Chromebooks Get OS Update, Holiday Price Cuts

I was under the impression Chrome was going to be fully Cloud based storage? Many of these have 16gb harddrives.

16gb is for the os

Update? You mean the browser got updated? What else is there? You know these would be Ok for a quick notebook for web surfing and travel. But the price they have on these machines is too high for the hardware and OS inside. If your going to try and gain a foothold with a unfamiliar product to most consumers. You have to advertise and inform.A really good intro price would be helpful too. Chromebooks will be the next Netbook failure. You cannot even buy them and put another OS on them because they lack any kind of decent size hard drive. They are worthless if you end up hating the cloud from Google.

The 16 gb solid state drive (NOT hard drive) on a Chromebook allows users to temporarily download files to their Chromebooks if they want to open them online, or as a holding place before uploading to cloud storage. I have a Chromebook and use the 16 gb SSD all the time. For example, I've download mp3s and movies onto the hard drive so I can listen/watch them when on a plane. In addition to the browser, Chrome OS has an integrated video/audio player and a file manager that looks like any file manager for accessing and managing files on the SSD.

Chrome OS is not just the Chrome browser. Even in a Chrome browser on a Windows laptop there are a lot of other plugins and programs that need to be running to make it work. For example, Adobe Flash. When you visit a website with Adobe Flash content on a Windows laptop with any browser, if you don't have Flash installed on your computer, you won't be able to view the content. Since you cannot install any programs on a Chromebook, Google needs to update the Chrome OS if they want to give users the latest version of Flash. Other examples include video codecs, ability to handle zip file formats, rendering of PDFs - these all require updates of extensions that are not part of the Chrome browser. These updates happen automatically, in the background. A user of the Chromebook on the mainstream stable channel may not even realize it when their OS is updated.

I read a lot of comments that say Chromebooks are too expensive for what they are. But in my opinion, $299 is not a lot of money. I have a high-end Windows laptop, an iPad, and recently, a Chromebook. Out of those three computers, my Chromebook is the cheapest and gets 75% of my use, my iPad about 20%, and my Windows laptop about 5%. It is a fantastic device, well worth the price.

So glai why did you waste so much on a high end laptop only to use a $300 Cloud book? Seems to me that was a bad decision on your part? I have a nice Macbook Air and a iPad. I can see no reason for someone to spend $300 on yet another web based piece of hardware? I guess its great if like you they have extra money to buy another piece of hardware. But myself I intend to use my Macbook Air as I have plenty invested in it. If you already have a laptop I am not sure what you gain buying a Chromebook?

Who's buying these things? I have yet to meet one person that owns one.
Get a tablet.

Why spend almost the same money for a Chromebook when I can get a Windows notebook? If I want something small and fast, I'd get a tablet. If I want a notebook, I want something that can be more productive than a Chromebook.

is it me or are the prices a bit high?

Chrome OS should == Android

I don't get the point of two separate OS-es that target similar audience. I think Google really had no idea what were they trying to do. This is also confirmed by the fact that the Android market (the one for the devices not the App Market) is so fragmented.

I really wish that Android succeeds and dominates the market for mobile devices and not just on phones but also on tablets, netbooks and even notebooks (or ultrabooks... whatever). I don't wish to see Microsoft taking over and polluting the mobile market too but Google really has to make up their mind and also they should really streamline and improve the quality of the developer tools. Microsoft/Apple deliver a single well integrated developer environment and good simulators and what we have with Android... How about the emulator - uselessssss!
Please Google do your stuff properly! Don't fails us! Keep Microsoft away!

Anything to just move those undesirable notebooks off the shelf, I presume.

Though, it would be tempting to get one and install either Ubuntu or Windows 7.