Re:Development on a Chromebook: an opinionated guide
by doktrin on Saturday April 20, 2013 @05:26PM
(#5582863)
> It's half the price of the Lenovo you mentioned.
To clarify, I did mention the price was close to refurbished models. This isn't a like-for-like comparison, of course, but it reflects my choices as a consumer. I'm more likely to pick up a refurbished Lenovo X-series than a refurbished Chromebook, for instance.
For reference, there's a x230 on sale from the Lenovo outlet for $546 [1]. Price and availability vary, of course, but this isn't super uncommon.
[1] http://outlet.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/outlet_us/...
Re:Development on a Chromebook: an opinionated guide
by bluedino on Saturday April 20, 2013 @06:56PM
(#5583152)
You get what you pay for when it comes to the Lenovo - the slightly bigger screen is available in IPS and blows the Chromebook screen away. The i5 (and available i7) is very powerful CPU, you can have 8GB of RAM and your choice of SSD/HD...
Re:Development on a Chromebook: an opinionated guide
by derekp7 on Saturday April 20, 2013 @09:48PM
(#5583534)
You actually get a choice of having both SSD and HD at the same time (not sure if this is what you were implying) -- since the X230 (and 220 I believe) has an mSATA slot under the palm rest. I've got mine booting off the mSATA (128 GB running Fedora), and have the spinning disk left with the factory installed Windows 7 (plus a large partition formatted ext4 for my VMs).
Re:Development on a Chromebook: an opinionated guide
by simon_weber on Saturday April 20, 2013 @05:27PM
(#5582871)
crouton eliminates the need for an internet connection, as well as letting you run whatever you want.
I can't say I've tried running a vm inside my chrooted OS, but I don't think there'd be anything preventing it.
It's half the price of the Lenovo you mentioned. It has fairly long battery life, it's small yet has a full-size keyboard. It's slick hardware compared to a $299 Best Buy laptop or a netbook. But it has a whole list of disadvantages.
You can't fire up a VM. You can't browse using the actual desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or IE. You can't use software package X. You need to be connected to the internet to do development. It's just a fancy ssh/rdp terminal in this case.
I understand the romanticism about developing on a Chromebook. I love the 11" Air, and despite the low-resolution screen and low specs (ULV CPU, 2GB or 4GB RAM and 64GB/128GB SSD) you can actually get stuff done. Is it the 'Ultimate Developer PC'? No, but a great machine.
The Chromebook is far more limited, but maybe the next revision along with a regular Linux distribution will be a workable solution for the rest of us.