Today, Google revealed a Chromebook we’ve all been waiting for: The Chromebook Pixel, which seems to high an extremely high def, beautiful display machine. They also showed off that it was in fact a touchscreen, which confirmed rumors that were previously leaked.
So, everything seemed pretty standard, and looked pretty good… It has a 3:2 screen ration, and can be ordered with either a 32 gig or 64 gig hard drive. It also features ChromeOS, again nothing unexpected…
So what’s the problem? Well, how about coughing up 13 hundred dollar bills to get your hands on this bad boy? Uh…
While the Chromebook seems to be higher-end, it’s hardly in the vicinity of Alienware, which you can get for around the same price, and would make for a much better deal overall. At the end of the day, who wants to buy what’s essentially a netbook, for the price tag of a high-end gaming machine? Not me. After all, this thing can’t even run Photoshop, which can be run on full laptops that you can get your hands on for a lot less.
While it is overall a solid laptop, it seems that what you’re really paying for here, is the good looks, and admittedly, is a pretty nice-looking laptop. If you want to spend this much on a laptop though, you might as well chuck out a $150 more, and get your hands on 1 TB of Google Drive storage, which will remain safely stored on their cloud-based storage system, instead of your machine.
Another major problem that not many people are talking about, is the fact that this thing runs on ChromeOS, which in and of itself, isn’t too bad, but the fact of the matter is, just not enough programs are actually compatible with this OS, for one, and two, it’s just severely untested.
Personally, I think Google should be paying me $1300 if they want me to spend my time essentially beta-testing their new operating system. Windows might have its problems, but at least it’s been around the block for a while, and is not a completely untested OS. OSX has always had a good reputation, and Apple’s operating systems have been around for a while too.
Overall, it’s safe to say that Google just hasn’t learned its lesson with the Nexus One, which went for about $530, and many people felt that THAT was too high, never mind the $1300 price tag on this new netbook.Granted, the Pixel is a much better machine, but obviously Google should be looking to help fill the demand of people that want to get a laptop, and pay practically nothing for it. As long as they can get on Facebook and talk to their friends, most people are happy, and that’s why the $150ish netbooks are doing pretty well.
Overall, I think Google put out a pretty nice laptop here, but at $1300, you can bet that this new Chromebook will remain firmly on the shelves, but we’ll see if enough people are willing to splurge on this new laptop to make it a success. I doubt it.