HP, Google Offering 11.6" Chromebook on Google Play

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A laptop like device that has smaller flash storage than a cheap flash drive. I am curious what people really buy and use this for? Portability wise, smart phone and tablet beat it. Productivity wise, a normal Windows laptop beats it. Too big for music playing. Storage too small for movie watching. Not the best form factor for eBook. But Amazon sells a lot of this. So really, what do the buyers use it for?
 
Only 16gb of storage? Only 6 hours battery life, with all of its other limitations? When you can get a half decent actual laptop starting at $300, $279 for a device like this seems like a lot for a device with one of the most limited OS's you can get on it. I'd take an Android tablet - which costs quite a bit less, I might add - over this in a heartbeat if you really wanted some sort of Google service using device.

I can understand the idea behind a Chromebook, but when they're hitting the lower end of the full laptop pricing spectrum, I just can't see them being worth it. Machines like this should be $100'ish, not coming up on $300.
 
Slow down a minute. Someone find me a Windows laptop for $300 that has an IPS screen, speakers embedded into the keyboard, totally silent running, a decent keyboard and trackpad, that boots in 7 seconds and resumes instantly. Plus, it's fast people. Anything running Windows 8 with some crap mechanical hard drive is going to feel like a slug compared to this.

Someone find a tablet that comes even close to those specs with a keyboard for under $300.

Not going to happen either way.

Closest competitors? Asus T100 @ $350. That's $70 more with identical specs and worse screen.

Surface RT? Looking at minimum $450+keyboard.

$300 10" Android tablets? Junk and not good for productivity.

Only 16GB of storage? That's more than the 32 GB Surface RT has left over after Win 8 is installed. What do you need more for? I am currently using less than 2 GB on my Chromebook. There's no programs to install. Any other content is stored on the 100GB of free drive storage.

What does the average user do on the computer that the Chromebook doesent?

Web browser? Check.

Word processor? Check.

Basic photo editing? Check.

Music Player? Check.

Gaming? Browser based, but who is really gaming on a $300 11" laptop?

Also, don't mention the line about "You can't do anything offline" because you can. Docs and many other apps are available for offline use.

No antivirus, no malware, no program updates. Did I mention it's fast? It will never slow down and will always have the latest software.

To the average household consumer, this thing is a steal. It does everything they need fast like they are used to on their tablets and phones.

"But But it doesn't have Office!!!!!" No one really needs it. Google Docs has 90% of the functionality, and there is also the Microsoft Office Web apps if you don't like that. If you are doing something incredibly technical, you probably aren't going to be buying a $280 notebook.

 
Chromebooks don't NEED more than 16 GB storage. It's only used to run the operating system from as well as cache websites, store settings and downloaded files.

I can't speak for this model, but Samsung's chromebook has an SD card slot, so if you need more storage then that's easily taken care of.
 
My biggest disappointment for most chromebooks is not the functionality--they are designed for a specific sort of usage, and I totally get that. But...I can't fathom why they were designed and have such low battery life (and with such a relatively hefty weight). I see how you can hit 2.3 pounds for a chromebook--that's a reasonable weight--I just don't see why the battery life is so abysmal. For such a low power device, I would expect, like, days of usage, not just 6 hours. How difficult would it be to integrate a larger (and yes, heavier) battery to get you super long usage? Not very hard. I mean, I know the price point and target market is totally different, but let's take the MBA; it weighs the same, and gets at least 50% more battery life, all with a more powerful processor and full desktop functionality.

The guts of the chromebook are essentially a smartphone with a keyboard and a larger display panel. It has a 2300mah battery. My phone has a 2100mah battery. You could easily double the capacity without a significant cost or weight, and have a truly usable all-day device. This 4-6 hour usage is sub-par by today's standards.
 


The issue here is cost. Higher capacity batteries cost more. The battery in the Chromebook is powering a screen about 4x bigger than a typical smartphone. Asking them to have similar battery life is not reasonable, especially at $200-280

Macbook Air? Costs 4x as much as a Chromebook. They can afford to put a bigger battery in there.

Chromebook battery life is actually very good compared to most Windows notebooks in the price range which typically have 3-4 hour battery life. The Samsung Series 3 Chromebook what I have has 4080 mAH and is rated for 6.5 hours, yet I can easily get 8+ hours of web browsing and word processing with the screen at half brightness. This is the one case where battery life has actually been better than advertised.
 

You aren't going to get days of usage out of anything budget-priced with a budget-grade battery and a conventional budget-grade LCD on it since the backlight alone will be draining 3-10W depending on brightness.

Battery-wise, your phone has a 3.7V 2100mAh battery. [strike]The Chromebook likely has a 7.4V (two cells) or 11V (three cells) 2300mAh battery pack. So that would be 7.8Wh for your phone VS either 17Wh or 25.3Wh battery capacity for the Chromebook.[/strike] The Chromebook 11's Google Play page says it has a 30Wh pack so, if it uses 2300mAh cells, that would be four cells. (2.3Ah x 14.8V)
 
It's a 1366x768 IPS display which is outstanding at this price point. Same resolution as the Macbook Air.

It's really amazing what they can do without having to spend money on licensing a bloated OS like Windows or a power hungry CPU to power it.
 
Considering your phone spends most of the time with its screen OFF (unless you're a facebook addict) I don't think it's a fair comparison.

If you want to make a valid comparison, compare the Chromebooks to other laptops in the same price range, that usually means fairly bulky affairs with mechanical harddrives.
 
Considering that the high resolution display was a selling point of the Chromebook Pixel it is a shame that this notebook only has 768p. Would it kill them to bump it to 900p at least? 768p needs to die.
 
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