Pinboard (guardiantech)

Five-month usage study: Chrome OS drives 0.2% of north American desktop web traffic >> Chitika Online Advertising Network

guardiantech — 2014-02-23T21:44:47+00:00

To quantify Chrome OS’ North American usage growth over time, Chitika Insights analyzed billions of U.S. and Canadian desktop-based online ad impressions within the Chitika ad network. The data set analyzed consisted of impressions catalogued from 1 September 2013 to 31 January 2014. For some comparison, continental Web usage shares of both Chrome OS and Linux are graphed over the five-month timespan.

The Chrome OS share doubled (from 0.1% to 0.2%). The Linux share ramped from 1.1% to 1.9%.

First real-world usage figures suggest Chromebooks are struggling >> ZDNet

guardiantech — 2013-04-17T21:13:18+00:00

Ed Bott:

To put things in perspective, as of April 2013 all Chromebooks combined have managed to achieve 7/10 of 1% of the usage of Windows 8 PCs worldwide.
Put another way, that figure suggests that in nearly two years on the market, all of those Chromebooks have achieved a smaller percentage of usage than Windows RT earned as of January 2013, after only three months on the market. Windows RT has been widely considered a disappointment, with OEMs cutting prices for RT-powered devices.
In both categories, those tiny results suggest a fair amount of pain for the OEMs that jumped in early. Google’s gone all-in for its cloud-based OS, and Microsoft is similarly gung-ho about the future of its Windows RT operating system. But it might be another couple of years before the general buying public is really ready for either one.

But one Chromebook was the top seller on Amazon's PC category! Could it be that that isn't a reliable metric for broader sales?

Chromebook and the low cost of being accessible >> Australian Financial Review

guardiantech — 2013-03-26T06:32:42+00:00

Caitlin Fitzsimmons:

Chief information officer of US-based building company Egan Construction, Jim Nonn, issued Chromebooks to 140 foremen on the Minnesota light rail project about a year ago. In a post on the Google corporate blog, he describes how the low cost takes the fear factor out of the equation.
“The workers love the Chromebooks because they aren’t afraid to use them on the job,” Nonn says. “If one does get damaged, we can swap it for another in a matter of minutes with zero time wasted or data lost.
“We’ve saved so much in moving forward with Chromebooks instead of Windows laptops – about $200 per machine.”

Chrome OS thwarts attack attempts in Pwnium challenge >> Phys.org

guardiantech — 2013-03-11T17:32:10+00:00

Hackers at a please-hack-me contest at the CanWest security conference in Vancouver, BC, went home empty-handed. The contest during the Vancouver three-day conference on digital security ended up with enlightened participants capable of attempts nonetheless missing out on a massive pile of cash—the bounty was $3.14159 million — the reward for their efforts if successful. They were unable to break into Google's Chrome OS. This Pwnium 3 contest invited hackers to penetrate any holes they could find in the Chrome operating system.

Impressive. (Thanks @sputnikkers for the link.)

localStorage Demo >> Dave Winer

guardiantech — 2013-03-08T21:52:41+00:00

localStorage feature.

? The text you type is automatically saved every second. You can refresh the page, even quit and relaunch the browser, and the text remains. Useful.

Report: Chrome OS web traffic share up 700% since last June, still just accounts for 0.07% >> TechCrunch

guardiantech — 2013-03-04T22:14:12+00:00

Since last June, Chrome OS’s share of traffic on Chitika’s network increased by 700%. Even so, Chromebooks still just account for 0.07% of desktop- and laptop-based traffic to sites in the company’s network. That puts it ahead of the Wii at 0.02% and behind the PlayStation with 0.08%, but those consoles were obviously never meant to be web-centric devices to begin with. Last June, Chrome OS accounted for 0.011% of traffic across Chitika’s network.

Usual caveats about Chitika, but there you go. (By the way, it increased seven-fold. Isn't that 600%, since 100% is a doubling?)

Google announces Chromebook Pixel: a premium Chrome OS laptop shipping next week for $1,299 >> The Verge

guardiantech — 2013-02-22T07:21:01+00:00

Google repeatedly told us how smooth and fluid it is to swipe through webpages on the touchscreen on the Pixel, and how it would enable developers to target a broader ecosystem for their apps by allowing their tablet and smartphone creations to have the same experience on the web. If only it were true: the touchscreen response is far from fluid, if Google's on-stage demos and our own hands-on impressions are any indication.

Specifications v experience.

Samsung Chromebook: hands-on review >> Information Week

guardiantech — 2012-10-23T05:21:34+00:00

What happened? Google decided to stop fighting the desktop metaphor. Early Chromebooks, like Google's CR-48 and the first generation Samsung and Acer devices, were about as much fun to use as an airport computing kiosk set up to support Web browsing and nothing more. Chrome OS felt like a prison, like the desktop typically behind the browser had been hidden. That may have been nothing more than user expectation, but user expectation is part of the user experience, and that experience tends not to be positive when expectation is denied.
Earlier this year, Google made its Chrome OS browser window behave like a browser on a Mac or Windows computer--it can now be minimized to reveal a desktop with files and icons. Chrome OS has gained a menu bar at the bottom of the screen with Web app icons. Clicking on a device-related icon, like the battery, produces a free-floating menu pane, without any reference to the Chrome browser. There's a files folder, accessible from the Apps menu in the menu bar, that displays local downloads and remote Google Drive files. In other words, Chromebooks have adopted more legacy user interface conventions and are better for it.

So basically, ChromeOS can't beat the desktop paradigm. But at that price, who minds? (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)

Google updates struggling Chrome OS | Cloud | News | PC Pro

guardiantech — 2012-08-22T21:19:55+00:00

Google has added the ability to save files directly to Drive, rather than saving them locally and uploading them, making it much easier to work on files between devices. Saving a file opens a dialog window with a choice of tabs; choose Google Drive and it gives a neatly ordered folder and file tree that's arguably cleaner than the Drive web interface.

The article also mentions that Chitika estimates Chrome's share at around 0.0119%. That's somewhere around 100,000 devices.

Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 Review >> Cnet

guardiantech — 2012-06-13T21:41:31+00:00

Here's the biggest problem with the Chromebook: the hardware's fine, and the simplified Web-based OS is clever, and even versatile if you don't mind its limitations. Still, it's a radically reduced subset of what you can get on a Windows or Mac laptop...or even an iPad or Android tablet, for that matter. Yet, it costs more than a new iPad 2, a thinner, keyboard-enabled Android tablet like the Asus Transformer Pad, or a fully featured 11-inch ultraportable laptop like the AMD-powered HP dm1z.
If the Chromebook were $99, this could have been a revolutionary product. As it currently stands, it's merely an invitation to pay a lot of money to be part of a Google experiment. And you're the test subject.

Their verdict: 2/5. The money you pay: $550. Is that how they named it? (Thanks @nazo for the link.)

27,000 Google Chromebooks headed to U.S. schools | Deep Tech - CNET News

guardiantech — 2012-01-25T22:37:11+00:00

"This is the right device for student learning," said Bryan Weinert, technology coordinator for the Leyden Community High School District in Illinois. "We plan to deploy 3,500 to students next year. Every single student will be issued a Chromebook they can use at school and at home."

The Chromebooks will replace Netbooks, he said. "We were looking for a device that can be invisible. We want teachers to focus on instruction," not technical support, waiting for laptops to boot, or making sure they're charged, he said.

Oh, yeah, Chromebooks. They were going to destroy Microsoft's business once upon a time.

HTC considering Chrome OS for Internet-access devices

guardiantech — 2011-11-24T23:11:24+00:00

"Although Chromebooks offered by Acer and Samsung Electronics may see low cumulative sales of 25,000-30,000 units at the end of 2011, HTC is evaluating the feasibility of combining the advantages of Chrome OS and Android for use in internet-access devices, products between tablet PCs and netbooks, according to component makers. However, Acer and HTC did not respond when asked for comment." A dual-boot device that's between a tablet and a netbook? Almost a niche-y a market as Chromebooks seem to be so far.

Biggest Threat to Apple: Google Chrome OS >> TheStreet

guardiantech — 2011-04-29T05:15:52+00:00

"Starting some time around July or August, Google's partners Samsung and Acer will launch laptops and perhaps also a desktop or two, based on Chrome OS. I am guessing laptops will start at $299 and "naked" desktops at $149. Given the superb performance of these Chrome OS PCs, with boot-up times (from cold) of less than even Apple's MacBook Air, some consumers and enterprises will pick Chrome OS PCs over the much more expensive Apple PCs."

A good example of how price can blind you to why people buy computers. Would someone who buys a ChromeOS computer really have been in the market for an Apple device? Far more likely they'd have been looking at cheap PCs.

Don't forget either that the first generation of netbooks running Linux had huge returns because people couldn't make them work: they expected (and later got) Windows. Expect something similar for ChromeOS.