After enduring Leo Laporte 's 35 minutes of pessimism towards Google Glass on TWiG (not all unde...

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

After enduring Leo Laporte's 35 minutes of pessimism towards Google Glass on TWiG (not all undeserved, but more time than he needed to make the point), I'm not really looking forward to another doubt-fest against the Chromebook Pixel on The Tech Guy, TWiT, and TWiG. Yes, $1300 is too much for most people to pay for a laptop that does too little, but it does hint at Google's strategy. Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, and iyaz akhtar did a nice job today of expressing most of what Marques Brownlee explained in this video: For Chrome OS to be a success, it needs great web apps -- and it's not likely to get great web apps without inspiring hardware to run them on.

 

I think there's another strategy at play, a Dan Ariely-inspired theory about the Chromebook that Leo Laporte might like. I'm guessing that Google would like to make (either themselves or through partners) some nice mid-range Chromebooks in the $500-$800 range to compete squarely against the middle of the Windows market, which isn't too bullish with Windows 8. Right now, it's hard to promote those prices when Samsung and Acer have set the price floor for Chromebooks so low. But by putting a high-end $1300 Chromebook on the market, Google (a) gets a lot of media attention, (b) says, "hey Apple, we can do the retina high-end laptop, too," and © blows wide open our psychological predispositions about what we think Chromebooks might be worth. I think that last point is key, and explains why Samsung's $249 Chromebook feels even cheaper to me now than it did 2 days ago.

[G+_Alex Masters]

Raymond Johnson Did you know that Jeff Jarvis ordered an LTE Chromebook Pixel for himself as a replacement for his current Samsung one? Hopefully this will help to produce a balanced discussion on next week's TWiG if they talk about it. I'm pretty sure they will :)

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

I thought Jeff Jarvis's post was very well-stated and I'm also hoping for a balanced discussion on TWiG. (And by balanced, I don't mean Leo steps off the ledge, and Jeff pulls him back, and Leo steps again...)

[G+_Alex Masters]

Hahaha! Well I guess it all depends how Leo feels on the day. Hopefully Jeff will do most of the talking considering he is a regular Chromebook user. Fingers crossed!

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

What gets me, Lou Gagliardi, is that on The Tech Guy Leo often recommends iPads to people who are just looking for trouble-free access to email and the web. For many people, that's probably a good recommendation, but why wouldn't a Chromebook be equally good for many of those people?

[G+_Peter Elst]

I don't mind so much usually, this time Leo was being rather explicitly negative though with zero hands on experience to back it up. What I find more annoying is the changing position within a single show, in the show opening saying "I'm not convinced" then when the topic is introduced going "I'm so excited". 

[G+_Chris Porter]

I think Leo was just in a cynical mood on Wednesday.  I wouldn't put too much weight behind his skepticism on one show.

[G+_Jose Gomez]

Leo needs a long Tech-less vacation. Some thing to remind him how far we've come. I think the guy is a little jaded. Maybe a few days in the stone age for lack of a better metaphor might make him appreciate something like a Chromebook Pixel. It maybe out of my price range but I would certainly enjoy one.

[G+_Chris Porter]

That's true, Lou Gagliardi.  I agree with him that a $1300 Chromebook is a tough sell, but I love the idea of a $250 always connected device where little or no data is stored.  

 

I'm a little worried, though, that the Chromebook is ahead of its time.  And that people's lack of understanding about how cloud computing works will ultimately lead to very limited sales.  Every other week, my Dad asks me "What's this cloud thing?" and "How do I get on the cloud?"  I'm wondering if the Chromebook might be a better product 5 to 10 years from now than it is even today.

[G+_Bruce Johnson]

I really don't get all the Chromebook hate.  Yes, the Pixel is spendy, but many complain that it's "$250 and it doesn't even have an OS?  That's way too much!"  What do most people do?  E-mail, surf, word processing, pictures, watch Netflix, and the occasional spreadsheet.  Why do you need Windows or MacOS for that?  I've been trying to come up with ways a Chromebook would hold me back and I haven't managed to think of one.

[G+_Chris Porter]

I'm certainly using the hard drive less and less these days.  And even when I do save files to the drive, I'm saving them to either my Google Drive or Dropbox folder, which I could do without the hard drive at all.

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

I'm not sure I would say the whole network needs a reboot, Dario Razum, but I'd personally prefer to see more of the kind of pacing and planning I've been seeing on All About Android. I'm not sure how much help Jason Howell gets in putting that show together, but I think the effort pays off.

 

I don't want to get too down on Leo. Yes, sometimes I get frustrated with him, but then again, I get a lot of chances each week from watching him on TWiT, BYB, Security Now, TWiG, Triangulation, Windows Weekly, and the Tech Guy. (Is that everything but MBW?) I'm sure Leo has spent a lot of time thinking about how, with a limited amount of tech news each week to work with, he can do all those shows and not feel like he's just saying the same thing over and over again. I really enjoy Paul Thurrott's balance of optimism and pessimism, and Leo usually plays off it well. But some weeks or some shows are bound to be better than others, and like Chris Porter suggested, perhaps the last TWiG just happened to fall on the wrong side of average.

[G+_Marc Kline]

I'm on board about the $200-250 model, but it's hard for me to envision who the $1000+ model is for right now. I understand that web/cloud apps are "good enough" for everyday tasks and that the cheaper hardware covers that use case well. But more advanced and expensive hardware wouldn't seem to speak to the "good enough" crowd. If this is a reference piece of hardware meant to make a statement and announce the place of cloud computing beyond the cover-the-basics market, I'm excited to see the marketplace fill in with more rich applications for these cloud systems.

 

I guess it's that I've always seen these Chrome OS devices as "thin clients" with suitable hardware for lightweight applications that don't require much on the local side. This hardware bucks the trend a bit in a way that is kind of confusing to me, but I'm betting Google sees something emerging that I don't from my armchair.

 

Still, I understand Leo's skepticism and think we, by now, have to see him for the tech pundit that he is and not be so hard on him. I appreciate him going out on a limb and making a statement rather than playing it safe. He says some things I find a bit outrageous at times, but I think that he's well aware of how he sounds and realizes that he's going to win some predictions and lose others. I'd rather get some emotional rise out of my TWiT experiences than be bored without tension between my own opinions and those of any of the hosts.

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

Also, let me say this in defense of Chromebooks: As a teacher who occasionally took students to a Windows-based computer lab, it's astonishing how much the typical student can muck up a machine by installing shareware, deleting icons and shortcuts, changing the wallpaper, bringing in malware on removable drives, etc. In response, tech staff spend a lot of time preparing and deploying (and redeploying) images to return those computers to a known-good state, often by using software and systems that can cost the school considerable extra money. I know this is just one use case that doesn't necessarily translate to the consumer market, but it is a case where Chromebooks make a whole lot of good sense.

[G+_Brandon Butler]

I had one of the original Chromebooks when they were first released by Google. I brought it everywhere with me and got a lot of use out of it. 

 

My brother needed a computer so I passed it on to him and he used it for months until he received a new laptop as a gift. 

 

He passed it on to my mother and she uses it with no issues. I no longer get calls about computer issues, ha ha. 

 

I think the Chromebook is a great device with a lot of potential. It's also a good thing that they are giving consumers more choices. 

 

I think the Chromebook and Chrome OS will catch on eventually. Most people are now using cloud storage services so they no longer need large local available storage. 

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

Marc Kline, I think you're right about "good enough" computing. To me, it seemed like we went a decade or more where improvement was marked by a steady increase in processor speed, memory, hard drive space, and graphics performance. We got used to measuring computer quality by those measures. Now you can almost buy a computer at random and assume those things are going to be "good enough."

 

Now we've entered this "fast enough" or "good enough" phase where companies have to try something bold or risk becoming Packard Dell Bell. Maybe it's touch. Or lots of pixels. Or cloud services. Or wearable computing. Or thinness. Or a less-is-more software/OS strategy. Lenovo and ASUS (to their credit) are becoming leaders mostly because they're throwing a bunch of designs to the market to see what sticks, doing things few of us could have imagined just 3-5 years ago. To the masses, the simplicity of Chromebooks might have more appeal than the typical power-user tech journalist thinks.

[G+_James Clay]

Leo's aim when making these shows is not to be fair and equitable, and never has been, and never will be. His aim is, and he has said this, is to make them compelling to watch/listen to. As I can see from the discussion he has achieved that, you are watching the shows and talking about them. That's the aim of the shows and the TWiT network. You might not like what he's saying, but you're still watching, which is what Leo wants.

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

I agree, James Clay, and it helps that Leo's not "in charge" on every show. For Security Now and Know How, Leo plays the "Ed McMahon" role to Steve and iYaz's Johnny pretty well. (That's a Tonight Show reference for those too young to remember the Carson era.)

[G+_Dan Polnoff]

What I still don't understand is what is the purpose of the extra processing power on a chromebook? I can't seem to come up with an app that needs stronger cpus but not local storage. I love the chronebooks but I understand the skepticism over a high end notebook, especially when no one is buying computers right now.

[G+_Raymond Johnson]

Dan Polnoff: I know the extra processing power makes running a browser with many tabs a little more enjoyable, but I'd guess the biggest reason for the stronger CPU in the Pixel is to encourage developers to write Chrome web apps that take advantage of the extra power.

[G+_Josh Frye]

Sorry guys but I still don't get the price tag on this chrome book, I like the idea of a chrome book. But not this price tag nor all the fancy features making it that much. As a average computer user, I know this Chromebook is not targeted at me, but in some ways the cheaper ones are not either. I can't pay more than 500 bucks for any computer and I can only do that once every couple of years. I still have a pre Centrino laptop and a Acer  desktop that I grafted Windows 7 and Vista drivers on. And now the desktop is telling me the Asus I will be buying soon is long overdo. That also means I can only afford free cloud services like dropbox. If I the computer does not have a hard drive where I will save locally then there better be a SD card slot. Because I will have five or six 32 gig cards to store my files.

 

I also do not live in a area with free WiFi everywhere, right now I would have to sit in MacDonald  or sit at home with the dsl to use much of a Chromebook.

 

And the school setting with Windows, don't run them as a power user or admin. Save a snapshot of the system and tell people not to save thier documents to the hardrive and always expect them to be there. If one of our systems (I work for a college) is too far gone, we wipe it and add it back to the Active directory. If it is a office pc we pull their my documents and assorted data off and rebuild. It takes too much time to do anything else when you have desktops and laptops spread everywhere and in multiple far off campuses.

[G+_Tony Porter]

You should all add Marques Brownlee his reporting and HD video is first class :)

[G+_Curtis Laraque]

In terms of the Pixel, I get the idea of resetting a benchmark for developers to reach in terms of performance, and I get the idea of stretching the price range of the Chromebook brand. I'm not really sure why the Pixel would be the way to go about doing these things, though. The Pixel is all about wonderful hardware, when the challenge Google really faces here is the branding of Chrome OS. I feel like Google has put the cart before the horse here; make the OS awesome and make it feel like it's a complete OS, and no one will question the hardware that it's installed on.

 

In terms of Leo, I think he tends to go hard with his opinions as they are, and, even without hands-on experience, has plenty of reasoning behind them. That doesn't make him unswayable though, and there's always room for discussion. Leo's style encourages the other hosts to be more knowledgeable and invested in the things they discuss, so counter opinions and points can be as strong as his, making for a more valuable discussion. It's always good to have a naysayer in the group, lest a discussion just dissolve into one big "woooo this is awesome!" party with no substance.

[G+_Justin Smith (TimEChant]

+Jose Gomez totally agree. Recently he seems to be a little more jaded than normal. I see him using more stand in hosts is maybe an tip that he thinks so too

[G+_Eng. Jorge Santana]

If you expect Leo to praise a Browser laptop for 1500$ that can't be use for REAL work you are out of your mind. A 499$ iPad does a thousand more things that a pixel can. You need to install Linux or windows for the laptop to be productive IMHO.