My first post will just be a geeky praise to one of my favorite gadgets!
I've long decided that my first post in this blog will be about the google chromebook.
And not any google chromebook... My google chromebook.
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| Take a first look! |
Anyways
Some specs:
Model: XE303C12-A01US
Samsung Exynos 5 Dual core CPU
2 gigs of ram
16GB SSD drive
11.6'' LED HD screen
1366x768 resolution
2 USB ports (1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0)
SD card slot
0.3MP webcam
HDMI output
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| A view of the usb, the HDMI and the power input ports |
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| A view of the headphones jack and the sd card slot |
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| A close up of the 0.3MP camera - there are some light sensors and maybe a mic on its sides |
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| A photo taken from the chromebooks webcam |
All pretty straight forward... except the cpu.
So what about the exynos cpu?
Samsung has designed this new system-on-a-chip called Exynos 5 which holds an 1.7GHz Dual core ARM Cortex A15 CPU and an ARM Mali-T604 Quad core GPU (4x533MHz)
It also holds support for USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 and other I/O ports and interfaces such as HDMI.
Also, some features such as a separate chip which is responsible for the linkage between the CPUs, MMUs, graphics, memory and ethernet controllers which I won't fool you by pretending that I fully understand...
But the ARM core is generally known in being used in mobile phones and devices, what is it doing powering a laptop?
This new ARM core - the ARM Cortex A15 - is designed for providing more computing power whilst maintaining the chips's low power consumption. Its competitors Intel, AMD and Nvidia are hardly keeping up, with only Intel, with its quad core Atom and the i3, being more powerful. But it is still lacking in areas like power consumption compared to the ARM chip.
But the ARM core is generally known in being used in mobile phones and devices, what is it doing powering a laptop?
This new ARM core - the ARM Cortex A15 - is designed for providing more computing power whilst maintaining the chips's low power consumption. Its competitors Intel, AMD and Nvidia are hardly keeping up, with only Intel, with its quad core Atom and the i3, being more powerful. But it is still lacking in areas like power consumption compared to the ARM chip.
I'll analyze the CPU architecture later in the OS part of this post.
The laptop doesn't have any fans. It doesn't need any. Even after many hours of use it just feels a little warm. And it's also completely silent. And that is because of the ARM chip combined with the 16GB SSD drive.
The laptop doesn't have any fans. It doesn't need any. Even after many hours of use it just feels a little warm. And it's also completely silent. And that is because of the ARM chip combined with the 16GB SSD drive.
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| No openings anywhere under the chromebook - except for the speakers in the upper corners |
The battery can hold the laptop powered for up to 6.5 hours (as advertised)
Well, this always depends on the type of usage. I've witnessed the battery draining from 3.x hours of usage (brightness full, wlan on, usb devices attached and video streaming) to something less than 9 hours (brightness low, wlan off, no usb devices - just reading and watching a movie)
Still, I know many laptops that can only be powered for only up to 2.5 hours. So having it's lowest guaranteed battery autonomy at 3.x hours is excellent!
If you close the lid, the device enters sleep mode automatically and there isn't a way to change this setting. Not that you'll need to anyways. Ever. Sleeping consumes nearly no power at all! I've kept my chromebook in sleep mode by the time I arrived from a trip and didn't use it for a couple of weeks. When I opened it, I was able to use it for at least an hour. Not to mention waking up from sleep mode... This is just crazy, I never seen something like this before. It feels like unlocking a smartphone. It literally needs less than a second to wake up. If you have a youtube video or a movie file playing at the time you close the lid, go ahead and leave it there for days. When you open the lid, the video will immediately resume from where you left it. Even if you don't want it to! So, every time I don't need my chromebook any more, I just close the lid and put it in its bag, not worrying if it'll have any battery remaining for any possible future use. It wont disappoint me for sure.
Well, this always depends on the type of usage. I've witnessed the battery draining from 3.x hours of usage (brightness full, wlan on, usb devices attached and video streaming) to something less than 9 hours (brightness low, wlan off, no usb devices - just reading and watching a movie)
Still, I know many laptops that can only be powered for only up to 2.5 hours. So having it's lowest guaranteed battery autonomy at 3.x hours is excellent!
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| Closing the lid |
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| Lid closed |
If you close the lid, the device enters sleep mode automatically and there isn't a way to change this setting. Not that you'll need to anyways. Ever. Sleeping consumes nearly no power at all! I've kept my chromebook in sleep mode by the time I arrived from a trip and didn't use it for a couple of weeks. When I opened it, I was able to use it for at least an hour. Not to mention waking up from sleep mode... This is just crazy, I never seen something like this before. It feels like unlocking a smartphone. It literally needs less than a second to wake up. If you have a youtube video or a movie file playing at the time you close the lid, go ahead and leave it there for days. When you open the lid, the video will immediately resume from where you left it. Even if you don't want it to! So, every time I don't need my chromebook any more, I just close the lid and put it in its bag, not worrying if it'll have any battery remaining for any possible future use. It wont disappoint me for sure.
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| A close up on the keyboard - No windows key!! The F keys are replaced by some function keys... |
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| A close up on the keyboard and screen - browsing in a random webpage... |
Everyday usage is just a joy. The keyboard is very comfortable. Although I've heard complaints about the lower-case layout of it, I don't see were the problem is, the spacing between the keys is good, the feel of the key while being pressed is smooth and anyways, who watches their keyboard while typing nowadays? The trackpad is flat and empty without any buttons, You can tell it is inspired from a macbook trackpad, although it doesn't have all of its capabilities. It supports right clicking and scrolling with two finger gestures, which I find very handy. I've caught myself trying to use this feature in old laptops at my job and find their lack of it very time consuming... How have I lived without it all this time?
This is a very portable laptop. With an 11" screen and this autonomy, you can carry it anywhere - even in long trips. I never get it's charger with me when I go out and I've never had to stop what I was doing with it because the battery was getting low. I use my chromebook for youtube videos, movies (SD,HD,Full HD), email, facebook chat - posting - browsing, googling, backing up my friends's camera photos using the sd card slot and even charging usb devices (although this drains the battery very quick) I haven't tried to play flash games or anything like that, but I imagine the cpu usage is about the same - if not a little more - than that of watching an HD movie.
Another super feature of the processor is, as I mentioned above, the capability of viewing HD movies. Quoting wikipedia: " This SoC will have a memory interface providing 12.8 GB/sec of memory bandwidth, have support for USB 3.0 and SATA 3, decode full 1080p video at 60 fps along with simultaneously displaying WQXGA-resolution (2560x1600) on a mobile display as well as 1080p over HDMI." Although technically it is useless to play an Full HD movie (1920x1080) on this 1366x768 chromebooks' screen, it won't complain at all. Movies play smoothly. Now, talking about the supporting formats... Well, I usually download my movies in HD which are (usually) in mkv's, mp4's and avi's. The chromebook can play them all, although sometimes it needs a little tweaking. Generally, if you rename the extension of a video file to .mp4 it will play fine - my only problem until now was with two video files - in one mkv I couldn't hear any audio and in another, only part of the audio channel could be heard (I suspect it had a 5.1 audio stream or something) (UPDATE: more mkvs with no audio...) Subtitle support is currently on the works, to view them you have to get your device in dev mode, convert your subtitle files in .vtt format and open the video file from a html file you wrote... Not for the everyday user for sure! I expected better from google, although the vtt format sounds very promising as far as encoding problems are concerned... I would be glad to finally get rid of this bugger!
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| The chromebook booting up (in literally seconds) |
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| The chromebooks login screen - it will show more users if more users have been using it recently |
ChromeOS is a very smooth experience. Most of the features just work as long as you don't ask for too much. You have to keep in mind that this isn't a desktop replacement laptop but an ultra portable internet browsing device with some extra features you have to be grateful about.
I will propably start an arguement, but I have to say this is a Linux based OS. I don't even know why do some people argue about that. Is "Linux" a bad word? Is it scary for some? (or for their costumers?) I was in a BestBuy in LA and asked about the OS, a friend of mine asked if this was a Linux based OS... The answer was something like "eeeerrrrr, eeeehhhh, no, not exactly, naaaah, you can't say that" My question is: why?. I later learned that he had tried some linux distirbution himself. So I am very confused about this person. Even the google representative in the store had about the same reaction. I am not going to accuse a whole corporation for confusing people and even their staff but, wtf Google?
I mean, common, how much proof do you want, it has a shell (press ctrl+alt+t > type shell in dev mode) in which you can run various common unix and linux commands and programs, the filesystem is linux/unix like... Google doesn't hide the fact that this OS has a "patched" linux kernel. Just read the documentation in the dev pages, both in chromeOS and chromiumOS (the open source - community supported/maintained - development version of chromeOS) websites. Not to mention that this isn't the first time that google is using a linux kernel in an OS...
What ChromeOS currently supports: Being an OS with basically only a browser, this device generally supports web-based applications. Its google-chrome browser is in many ways the same with any google-chrome browser in any other OS. This means that with every update, its embedded flash player is updated to the newest version. So - generally - every flash (and of course, HTML5) content on the internet is probably going to run on the chromebook - fairly fast. Some of the applications that are included except the browser are: a file manager, a camera viewer, a media player, a "scratchpad" and a calculator. Everything else must be run from the cloud.
So we can easily understand what this device cannot support: Everything that needs to be "installed" in an OS. This includes but it is not limited to: Skype(!), MSOffice, Adobe suite, bittorent clients, extra media codecs, alternative browsers, Viruses...
The internet connectivity of this model is limited to a wifi module only. The 3g model costs about a 100$ more. Well, in 2013, wifi is everywhere, but there are still places that wifi isn't as available as you might have wanted ($$) so an option for a 3g connection is always desired in a device that is designed to be run with an internet connection... Problem is... usb 3g dongles aren't supported. Basically, the only usb devices that this device supports are usb storage devices, keyboards, mice and I've found reports that usb headsets are also supported (then again, I've found possitive reports about usb 3g dongles...) So the only solution that I've found is either using my smartphone as an access point using its 3g connection or a mifi. The only downside is, I have yet to find a smartphone or a mifi device capable of maintaining its connection as long as the chromebook has battery!
Before I end this post: This device has a locked "BIOS". However, you can still install an alterative OS (without many options - but still) I have already installed Ubuntu linux (which are called chrUbuntu when you install them in this device)which are basicaly the chromeOS linux kernel with Ubuntu on top (and the chromebook in developer mode) It's a whole new story - it deserves a post of its own...
Concluding: This is an ultraportable device with more than basic capabilities for everyday use on-the-go. It is not a desktop replacement. You need to know what you are asking if you're considering bying it...
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