Author Topic: Chromebook Pixel 2  (Read 3573 times)

hans

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Chromebook Pixel 2
« on: April 19, 2015, 12:10:48 PM »
So I'm pretty sure I'm going to get one of these. Just haven't decided on whether or not to splurge on the 'LS' version or not. I've been looking to upgrade my Series 3 and this one seems to be a pretty nice hardware option. I don't really need a touchscreen laptop (I don't think) and it's a bit steep on price but I've really enjoyed my Series 3 and have been using it (with crouton) as my main laptop for the last couple years now. I really like the 3:2 screen and I'll admit, I'm pretty big on the cloud stuff so I don't mind that it's "limited" but throwing crouton on it helps with that and a USB storage drive can augment the minimal storage if necessary. The 12 hour battery is pretty enticing too which would practically double what I thought was pretty decent 5-6hrs on the Samsung.
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hans

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2015, 06:12:24 PM »
Well, I splurged and bought one of these. It just arrived today and it's pretty nice. The screen is very nice although I still wish you could get a matte screen these days rather than "anti-glare" ones. I'll get into a deeper review once I use it for a bit but I think it'll be a good upgrade for my personal machine. I installed crouton on it and I'll do some compiling and such and see how things feel. It's very compact but feels plenty large enough for most tasks. I actually really like the 3:2 ration vs the widescreen displays since it brings me back to the old days where you actually had some vertical space for code. It's amazing how much difference 100px or so makes. I'm hoping I can even do my Arduino coding and stuff now that I'm back on an Intel.
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KnuckleBuckett

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2015, 06:37:00 AM »
How much was it?

hans

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2015, 08:06:27 AM »
I got the "LS" model so $1299 (+tax). I really don't think you need the extra power though and I could have been happy enough with the standard model for $999 but I also run crouton for a bit of local development and I couldn't resist the faster speed and more RAM, but I'll probably never really go over 8GB. I never really had much of a problem with my other chromebook and that was only 2GB, but you bump up to that pretty easily.

I know people say it's just a browser but when you throw crouton on it and do a chroot I actually use it for regular development and it seems to work OK. I'm going to try and do a bit of a battery test today and go to work with it and not plug it in but I don't think I'm actually going to see the 12 hour life they claim under my usage and brightness level, but 8+ looks totally possible if the remaining percentage is accurate.

The one thing I have noticed though that I'm researching and looks like a common thing is I get a screen flicker sometimes, which from what I've been reading is only in developer mode (which I switched to) so we'll see what's up with that. It doesn't seem to be happening when not in developer mode (from what I've read, I haven't switched back), which seems odd.

I do kind of wish it didn't have a fan too as that was one of the best things I liked about the Samsung. The fan does kick on once in a while but is pretty quiet so it's not a big deal, but totally silent would have been better.
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KnuckleBuckett

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2015, 02:04:11 PM »
Since a full fledged laptop, and a nice one, can be purchased for this kind of money, why a Chromebook?

hans

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2015, 03:53:44 PM »
They're actually pretty nice hardware, and spec wise it's kind of a tweener. Trying to get 16GB of RAM in Macbook is much more expensive and if this had a bit more local storage (which can be augmented by flash) I think it would compete nicer (especially the 8GB one). I think the touchscreen adds to the price and until I use it for a bit I can't really say I'm going to use it that much so it's probably mostly wasted. But the 12 hour battery and very fast ChromeOS (which for most of what I do is enough) is actually really nice. And to have something that isn't just made out of plastic just feels good to use.

What other laptop is made of solid materials, has 16GB RAM, an all day battery (something more than 6hrs) and a high resolution touchscreen close to this price? If this had more than 64GB of SSD people might actually mistake it for a "real" laptop. And the $999 version is actually pretty competitive in that price range as well, again neglecting the local storage, so tack on an extra $150 or so for a big SD card to compensate.

Chromebooks get kind of a bad rap in that they're "just for browsing" but many developers just throw them in developer mode and they're actually kind of nice hardware (for Linux work). I just wish they'd figure out a way to let you put crouton on it without having to throw it in developer mode.

If the 8GB version had a bit more local storage, I think quite a few developers would consider them, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what they're supposed to be about which is cloud computing.

And of course I'm as much of a Google fan as many people are with Apple so there's that. But really, I've really liked my Samsung Series 3 and just wanted something a bit nicer and not Apple.

Plus you get 1TB of drive storage for 3 years which at current rate ends up being ~$300 right there, not that you couldn't get storage other places.

I think the device is overpriced, but not as much really for what you get, but I've also grown to have an affinity for Chromebooks.
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micah

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #6 on: June 26, 2015, 04:09:21 PM »
Chromebooks get kind of a bad rap in that they're "just for browsing" but many developers just throw them in developer mode and they're actually kind of nice hardware (for Linux work). I just wish they'd figure out a way to let you put crouton on it without having to throw it in developer mode.

I gotta say, doing web dev in cloud9 is pretty sweet on my $200 chromebook.
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hans

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #7 on: June 26, 2015, 04:19:06 PM »
Yup and for the "desktop" crowd, FB is pretty much doing something similar with http://nuclide.io/ and remote development. We're swinging back to mainframe days with thin clients.
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hans

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Re: Chromebook Pixel 2
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2015, 04:20:34 PM »
Oh, there is one kind of nice use for the touch screen (even though I had fingerprints on my scree), doing mobile testing. It's kind of nice just to touch rather than click in the developer tools.
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