Chromebooks?

[ultimatebob]

Seriously, what ever happened to these? I thought that they were going to revolutionize the way we use small laptops for home and business use.

It seems that they're still on sale, but I don't know who's buying them (if anyone). The price hasn't seemed to come down, either.... I can still get a Windows 7 netbook with nearly identical specs for the same price.

Is this product DOA, or does Google have something sneaky in store for a future product release?

 

[nardz84]

You can get a full Win7 laptop (granted a cheap model on sale) for less, I think that was the biggest issue. I had one that they handed out at GoogleIO last year, sold it after a month because I couldn't figure out wth to do with it. It required internet for everything I tried, despite them saying some things were supposed to work offline. It also didn't feel any faster than a regular browser running in Windows. Overall, it just felt like a half thought out idea, I was amazed they got Samsung and Acer to partner up on the hardware end.

Side note, Samsung shot themselves in the foot on those things, the hardware was beautiful but the BIOS was locked, if I could have installed Win7 on it I would have kept it for sure.

 

[b0mbrman]

They might, but I think they just miscalculated. Always on WiFi isn't reliable enough for anyone yet... or at least not for anyone who's trying to get away with a laptop that inexpensive.

Maybe there's a business application for these? They'd really only work in a critical mass sort of situation...

 

[Gikaseixas]

Ambitious idea gone wrong IMO. A little bit ahead of it's time.