News Google's Chromebook Plus Program Targets Premium Laptop Space

[Admin]

Google's Chromebook Plus label guarantees proper performance, specifications, and AI features.

Google's Chromebook Plus Program Targets Premium Laptop Space : Read more

 

[PEnns]

"....and a minimum of 8 GB RAM and 128GB of storage"

That should tell us how serious those suckers are!!

Those dumb boxes can't even play one of the most widespread video formats on the planet! They're nothing but wannabe, crippled laptops meant for the most inane tasks, like browsing, writing a Google Cloud document and nothing else. Yeah, they boot up in 10 seconds, yay, because there NOTHING to boot up! And their life expectancy? 2 years.

Say what you want about Windows, but Window-based laptops run circles around those nasty, dumb machines, for about the same price point.

 

[helper800]

"....and a minimum of 8 GB RAM and 128GB of storage"

That should tell us how serious those suckers are!!

Those dumb boxes can't even play one of the most widespread video formats on the planet! They're nothing but wannabe, crippled laptops meant for the most inane tasks, like browsing, writing a Google Cloud document and nothing else. Yeah, they boot up in 10 seconds, yay, because there NOTHING to boot up! And their life expectancy? 2 years.

Say what you want about Windows, but Window-based laptops run circles around those nasty, dumb machines, for about the same price point.

In my opinion this is a bad take. Chromebooks are the everyday persons boiled down use case. I would say the vast majority of people who use laptops use them for simple basic tasks such as web browsing, word processing, slides, emails, and otherwise. Chromebooks also last significantly longer than you believe. Google has promised 10 years of support for chromebooks, much longer than most OSs. I work at a school district and you would not believe how long these chromebooks last with all these kids using them every single day for years on end. In fact, we have to surplus 90% of our old chromebooks because they still work 5+ years later and just don't die.

 

[Giroro]

If you're looking to spend $400+, then you should get a real laptop.
The chromebook OS is impressive by netbook standards, but the software support outside of running a web browser is essentially "none".
Chrome OS doesn't have a native app store. It's the Android Google Play store with a couple dozen or so native Chrome OS apps buried under 10-million emulated android apps which absolutely will not work with a mouse/keyboard, and often won't even work with a chromebook's landscape aspect ratio - and that's if they even launch in the first place.
There also is very few games made for chromebook (it didn't even have a real version of minecraft until a few months ago) - which is fascinating considering it's massive install base. More kids have chromebooks right now than Nintendo DS ever had at it's peak (and even the worst chromebook is a lot more powerful than that). I don't know why game companies seem to be ignoring the platform.
So you're back to "I hope this android game will launch and let me technically navigate a menu without having to plug an $80 gamepad into this $80 laptop"

Most importantly, there's no tools to filter or search the Play Store for native apps, or even by the features of your chromebook. So if you don't have a touch screen, good luck finding apps that you can interact with. Side-loading Linux apps is possible, but also a broken-driver terminal nightmare.

Chromebooks are neat toys and kindof fun sometimes. They run a web browser way better than you would expect out of terrible hardware. Really my only complaint with the web experience (and native apps when you can actually find one) isn't because I'm running a 1.6GHz dual core celeron from 2013, it's that 4GB of RAM is only good for like, 6 tabs of modern websites before it runs out.
Still, it doesn't make any sense to spend more than $150 on one. I don't think this weird Chromebook Plus branding is going to make overpriced chromebooks worthwhile, unless it eventually comes with a complete ground-up redo of the software library and a native app store.
Maybe the bad hardware was stopping them from improving the software library, and maybe Chromebook plus is going to be a baseline new platform to improve things in the future. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Right now it feels more like "Give us 3x more money for the same basic limited user experience, with a slightly better screen".

 

[helper800]

If you're looking to spend $400+, then you should get a real laptop.
The chromebook OS is impressive by netbook standards, but the software support outside of running a web browser is essentially "none".
Chrome OS doesn't have a native app store. It's the Android Google Play store with a couple dozen or so native Chrome OS apps buried under 10-million emulated android apps which absolutely will not work with a mouse/keyboard, and often won't even work with a chromebook's landscape aspect ratio - and that's if they even launch in the first place.
There also is very few games made for chromebook (it didn't even have a real version of minecraft until a few months ago) - which is fascinating considering it's massive install base. More kids have chromebooks right now than Nintendo DS ever had at it's peak (and even the worst chromebook is a lot more powerful than that). I don't know why game companies seem to be ignoring the platform.
So you're back to "I hope this android game will launch and let me technically navigate a menu without having to plug an $80 gamepad into this $80 laptop"

Most importantly, there's no tools to filter or search the Play Store for native apps, or even by the features of your chromebook. So if you don't have a touch screen, good luck finding apps that you can interact with. Side-loading Linux apps is possible, but also a broken-driver terminal nightmare.

Chromebooks are neat toys and kindof fun sometimes. They run a web browser way better than you would expect out of terrible hardware. Really my only complaint with the web experience (and native apps when you can actually find one) isn't that I'm running from running a 1.6GHz dual core celeron from 2013, it's that 4GB of RAM is only good for like, 6 tabs of modern websites before it runs out.
Still, it doesn't make any sense to spend more than $150 on one. I don't think this weird Chromebook Plus branding is going to make overpriced chromebooks worthwhile, unless it eventually comes with a complete ground-up redo of the software library and a native app store.
Maybe the bad hardware was stopping them from improving the software library, and maybe Chromebook plus is going to be a baseline new platform to improve things in the future. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Right now it feels more like "Give us 3x more money for the same basic limited user experience, with a slightly better screen".

This is a very good criticism of chromebooks and their OS. Hopefully since a program like this is coming out that means there is going to be more serious attention to native apps and effort put into phone app ports.

 

[usertests]

They should have mandated dedicated AI hardware, e.g. minimum of Meteor Lake or Phoenix. Bad move by Google.

Those dumb boxes can't even play one of the most widespread video formats on the planet! They're nothing but wannabe, crippled laptops meant for the most inane tasks, like browsing, writing a Google Cloud document and nothing else. Yeah, they boot up in 10 seconds, yay, because there NOTHING to boot up! And their life expectancy? 2 years.

Wrong on a lot of points. What are you talking about with the video format?

 

[cyrusfox]

Say what you want about Windows, but Window-based laptops run circles around those nasty, dumb machines, for about the same price point.

As a counter point, ChromeOS Flex is super efficient and makes an unsupported old chromebook fully update , with Linux capability and security compliant browsing as well as boasting 6+hour battery life (Not bad for a 8 year old beat up Acer C740). I Wouldn't buy a new chromebook but a free to $30 one, sure!

Those dumb boxes can't even play one of the most widespread video formats on the planet!

also are you talking about MKV or which format? I would imagine a linux install of VLC should rectify this quickly

 

[steve15180]

In my opinion this is a bad take. Chromebooks are the everyday persons boiled down use case. I would say the vast majority of people who use laptops use them for simple basic tasks such as web browsing, word processing, slides, emails, and otherwise. Chromebooks also last significantly longer than you believe. Google has promised 10 years of support for chromebooks, much longer than most OSs. I work at a school district and you would not believe how long these chromebooks last with all these kids using them every single day for years on end. In fact, we have to surplus 90% of our old chromebooks because they still work 5+ years later and just don't die.

I work in a school district as well. And you should know that your support numbers are dead wrong. 10 years starts in 2024. Until then, it is 6.5 years after the specific model is FIRST introduced. Which means that if you buy the same ones as replacements 2 years later, your down to 4 .5 years. Second, these are no better than any other entry level laptop. No better, no worse, except that the students abuse the heck out of them and it shows. Lastly, your locked into google for all of your useful apps. This was tried before, and failed miserably (anyone remember the chromebook with an awesome high res display....if you blinked, you missed it).

 

[bit_user]

Chromebook Plus models are designed to offer superior performance and therefore are powered by at least a 12th Gen Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 CPUs,

All x86? That seems like a pretty major snub to Qualcomm and Mediatek.

 

[bit_user]

Say what you want about Windows, but Window-based laptops run circles around those nasty, dumb machines, for about the same price point.

So tell me: if you put a Windows-based laptop in the hands of the average teenage boy, how long does it usually take to get virus-infected?

Furthermore, if you're going to say that's not an issue if you use good security software, then let me tell you what the software on my corporate laptop does to performance. On a low-spec CPU, it would perform like utter trash. And yet, we still manage to get hit with malware.

 

[pixelpusher220]

In my opinion this is a bad take. Chromebooks are the everyday persons boiled down use case. I would say the vast majority of people who use laptops use them for simple basic tasks such as web browsing, word processing, slides, emails, and otherwise. Chromebooks also last significantly longer than you believe. Google has promised 10 years of support for chromebooks, much longer than most OSs. I work at a school district and you would not believe how long these chromebooks last with all these kids using them every single day for years on end. In fact, we have to surplus 90% of our old chromebooks because they still work 5+ years later and just don't die.

Uh, Google was FORCING EOL on these machines in as little as 3 years https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-google-lifespan-chromebooksa-school-districts.html

They finally caved and will start supporting them longer, but up front they specifically made them disposable with no ability to keep them active...yay for SaaS but for your own damn hardware

 

[PEnns]

So tell me: if you put a Windows-based laptop in the hands of the average teenage boy, how long does it usually take to get virus-infected?

Your average teenager can infect the hell out of anything.

Or are you implying (like many before you who said the same about any of their favorite system!) that Chromebooks are virus-proof?? I heard the same ludicrous claims about Apple, Unix, Linux, ad nauseam.

 

[helper800]

Uh, Google was FORCING EOL on these machines in as little as 3 years https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-google-lifespan-chromebooksa-school-districts.html

They finally caved and will start supporting them longer, but up front they specifically made them disposable with no ability to keep them active...yay for SaaS but for your own damn hardware

Support has changed from 5 or 8 years to 10 years for models post-2021 and partial support for pre-2021 models. Regardless of why it happened, 10 years of support promised from Google sounds about as good as the average lifetime of a Microsoft OS.

 

[helper800]

I work in a school district as well. And you should know that your support numbers are dead wrong. 10 years starts in 2024. Until then, it is 6.5 years after the specific model is FIRST introduced. Which means that if you buy the same ones as replacements 2 years later, your down to 4 .5 years. Second, these are no better than any other entry level laptop. No better, no worse, except that the students abuse the heck out of them and it shows. Lastly, your locked into google for all of your useful apps. This was tried before, and failed miserably (anyone remember the chromebook with an awesome high res display....if you blinked, you missed it).

You are putting words in my mouth, read what I wrote, "Google has promised 10 years of support for chromebooks." I never said that every individual model now has 10 years support. 10 years of support starts in 2024 for models that are already supported because these include models that are post 2021. This means that a 2022 model chromebook will have support until 2032. I never said that these were better than any other laptop either, I simply stated that they are significantly more durable than their prices would suggest. I have seen kids using them as frisbees, pick them up off the concrete, and then they are fine to use with some small scrap. You are not locked into google for everything. The vast majority of what our students use are websites that are built with chromebooks in mind.

 

[usertests]

Not only did they increase support to 10 years (from model date), they are decoupling the browser from the OS with "LaCrOS", allowing it to receive updates after OS support ends. If all else fails, you can probably replace ChromeOS with full Linux. You're likely to have better luck with x86 models.