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The Year of the Chromebook

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ChromeBox (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-05-14 09:20 (#1K0)

I got a $180 ASUS ChromeBox for use as an HTPC. The native video player can play all the bluray quality files that I've tried. Now if I can just figure out how to use a network share (CIFS or NFS) it would be nearly perfect.

I've tried to stream over HTTP using Plex and Synology Video station, but they both insist on transcoding the video. Anyone know of a good video library app that streams the raw source file using the HTML5 <video> tag? I created my own php project as a test to make sure it worked, but surely there are premade apps for this purpose.

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 2, Informative)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-14 10:08 (#1K4)

Plex transcodes - it's kind of its claim to fame. You mean you accessed your Plex media server over the HTTP connection and weren't happy with it? I did the same and thought that was good enough for me. I was planning on nuking ChromeOS and installing Linux but I'm going to keep Chrome around just a bit longer while I play with it. I'm already kind of frustrated with its limitations as an OS, but I concede this is probably what the future looks like, and it's better than I thought it would be. The HP14 is nice hardware, actually, with a very useable keyboard (once you accept it's almost impossible to get a machine that doesn't have that blasted chiclet keyboard these days).

Yes, I also need to get to an NFS share though, and it's probably the straw that will drive me to nuke Chrome and go ahead with the full Linux install.

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-05-14 10:17 (#1K8)

The price and look of the Chromebooks are very attractive, but I have held off prefering Linux on a "regular" laptop: ebay has good deals on older Dell Precision, for example, that are price competitive with Chromebooks. I'll probably get a tablet at some point for the casual or ultra mobile use cases.

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-14 13:00 (#1KF)

Why not just load linux on the chromebook? Elementary OS works great (sans trackpad on toshiba, but someone just need to fix ubuntu bug 1296534 for that). I hear Linux Mint works well too.

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 2, Interesting)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-05-14 14:25 (#1KQ)

I've understood that the ARM hardware in many of the affordable chromebooks are not performance competitive even with older Core processor based laptops. Is this a misconception on my part?

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 3, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-14 17:33 (#1M0)

Yes, it's a misconception on your part. The latest sub-$300 Chromebooks (Intel Haswell CPU) are actually significantly MORE powerful than any laptop you can get for under $600 or so. Check it yourself on places like cpubenchmark.net. It's about as fast as an i5.

It's kind of irritating, actually. I didn't want to choose a Chromebook.

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-05-14 19:10 (#1M4)

Wow, thanks for the correction... that definitely changes things from my perspective... I wonder how they keep the cost down for the Chromebooks, that can't all be a Microsoft tax can it?

Re: ChromeBox (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-14 19:42 (#1M5)

I don't know. I speculate in my other post below (The Economics are Ridiculous) that it has something to do with the virtual kickback that Google gets from tying you in to all its services and platform. But I don't really know. They do limit most of the Chromebooks to a silly 2GB RAM, but that can't be a big cost. And they engineer the BIOS to suit Chrome/Linux.

But I can't figure out why there are no competing Haswell netbooks in the same price range -- I think it's because the netbook market has been abandoned (unwisely).

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2014-05-15 00:36 Interesting +1 rocks@pipedot.org

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Marked as [Not Junk] by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-01-04 03:08