The Chromebook / Chromebox Thread

[RevPokemon]

I read it all twice and can't find anything credible in either post. He's alluding to a few things that are true, such as high end gaming ultra books do have cooling issues, but he's exaggerating beyond reason.
Also, he's putting down chrome books when he's never seen them. How can you call one heavy if you've never seen one?

Now I too have never seen a chrome book, but I've always had the question. If it's a cloud based OS, how does it handle Internet dropouts? Does everything suddenly refuse to load, or does it still let you do everything offline and only syncs when you get back online?

Basically its like a tablet without WiFi more or less. Some apps on the Chromebook will work if it is offline compatible but if it lacks off line abilities then it won't work.

 

[LightyKD]

Chrome machines are no more cloud based than your average PC. The whole "It's cloud bases" is all marketing. You have both on and offline apps. Most devs tend to make their apps online. As for as handling networks. My Chromebox gets roughly twice the speed of my wife's PC @ 4GHz and roughly three times the speed at 5GHz. We're talking a bout a bump from 25mbps to 125mbps. It's a speedy machine. There are a few hiccups and some oddities, ( I miss having properties when file browsing) but overall I don't see why people are hating so damn much.

 

[RevPokemon]

Chrome machines are no more cloud based than your average PC. The whole "It's cloud bases" is all marketing. You have both on and offline apps. Most devs tend to make their apps online. As for as handling networks. My Chromebox gets roughly twice the speed of my wife's PC @ 4GHz and roughly three times the speed at 5GHz. We're talking a bout a bump from 25mbps to 125mbps. It's a speedy machine. There are a few hiccups and some oddities, ( I miss having properties when file browsing) but overall I don't see why people are hating so damn much.

Personally I feel that I like Chromebooks but for myself they aren't worth the price when for a bit more you can get a windows with more features. Now I don't have a problem with chrome books but they don't suit me needs

 

[weatMod]

I read it all twice and can't find anything credible in either post. He's alluding to a few things that are true, such as high end gaming ultra books do have cooling issues, but he's exaggerating beyond reason.
Also, he's putting down chrome books when he's never seen them. How can you call one heavy if you've never seen one?

Now I too have never seen a chrome book, but I've always had the question. If it's a cloud based OS, how does it handle Internet dropouts? Does everything suddenly refuse to load, or does it still let you do everything offline and only syncs when you get back online?

actually i have seen them in the store an picked them up they are quite heavy especially for what they are
i said i never used one i didnt say i never seen one
and no my ultrabook is not a "high end gaming ultrabook" because no such thing even exists , you couldnt game on this thing at all it has intel HD graphics
they all do , they dont put decent graphic cards in ultraboks, AFAIK, just intel standard crap

it cant even run chrome properly with a 4th gen i7 and and 8 gigs of ram, you cant even scroll anything , it takes 3 hours to populate thumbnails in windows explorer
every time i use it i just want to tear my fucking eyeballs out and smash it with a sledge hammer

its a piece of shit , intels haswell ultramobile chips are pieces of shit they are fucking worthless garbage
im not even exaggerating when i say the fan is screaming at full blast and blowing out hot air hotter than from a hairdryer on high before i even take my finger off of the on button , not even on for 2 seconds hot as fuck fan going full blast with nothing even running and its already in near meltdown

if i open more than 10 tabs in chrome it nearly burns my fucking house down

and intel is using extremely deceptive advertising and branding ,i7 haswell laptop uses a different chip than a haswell i7 ultrabook ,but they dont tell you that unless you really dig to find out

intels ultramobile chips are pure garbage they get worse performance than a 1st gen celleron or atom

so i cant imagine them putting anything worth a fuck in a $200 shit book

when i paid like $1800 and the performace is absolutely fucking pathetic ,it takes literally 20 minutes to scroll 5 inches down a tumblr page or any page with lots of photos
the scrolling if you can even call it that is fucking ridiculous it cant even scroll anything or it lags and jumps all over the fucking place and never populates thumbs half the time
if it does it's only after loading for 15 minutes

it stutters and freezes ,its total garbage, it even happens in windows explorer when browsing folders on the SSD
typing often lags also,up to like 40 seconds behind sometimes
it is a totally unuseable piece of dog shit that i wish i had never purchased and that goes for pretty much everything on the market today running win 8 or 8.1

i dont know what you have to spend these days to get a decent machine or if you can even find one , but im sure its well over 2k so you are not going to get anything decent for $200 chrome book price range

if a real computer with much better specs cant even run their shitty apps then how can a much lowe hardware be expected to?
unless it's windows causing all the problems, but i doubt a 200 machine will run an of it even remotely decently even if the google OS is minimal

i would never waste my money on something that only runs googles piece of shit apps like google drive ,the biggest fucking abomination ever that takes literally hours to scroll through photos , stops ,skips, jumps all over the place when attempting to scroll through thumbs, never populates thumbs hangs all the time it's worthless shit, absolute fucking shit
just like google plus

and also chrome has gotten significantly worse, slower and more unstable in the last few years too it runs like shit compared to 3 years ago i dont what these fuck heads are doing over there but every change these assholes makes just fucks thing up more and more it's like they are deliberately destroying their own products and crippling performance and turning everything to shit on purpose

same goes for mozilla that browser has gone strait into the fucking toilet too, it's totally unuseable now it get about the same shit performance now as MSIE ,i swear they are putting in so much spyware in all of this shit now its
totally fucking the performance up to the point of it being nearly worthless for use on mobiles

but it's funny that i notice less problems on IOS and lower end android devices with chrome , chrome works better on my shitty iphone 5c w/ IOS 7(IOS 8 on 5c sucks) and on my friends shitty $99 lg tablet than it runs on my ultrabook or on his galaxy s5 alpha, scrolling is smooth and fluid and performance seems better on smaller less powered devices it makes no fucking sense at all

just like it makes no sense that these new windows machines run hot as fuck with nothing even running but i can open 60 tabs on chrome and have 12 apps running at once on an iphone and its not even warm
but google drive still sucks on every device no matter what it is ,it's completely fucking worthless slow as shit piece of garbage into the trash it goes

it's like windows is deliberately fucking it's users who want to use desktop and normal windows programs , because the metro shit and their app versions that i dont think use as much resources i bet they dont have these problems, of course i wouldnt know because i never use that bullshit because it's garbage but its like they make these things and say they run full windows but then they make everything thats not an app run so fucking shitty to try and force you use to use their shitty metro shit and their crappy worthless apps , of which there are probably like what 15 of total in the windows store?

they said they got rid of rt and everything is full 8.1 now, but the way 8.1 runs normal windoes programs they may as well have just got rid of full windows because the performance sucks so bad when trying to run anything its not even worth it, its like they crippled it on purpose to make you use their apps
only thing is they dont even have any

these 3 companies have ruined everything

INTEl
MS
GOOGLE
everything the touch turns to shit, they are all going in reverse

 

[LightyKD]

actually i have seen them in the store an picked them up they are quite heavy especially for what they are
i said i never used one i didnt say i never seen one
and no my ultrabook is not a "high end gaming ultrabook" because no such thing even exists , you couldnt game on this thing at all it has intel HD graphics
they all do , they dont put decent graphic cards in ultraboks, AFAIK, just intel standard crap

it cant even run chrome properly with a 4th gen i7 and and 8 gigs of ram, you cant even scroll anything , it takes 3 hours to populate thumbnails in windows explorer
every time i use it i just want to tear my fucking eyeballs out and smash it with a sledge hammer

its a piece of shit , intels haswell ultramobile chips are pieces of shit they are fucking worthless garbage
im not even exaggerating when i say the fan is screaming at full blast and blowing out hot air hotter than from a hairdryer on high before i even take my finger off of the on button , not even on for 2 seconds hot as fuck fan going full blast with nothing even running and its already in near meltdown

if i open more than 10 tabs in chrome it nearly burns my fucking house down

and intel is using extremely deceptive advertising and branding ,i7 haswell laptop uses a different chip than a haswell i7 ultrabook ,but they dont tell you that unless you really dig to find out

intels ultramobile chips are pure garbage they get worse performance than a 1st gen celleron or atom

so i cant imagine them putting anything worth a fuck in a $200 shit book

when i paid like $1800 and the performace is absolutely fucking pathetic ,it takes literally 20 minutes to scroll 5 inches down a tumblr page or any page with lots of photos
the scrolling if you can even call it that is fucking ridiculous it cant even scroll anything or it lags and jumps all over the fucking place and never populates thumbs half the time
if it does it's only after loading for 15 minutes

it stutters and freezes ,its total garbage, it even happens in windows explorer when browsing folders on the SSD
typing often lags also,up to like 40 seconds behind sometimes
it is a totally unuseable piece of dog shit that i wish i had never purchased and that goes for pretty much everything on the market today running win 8 or 8.1

i dont know what you have to spend these days to get a decent machine or if you can even find one , but im sure its well over 2k so you are not going to get anything decent for $200 chrome book price range

if a real computer with much better specs cant even run their shitty apps then how can a much lowe hardware be expected to?
unless it's windows causing all the problems, but i doubt a 200 machine will run an of it even remotely decently even if the google OS is minimal

i would never waste my money on something that only runs googles piece of shit apps like google drive ,the biggest fucking abomination ever that takes literally hours to scroll through photos , stops ,skips, jumps all over the place when attempting to scroll through thumbs, never populates thumbs hangs all the time it's worthless shit, absolute fucking shit
just like google plus

and also chrome has gotten significantly worse, slower and more unstable in the last few years too it runs like shit compared to 3 years ago i dont what these fuck heads are doing over there but every change these assholes makes just fucks thing up more and more it's like they are deliberately destroying their own products and crippling performance and turning everything to shit on purpose

same goes for mozilla that browser has gone strait into the fucking toilet too, it's totally unuseable now it get about the same shit performance now as MSIE ,i swear they are putting in so much spyware in all of this shit now its
totally fucking the performance up to the point of it being nearly worthless for use on mobiles

but it's funny that i notice less problems on IOS and lower end android devices with chrome , chrome works better on my shitty iphone 5c w/ IOS 7(IOS 8 on 5c sucks) and on my friends shitty $99 lg tablet than it runs on my ultrabook or on his galaxy s5 alpha, scrolling is smooth and fluid and performance seems better on smaller less powered devices it makes no fucking sense at all

just like it makes no sense that these new windows machines run hot as fuck with nothing even running but i can open 60 tabs on chrome and have 12 apps running at once on an iphone and its not even warm
but google drive still sucks on every device no matter what it is ,it's completely fucking worthless slow as shit piece of garbage into the trash it goes

it's like windows is deliberately fucking it's users who want to use desktop and normal windows programs , because the metro shit and their app versions that i dont think use as much resources i bet they dont have these problems, of course i wouldnt know because i never use that bullshit because it's garbage but its like they make these things and say they run full windows but then they make everything thats not an app run so fucking shitty to try and force you use to use their shitty metro shit and their crappy worthless apps , of which there are probably like what 15 of total in the windows store?

they said they got rid of rt and everything is full 8.1 now, but the way 8.1 runs normal windoes programs they may as well have just got rid of full windows because the performance sucks so bad when trying to run anything its not even worth it, its like they crippled it on purpose to make you use their apps
only thing is they dont even have any

these 3 companies have ruined everything

INTEl
MS
GOOGLE
everything the touch turns to shit, they are all going in reverse

OK, it sucks that you're having so many issues but are you sure that you don't have some bit of malware on your PC? Maybe it's time for a refresh? The Chrome OS hardware/software combo is similar to the old Power PC macs. The OS is made specifically with the hardware in mind. My Chromebox might have shoddy specs if it was running Windows but it's a speed demon in Chrome OS. There are four mainstream operating systems. You seem to be having issues in Windows and you might not like Chrome OS but maybe you could try one of the X86 versions of Mac OSX or use a lightweight OS like Ubuntu? You mentioned that you have a iPhone. Maybe it's time for you to marry your phone and PC by using OSX X86.

 

[Originality]

A few things comes to mind. Choked primary drive, malware, bloatware, adware, too many third party chrome extensions, etc. Windows 8 has a refresh feature that I admittedly don't know too much about but heard it could help with such problems. That and a good old spring cleaning, removing unnecessary or unwanted software and extensions to reduce the amount of thrashing the primary drive goes through.

That said, none of this sounds like the fault of Intel or MS.

 

[LightyKD]

I don't want this thread to go too far off its course. I'm still hoping that more Chromebook/box owners will show up here.

 

[weatMod]

OK, it sucks that you're having so many issues but are you sure that you don't have some bit of malware on your PC? Maybe it's time for a refresh? The Chrome OS hardware/software combo is similar to the old Power PC macs. The OS is made specifically with the hardware in mind. My Chromebox might have shoddy specs if it was running Windows but it's a speed demon in Chrome OS. There are four mainstream operating systems. You seem to be having issues in Windows and you might not like Chrome OS but maybe you could try one of the X86 versions of Mac OSX or use a lightweight OS like Ubuntu? You mentioned that you have a iPhone. Maybe it's time for you to marry your phone and PC by using OSX X86.

yeah i am meaning to learn ubuntu, and now it even has touch support i hear, i hate osx though

yeah i thought it was just my PC and maybe there was spyware on it or maybe that the antivirus was slowing it done
but scanning with AV and malwarebytes never found anything but then i bought a whole new ultrabook and getting basically the same issues

i think the OS or the browse IS the spyware or both
because i bought a new laptop in 2010 got it home and i remember having 4 browsers open at the same time with 3 pages open in each browser and like 60 plus tabs open in each window and never having any issues
after about 2012 i noticed problems with the old laptop and it was getting slow then it broke so i figured i just a get brand new PC and it will be better WRONG
it's worse and my old laptop was a 1st gen i3 now i got a i7 ultrabook and its crap
i think they are doing something with these browsers because i used to like them and they all seem to suck now, they autoupdate too which really sucks
thats BS if the new version sucks you ant go back to a legacy version, but i noticed significant decline in performace of all of them, so i dont know if its the OS or the browsers like chrome and FF but i suspect its a little of both

also i have sites i go to stream audio and it NEVER works on ANY browser on my PC but open it in chrome IOS and it works fine , also wont even stream when i copy the URL into VLC directly , just fucking refuses to work on ANY PC

shit dont make sense, i think they are deliberately sabotaging PC and putting so much NSA spy ware in these browsers that it turning the performance to shit cause i have no other explanation

and i cant for the life me understand how these smartphones and tablets can run a fuck ton more shit than my PC and not get even slightly warm and they have no fans
but my PC is not even on for 2 seconds nothing running has a fan whic runs constantly and it's scalding hot,

why can they make tablets with no fans but ultrabooks, and tablet convertible ultraboooks which is what i have still need fans and run hot as fuck doing NOTHING
but a shitty iphone 5c with 30 apps open and 60 browser tabs open doesnt break a sweat or slow down at all hardly

either intel is seriously fuckng their shit up or there is a metric fuckton of secret spyware running in the background that is stealing resources or something
i can't figure it out but PC computing has just gotten so shitty its not even worth it for laptops, ultrabooks,convertables

it makes no sense at all ,intel can just go fuck right of with their garbage mobile chip they should just give up i wish i could buy a PC laptop with an invidia or qualcom chip i bet it wouldnt overheat instantly and i bet it wouldnt even need a fan

 

[LightyKD]

OK, back to Chrome OS

Here are a few things people should know:

If you need office related apps, the Google Suite should be fine for you
- Google Docs (Word)
- Google Sheets (Excel)
- Google Slides (Powerpoint)

For your email you can start off with
- Gmail or Inbox
- of course there are plenty of email sites.

In regards to a GIMP substitute I use
- Sumo Paint / this app seems to have most if no all of what GIMP offers and allows for saving to and from both the local and cloud storage

For video editing
- WeVideo / seems like it feature packed but the pricing-to-usable features ratio sucks ass. Until Google makes their own video editing solution, don't rely much on this app.

For torrents
- JS Torrent / is pretty much the ONLY app to use. It works but sometime it's really slow

The File Browser
- leaves much to be desired. For the most part it will do what you need it to do but having to go to the gear icon to request a second window sucks. I hate that there is no properties tab for folders and files. Additionally I hate that there is no preview within the icon for documents and videos yet pictures have previews. it's silly. Additionally, there seems to be no decent options for organizing files within a folder. From what I can gather, your files are arranged on a last used basis. It's annoying. Even the Google Drive website has better arrangement.

BTW, until it's fixed, DON'T use Google Drive from the file browser. The damn thing has issues playing your cloud videos yet, they play perfectly from the website. Mostly you have to wait a half a minute for the file to load. If you must use Drive from the file browser, only use it for quick access to small files. Finally, and this is a knock on both Windows AND Chrome OS (I'm not sure of the situation in OSX), I HATE that there is no native gif animation support. It's so damn stupid! You're telling me that after all these years, I still need to drag and drop a gif into a web browser just to watch them animate?! WTF?! I know that a new, material designed file browser is on the way so I'm holding hope that a lot of these issues will be ironed out.

With all of that said, don't get it twisted, I still love my Chromebox and Chrome OS is still a good system. It's a young, budding system with lots of room to mature. Like any parent, I'm looking forward to watching the OS mature. I'll have more to say on things over the next few days but right now I'm having fun!

 

[Lacius]

At the school I work at, I was on a committee to select Chromebooks or laptops to buy for students. We ended up purchasing about twenty Lenovo N20 models. So far, we've had nothing but good experiences with them. They're much faster than the old Windows XP computers we already have, and the students can do pretty much anything on them that they would do on a Windows machine. We might purchase about a hundred more.

 

[LightyKD]

At the school I work at, I was on a committee to select Chromebooks or laptops to buy for students. We ended up purchasing about twenty Lenovo N20 models. So far, we've had nothing but good experiences with them. They're much faster than the old Windows XP computers we already have, and the students can do pretty much anything on them that they would do on a Windows machine. We might purchase about a hundred more.

That's pretty awesome! I really wish that more schools would go with the Chrome OS platform. No excuses on losing your homework because it's backed onto the cloud lol. Google should start getting manufacturers to make Chrome OS sticks. for schools that can't afford to buy every student a laptop, I can see them (schools) having a monitor, keyboard and mouse at every desk and all the student would need is a "Chrome stick". There would be no worried of major damage because a student drops a laptop and if a stick becomes damaged it should be fairly cheap to replace. This might not be so easy to implement on the High School level but maybe in the Elementary and Middle levels.

 

[weatMod]

At the school I work at, I was on a committee to select Chromebooks or laptops to buy for students. We ended up purchasing about twenty Lenovo N20 models. So far, we've had nothing but good experiences with them. They're much faster than the old Windows XP computers we already have, and the students can do pretty much anything on them that they would do on a Windows machine. We might purchase about a hundred more.

you know you are just teaching and indoctrinating the children to trust the cloud computing model and give up all their computing freedom ,data and privacy over to this cancerous mega corporation right?

get them while there young is the strategy to changing dissenting opinions
it's happening in all schools nation wide too
their goal is to wipe out local storage and GP computing altogether
and also to create dossiers on every child

 

[Lacius]

That's pretty awesome! I really wish that more schools would go with the Chrome OS platform. No excuses on losing your homework because it's backed onto the cloud lol. Google should start getting manufacturers to make Chrome OS sticks. for schools that can't afford to buy every student a laptop, I can see them (schools) having a monitor, keyboard and mouse at every desk and all the student would need is a "Chrome stick". There would be no worried of major damage because a student drops a laptop and if a stick becomes damaged it should be fairly cheap to replace. This might not be so easy to implement on the High School level but maybe in the Elementary and Middle levels.

The goal of our school district is to unify around Google. It was between Google accounts and Microsoft accounts, and I chose Google. We're giving the kids Google accounts, we're using Google Docs for all of our word processing, we're using Google Drive for all of our files (in part so no one can lose anything), etc. Even the old Windows computers are just acting as middlemen between students and Google Chrome.

you know you are just teaching and indoctrinating the children to trust the cloud computing model and give up all their computing freedom ,data and privacy over to this cancerous mega corporation right?

get them while there young is the strategy to changing dissenting opinions
it's happening in all schools nation wide too
their goal is to wipe out local storage and GP computing altogether

and also to create dossiers on every child

I don't think your concerns are valid. I'm not telling students to give up their computing freedom. There are numerous reasons to use cloud computing and web-based applications in a school setting. Including what I mentioned above, it also allows for consistency across devices. In the classroom setting, it is impossible to go over every computer option. It would take the whole school year to adequately say, "Here's how Windows works. Here's how Mac OS works. Here's how Android works. Here's how iOS works. Here's how Google works. Here's how Microsoft Word works. Here's how LibreOffice works. Here's how Outlook works." The goal is to consistently use one of these options in order to provide a framework from which students can gain the computer literacy required to intuitively figure out everything else on this list and more.

I chose Google because Chromebooks are cheap, and Google works across all devices. It also keeps my students organized, especially the ones who will intentionally forget their thumb drives because they don't want to work on a research paper.

 

[LightyKD]

The goal of our school district is to unify around Google. It was between Google accounts and Microsoft accounts, and I chose Google. We're giving the kids Google accounts, we're using Google Docs for all of our word processing, we're using Google Drive for all of our files (in part so no one can lose anything), etc. Even the old Windows computers are just acting as middlemen between students and Google Chrome.


I don't think your concerns are valid. I'm not telling students to give up their computing freedom. There are numerous reasons to use cloud computing and web-based applications in a school setting. Including what I mentioned above, it also allows for consistency across devices. In the classroom setting, it is impossible to go over every computer option. It would take the whole school year to adequately say, "Here's how Windows works. Here's how Mac OS works. Here's how Android works. Here's how iOS works. Here's how Google works. Here's how Microsoft Word works. Here's how LibreOffice works. Here's out Outlook works." The goal is to consistently use one of these options in order to provide a framework from which students can gain the computer literacy required to intuitively figure out everything else on this list and more.

I chose Google because Chromebooks are cheap, and Google works across all devices. It also keeps my students organized, especially the ones who will intentionally forget their thumb drives because they don't want to work on a research paper.

Sounds like your school is off to a really good start. Speaking of Windows, I find it funny that Microsoft is trying to get PC manufacturers to play catch-up with Chromebooks/boxes. Just look at the four recent offerings from HP. The HP Stream 11 is a Windows 8 book that comes in blue or pink and is modeled after their very own Chromebook. The other two devices are the silver and blue HP stream mini, which are boxes that are basically the same offering as their own Chromebox but with Windows 8 and a sightly modified shell.

Other Windows manufacturers are following. Hell, Microsoft is even giving away licenses at $35 a pop for devices such as micro computers and tablets running Windows 8. There is no doubt that Google went in the right direction. People want simplicity and people want devices that just work. A year from now, there will be a ton of Chrome OS users and I cant wait to see the computing landscape then.

 

[weatMod]

The goal of our school district is to unify around Google. It was between Google accounts and Microsoft accounts, and I chose Google. We're giving the kids Google accounts, we're using Google Docs for all of our word processing, we're using Google Drive for all of our files (in part so no one can lose anything), etc. Even the old Windows computers are just acting as middlemen between students and Google Chrome.


I don't think your concerns are valid. I'm not telling students to give up their computing freedom. There are numerous reasons to use cloud computing and web-based applications in a school setting. Including what I mentioned above, it also allows for consistency across devices. In the classroom setting, it is impossible to go over every computer option. It would take the whole school year to adequately say, "Here's how Windows works. Here's how Mac OS works. Here's how Android works. Here's how iOS works. Here's how Google works. Here's how Microsoft Word works. Here's how LibreOffice works. Here's how Outlook works." The goal is to consistently use one of these options in order to provide a framework from which students can gain the computer literacy required to intuitively figure out everything else on this list and more.

I chose Google because Chromebooks are cheap, and Google works across all devices. It also keeps my students organized, especially the ones who will intentionally forget their thumb drives because they don't want to work on a research paper.

but they are not gaining computer literacy though they are gaining google literacy , by your admission the school is too lazy to teach proficiency in actual computer literacy so you are just teaching google as an alternative because it's just easier ,pure laziness

of course if they get their way they will be using this horrible alternative to real computing in the real world
you are contributing to the death of computing, to the death of GP computing and local storage and giving control over to google ,you are sacrificing control and freedom for convenience


i do use chrome and do like the sync feature that syncs my browse across devices but you are giving up privacy and compromising security
but there is not really an alternative now because nothing is really private or secure anymore

but when you upload to these cloud services they own all of your data, read the fine print

this is just contributing to the dumbing down of society and creating total dependence of these corporate entities
and giving them total control

it's not a good thing they are constantly changing things for the worse and pissing off their users too ,and they never listen to user feedback
in fact they do the exact opposite of what their user want most of the time

also there is a concerted effort to spread the use of chrome books in schools these companies want to collect data on all children
it's child exploitation
they are data mining children

 

[weatMod]

Sounds like your school is off to a really good start. Speaking of Windows, I find it funny that Microsoft is trying to get PC manufacturers to play catch-up with Chromebooks/boxes. Just look at the four recent offerings from HP. The HP Stream 11 is a Windows 8 book that comes in blue or pink and is modeled after their very own Chromebook. The other two devices are the silver and blue HP stream mini, which are boxes that are basically the same offering as their own Chromebox but with Windows 8 and a sightly modified shell.

Other Windows manufacturers are following. Hell, Microsoft is even giving away licenses at $35 a pop for devices such as micro computers and tablets running Windows 8. There is no doubt that Google went in the right direction. People want simplicity and people want devices that just work. A year from now, there will be a ton of Chrome OS users and I cant wait to see the computing landscape then.

you think this is good IT'S NOT GOOD

it's funny you mention this because i am using the HP stream whatever the fuck you call it ,i call it a fucking piece of shit, right now
my ultrabook is broke,(already after not even 4 months of use and having never even been outside my home or off AC)

the manufacturers warranty only pays for repair through geek squad(which totally sucks because they do not fix in house and have to ship your PC across the country)

so worst buy offered me to be able to buy a PC as sort of a loaner and said they will return it when my PC comes back no matter how long it takes i can still return for a full refund

i was sort of in a rush and since they said the repair would only take a couple weeks i just decided to pick up the cheapest lightest thing there and i didn't even realize that it was a stream cloud based whatever it is, it runs win 8.1 and has a touch screen so i just grabbed it

here is my review of this piece of garbage

1st thing i notice is the build quality ,it is actually surprisingly great , it's not too heavy , feels nice and really solid,the hinge is really tight , i like the blue color and white keys color scheme and the outside of the lid has a really nice matte finish ,i really like the build quality and look of this device a lot

i would never call this thing light it's just that it was lighter than pretty much every other thing on the worst buy display line, but their selection is just total shit anyways
this thing is still about 2 and half times heavier than my ultrabook

also on the plus side it is quiet , i dont even know if it has a fan in it because after a week and half of heavy use i hear nothing

it has some decent stereo DTS speakers on the bottom of the front underneath

aaand thats about all that i can say positive about this thing

now for the negative

lets start with the display, this has to be THE WORST LCD display i have ever seen in my entire life ,now i am used to a premium IPS triluminous full HD LED display
but this thing is just so fucked up, the color scheme is so far off its ridiculous none of the colors are right at all but i knew that right away when i was in worst buy by just by looking at all the other machines next to it because it was so glaringly obvious by comparison but it still would have been totally noticeable even if it want next to other machines with decent displays

, but i didnt care though since this is only extremely temporary situation, mainly i grabbed it cause it was among the lightest and cheapest things there and it looked nice

i overlooked one thing with this device , the SD reader is MSD only , no SD slot just micro i didnt realize it till i got it home

now to the performance

good god why would anyone want to deal with piece of shit is beyond me you would have to be a total fucking masochist or live in the poorest 3rd world hell hole slum and not be able to afford anything else other than that i see no reason to own this garbage

1st of all (another oversight on my part i didnt realize when i picked it up) this thing has 20 gigs of storage TWENTY!
the fucking "HDD" is already full and has been for days now
and i only had it a little over a week!

the performance out of the box was total shit to be sure but now with the "HDD" full and only 2 gigs of ram it's like not even useable

if you plan on using chrome on this thing you can forget it
dont even bother wasting your time ,it's horrible

if this is the future of computing just kill me now ,id rater go live in the fucking woods and eat berries and brush my teeth with a stick and become a total Luddite living in a cave than deal with this shit, and this cloud computing nightmare
these things are just dumb terminals with shit performance even for that

EDIT: oh yeah and i forgot to mention that this thing came with MCafee preinstalled FUCKING MCAFEE!
that should just say it all right fucking there
as if the HP logo isn't enough in itself to steer you clear of this abomination

 

[Subtle Demise]

The moral of this story, don't buy prebuilt computers

 

[weatMod]

The moral of this story, don't buy prebuilt computers

yes true but for laptops,ultrabooks you really have no choice

they are all prebuilt, and now there has been a lot of companies cutting back their offerings or just dropping out of the laptop and ultrabook market altogether , i have NEVER seen such a shitty selection to chose from in my life and just as these manufacturers are moving out of laptop and ultrabook production they are moving into this new cloud book market
this current generation of laptops has thee shittiest selection i have ever seen in my life

i bought my ultrabook like a year ago and it was not great then but now it 100 times worse
you cant even find anything decent ,they all way ton and have the shittiest features and configurations
they are all huge bulky and ugly

the market has completely gone to shit , you have to spend like at least 2k for anything even half decent anything with a half decent weight and half decent specs now is going to cost you like 2k plus


the moral is that these monopoly corporations are pushing things a very bad and frightening direction
and people should try and resist it because if they give in now it's only going to make things worse

 

[TeamScriptKiddies]

actually i have seen them in the store an picked them up they are quite heavy especially for what they are
i said i never used one i didnt say i never seen one
and no my ultrabook is not a "high end gaming ultrabook" because no such thing even exists , you couldnt game on this thing at all it has intel HD graphics
they all do , they dont put decent graphic cards in ultraboks, AFAIK, just intel standard crap

it cant even run chrome properly with a 4th gen i7 and and 8 gigs of ram, you cant even scroll anything , it takes 3 hours to populate thumbnails in windows explorer
every time i use it i just want to tear my fucking eyeballs out and smash it with a sledge hammer

its a piece of shit , intels haswell ultramobile chips are pieces of shit they are fucking worthless garbage
im not even exaggerating when i say the fan is screaming at full blast and blowing out hot air hotter than from a hairdryer on high before i even take my finger off of the on button , not even on for 2 seconds hot as fuck fan going full blast with nothing even running and its already in near meltdown

if i open more than 10 tabs in chrome it nearly burns my fucking house down

and intel is using extremely deceptive advertising and branding ,i7 haswell laptop uses a different chip than a haswell i7 ultrabook ,but they dont tell you that unless you really dig to find out

intels ultramobile chips are pure garbage they get worse performance than a 1st gen celleron or atom

so i cant imagine them putting anything worth a fuck in a $200 shit book

when i paid like $1800 and the performace is absolutely fucking pathetic ,it takes literally 20 minutes to scroll 5 inches down a tumblr page or any page with lots of photos
the scrolling if you can even call it that is fucking ridiculous it cant even scroll anything or it lags and jumps all over the fucking place and never populates thumbs half the time
if it does it's only after loading for 15 minutes

it stutters and freezes ,its total garbage, it even happens in windows explorer when browsing folders on the SSD
typing often lags also,up to like 40 seconds behind sometimes
it is a totally unuseable piece of dog shit that i wish i had never purchased and that goes for pretty much everything on the market today running win 8 or 8.1

i dont know what you have to spend these days to get a decent machine or if you can even find one , but im sure its well over 2k so you are not going to get anything decent for $200 chrome book price range

if a real computer with much better specs cant even run their shitty apps then how can a much lowe hardware be expected to?
unless it's windows causing all the problems, but i doubt a 200 machine will run an of it even remotely decently even if the google OS is minimal

i would never waste my money on something that only runs googles piece of shit apps like google drive ,the biggest fucking abomination ever that takes literally hours to scroll through photos , stops ,skips, jumps all over the place when attempting to scroll through thumbs, never populates thumbs hangs all the time it's worthless shit, absolute fucking shit
just like google plus

and also chrome has gotten significantly worse, slower and more unstable in the last few years too it runs like shit compared to 3 years ago i dont what these fuck heads are doing over there but every change these assholes makes just fucks thing up more and more it's like they are deliberately destroying their own products and crippling performance and turning everything to shit on purpose

same goes for mozilla that browser has gone strait into the fucking toilet too, it's totally unuseable now it get about the same shit performance now as MSIE ,i swear they are putting in so much spyware in all of this shit now its
totally fucking the performance up to the point of it being nearly worthless for use on mobiles

but it's funny that i notice less problems on IOS and lower end android devices with chrome , chrome works better on my shitty iphone 5c w/ IOS 7(IOS 8 on 5c sucks) and on my friends shitty $99 lg tablet than it runs on my ultrabook or on his galaxy s5 alpha, scrolling is smooth and fluid and performance seems better on smaller less powered devices it makes no fucking sense at all

just like it makes no sense that these new windows machines run hot as fuck with nothing even running but i can open 60 tabs on chrome and have 12 apps running at once on an iphone and its not even warm
but google drive still sucks on every device no matter what it is ,it's completely fucking worthless slow as shit piece of garbage into the trash it goes

it's like windows is deliberately fucking it's users who want to use desktop and normal windows programs , because the metro shit and their app versions that i dont think use as much resources i bet they dont have these problems, of course i wouldnt know because i never use that bullshit because it's garbage but its like they make these things and say they run full windows but then they make everything thats not an app run so fucking shitty to try and force you use to use their shitty metro shit and their crappy worthless apps , of which there are probably like what 15 of total in the windows store?

they said they got rid of rt and everything is full 8.1 now, but the way 8.1 runs normal windoes programs they may as well have just got rid of full windows because the performance sucks so bad when trying to run anything its not even worth it, its like they crippled it on purpose to make you use their apps
only thing is they dont even have any

these 3 companies have ruined everything

INTEl
MS
GOOGLE
everything the touch turns to shit, they are all going in reverse

Stop watching so much porn and maybe your computer wont be riddled with viruses. That and dont click on every ad you see online, and while you're at it, dont open emails from people you dont know.

Then your computer will run decently. Everything you've stated points at one thing, viruses.

Learn how to safely use your computer online and stop blaming others for your problems..

 

[Lacius]

but they are not gaining computer literacy though they are gaining google literacy , by your admission the school is too lazy to teach proficiency in actual computer literacy so you are just teaching google as an alternative because it's just easier ,pure laziness

It is possible to teach computer literacy using Google or something else as a launching point. In fact, that's how it works, but I guess you wouldn't know. Also, telling me I'm too lazy to teach computer literacy is just idiotic, considering that it's a significant part of my day job. What you said just doesn't make sense.

of course if they get their way they will be using this horrible alternative to real computing in the real world
you are contributing to the death of computing, to the death of GP computing and local storage and giving control over to google ,you are sacrificing control and freedom for convenience

Ignoring the fact that much of the world is going the way of email and becoming web-based, which is still real computing (whatever that's supposed to mean), we have Windows computers, and we reference other items that aren't Google Apps.

i do use chrome and do like the sync feature that syncs my browse across devices but you are giving up privacy and compromising security
but there is not really an alternative now because nothing is really private or secure anymore

but when you upload to these cloud services they own all of your data, read the fine print

this is just contributing to the dumbing down of society and creating total dependence of these corporate entities
and giving them total control

If you don't like it, either don't use it or encrypt your data.

this is just contributing to the dumbing down of society and creating total dependence of these corporate entities
and giving them total control

it's not a good thing they are constantly changing things for the worse and pissing off their users too ,and they never listen to user feedback
in fact they do the exact opposite of what their user want most of the time

also there is a concerted effort to spread the use of chrome books in schools these companies want to collect data on all children
it's child exploitation
they are data mining children

We wouldn't be using Google if it weren't highly functional and user-friendly, not to mention highly convenient and cheap. If they piss us off, we'll move on; that's how the market works. I also genuinely laughed at your comment about data mining. Ignoring that there's no real evidence for this child exploitation as you describe it, my students are sending "hi" email messages to each other and typing research papers on Ebola. I'm not sure what Google has to be gained or what my students have to be lost. I'm probably doing more data mining on them than Google.