$250 is a very good price point for a light laptop for basic email/web surfing/document editing. It’s not a full feature laptop with a full OS, that is one reason the price point is the same as a 7″ Android tablet. It’s fairly full featured hardware wise. Web cam, USB ports, card reader and a 16GB Flash drive for storage. This $250 laptop is a good second system. I have a big desktop with a Drobo for storage, picture editing and other higher end functions. For the cost of the Nexus 7, you can get a real keyboard and better monitor. I’ve been using tablets, both iOS and Android for years, but I keep coming back to a device with a real keyboard for content creation.
For another $80, you can get a 3G version of this Chromebook, which is important if you are going to be using this device on the road. It really does require Internet access to be entirely useful.
Filed under: Gadget, Google, Internet, netbook, tablet | Tagged: computer, Gadget, Google |
Urbin Technology 
It’s an interesting device, although I’m a bit reluctant to replace my Win7 Netbook at this time.
I agree, you have a more multifunctional device, but I’m willing to bet it cost a bit more.
This Chromebook has the limitation that you have to do *everything* in a browser. The modern computer user spends a lot of time in a browser, but there are some things that are done best outside of a browser.
It would make a decent low cost system for a teenager.
That’s so; the laptop ran about $350.
I’ve got an Android tablet, and now that I’ve got a Bluetooth keyboard for it, it’s nice for an overnight trip, but I don’t think I’d want to spend more time than that without the laptop. The laptop’s got a scripting language, and I can use it to back up pictures.
I hear ya. We, and just about everyone who would read this blog, are not “typical gadget consumers.” I know people live on tablets, but they are primarily data consumers. Power geeks like us need, or want enough to call it a need, the flexibility of a full OS.
I’m surprised it requires you to do everything in a browser — my android phone and tablet don’t.
That is because you are running Android and not ChromeOS. Back when Chrome came out, some geeks peeked under the hood and declared it could be the base for a minimal OS. I pretty sure I mentioned that on this very blog way back.
I found this site (http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/index.php), where you can get vanilla Chrome OS builds. They have two flavors available for download. One is a Virtualbox image (pretty simple to get up and running), and the other is a bootable image you can put on a USB flash drive.
Huh, really? Does ChromeOS require an internet connection?
No, but it really does work better with one. The devices have local storage, and you can edit docs with no connection with a local version of Google Docs.