Chrome OS is a more modern OS than Android which was rushed out the door. Chrome was designed to be updated easily, whereas Android until the very latest devices (Treble) requires blobs from the ODMs. Android's latency has always been a bit too high (compared to iOS), so handwriting and audio creation apps should work better on Chrome OS. There's not a huge number of great tablet-optimised Android apps, either.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Point?

        Chrome OS is a more modern OS than Android which was rushed out the door.

        I think they were both initially rather rushed. The fact that ChromeOS is gaining the ability to run Android apps indicates that the initial idea for ChromeOS of doing everything in the browser wasn't that well thought through either.

        1. Killing Time

          Re: Point?

          'The fact that ChromeOS is gaining the ability to run Android apps indicates that the initial idea for ChromeOS of doing everything in the browser wasn't that well thought through either.'

          I don't know if you actually use Chrome OS and specifically on a Chromebook but with the exception of a files and media app it still runs basically everything through the browser. The browser is its principle user interface.

          At this point in time, on a Chromebook, Android apps run in a variety of sizes but that is generally a limitation of how they are currently written for the smaller screens of phones or tablets, but effectively in its own browser tab.

          No doubt this will change, as the ecosystem evolves, every six weeks or so, with each release, regular incremental improvement since around 2011. I see little evidence of rushed release given that widely documented timescale.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Point?

        Literally none of that is true. It might have been 5 years ago, but not anymore.

        For example audio latency. An iPad Vs a decent android device running Oreo 8.1, both around 10ms roundtrip latency.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Google do not provide anything for free

          Really? My son got a couple of Chromebooks off them for watching a half hour presentation on their cloud offering. Not free but pretty bloody close...

    3. se99paj

      Re: Point?

      The Android tablet market has been stale for sometime, now that ChromeOS supports Android apps and as ChromeOS is being designed more for touch you can see that the development of ChromeOS is more closely aligned with tablets than Android would be.

      As someone that was thinking of a Chromebook as a replacement for my Android tablet I'm interested to see where this is going. Hopefully the first of many ChromeOS tablets

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Point?

      Two totally different audiences.

      I have both an android tablet and a Chromebook and they both serve me differently.

      The Tablet (Xperia tablet Z3 compact, Oreo 8.1 lineage) is casual browsing / timewasting / ebook reading.

      The Chromebook (Acer R11) is for proper work.

    5. Edward Green

      Re: Point?

      Full desktop web browser. I guess a lot of e-learning web sites are targeted at the desktop, even if touch optimised.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another Future Android Landfill Leaking Poison

    So many crappy devices... rearranging the chairs on the decks... while the humans, plants and animals of planet earth sink.

  4. MatsSvensson

    Nice!

    But were is the ms-paint-book?

    I need a tablet that can only run ms-paint!

    1. Teiwaz

      Only run ms-paint

      But were is the ms-paint-book?

      I need a tablet that can only run ms-paint!

      Only run ms-paint?

      Something in the Windows RT line then?

    2. WallMeerkat

      If it runs Android apps it'll run Dosbox

      If it runs Dosbox it'll run Windows 3.x/95

      If it runs Windows 3.x/95 it'll have MS Paintbrush/Paint installed.

  5. Aqua Marina

    ‘book tablets‘

    Surely that should be ‘Booklets’!

    1. no_handle_yet

      I wish Pratchett was still around -

      I'd love to see an OOKlet with a realdragon 888 octarine core chip running Linux small gods edition.

      1. Swarthy
        Go

        Re: I wish Pratchett was still around -

        I'd love to see an OOKlet with a realdragon 888 octarine core chip running Linux small gods edition.
        That might not be too hard to arrange (If one has maybe a few million to fund development/production). I think this could be a Kickstarter!

        First, you fork/Theme a MIPS-capable Linux distro as Small Gods Edition

        Then you team up with Imagination Technologies to create a custom processing core that includes one(1) each M, I, and P class core bodged into one super-core, along with power management silicon, call it 111 Octrine.

        Continue work with IT (or find another Foundry) to build a 8 Octrine super-core SoC called the realdragon. (8x111 octrine=888 octrine)

        Slap the realdragon SoC and assorted gubbins into a medium-large tablet, load your Small Gods Linux on there, and call it an OOOKlet.

        But be sure to never use the M-word around it, if you do, even bananas won't save you.

    2. handleoclast

      Re: ‘book tablets‘

      Surely that should be ‘Booklets’!

      Or maybe babblets. Or taboo.

    3. DNTP

      Re: ‘book tablets‘

      How about book + tablet = booblet?

  6. Nial

    The whole advantage of the chromebook is nearly iPad speed of power up, _with_ a keyboard and ~10 hours battery life.

    Without the keyboard it's just another tablet.

  7. WozNZ

    Wow, almost as pointless as windows RT

    1. WallMeerkat

      Played with it in peecee wurld once, and once I got past the novelty of seeing Windows Explorer on a tablet I never saw the point of RT - especially as traditional Windows applications couldn't run on it, just a subset of ARM compiled MS store apps. The HP Touchpad was more useful.

  8. WallMeerkat

    Agree with others.

    I thought Android was the mobile/tablet OS

    And I thought ChromeOS was for Chromebooks - the spiritual successors to the old netbooks that some of us quite liked, as in it had a proper keyboard, except that all of your applications were on the fog\b\b\bcloud?

    (Though I will admit to having owned Android tablets with keyboards - ASUS Transformer and Cube iWork, which muddies the definition)

  9. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I seem to remember years ago Google announced that eventually Android and Chrome OS would be merged. Has this been abandoned now or is it still on the cards?

    Perhaps these Chrome OS tablets are the beginning of Google phasing out of Android tablets since ChromeOS can run Android Apps (although i believe not all apps are compatible atm).

    It does seem crazy for Google to be developing 2 competing OS platforms that essentially do the the same stuff.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Three systems:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hasn't this been tried before?

    I got a WiFi iPad once at a raffle and I never could find a use for it. It's only theoretical advantage was as a reading device left next to the recliner, except it couldn't always be there because it needed charging. The TV did streaming better, the desktop computer did reading and interaction better, and my phone was always in reach and online. Gave the iPad away after a year because it wasn't useful enough to justify finishing all the signup crap.

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