Samsung Chromebook Series 5 with 3GSale ends 06/ 3 9AM ET

[ausmike]

Anyone wanting one of these :

Samsung Chromebook Series 5 with 3GSale ends 06/ 3 9AM ET

GO here
REGISTER with NEW GOOGLE EMAIL (or your gmail account)
and get laptop for $399.00 shiiped with CHROME OS

I got mine TODAY !!! .... woo hoo new tioy to play for free !!!

[ThinkRob]

Five hundred bucks for a plain Atom netbook?

The included 100MB 3G data allowance is nice, but still... that's pretty bloody expensive for some run-of-the-mill hardware. Add in the fact that it's only capable of running a browser, and I'm just not seeing the value proposition; it's a really expensive version of some common hardware with some really limited software. Pass.

[dwilsonfl]

I have the CR-48 and have been using it for 6 months for everything I could. It really has replaced everything else except for rare occasions. Battery life is 8 hours plus, the Verizon wireless is fast, and working with Google doc is getting easier and easier. I'm with you on the price ThinkRob, but if it was $249-$299 - they'd sell a bunch.

Got invited to buy one of the Samsungs early too, but I have a free CR-48 so... no.

[ThinkRob]

I guess I have trouble seeing the value proposition of the software too. I mean... it's a browser. Except instead of also being able to use thousands of existing apps, you can only use a browser. Neat tech demo? Definitely. But a product that one has to pay a premium for? Well... in the parlance of today's youth: "lol. fail."

[ozzymud]

@ThinkRob: For someone like you or I, definately fail... but for several people I know... it is quite adequate... My wife for example uses her machine MAINLY to use facebook and play Zynga's crappy games(farmville, frontierville, otherlameville, etc). Although she uses Thunderbird to read mail (gmail pop), she would prolly be quite comfortable using gmail.com. She views the occasional PDF (works well in "just a browser"), watches youtube videos, streams movies on netflix, ForecastFox in Firefox for weather, her gaming is limited to the above mentioned facebook games, and PopCap type games (all available in Flash versions), listens to music while browsing with last.fm....

Her netbook currently runs UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix), she loves it (my daughter and I loathe it ).

She could live quite happily on ChromeOS. I honestly can't think of one app she uses that she would miss using ChromeOS... so it is very viable for some, but definately a fail if you expect a full pc in a netbook.

[ThinkRob]

Oh, I know people for whom it would be acceptable too. I've got family members with netbooks that could be replaced with a "Chrome Book".

It's just that personally until the price is *lower* than competing solutions, it's not worth the compromise. Yes, I could transition them to using only web apps (which in turn then makes the netbook useless anywhere without WiFi, but I digress), but why? What's the value-add of ChromeOS? It's not automated updates, since the netbooks all have that anyways. It's not a hard-to-mess-up config, since they don't have the root password right now. It's not performance, or at least not for the folks I know (they're not exactly doing any high-intensity stuff...)

Now I do see the appeal of this for people coming from a *very* limited Windows background. But I sure don't like what it represents...

[ozzymud]

I agree 100%, I'm personally not going to buy into/reccomend this "cloud" computing stuff at all, even if the price does drop.

I really don't like the idea of ALL my data being out there (no matter how secure it seems to be), I'll let family photos and other important documents sit on external media in the safe deposit box at the bank (now there is offsite storage I can trust ), my e-mails will continue to be downloaded via pop3 to MY machine, etc, etc... And like you said, what about when there is no Wi-Fi or cell coverage for that matter, plenty of places up here where that is all too real, would make it really tough to read a book while camping

I'd rather waste time educating friends/family on howto use a real OS, most non-gamers transit easily to Linux, so this is what I do anyways