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Watch the keynote, friend. No web browser does what Chrome OS is offering. Not without a bevy of 3rd party plugins, anyway.

Apparently you are right, my web browser can't browse webpages, or do offline storage.

Oh and you know what it really can't do, charge me $20 a month.
 
LOL

Its $28 per user, per month

NOT

$28 per machine, per month

So if a school only wants 50 computers to serve 250 students at educational pricing of $20 per user, per month that is 250*20 = $5,000 per month or $60,000 per year or $180,000 for the 3 year contract.

Now, to buy 50 iMacs at $1,149.00 that is $57,450 or about 1/3 the cost.

Umm...you forgot to add the cost for the system admin (or two). Let alone the costs for backup software/hardware, security software/hardware, general software upkeep costs, general hardware upkeep costs, UPS's (not really needed if you have a laptop, general surge protectors would do), and... I think you get the idea. And you are still stuck with a lab that can only accommodate 50 users at any one time. Besides the fact that those poor admins have to deal with patches, students screwing up the file system, dealing with viruses, etc. etc. etc.

And for businesses? The costs goes even more way up. Seriously, $20 per month/per user for students or $28 for businesses is cheat and relatively hassle free. Maintenance and support is provided. That is HUGE.

Now if it was just a regular student buying this, or some employee, then yes, there maybe other better options, but for companies or school, this has got to be at the very least 'very' interesting proposition.
 
And for businesses? The costs goes even more way up. Seriously, $20 per month/per user for students or $28 for businesses is cheat and relatively hassle free. Maintenance and support is provided. That is HUGE.

Are you seriously relying on Google for support? LOL
 
If this picks of momentum...

I know what will happen the moment this picks up momentum. This will push many companies to release great web based options to their programs. MS office will become subscription based and so on. No one would want to pass up on the potential customers and this will work on any computer. I know apple will not let this last long without adding a version of iTunes to it or web based.

One reason they will do this is people will buy these computers and they will then maybe want a smartphone. They will not consider an iOS device if it does not work with their computer. They will not buy another computer just for iTunes either. Apple will jump to place iTunes on this or even better make a web based version. Thanks google for driving other people to innovate for you and us.
 
Are you seriously relying on Google for support? LOL

Me? Heck no! These laptops are not good enough for my line of work, nor for most of the people who work in my company.

On the other hand, if I was the one to dish out the $$$ in a particular department of some company where these laptops were enough, and it would save me time, pain and $$$ I sure as heck would consider it.
 
Me? Heck no! These laptops are not good enough for my line of work, nor for most of the people who work in my company.

On the other hand, if I was the one to dish out the $$$ in a particular department of some company where these laptops were enough, and it would save me time, pain and $$$ I sure as heck would consider it.

If there's really a department where 100% of their job can be accomplished in a web browser, just give them all a Google TV. Quite frankly it's way more full featured than the Chrome OS.
 
I don't understand why we would need a Chrome OS more than a regular OS with a Chrome browser installed, it must be a Google thing.
 
I don't understand why we would need a Chrome OS more than a regular OS with a Chrome browser installed, it must be a Google thing.

To be honest I think google released this to push the drive for web apps. It makes sense and it will be smart for computers to start using web apps now.
 
[
Or it could be a play on the word "Notebook" which is what I thought was a commonly used alternative name for a laptop.

Yeah I was about to say how far can you go to think someone is coping Apple to say it is stealing the name.

Macbook is a play off of Notebook. Netbook is the play off notebook and so on.

I see Chromebook more a play off netbook or Notebook and has nothing to do with with the Apple trademark on Macbook.
 
As a beta tester, these suck

I can buy a real laptop or tablet for $500 that doesn't need Internet access to work

Microcenter has refurbished laptops for $279... ;)

I didn't think it possible that Google could so horribly get it wrong. No internet? Got Brick?
I cannot believe this.

Well, Google tried to convince us that we all need a $299 GoogleTV set-top box instead of the $99 AppleTV... :eek:

Go figure....
 
Offline Use

The big mistake here is the lack of any option for offline use. There are plenty of times when you might be out of range of the internet and still need a computer.

Google have said that they will be enabling offline us for Google Docs, Google Mail, and Google Calendar in the Summer.

They've also said that most of their apps have been designed for offline use.

I hope this helps. :apple:
 
Google have said that they will be enabling offline us for Google Docs, Google Mail, and Google Calendar in the Summer.

They've also said that most of their apps have been designed for offline use.

I hope this helps. :apple:

I really don''t know why people keep on about offline use, especially when it was addressed in the keynote.

It's as if people are bashing blindly without any knowledge or idea what has actually been announced. People here wouldn't do that, would they? :confused:
 
Agreed that these are DOA and that an iPad/netbook is a better option. Don't think that the iPad killed the netbook though.

These machines just aren't going to cut it as primary machines, and don't offer enough features to be a secondary.

Well, the iPad doesn't even cut it as a third or fourth machine, so it's funny that you mention it in this context. The Google device has at least a REAL web browser that supports all web technologies, and not just a crippled mobile version of Safari. And let's face it: The average consumers today spend probably around 90% of their computing time in the web browser, everything else has been secondary for a long time now. It was the Internet the allowed Apple's recent successes, because the Internet made the user independent from the far more successful Windows platform.

It is also funny that people complain that those notebooks won't work without the Internet but at the same time also champion the iPad which is also rather useless without Internet access (unless playing Angry Birds is a killer application for you). Besides, those notebooks DO have offline capabilities. But of course there are reasons why there are models with built-in 3G and in the next generation with LTE. The Internet WILL be available everywhere in the foreseeable future - even in the US.

Just like Apple, Google is investing in the future. Those platforms might appear premature today, but they clearly show where we're headed.
 
instant on -lol

My SSD equipped MBP needs 8 sec for booting. So how much faster could those things be. Besides that i use my computers frequently on places without internet availability (train rides, subway, aircraft a.s.o) so that i consider those machines as comptletely useless. (Not to mention the lack of fast mobile internet avail. in Germany and the US) :apple:

And @ Winni: I for example have to carry a lot of docs around. This is perfect on the iPad and lacking my portable machine, i can also edit them - even while flying. Same for a lot of other applications. If you think Angry Birds (which i dont have) is the killer app - fine, do so, but a lot of people do productive things on it. Apart from that, the iP is much more handy with its lightweight (in eco class you cant even unfold you normal laptop on the little tray.
 
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I'm not too sure about this. But I imagine there are millions of users out there to whom a core 2 duo is overkill for what they use their computers for. Mac rumours isn't always the best way to poll future/new tech anyway since the negativity to change on here is quite high. The original iPod got slammed. The switch to Intel got slammed. The iPad got slammed (by me too) and who knows, these might gain a huge market-share for the low end user.

I can think of a lot of technophobes to whom this would be preferential over a Win 7 starter net-book or an iPad. Who needs backing up if it automatically does that for you? I bet theres a huge amount of people who don't back up their systems/info. Those brought up on facebook etc would be perfect for this. And for the more savvy computer user this would make a great travel companion/secondary device, at a fraction of the cost of a MacBook air.
 
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What I think people forget is that ChromeOS can run NaCL applications within the actual browser itself - native off line applications residing within the browser and most likely be sold through the ChromeOS online application store. If it needed to be connected all the the time then obviously it would suck giant rocks but that simply isn't the case.
 
If there's really a department where 100% of their job can be accomplished in a web browser, just give them all a Google TV. Quite frankly it's way more full featured than the Chrome OS.

There's a Citrix client on the way for Chrome OS. I know many departments in my company that could do 100% of their jobs with a web browser and a citrix client. Fat laptops are really overkill for many modern jobs. Just setup a Citrix farm and publish the required fat applications and push out dumb terminals to people. A lot of corporate internal applications are simply J2EE apps or other types of webapps anyhow, and most non-technical jobs don't require any applications that are not Citrix supported.

It's much easier to manage from an IT perspective as there's no local storage of data, everything is much more centralized and easier to backup, everything is much easier to debug (really low on-site maintenance to do) and "fixing" problems with a "client machine" is usually just a "here, have this new one" while you run off with the old one, no account/data migration needed.

These are really fantastic as far as dumb enterprise terminals go. We're in 2011, a lot of you people really lack vision. We were deploying essentially this same setup to a lot of small businesses back in 2003-2005 using Microsoft Terminal Services. We removed Windows from the employees desktop and installed ThinStation on their computers. Companies with 20-30 employees not running Windows on their desktops and no one even cared.

For some consumers, this is plenty too. My step dad does Facebook, he does e-mail, he does light word processing and he has a photo collection. Hum... let's see... Facebook (web), E-mail (web), light word processing (Google Docs), photo collection (Picasa). Yep, he's covered. Flash games cover the rest of his needs (he plays card games mostly, stuff included in Windows) and that's in ChromeOS too.

Google is on to something here. It might not be useful to everyone, but they definately have something.
 
At this point, it does seem that this is selling to a specific market. A limited market, but maybe that is precisely the angle here. It does seem a bit more like a dummy terminal, but as one may have pointed out, perhaps certain businesses would want it that way. Still, I would think they would try to price something like that less than a net book. Whether it is certain businesses actual want to have a machine that relies on the network to work, for a software control factor, it still seems less featured.

Now case in point, this is still an open and close laptop, so I wouldn't even compare it to a tablet.
 
My 2 cents right here:

tl;dr? -> I think this is going to be big for google.

Most of things, that I buy, have only one reason behind them: utility based on requirements, affordability and responsibility.

What is ChromeOS?

To most people, its a web browser slapped on a laptop. So it is.

So what? If Google can make the web browser capable of doing more and more and more, then why not?
At first, I hated this idea, for many reasons and still do, but now for other reasons. One of the big reasons, I didn't like this was because Google was behind such a thing.
I simply don't trust Google. Apple's efforts of introducing webkit and now Google using it to make their own OS. Well, to be honest, its fair but feels more googlish.

Most people in this world DO NOT need windows/mac os x machines. The percentage of these people is more than 90% in my opinion[approx. 7 billion people in this world].

ChromeOS doesn't need sandy bridge CPU's like people claim. It doesn't need that kind of horsepower to drive that little software. Are we the same Apple fans who first look for experience and then the hardware specifications?
I guess not. This thread is pretty remarkable to the hypocrisy of some of us, that boost experience over hardware specs. Not all but some of us here.

In reality most people don't care. They want great experience and from what I have seen, chromeOS does that right.

What if they are charging $500 for a netbook? A laptop for that price has got the specs but is still an inferior product in most ways.

The people who are looking for this kind of netbook are those who are just on the go most of the time but PREFER a keyboard.

In my opinion, Google has made a big deal with these netbooks. They will have a HUGE impact on Windows PC sales as most people don't give a **** as they don't know how to use these complex computers.

Also, this is a substitute for those people that cannot do with an iPad and want a keyboard. All these journalists, bloggers, writers, students who don't need the processing power, can have these kind of machines at a very cheap price.

The students who want to mess with these, can log into the shell. Boom.

I for once being a big fan of Apple products, think this is great for Google. In some time, Google can sell millions of these and be a master in the netbooks department.

Next, they will have Video Conferencing, probably Webex, Citrix and what not.

I think Google really pushed the limits with ChromeOS and their methodology is strictly behind that of Apple's:

- Good user experience for what the device claims
- Charge reasonable

I just have one issue: Google.

They are an irresponsible company and a company I cannot trust. I can spend $500 more and get a good computer mainly because I don't trust Google.

But for those who don't give a flying *******, this is the future.
 
Great stuff, can't wait for my ChromeBook Pro, or my ChromeBook Airy

Will they also be making a Chrome Pro desktop machine, or an iChrome all in one?

Personally I can't wait for the PowerChrome G5 laptop and the Chrube!
 
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