1366x768 is a blasphemy before the machine god; but an actually-not-dreadful-quality screen for under $300 is news indeed(especially when 1366x768 of the lowest quality possible smeared across 15 inches is par for the course at that price pointâŚ
How about a Windows model in similar vein, HP?
Whoa there buddy, I donât think thereâs enough powdered unicorn horn and philosopher stones for a consumer sized run.
Itâs IPS, not TN, which changes things.
Iâll bet it can run every web app out there. Awesome!
I am not sure about Chromebooks yet, privacy and security-wise. I need to do more in-depth look but my surface scan so far says that Chromebooks are basically âcloudâ machines, and Iâm not comfortable with using the cloud for client files.
Yeah, Chromebooks are basically âjust get some email and stuff doneâ machines that wonât get bogged down by malware, user error, etc., but are easier to get typey-typey work done on than tablets. Perfect gifts for college kids and emaily grandparents, but not a geekâs main machine.
That was the âactually-not-dreadful-qualityâ I was referring to. Itâll still have pixels large enough to cut your wrists with; but at least the color wonât be shot to hell if you turn your head a few degrees.
Though, with a (vendor supported; but non-default) bypass option, you can run arbitrary linuxes on them, and since ChromeOS is a linux kernel underneath, you have a better-than-average shot at getting things to actually work. Wonât make the machine any punchier; but it does increase the geek appeal.
I love how this looks. Iâm actually hoping the plastic iPhone takes off in a big way, so Apple takes its design cues for the next Macbook Air from that instead. Never was a fan of the metal look.
Wow, that street price is estimated down to the cent!
looks like a clone of the old white MacBooks.
Having auditioned the Samsung ARM Chromebook (very similar hardware, the HP uses the same Exynos SoC) as a dev notebook, I have to say pressing Ctrl-D every time you boot gets pretty old pretty fast. This is exacerbated by poor power management. Also, I wouldnât make too many assumptions about how well things might work - setting up the 3G data was a pain and the trackpad was super-fussy running native Ubuntu/Chrubuntu.
Most devs that use Chromebooks for development either end up using the Crouton chroot or running everything remote, but Iâve found both options less than satisfying and missing some basic affordances, like a working clipboards, launchers, or a modern terminal app. Itâll get you there, but it wonât be pleasant.
It looks like the HPâs screen is better (the Samsungâs TN is pretty terrible), but Iâm still disappointed the these low-power ARM laptops have such crappy batteries/battery-life.
As a developer, your best bet for an ultraportable is probably still a MBA on OSX or something like the Developer Edition XPS for Linux. These are about $1000 more expensive, but provide a whole different level end-user experience.
Umm⌠no. Most college kids do need to use real software.
Generally seconded. I too installed chrubuntu on the samsung exynos, and I never did get the mouse to behave. (That was six months ago and the process may have evolved to something better by now but I have no recent direct experience.)
But I reverted it to its stock os and Iâm happy with the purchase. I bought it for my 7th grade daughter (the chrubuntu install was just an experiment), and itâs perfect for her, both in capabilities and in that I wonât have to agonize financially if/when she comes home one day with it having been crushed in the locker room somehow.
I have a Samsung series 3. The display is absolutely fine for what I use it forâweb browsing, web mail, google docs. Lightweight with a full keyboard and $230.00âitâs the perfect portable for the things I use a laptop for.
The one complaint I have is the non-standard charger. To me, thatâs the killer feature of the HP, not the improved display. I would LOVE to stop schlepping around yet another charger.
âMostâ implies above 50%, and unless we know exact numbers, we might not want to use that.
But lots of college students major in the humanities, where they can probably get by with a good online reference manager (and there are some very good ones) and Google Docs or some other online applications for their essays.
Lots of other major in econ, and they can probably get by with aforesaid reference manager and good spreadsheets, presentation tools, and other online stuff.
Itâs not all top-of-the-line, but even ten years ago when I went to school many students relied on the lab computers if they needed access to any special software or better computing power.
Nah, I managed with my Chromebook (the macbook air knockoff one) just fine. Honestly, it was just a matter of finding online utilitiesâthere isnât much college students use pirated copies of Photoshop for that Pixlr canât handle, for instance. I will say, however, that if OnLive could hook into Chrome it would be a million times better. Also if Google Music didnât not have a ChromeOS client. But other than that, I didnât have problems.
I bought a Samsung Chromebook earlier this year. I like it plenty, except that if you need a specialized program, like Arduino IDE, you are out of luck unless you boot into linux. But I do have to say that the cloud has saved my ass more than once, thanks to a child spilling a drink onto it while it was charging. It didnât work until it was dry, but it managed to recover just fine. Unfortunately I think that there is a enough corrosion somewhere such that the video memory or gpu is losing power when I load heavy websites.
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