Is it that or is it just an effort to stay relevant? If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it? There are tons of tablets from HP/Dell that cost 100-200$ and run full windows OS and have comparable specs to the Chromebooks. As far as I know they are selling quite well. I am wondering if this is Google responding to that pressure.

Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS? Only Google can make system and native apps, unlike the iDevices where you can access most of the native functionality even if you have to go through Apple's approval and you're not forced to upload all your information into Google's cloud with paltry local storage like 64GB on even a 1500 dollar machine where the information is mined by Google and is accessible to various parties like the Government. They now even track which retail stores people visit using their Android phones or iPhones. http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

Looks like user and developer freedom are a big concern only when Apple or Microsoft infringe it(even though Win32 is much more open than ChromeOS, after all Google exploited it with the Chrome browser and bundling it with Flash and Java updates), but Google gets a free pass to lock everything down and still call itself open.

 - Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing any operating system to be loaded on them.

 - ChromeOS follows the same open source model as Chrome—Most core features open, with things like Flash/Wildvine/API keys held secret.

 - There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS" and "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chromebooks". Both of these statements are absolutely true.

So I fail to see how Chromebooks are "more extremely locked down" than iDevices.

This is not correct, you can run native apps for Chrome OS via Native Client (NaCL) or App Runtime for Chrome (ARC).

VLC, a poster child for native apps, will be released for Chrome OS in a few months using ARC.

Anandtech has already tested a beta version: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9082/the-chromebook-pixel-2015...

It's an interesting experiment but I don't think Google is aiming to please the crowd with the need for "native apps" anyways and they wouldn't be terribly interested in keeping the native VLC dependencies alive and/or compatible. It seems pretty obvious to me that Google is trying to push the mainstream consumer market into a "cloud computing/services lifestyle", it only makes sense because their whole business model revolves around web users. So VLC is out, Netflix/Playstore is in.

Not for me, don't get me wrong, I'm not that kind of consumer and it may be safe to state that most people within the HN crowd isn't either. I'm personally following and waiting for the Novena[1] laptop and open hardware to be launched.

Even if chromeOS is removed and Gnu/Linux is loaded instead, chromebooks' keyboards look abysmally ugly and useless to me, otherwise I would at least be excited about the inexpensive hardware.

So yeah, as a consumer I can distill my opinion about this product to "meh...", but as a web developer though, that's a different story, the possibility of Google hardware converting handheld mobile users to desktop-ish mobile users and reaching a broader international audience makes me almost enthusiastic about Chromebooks.

After all, until some potentially better hardware project (Firefox OS [2] or Indie Phone [3], who knows) expands to the netbook-ish form factor ("Lapfox"?/"Indiebook"?), the not-so-open inexpensive Chromebook hardware & affordable by hundreds of millions (potentially billions, we'll see) introduces and welcomes new demographics to the web and is better for the world (in the short run) than almost-fully-open expensive hardware that only a few million can afford (for now), don't you think?

[1]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop

[2]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/

[3]: https://ind.ie/about/

Exactly - ChromeOS is a browser. "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS" makes about as much sense as "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chrome" or "Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer".

...or it would have made that little sense before Mozilla wrote a browser in html: https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html

There's Native Client, so you can write native code. I believe there are things like Emacs for NaCl, though Emacs is relatively useless until someone also ports your favorite programming language, version control, etc. to this model. For programmers, it's tough to have to redo everything, and because we tend not to use the ability to run unaudited native code to install viruses on our machine, it seems like a lot of work for no reason. For the end user, though, things are a bit different. It's a long road but ultimately computers that are easier to use and get fewer viruses is a worthy goal, I think.

Someone could port Firefox to ChromeOS if they found it to be interesting. It would probably be quite difficult, however.

I use ChromeOS as my primary workstation because it removes a lot of headaches I have with computers. I hate configuring things. I just want a terminal with Emacs and a web browser. ChromeOS gives me this. I log into my laptop and it has the exact same configuration as my desktop.

ChromeOS auto-updates and takes 8 seconds to reboot afterwards. It doesn't nag me about auto-updates or checking that Windows Defender is up to date. All my work is saved somewhere other than my desktop/laptop, so if I lose the computer or get another one all I have to do is log in again.

It's very much a thin-client thing, which some people hate, but I find quite suitable for my normal workflow. sshing into a Linux box is generally great for doing work. Using the GUIs is an effort in frustration. ChromeOS solved that issue for me. (Yup, I need an Internet connection to get to my ssh-able Linux box somewhere. I always have one.)

If you are convinced Google is out to get you with configuration syncing, SSH clients that run "in a web browser" (but are native code and preserve all keybindings that you're used to), and "cloud storage" then ChromeOS is probably not for you. Enter developer mode (one keypress) and install your favorite Linux distribution instead -- all the patches necessary to make the devices work are in the open source tree, and unlike with Linux on random Windows laptops, your WiFi will work and you'll get the advertised battery life.

I have given ChromeOS laptops to family members where my previous attempts at giving them computers have failed. A year later their laptops are running the latest version of the OS and didn't have any viruses. I even got them using two-factor authentication with security keys! I was surprised.

Disclaimer: I work on ChromeOS as my 20% project. But I work on it because it solved a lot of my computing problems and I find it worth my time. I wouldn't waste my time advocating to help my employer sell $149 laptops.

I purchased my 88 year old father a chromebook two years ago.

It just works, and is the only computer he has not messed up.

Highly recommended.

Also, when running emacs in the terminal through ssh, doesn't emacs keybindings interfere to much with chromeos's browser?

Terminal settings are configurable and persistent.

You can have as many windows open as you like.

Here's the app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...

It works on any machine running Chrome. Things don't quite work right on MacOS, I'm told, but it seems native on Windows and Linux. (And CrOS of course.)

you said it is your main workstation, I'm guessing you are an external monitor, how well does external monitors work?

I have the i7 model at work and an i3 model at home. Both are fast. I also have a Chromebook Pixel for situations that require a laptop.

As for monitors, both the desktops and laptops handle my 4k monitor OK, but only at 30Hz (because it's a Displayport MST model which are horrible hacks and are thankfully no longer made). At work I use a 24" and 30" monitor. Works as expected.

You can tune the density per-monitor, so you can run your 4k monitor at 1.25x or 2x density and your normal monitor at 1x density and it Just Works.

It's a pretty nice OS.

There's a dialog for setting up resolutions and relative position of the screens to each other. Attaching a screen means that it's automatically fired up with its default settings.

Each screen has the window bar, and clicking on icons there opens the respective website/app on that screen.

When closing the laptop with an attached screen, it merely disabled the display (instead of going to sleep completely) which was confusing the first time but actually makes sense and is how other devices handle the situation as well.

Sure they could; it would just be an ActiveX control, or whatever they call that this week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_Frame

So do most Windows Notebooks. I just bought one recently at 250$, installed Linux. so there is nothing special about chromebooks in this regard.

"So I fail to see how Chromebooks are 'more extremely locked down' than iDevices."

  There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question
  is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS"

It's just like the old days!

I am asking because it was a major pain to get Lubuntu installed on Acer C720, Windows is not an option at all.

Chromebooks feel extremely locked down I'd say close to iDevices.

Can Google even make a Chrome browser for FirefoxOS?

All of the PR surrounding the creation of FirefoxOS lauded how it was completely open because it was built on standards like HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

But when Google does the same thing, it is an example of "locking everything down while still calling itself open."

Mozilla has been arguing for years that compile-to-JavaScript is good enough (and based their opposition to NaCl/PNaCl on this principle). It is strange to see argument here against Google that "only true native will do", when that argument is what motivated NaCl/PNaCl to begin with.

Well, Mozilla have a proven track record of providing a self-host alternative for their cloud platform (the main reason I'm using Firefox sync -- with Mozilla servers -- is that I could set up a proof-of-concept sync server[1] on my own hw, see that, yes it does work fine. Contrast that with what Google does ("We have a magic database, here's some of the ideas behind it; sorry you can't host your own, so all our service tech will remain proprietary").

I use Chromium from time to time, but I don't use Chrome -- and I avoid logging in to Google services when I can.

I've been waiting for a Cyanogen-mod for my current phone, because I don't like running stock Android in it's sort-a-open, mostly-closed state -- not to mention the amount of spyware that ships with the platform (it doesn't help that Samsung ships its own software too -- which I'm assuming contains its share of bugs).

Try building a working phone kernel+userland with whatever Google+partner have released and try and convince me that they're good at doing "open".

I hope they will keep the dev-mode for all chromebooks -- and that they'll make it easier to boot into custom kernels without a boot-up delay etc -- but I'm not holding my breath.

[1] I actually ran the previous one, but I'll be setting up an updated one, as soon as I move "into" my new server.

The PC software ecosystem has been open historically, even with Windows and OS X, and now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative

If Mozilla and Google both do X, but Mozilla's actions are judged as "open" while Google's are judged as "completely closed," then the words open and closed are losing their meaning.

How does Google's other business activities affect whether, in principle, an HTML/JavaScript-based OS is "open" or "closed"?

Yes, it's true that OS platforms are moving towards sandboxing their apps more and more. This is mainly being driven by market forces, because more sandboxed platforms offer important features:

    - more resistant to malware

    - more secure (one stupid little app can't steal/delete all your data)

And while mainstream consumer devices are moving towards being more sandboxed, the ability to tinker is being addressed in other ways, like Raspberry Pi, which are very cool in their own way.

iDevices are locked down for the purposes of Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users. Chromebooks are locked down for end-user security and ease-of-administration.

Chromebooks allow the end-user to unlock the bootloader and/or run them in developer mode if they really want to do that (and this is all well documented by Google, not akin to jailbreaking), and pretty much the only reason a lot of developers even consider Chromebooks as full laptop replacements is for this reason.

Want to run Firefox on a Chromebook? Install crouton (a project developed by a Google employee) and just go ahead and run Firefox, works fine, just like any other Linux app. Google does nothing to stop this (in fact, they go out of their way to make tools to enable it), they just put enough friction into it to let you know that when you do this all bets are off as to the security of the chroot you are running native Linux apps in.

There are legitimate benefits to having a locked down platform which Apple (and developers/consumers) have decided is worth the negatives. There are zero viruses or malware on iOS compared to quite a few on Android. The quality of applications is significantly higher on iOS because (a) developers have a consistent platform to optimize for and (b) majority of iOS users are more than likely on the latest release.

This approach is working so well for Apple that Google, Samsung and Microsoft are all trying to emulate it.

I don't disagree that there are benefits to the consistency of the Apple ecosystem versus that of Android, but all of those benefits are rooted in Google's lack of control of what phone vendors do with the OS (though they have been working to change that), not lack of control of users or app developers.. the entire jailbreaking ecosystem proves that such freedom doesn't harm the people who want the safe thing, it is just a shame they are forced to constantly fight against the phone vendor (on the Apple side) to keep things open whereas Google (usually -- they've been uncharacteristically dickish with Chromecast hardware) usually goes out of their way to allow the user to run free if they want to.

Of course, for some 15-year-old girl in Jakarta, "learn more about their world" may in fact mean rooting their machine so they can deal with grotty Unix details and 8 years down the road build on that to for an MEng thesis and then startup.

What does that have to do with how open the devices are?

Sure, Native Client's there and should have all the functionality you need. It'll technically be running inside Chrome, but so is everything else like the settings dialog.

Apparently they can: https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html

1. http://funroll-loops.teurasporsaat.org/

Chromebooks also run Android apps so in the near future there will be a lot more flexibility in what kinds of either web apps or Android apps you can develop. Firefox already runs on Android and presumably will be available for Chrome OS within this year.

Apple doesn't allow third-party interpreters/compilers if they can run code from untrusted sources (Codea and some Python environments get around it by only running locally written code).

That's not remotely true.

When my grandparents and parents ask me what computer they should get, or my in-laws ask what they should get their kids, I'm going to seriously consider Chromebooks. If they need to run Office, or Minecraft, clearly it's not a fit. But for the tweeting / facebooking / gmailing universe, a Chromebook is a very nice box.

And the number of zero-day exploits, viruses, keyboard loggers is way smaller for a Chrome OS machine. And the update process is a painless reboot. And I'm not helping them try to read data off of a dead hard drive (because it's in the cloud.) And if they want a second or a third, all of their data is visible on all of them. And the battery is great, the wifi works great, the build quality is great. Get them hooked up with two-factor protection, and their accounts and data are pretty well protected.

You're viewing the Chrome OS machines and their competitors, from a tech-savvy super-user standpoint. Many people don't need, don't want, and are hindered by that flexibility and power.

The maintenance cost on a "full OS" is higher than the maintenance cost on a Chrome OS. Period.

I mean, if you buy a tablet, you don't worry that it can't print out Excel documents, right? It's still the best device for doing what you're doing with it. So with a Chromebook -- it's a better general-web-use device than a Windows laptop, particularly at the price points that Chromebooks live at.

She works as an interpreter/translator and needs to be able to write documents in multiple language systems (e.g. non-Latin alphabets) in a way she understands.

For me, it's the camera-printer link that keeps messing me up.

The same goes for sending files via Dropbox to someone next to you on an iDevice. Since it's very difficult for me to send data from my Android device to my wife's iPad or even from my MacBook to my wife's iPad3, the "solution" is to send it to the other side of the world on to Dropbox's servers for her to retrieve it.

Back in thte 50s when people had visions of an interconnected world and a utopian human future, filled with spaceflight and wonder, I am pretty sure they didn't have visions of needlessly sending data through 50+ network nodes just to get it back again on a device right next to them.

It's so stupid; if you had proposed this "solution" 20 years ago they'd have laughed you out of the room, yet today Chromebooks ("store all of YOUR data ELSEWHERE! Struggle to get it back! Find it impossible to send to a device NEXT TO YOU!") and the associated cloud solutions are all the rage.

It's stupid.

That's how cloud stuff works. Picking on cloud printers in particular is raging at the wind.

Printers don't really fit this model - when you tell something to print (for the printer on your desk), getting it sent to the other side of the world just to come back is daft, energy inefficient and wasteful.

If you really need Office, and not just Google Docs, you can actually run Office on a Chromebook.

With the eventual capability that they'll be able to run Android programs, as well as PNaCl and Emscripten borrowing from each other and getting better offering opportunity for tons of apps to be ported to the web, and then of course HTML5 and Js becoming the technology of choice for all sorts of apps, Chromebooks are the eventual future.

Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future.

And this is the main thing - for millions (hundreds of millions, maybe billions soon), a smartphone is their first entry to the internet. Probably an Android. When they see the Chrome logo in a laptop they can afford, and they already like the Android/Chrome ecosystem, they'll buy it, versus Windows which is associated with viruses, scams, piracy, etc...

Keep in mind Googles current business is still search. The net they're casting has nothing to do with the present, they're gunning for 7 billion people to associate them with computing, and to create the new future of computing.

Go to the third world. Yes some families have cheap PCs running pirated XP, but every kid has a cheap smartphone that they can connect to the internet with. They all have Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc...

That reminds me of Sun in the early 90's.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I don't think it's inevitable you're right either. Especially since browser UI toolkits are still stuck in the stone age compared to native counterparts.

Until that gets fixed, I actually think it's probably just wishful thinking.

A lot of cool things came out of Sun. I don't think this was one. Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.

I'm pretty young, so I was woefully ignorant of this. However the more I read about it, the more it sounds like 'Cloud computing' and 'internet of things'. In fact, Chrome OS isn't too far from their Java Internet Terminal idea.

> Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.

I have. My main IDE, and probably my favourite ever, is R Studio which runs in a Webview (or as a webpage) and uses Ace for editing. Two fairly popular upstart IDEs, LightTable and Atom both use web technology. I quite enjoy Caret as well.

Not sure why you think they're decades behind. If anything the fact they're as advanced as they are is impressive, given most have been developed only in the last few years, whereas Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc..., have been around much longer.

That's what I was getting at. That was 19 years ago.

> Not sure why you think they're decades behind.

I was thinking in person-hours. I don't mean to belittle them. But I feel like these are mostly "JustAnotherTextMate".

But I was actually talking about in-browser environments like CodeAnywhere.

There are many HTML/CSS frameworks that are doing really great job and not struggling at all. It all depends of course on what you want to do, but finding a good kit that solves your problem is definitely not the bottleneck of creating a modern HTML UI based application.

of course you need them because working directly with hTML/CSS is total crap.

Where are the real shipping numbers from Google then? Surely they must know the numbers? Why won't they release it then? The only reason I can think of could be that they aren't all that great.

The numbers are out there, but Google isn't releasing numbers because they're a tiny vendor.

I'm sure Google has the numbers since the Chromebooks/Chromeboxes auto-update (part of the whole point, really) so given that they likely have unique device IDs (or ethernet MAC addresses), the 'live devices count' would be rather easy to figure out.

Latest IDC figures show Chromebooks continue to struggle http://www.zdnet.com/article/latest-idc-figures-show-chromeb...

http://betanews.com/2015/02/24/2015-is-year-of-the-chromeboo...

Different source, different paper, different journalist, same conclusion.

The idea that Chromebooks sell in volume is delusional, at this point, and downvotes won't make it any less delusional.

Chromebook sales are a much bigger part of current PC sales. And vendors do keep expanding their Chromebook lines. If it was a failure they wouldn't.

I appreciate from the downvotes above that some people prefer to believe what they want to believe ;-)

And that's why the education sector is flocking to these things. OK, the price is good, but when you factor in order of magnitude less support costs, it's a very compelling proposition.

Are there really any sub-200$ Windows laptops that have 10 hour battery life on an 8 second boot?

I find that pretty hard to believe. Maybe they have similarly specced components but the experience will be much worse.

8 second boot ,frankly who cares ? my windows machine takes 40 second to boot sure, but I boot it like 2 times a week.

10 hour battery life ? maybe on idle, I bet this thing doesn't last 10 hours with 50 tabs opened or when playing youtube videos ...

I can't believe there are still people defending that stuff, it's netbooks all over again but worse cause it's only a browser ...

Or we are on full astroturfing mode like anytime there is a Chromebook thread on HN i'm not sure.

You are right - it's probably more like 8 hours. The older Acer c720 got between 6 and 7 hours streaming Netflix[1]. The Chromebook 13 got 10 hours[2].

[1] http://www.trustedreviews.com/acer-c720-chromebook-review-ba...

[2] http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/23/acer-chromebook-13-review...

That said, these are machines with mobile processors and an OS that is tailored for mobiles. It isn't all that suprising that they are more capable than their normal counterparts.

Chromebooks seem to average around 8 hours of continuous web browsing[1].

[1] http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/samsung-chromebook-...

So the answer is maybe.

(The ubiquitous presence of an ISA/OS pair is a historical anomaly, and I believe it's on the way out)

You can't log in to a Chromebook for the first time while on a plane. After initialization, for example the Google Docs suite works pretty well with no connection - and so could any other web app that doesn't rely on connectivity for its base operation: eg. Skype on Windows on a plane will work just as bad as Hangouts on Chrome OS on a plane.

If I had a choice between a £150 Chromebook and a £75 Windows laptop, I'd choose the Chromebook.

Windows isn't an 'upgrade' to Chrome OS.

the only time i heard about chromebooks in the wild was while walking at low income are shopping malls. the Cricket and att stores would often have a little banner on the floor advertising the "cheap kinda of a computer!"

Heh... wonder what your definition of "everyone" is. Another comment posted above points to data that chromebooks are forming 14% of PC sales in the US. From my personal experience, the local highschool and middle school where I live have basically mandated that each student buy a chromebook -- they don't say chromebook exactly but heavily, strongly suggest it for the low price and maintenance factors. 90+% of the students are carrying around lightweight chromebooks in their backpacks now.

Me on the other hand see only the hunger for next batch of data collecting on a population that is still "unexplored".

There's better options in the $50 - $150 price range for smartphones than Android One. The same with laptops - a $150-$200 x86 laptop running Windows is much better than the equivalent ARM Chromebook right now.

And that's just for new sales. Another reason is the large market for used products - which provide better performance per dollar than most products which needs to be manufactured (and maintain the same 'expensive western brand' status-orientated in cultures, and income unequal economies (which is strongly correlated to consumption of luxury goods).

I'm just curious... will the laptop be their first device or their second?

In Indian due to the import tax Chromebooks are far more expensive than entry level laptops. I had to get it from some come in US as it simply doesn't make any sense to buy them at these inflated prices (Its like 2x the original cost in India for an outdated model).

Imagine your average laptop cost $5k - $15k. Would you consider it a big deal if you could get a decent <$1k laptop? That's the equivalent situation.

That's what an automotive-minded person might believe. Why would you buy an electric car that you can't control when you could have a 1989 Volkwagen Golf getting 30mpg that would last you forever with just a little bit of maintenance? You would make that choice because you don't want to have the responsibility of doing something that makes the car unreliable or unsafe. You don't have the knowledge or the tools to fix it when it does. And you can't be late for work, or fail to pick up your daughter from school because your car wouldn't start. So even though you could get a car perfectly tailored to you and controlled by you for just $5,000, you buy a $60,000 electric car knowing that there's hardly any moving parts, so all you need to do is turn the car on and put your foot down and it will work. You plug it in when you get home, and unplug it when you leave for work. That's all you need to know.

That's how I liken the debate between Android and iOS, or Linux and Windows. People say to me "look at all the customization I can do!" and all I see is a maintenance nightmare. I use Linux at work because that's what it's best at. When I get home, I'm playing video games on my Windows desktop. On the weekends, I'm driving down two-track roads in my custom-built 1998 Toyota 4Runner, but my daily driver is a Fiat 500. When I'm playing around with developing apps, I'll sideload them onto my Nexus 4. But when someone calls my phone number, it rings to my iPhone, which I know will always ring no matter what software I manage to install.

As a consumer, it's not that I don't care. It's that I don't even want it. I know it's there. I know it's cheaper and I know it's more powerful and I know it can be customized. But none of those things are at the top of my list. Reliability, compatibility, and simplicity are my three biggest requirements.

That is an interesting analogy, but it's pretty misleading. Tesla happens to be locked down but not because it's electric. It doesn't need a turbo, that's like being upset you can't put a new zip disk in your SSD. The engines are fixed ratio, that's a more direct control than using a gear box. Electric cars have either simpler transmissions, or no transmissions at all. In general that means easier replacement, or not having to replace anything, surely a positive, right?

Electric cars are capable of being simpler and more alteration-friendly than ICEs. They just cost more.

What I'm saying is it's not that customers don't understand these points, it's that these points are exactly why some customers don't choose a more open system.

And some of the androids are even more expensive than iPhones...

The implicit context for the comment you're replying to, made explicit, is clearly "Consumers have spoken, they do not care [about whether their devices have a 'real' OS or not]." Given that this is the case, your rebuttal is a fairly empty one. It's essentially in the same realm as tautological-ish, no-impact statements, as far its role in this discussion goes...

I disagree, developers can develop native apps for iOS even if they need to go through the App Store. Only crippled web apps are allowed on Chrome OS and only Google can develop really native apps.

The usual "word processing, research, facebook" student load, for instance? A dedicated physical machine powerful enough to run even MS Word locally is a waste of money in this instance.

Access to the global information network and ability to use things on it is step 0 in getting people into the modern era. All that other stuff that you get from a "real OS" is a step above that.

Not in Cologne (~1 million) nor Dortmund/Bochum (part of the 'Ruhrgebiet' metropolitan area, which Wikipedia estimates includes about 12 million people).

Guess not a first-world country?

We're probably on the same side: I would NEVER go for a Chromebook. Always online is stupid. Mobile sucks on trains here, so forget about data on the move. Hotspots don't exist. There are still lots of places that I visit that have little to no usable data connectivity.

I have no clue what the Chromebook is for, but it would be a giant failure in my circles and my environment.

Not that the over-arching sentiment of "you shouldn't take the existence of an always-available network connection for granted" is a bad one. It's just that saying, basically, "These devices aren't suitable everywhere; consider market segments that may be less mature than the big, contemporary Western one you're most familiar with, for example" is a little bit of a weird and not terribly convincing way to express it.

The whole point of a netbook (which is really what a Chromebook is, with the tainted name dropped) is something that has most of its functionality on the web rather than a local device.

Had one of those machines for work. Even after a fresh install, the lag was positively infuriating.

When Apple released the MacBook the other week, everyone had the same reaction ("Only one port? Can't plug in a USB stick and the power adapter at the same time? It'd STOOOPID").

But, when Google releases an UNDERPOWERED netbook with abysmal 1990s screen resolution, less storage than a USB stick and that only fully works when you're on a network, it's widely praised. I don't understand it!

In the 1980s with the microcomputer boom, if you'd have told all those kids using BBC Micros at their school that they could only use their computer and the Interword ROM whilst connected to the telephone system, they'd have thought you were stupid.

Yet, essentially this is what Chrome OS offers you. You can upload all your data (as if uploading your 4GB videos to "the cloud" is an enjoyable experience), and then view it periodically when you have a network connection.

I know we normally DO have network connections but the invention of microcomputers was meant to DO AWAY with the need for mainframes, not turn our local powerful microcomputers into dumb terminals for remote corporate-controlled mainframes. If you'd proposed such a solution 20 years ago, they'd have thought you were insane.

You need a connection for web-based use-cases.

You don't need a connection for non web-based use-cases (document editing, etc works offline).

The same is true of any OS.

I think storing all of your data online is foolish, basically as it means that offline you're scuppered.

It is not going to run Visual Studio of course, but it is quite capable for browsing/videos/word processing/etc.

Browse https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/apps?_feature=of... to get a list of apps that are available that work offline.

And yes, Netflix, YouTube etc., no problem.

Which is probably why they're so popular with schools. I no longer own one but when I did it was my go to for email and basic web stuff.

With all the talk of schools mandating that children have equivalent devices, what was wrong with writing on paper and doing maths on paper? We managed at school.