New Samsung Chromebook, yours for <$350

Forums › Chromium OS and Google Chrome OS › New Samsung Chromebook, yours for <$350 - Discussion Thread

P1n3apqlExpr3ss

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Ultimate Geek
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#110985 21-Oct-2012 21:21

I'm surprised there hasn't been a discussion made on this so far...

Anyway, new Samsung Chromebook blahblah, $249 USD, ship here using NZ Post YouShop and you can get it to your door for under $350 ($340~)

11.6 inch display, 768p resolution, Exynos 5 Dual (Cortex A15) chipset, 2 GB memory, 16 GB storage, SD card slot, USB 3.0 and 2.0, HDMI out, apparently modest claims of 6.5 hours battery life

News Articles:
http://mobilekiwi.co.nz/item/1709-google-and-samsungs-chromebook-can-be-yours-for-less-than-a-nexus-7
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3521492/google-new-samsung-chromebook-249-monday

Decent Reviews:
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-chromebook-late-2012-review-20252951/

Who's getting one?

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Ultimate Geek
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#704473 21-Oct-2012 21:33

I want one, tried ordering on Best Buy using You SHop address and NZ credit card but order gets cancelled saying unable to verify card information etc.

P1n3apqlExpr3ss

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#704480 21-Oct-2012 22:03

stitch: I want one, tried ordering on Best Buy using You SHop address and NZ credit card but order gets cancelled saying unable to verify card information etc.

That's the one thing I'm fearing when I order (waiting for some more decent reviews), Amazon and possibly Newegg should be good though

Kyanar

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#704544 22-Oct-2012 08:55

stitch: I want one, tried ordering on Best Buy using You SHop address and NZ credit card but order gets cancelled saying unable to verify card information etc.

Best Buy probably requires AVS validation (address matching) which NZ cards don't support.

P1n3apqlExpr3ss: That's the one thing I'm fearing when I order (waiting for some more decent reviews), Amazon and possibly Newegg should be good though

NewEgg are pretty militant about blocking freight forwarders - YouShop has now been around long enough that I'd bet it's caught their attention by now. Amazon would be a very good bet, and you can get Geekzone a few pingers by using the affiliate link and all that.

blair003

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#704601 22-Oct-2012 11:40

It would be great for travelling assuming you can do things like import pictures from a camera. Because it's so cheap it wouldn't ruin your holiday if it got stolen or broke.

Also _IF_ you had the upload bandwidth so that photo's downloaded from your camera could sync to Google Drive, that would be another big advantage. Lots of holidays get ruined from people losing camera's/photos. Unfortunately I'm not sure if free wifi at backpackers and even paid wifi at netcafe's would have the sort of upload bandwidth needed to make that workable right now.

As for me - I can see myself getting one in future as a shared general purpose device that would stay in the lounge. I am forever using a flatmates laptop to do something online at night.

Also, have you seen some of the stuff they are doing with chrome the browser now? There is actually a remote desktop app for chrome. So you install the app on chrome on two computers, then you can connect to desktop A remotely from desktop B. Not sure how good of a solution it is, but it shows that the concept of a browser based OS has more potential than you originally assume.

As for work though, not so much.

P1n3apqlExpr3ss

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#704603 22-Oct-2012 11:43

Here's a video of the remote desktop, seems to work fairly well for a beta product. No audio yet though.

blair003

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#704609 22-Oct-2012 12:04

The video doesn't show properly for me but yeah I have used it just to see and it seemed to work fine first time (but in my test both computers were on the same LAN, so it wasn't much of a test). And in all my years of using remote desktop, I have never missed audio. If audio were available via this app, I can't think of a reason why I would enable it.

I just think that making remote desktop functionality available from within the browser -- that is innovation. Things like this are why the whole chrome book thing could go somewhere.

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wanghou168

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#704629 22-Oct-2012 12:58

definitely ordering one this week
The machine is perfect for daily tasks such as typing docs, web browsing, emails, streaming video/music etc.

I am pretty happy to chuck away my 7" tablet for this, but not my Asus laptop just yet...

One thing I am not so satisfied with the chromebook after looking through all the reviews which is,
it seems like you can not download or torrent large files to the chromebook like a regular laptop/desktop with a hard drive built in.

MOBILE: Huawei P30
OTHER: Thinkpad E14 + Asus Vivobook + Intel NUC5i3 + A family of Raspberry Pi x 9 + Amazon Echo

wanghou168

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#704650 22-Oct-2012 15:27

After reading the thread, I went looking for more reviews and articles about the new Chromebook.

Couple of good reviews I found

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232599/Samsung_Chromebook_review_Google_s_new_249_computer?taxonomyId=76&pageNumber=1

http://blogs.computerworld.com/cloud-computing/20517/chrome-os-reviewed-google-cloud-platform

MOBILE: Huawei P30
OTHER: Thinkpad E14 + Asus Vivobook + Intel NUC5i3 + A family of Raspberry Pi x 9 + Amazon Echo

mattwnz

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#704658 22-Oct-2012 15:50

Looks like a cheap macbook.

freitasm

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#704670 22-Oct-2012 16:10

But so much different functionality.

I had a Google Chromebook here for a while. Reality is if you are planning to use it outside you need the 3G version. The WiFi only version is too limited - either you find a free WiFi, or use your phone as a WiFi hotspot or pay an overpriced WiFi service (it's cheaper to buy 3G mobile data than WiFi services now).

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NZtechfreak

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#704672 22-Oct-2012 16:11

Compelling price point on this one, and main thing that stands out for me is the battery life, which seems in practice to absolutely destroy the meagre estimate Google/Samsung have put on it.

Will have to think about getting one, hard to justify since it'll only be a curiosity purchase, although probably wouldn't be hard to shift on after satisfying said curiosity...

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P1n3apqlExpr3ss

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#704677 22-Oct-2012 16:15

Another review: http://www.zdnet.com/review-the-arm-powered-samsung-chromebook-7000006097/

Considering most people to buy macbooks use it for facebook/email/browsing there isn't much wrong with this, and it is now only a little bit more limited than traditional laptops. It can create offline docs and all of that now, plus it's always growing. Although Docs isn't as indepth/extensive as Microsoft Office. This is compared to Windows RT that could be a little stale in two years time (not sure how Microsoft is going to handle updates), much like WP7.x at the moment

Lambchop

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#704860 23-Oct-2012 00:58

this seems PERFECt for my folks..

i mean the win xp laptop they use at the mo takes aggges to boot, mum strugles through menu hell every time i try to explain something.

al they really do is look at family photos, video, and gmail ... boom

i think chrome OS might actually be just the thing i was looking for .. and at that price , i mean ..yeh .. sold

so whats the easiest way to import this? shame clove etc don't stock it.

i have a usa2men account but have never used it ...

ahmad

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#704861 23-Oct-2012 01:29

Is price the only advantage of these over a traditional 11.6" running (say) Windows 7?

nakedmolerat

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#704868 23-Oct-2012 06:59

ahmad: Is price the only advantage of these over a traditional 11.6" running (say) Windows 7?

No.

ChromeOS - everything is in the cloud. This laptop has limited use when not connected to the net.

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