RIP charging bricks: $279 HP Chromebook 11 charges via USB HP has unveiled a new Chromebook that it says borrows design ideas from Google's posh Chromebook Pixel - while still keeping the price tag under $300. Unlike HP's earlier Chromebooks, which you'd be hard-pressed to tell apart from the company's Pavilion laptops at first glance, the HP Chromebook 11 was designed "in close …
Phones generally have higher res because you hold them closer to your face, so you are more able to see the pixels. TVs have crap ppi compared to phones and laptops but you don't care because it's on the other side of the room. That said, yes I would prefer it to have a little more than sub 800 high, in fact I'd generally prefer to have a 4:3 1280*1024, but that's because I'm special.
No personal criticism intended, John, but if I look at the size of a micro (or even a full size) USB plug and socket, the idea of running 5A through that makes me feel queasy. I's like wiring an electric oven with 0.4mm2 bell wire.
And then I see the same people using 4mm2 OFC loudspeaker cables for their 2x 50W PMPO music box to have less loss . . .
Finally may be time to move away from my elderly netbook. To me these things are devices for when on holiday - hopefully fanless so silent, and gives me Chrome. As long as it can play movies from USB to keep me amused on the plane, job jobbed. For proper computing I have a nice big desktop back at home. Just hope they do one with black keys and the screen isn't reflective.
"... Nexus7, Nexus4 and Chromebook have me totally seup for what I do. Cost less than an iphone and iPad too."
The iPad Mini I bought my wife was $250 local store. My Nexus 7 was $230 plus $14 S&H (almost exactly the same total price). There is normally a price gap, but it's hardly worth mentioning.
My iPhone was $250 when accompanied with an actual 6GB 2-yr data plan so that it's useful. My coworker bought a Nexus 4 outright and it was also $250, but (and because) he's too cheap to have a reasonable data plan. So he has a very nice smartphone that's much less useful. There are two different locally optimized solutions, but only one approach actually gets the smartphone connected to the 'net with a multi-GB per month data plan. YMMV.
As far as I can see, with clever shopping, everything listed above is about $250. Facts. In general, there is an "Apple tax", but it can easily be avoided with clever shopping or including a data plan with your smartbrick.
YMMV, depending on local marketing practices.
I have the 11" Samsung and its great. I don't bother using my 13" Laptop anymore. It's just too heavy and bulky compared to the little Samsung.
I can do most of what I need to do with it web wise plus a bit more. For me it's a more useful device than a tablet. It's also far far superior to a netbook. It may only have a 768p screen but at least the menus fit on it.
Basically it cost £200 so I just thrash it for two years and then buy a new one. And when I get the new one all I have to do is log into it and I'm up and running. Cheap, simple chuck-about computing. No need for Linux as it's...well linux already really.
Try doing that with your miserable bulky £300 Toshiba bargain special laptop from PC World.
I want an upgrade to my Aspire One in the same general form factor capable of running Linux as a standalone computer. The AA1 is five years old now and still doing fairly well, but is beginning to creak. A shame someone can't do an upgrade motherboard that would fit in the same case, with the same connectors on it, but I suspect the market would be rather small.
How often in the 21st century do you find yourself offline?
I take it you have a smartphone with tethering? You live in the first or developing world?
If I find myself in a location or situation nowadays that doesn't have any access to the internet then chances are that's exactly the situation I wanted.
It's useful to turn this specification around a bit and compare it to tablets rather than full blown laptops.
I have the latest Nexus 7 and it's a great bit of kit for the money, really nice screen with a good resolution (not ****ing 1366x768) , fast processing that's easily fast enough for what I need and the battery easily lasts all day of pretty solid usage. It comes with a 2.5A charger (or something like that) which charges up really quite quickly as well.
Why the description of the Nexus 7? It doesn't have a keyboard - add a keyboard and you get something very similar to a ChromeBook. So there's no real reason why a device like this couldn't charge using a "standard" tablet charger.
It does have offline capabilities for Google Docs, and syncs when reconnected.
Knock off the cost of 100G of Google Drive for 2 years, and it is a $180 mini laptop. When I got mine I was able to cancel my Dropbox account, so I saved somewhat more. I don't know why, but document editing on a Chromebook, and posting to sites like this one, is much easier than with an Android tablet, even a Transformer.
I suggest trying or borrowing one first.
Before I got mine I was pretty sniffy and felt "what the hell is this going to be useful for???"
But then I got one (felt I had to try as it's part of my job really) and within an hour or two I was pretty impressed. The form factor works, the usability is far more then you imagine for general use.
It is actually far nicer to use than all these cheap full laptops that keep getting mentioned. Laptops at that end are miserable. I do not consider the 11" Samsung miserable at all. My proper laptop gathers dust.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
