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  4. If you discount my Android devices, all the servers that my Chromebook talks to in the Cloud, and all the computers that most people don't realize are computers (like the 4-8 computers in my car, the computer in the microwave, the computer in the TV, etc.), then I'm all Chromebook. 😉

  6. +Paul Spoerry I used the Pixel (and now a carbon X1 thinkpad running Fedora) to manage 800+ virtual machines. The only things I couldn't do were creating music and advanced image manipulation. Most image processing can be done with pixlr or G+ tools. I have a headless mac mini with logic on it I use with Chrome Remote Desktop to do music. Works insanely well. So well I do the same thing with my carbon and Fedora. For advanced image manipulation I used photoshop on a windows virtual machine, but now I just use it natively on Linux with Fedora. I still have the Pixel, but work wanted me to have a "normal" laptop so they gave me the thinkpad which I promptly upgraded with Fedora. 

  9. Got 2 chromeboxes and 3 chromebooks in office and a Pixel for me to indulge. I don't buy any software which doesn't work with cloud. Period. Never looked back…

  10. I'm currently in that middle-ground. Whereas 95% of what I do on computers is in the cloud, I haven't made the full switch.

    Part of it is that I'm comfortable in Windows and prefer to work there, even though I've done most work tasks on my Chromebook at least a few times. I'm using an Acer C720 with 4GBs of RAM.

    I installed Ubuntu on my Chromebook via crouton a few weeks ago, this weekend I finally got Linux setup with everything I think I'm going to need to make the full switch over.

    I have plans on doing a test in April, no Windows desktop all month if possible, unless it's to fetch data off the hard drive.

  14. Aside from the pixel, I hear a lot of people complain of chromebooks being underpowered, slowing down dramatically with more than a few tabs open, etc. Is that changing?

  16. Well with Crouton, isn't it a real computer? I will say the Haswell Celeron with the ssd attached directly to the bus does surprising well. With a kernel patch and some tweaking I was able to get Windows 7 in VirtualBox to run well, Except for the crapy lcd, crapy keyboard, crapy TouchPad and crapy case, I like my little refurbished Acer C720-2800 (4gb model). I only paid $180 for it so I can live with it. I did swap the drive, so it's now a $280 Chromebook. I have not used my MBair or iPad in over 2 weeks.

  17. +Michael Safyan  I used Pixlr as well. For many things it'll get the job done. I've found for more advanced things I have to switch over to my laptop to use Photoshop. I'll be sure to check out Codenvy!

    +Scott Wilson That's very cool. I have an older Windows machine that I have Plex setup on. I have a Chromecast plugged into the back of the XBox One. It makes movies, music, etc crazy easy. 

    +Barkin Yazicioglu I've noticed that for the past several years I've had a strong preference for cloud based apps. I can't say I'm 100% there, but like +Dan Bochichio the vast majority of what I do is setup that way. 

    +Dan Bochichio I've got crouton installed but I haven't done a whole lot with it. Do you have recommendations on what to do to get it setup for the full monty switch over?

    +Andy Boyle One of my best friends works for VMWare… very exciting things coming down the pipe!!!!!

    +Jon Bauerle The Acer C720 is probably the most popular. It's price tag is awesome too. I got one for my girlfriend and she LOOOOVES it. I thought screen size might be an issue for me so I opted for the HP 14. The screen resolution is the same as the C720… I notice it, my g/f can't see the difference. Also… the viewing angles on mine are not as good so if you have the screen in the wrong position colors look washed out. I haven't seen this effect on the 720. The 720's trackpad is awesome. The HP14's is good, better than any laptop I've used (with the exception of my Macbook Pro…. Mac's just have the best trackpad. period.). So if you think the 720 is too small then the HP14 (I got the model that has mobile Internet; not that I use it but because it has 4GB of RAM). That said, the 720 my g/f has only has 2GB and she thinks it runs just fine. 

    +Glenn Costello I got my g/f hers for xmas. She had mentioned thinking she wanted one. She had a 17" laptop and was tired up lugging it around. I was HUGELY apprehensive about the Chromebook. She is tab crazy. The C720 keeps up. Now… I will say that we both have gotten fond of the Extension "The Great Suspender". I even use it on my desktops. You configure a timeout period and it suspends (it's still there on your screen but the screen elements are removed) the tab to save memory. 

    +Gary Parks You have Windows running inside VirtualBox on your Chromebook. Do you have instructions? Did you just run crouton and install Virtualbox? Which model do you have? Aside from the screen issues I talked about above on the HP… we both think the keyboard, trackpad are damn good in comparison to our other laptops. Mine is a Dell XPS 17" and her's is an HP 17" (I forget the model off the top of my head). 

  19. I would love to ditch my windows laptop… But stuck with quickbooks…. I tried a cloud version, but it lacked the functionality of the windows version.

  21. As a programmer, I've watched many hours of tech video from last year's Google I/O developer conference 2013. I was surprised that I did not see one presenter with a chromebook. 100% of the presenters I saw used Mac laptops

  22. +Joey Lopez You probably saw a bunch of Pixels. People mistake them for Macs despite their superior design. I know a lot of Google folks with Pixels running Crouton. That being said, Google loves Apple. Google loves everyone. It's a part of their business model. Apple are the nuts with the weird psycho ex-girlfriend problem. Their thermonuclear war is one-sided. 

  25. +Joey Lopez that's because Chromebooks are the default option for new hires; people who joined Google before the option was available only had a choice between Linux and Mac OS X laptops, and they will generally hang onto whatever laptop was issued to them until it breaks or it reaches the end of the refresh cycle. They don't replace everyone's hardware all at once (that would be wasteful and expensive). I joined a little over three years ago, and my Macbook Pro laptop wasn't up for refresh until this year; needless to say, I replaced it with the Chromebook Pixel and haven't looked back.

  29. +Paul Spoerry Chromebooks are intended to be clients, not servers. I would recommend against Crouton or running Samba on your machine… that defeats a lot of the security benefit that is one of Chrome OS's biggest advantages. If you need to do something that Chrome OS can't do, then you should use Compute Engine, AWS, Nitrous.io, or some other service to provision a VM in the Cloud and do so computation there. Dual booting your laptop or modifying the OS simply opens you up to security holes, not to mention that any DRM media that requires the verified OS will stop working if tampered with.

  31. +Gary Parks, I wish that were the case, but I think there are really two kinds of people who do this: developers who actually understand what they are doing and tinkerers who do this by following a set of recipes online but do it because it's "cool" but aren't fully aware of the drawbacks. I think a lot of tinkerers would get a lot more out of their tinkering if it they were tinkering with online web services and Chrome apps or extensions that communicated with those web services rather than the local system.

  32. Meh, I did the crouton route for a while with my Pixel, but ultimately using command line ssh with crosh and using Chrome Remote Desktop to get to resources I needed was better workflow. 

  36. Despite how much I am impressed with the Chromebook, nothing beats the MacBook Pro with Retina display for design and development work not only because of its design but its software and operating system.

  39. +Stephen Dixon Retina is slick. That said, I tried Apple for a year. I will concede that at the time the MBP I had was the best hardware I'd ever used (mmmmm silky smooth trackpad) but I finally decided I couldn't stand OSX. I tried just installing Windows on it but since Apple won't give fan control over it just superheated my lap. I tried running other OS's in Parallels and VMWare but ultimately decided I could spend 1/3 the price for an equivalent machine and not have to VM my OS.

  41. +Ben Hanten I used a Pixel for about 6 months, got the haswell Macbook Air when it came out. Stopped using it when it DIED for no reason (great quality control Apple) and started using the Pixel while Apple took 3 weeks to fix my Air. By the time I got the Air back, the Pixel had ruined me. I couldn't deal with a substandard experience again. Work recently told me I couldn't use the Pixel anymore due to a security change. They gave me a 13" retina pro. I couldn't get used to the lower quality keyboard and touchpad. They gave me an X1 Carbon instead. After putting Fedora on it, I was content. 

  42. +Scott Wilson Not unless Adobe releases Illustrator and Photoshop and more development tools become available! The hardware of the Pixel is astounding and I think Chrome OS is great but, yeah, I need said design and development tools!

    +Paul Spoerry It is slick but it's a pain in the ass when using Photoshop and everything is 50% smaller, which is why I've switched to Illustrator for most of my design work. Regarding Windows, I have Windows 8 installed via Parallels for that exact reason!

    Overall, as soon as tools like Illustrator, Macaw and Photoshop (especially an IDE) are available on Chrome OS, I'd happily switch. 🙂

  44. +Stephen Dixon Honestly? Here's the thing. They spent a fortune designing the absolute, without question, highest end laptop hardware anybody has ever made. The best keyboard. The best cut glass trackpad. The hardest anodized aircraft aluminum. I dropped my pixel onto a wenge coffee table on the corner. This would have dented the hell out of a macbook. Instead it took a chunk out of the table. My Pixel still looks brand new around the time the letters would start wearing off the keys of a macbook, and it would be covered with scratches. This is without using a case or cover. But where's the Haswell version? That's the problem with Halo devices like the Pixel. The joy of owning the best in the world of something lasts for a while, but you get sad when the next model never shows. So it's that age old question of if it's better to have loved and lost rather than never loved at all.

  45. +Scott Wilson You're selling me the idea of the Pixel, that's for sure. Like I said before, I just hope that Adobe and Macaw release their software on Chrome OS in the near future as well as GitHub with their Atom code editor and Sublime with Sublime Text 3. That would surely make the Chromebook a true contender to the Mac.

  46. +Stephen Dixon Check out Codenvy as suggested by +Michael Safyan. I used it the other day and it's pretty damn slick. I too go back to the pc for Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. There are quick tools for image manipulation but sometimes you really need the pro-tools to get the job done. 

    Even when I had the Macbook pro if I needed to do something in Photoshop or anything that needed a high level of fidelity in mouse movement I'd use an actual mouse instead of the trackpad. 

    Pixel: This was the Chromebook that was drool worthy but I couldn't spending that kind of cash on one. And yeah… where's the refresh? I'd want the juice sipping Haswell too +Scott Wilson. 

    +Stephen Dixon Been eagerly waiting for Atom. It looks slick… that said, how in the hell did I miss Sublime Text?! (oh I know I was at IBM and stuck using their bloated tools).

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