20 Minutes with my Chromebook
The screen is fine. At its brightest it looks very washed out. It is too bright. At half brightness it looks fine and is still plenty bright. As much as I hate the glare on shiny screens, I kinda miss how cool it makes them look. I think the matte screen will make this a decent outdoor laptop though.
Right now, you can tell that ChromeOS doesn’t have the polish that Windows and OS X have. Maybe I’m being unfair by comparing the Series 5 to a high end laptop running an OS that has had 10 years to mature, but that’s its competition.
I’ll give this 3/5 stars. I really believe in the spirit of the laptop. It beats out traditional netbooks like my girlfriend’s EeePC and it is going to be a lot better for typing/video watching than my iPad. Unfortunately, it’s still a long way from replacing my Macbook Pro.
I plan on using this thing mostly full time and we’ll see how things change the more I get used to it.
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20 Minutes with my Chromebook | farp.blog | Vickkumar.com.au:
June 27th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
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Ravi:
June 28th, 2011 at 1:26 am
I absolutely love Afloat and use it primarily the same way you do – pop out a video, put it in a corner of my screen, and have it stay on top of all other windows.
However, unlike Netflix or YouTube videos (which btw you can play in VLC), Hulu actually makes a desktop app for this express purpose. Doesn’t support HD or Hulu Plus yet, but it works great otherwise.
Check it out, it’s called Hulu Desktop:
http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop
Dachkn:
June 28th, 2011 at 1:50 am
You seem to be forgetting that you are reviewing a $300 notebook and not a macbook equivalent. Shitty speakers and an average track pad aren’t exactly unexpected
Joe Friedl:
June 28th, 2011 at 2:04 am
As I understand it, the Chromebook isn’t meant to replace a Macbook. Especially considering the price difference even with the early adopter premium, the comparison is meaningless. You enjoyed the simplicity, which was the goal.
JohnLBevan:
June 28th, 2011 at 8:59 am
I’m wondering, what’s the price difference between the Chromebook & the Macbook Pro? From what I can see from current UK prices the Chromebook is around £300 whilst the Macbook Pro starts at £1000. How do the two compare once you factor this into account? Also, I suspect they’re not competing; Macbook Pros are aimed at high usage users / professionals. Chromebook is designed to be more of an advanced netbook which simplifies getting online for the non technical user. As bandwidth increases and web apps improve it will likely become competitive with the likes of the Macbook, but for the time being, I don’t think that’s what it’s trying to be.
Si algú fes una versió web de l’Emacs … « Només 5 línies:
June 28th, 2011 at 9:27 am
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Michael:
June 28th, 2011 at 10:07 am
Yeah I’ve been playing with mine and I don’t think I love it yet. Web apps are mostly glorified bookmarks (with some exceptions) and I’ve been able to get tabs to crash pretty easily. Even with only 2 open…
1 Month with my Chromebook and it’s going back to Samsung | farp.blog:
July 15th, 2011 at 10:17 pm
[…] than a month ago I wrote a blog post about the first 20 minutes with my Chromebook. I talked about how I really liked the idea of […]
Julio Angel Ortiz:
September 26th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
I was one of the fortunate who received a free CR-48 Chromebook from Google. Having had mine since early in the year, I’ve seen the OS go through a serious maturation process. Not that early on it was painful, but the subtle UI tweaks and not-so-subtle performance enhancements have been very welcome. Once it started supporting streaming video for Netflix, I was quite happy.
I use it the most at home, using the home PC only when I need to do some serious picture editing or uploading files. My Chromebook is amazingly versatile, but I think web apps need to mature much more before it really becomes a true desktop replacement.
Randall:
September 26th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
I wrote a follow up to this post about all the problems I had with it. The screen stopped working on me and it took about a month for me to get around to mailing it in and get it fixed. After I got it back, I noticed that the OS was MUCH more stable. Not sure if it was a hardware thing or if the updates have made it better while I wasn’t using it.
Where does my blog traffic come from? | farp.blog:
December 3rd, 2011 at 2:48 pm
[…] 1. 20 Minutes with my Chromebook (9,728) When I got my Chromebook I was a bit disappointed with it, but I believed it had some real potential. I wrote up a review of my initial impressions and posted it to Hacker News. It got picked up and made the front page. Most of my traffic came from the first few days after it was on Hacker News with a huge spike on the first day and then a tail of requests as people caught up on their RSS readers. […]
Ryan Morgan:
June 1st, 2012 at 12:37 pm
This was a useful review for me. I work at a school and we decide what to buy based on the needs of the students. Its useful to know what the new device can do in comparison to a well known device. Of course the price would suggest the two aren’t comparable. Its nice to see how much further the new product has to go before it is viable in our particular setting.