The Year of the Chromebook

2014 just might be remembered as the year of the Chromebook . It will be to me at least. I just bought one, and I'm not alone. So have a lot of other people. A whole lot. From the Register:

According to US market-watcher NPD, during the 11 months from January through November 2013, the platform's share of the computing device market had risen to 9.6 per cent from just 0.2 per cent in the same months of the previous year. By contrast, Apple's laptops accounted for a mere 1.8 per cent of the market in 2013, down from 2.6 per cent the year before. Windows-based laptops also declined, though they remain the biggest seller: their combined share fell from 42.9 per cent to 34.1 per cent. Do the sums, and that means Windows laptops took 75 per cent of the US notebook market, Chromebooks 21 per cent and Apple a measly four per cent. Some 6.6 million laptops were shipped through commercial channels, says NPD, of which just under 1.4 million were Chromebooks. Five Chromebooks were sold for every MacBook.

When first released in 2011, they failed to capture the market's attention, as the hardware remained somewhat limited and the software options weren't appealing, but time has been kind to Chromebooks. This year Google and Intel have partnered to make sure some compelling new hardware was released, including the ASUS Chromebox desktop , the 21.5" all-in-one by LG , and 20 other models by the likes of HP, ASUS, Acer, Samsung, and Lenovo. CNET is hugely bullish on Chromebooks; so is Richi Jennings over at Computerworld.

As for me, I consider myself a power user and I'm not a huge fan of Google's software ecosystem, but I like my new Chromebook. My HP14 is pretty nice hardware, it's running great, I find the user environment hugely useable, and hell - the price was awesome: under $300. It's hard to believe I paid something like $1600 for a PIII laptop and Win98 in 2000.