MBA Competitor $330 Chromebook 2? Or not?

[silvarios]

Black wrote:
[quote=MGS_forgot_password]
It's a dumb terminal

:agree:
I would argue, a lot more people use their home computer as a dumb terminal to the web than people here might think. Everyone, including Microsoft and Apple are pushing more and more features into the cloud. Any of the big players would love to be your incompatible silo pushing their own brand of vendor lock in.

[bhaveshp]

We are perfectly content with the 13" screens of our MB Airs.

We tried the $250 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor as my wife isn't a heavy user. Besides slow speed, the breaking point was the really crappy trackpad.

Apple's trackpads are the gold standard. I've tried many others and they all make me cringe.

I'll probably buy this Toshiba and give it a spin. Hopefully the trackpad is passable along with the Intel Baytrail CPU.

[Lew Zealand]

bhaveshp wrote:
We are perfectly content with the 13" screens of our MB Airs.

We tried the $250 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor as my wife isn't a heavy user. Besides slow speed, the breaking point was the really crappy trackpad.

Apple's trackpads are the gold standard. I've tried many others and they all make me cringe.

I'll probably buy this Toshiba and give it a spin. Hopefully the trackpad is passable along with the Intel Baytrail CPU.

This needs to be emphasized: Apple trackpads just work, and they work awesomely.

The trackpads of every other PC (many dozens) and Chromebook (2 of those) range from Ok (Dell) to terrible (Toshiba). Much of this is due to most people buying low-rent PCs (see average PC selling price) but the trackpad is half of the interface on most laptop computers and for it to work as universally meh as it does on PCs really kills some of the computer's utility.

Perhaps that's why PCs are going to touchscreens. Though while helping someone out last Friday who was an experienced TS user, he averaged 2 taps per thing he had to select on the screen on his Win8.1 laptop. It did not inspire confidence in the efficiency of using the TS for everyday use.

[silvarios]

What's worse, poor trackpad or poor display? I would almost rather have the former, at least I can pretty easily add an external mouse and still retain portability. Of course, I would prefer not to compromise either.

[sekker]

IPS screen or not, a modern 13" MBA is one of the best laptops around. True all-day battery life is amazing, plus the rest of the excellent Apple polish.

I think it's an unfair expectation to try to put ANY sub-$500 chromebook or laptop in the same category. I've not seen any of them that come even close.

As for Chromebooks, I do not understand why there is this push-back against google services. They work well in general, are far more stable than Apple's iCloud services, and they are typically free. You don't HAVE to use the gmail account to use google drive, google docs, etc.

Compared to Adobe and microsoft cloud services, google look fantastic, too.

I see nothing wrong with google pushing for good hardware to make it easy to get stuff done.

[weapon]

I love my MBA. Best traveling computer ever.

[richorlin]

I have a 13" MBA and I think the screen is great, even with my 67-year old eyes. When I bought it, I wasn't expecting it to be equal to a retina screen, even though it was a lot more than $900. I will agree that the 11" MBA screen leaves a lot to be desired, but that is only because of the size, not the quality of the screen.

You can't flatly say that the screen is awful. It may be awful for YOU (and others), but many others find it to be quite acceptable.

[gabester]

As someone who knows a thing or two about Chromebooks, Apple devices and Windows, I have to say:

1) "Dumb terminal" - more like a SMART terminal - how is any iPad, similarly network dependent, any less so? At least both device platforms CAN if a network is present be very useful independent of a powerful server/VDI infrastructure.
2) Chrome Remote Desktop - allows you to access a more powerful workstation as remote system. Biggest limit is the scaling of high-res desktop displays to most chromebooks' pathetic 1366x768 resolutions. A 1080p chromebook screen is a huge improvement for this.
3) Crouton - allows chroots to standard linux distributions utilizing the existing ChromeOS linux kernel; so you can run ChromeOS side-by-side with Ubuntu or Debian for "real computing experience."

For $350 for the Toshiba with an IPS screen - beating out the Samsung has a $400 1080p model in their Chromebook 2 - I'm seriously thinking of picking one of these up for its existing capabilities. Potential to boot Windows or OS X via hacks is also intriguing. Since it has USB3, additional storage as needed shouldn't be a big deal. The money I save over an MBA will get me a really nice hackintosh rig for that powerful backend.

[RAMd®d]

It does what it does extremely well... just don't expect it to be what it's not.

This is sig material.

And the latter part is the tough part.

People want one thing and yet choose something fundamentally different to criticize for not being what they want. I see this all the time. And yet it's neigh impossible to make them aware of what they're doing.

"Getting a hybrid cut my gas bill by 60%!"

"Yeah, but I bet it won't haul sheetrock like my F-350!!"

"um, yeah, ok."


As far as choosing between a poor trackpad and a "poor" display, I'll take the "poor" display.

For years I had to use a PC laptop with a lousy trackpad. Where I could, I used an external trackball but that wasn't always possible. PC trackpads, to me, are mediocre at best, even when only considering basic performance. You must physically interact with them constantly, and are constantly reminded that they could and should work much better than they do. This is all the more frustrating when going from the trackball back to the trackpad.

I've looked at the MBAs several times and almost whipped out the plastic on more than a couple occasions. I'm waiting to see if Ocotober brings anything new in the 'Book arena. But I see, literally, their screens and being quite acceptable.

Every 'Book I've owned and every laptop I've had to use has had a TN screen. Viewing angle isn't particularly important for me. I'm not sharing the view with two or three people, and titling the display is a set and forget thing for me. Maybe if I was a graphic artist or regularly used a laptop with a really good display, this would bother me. But it doesn't.

I will agree that a $900 computer should have a display as good as or better than a $300 computer, all other things being equal.

[silvarios]

richorlin wrote:
I have a 13" MBA and I think the screen is great, even with my 67-year old eyes. When I bought it, I wasn't expecting it to be equal to a retina screen, even though it was a lot more than $900. I will agree that the 11" MBA screen leaves a lot to be desired, but that is only because of the size, not the quality of the screen.

It's not about the pixels in this case, it's about color, viewing angles, etc. I'm not a designer, but if I plunk down $1000+ for a laptop, I don't want an entry level TN display. Seems fair to expect more when you pay more, right?

richorlin wrote: You can't flatly say that the screen is awful. It may be awful for YOU (and others), but many others find it to be quite acceptable.

Nah, it is objectively poorer than other displays on similar Apple devices. While not the worst display in the world, it is not the right panel for that price point. Probably good for keeping fat margins intact. If nothing else the poor viewing angles should be immediately apparent.

From the MacWorld UK MacBook Air 2014 review:
We used a Datacolor Spyder4Elite display calibrator to test and measured just 63 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. That’s a particularly disappointing result, which was borne out subjectively by off-key screens colours visible to the eye. The wider Adobe RGB gamut was measured with only 48 percent coverage.

We found that viewing angles for this twisted-nematic (TN) glossy panel were limited, with marked colour inversion effects evident as we tried to view the screen from the sides and above/below.

Contrast ratio was measured using the Datacolor calibrator, to gain an idea of the display’s contrast quality. We recorded at the display’s highest peak output of 308 cd/m2 and discoverd contrast ratio was 600:1, rising to 680:1 at its nominal 75 percent brightness setting (corresponding to 143 cd/m2).

Delta E from 48 spot tones averaged a poor 8.39, with the highest deviation of 13.75 coming from the test’s ‘3E’ swatch (lilac tone).

This is all quite disappointing, but while a Retina display for the MacBook Air would be nice, it's probably not essential for the majority of users. Anyone who would benefit from the extra pixels can upgrade to the MacBook Pro with Retina display but beware that there will be a sacrifice in battery life. Read our Retina MacBook Pro reviews here. "