It's been nearly two years since the first commercially available Chromebook was introduced… prompting many folks to wonder why they'd spend $430 on a laptop designed to run an operating system based on a web browser. Chromebooks have come a long way since then, with the operating system becoming more mature, web apps becoming more useful, and the average price of a Chromebook dropping.
Today you can pick up an Acer Aspire C7 Chromebook for as little as $200 or a Samsung Series 3 Chromebook with an ARM Cortex-A15 processor for $249. Both offer generally speedy performance and acceptable perforbatterymance in a portable package. And they're priced low enough to consider picking one up as a secondary computer — one that you can use when you don't need the full functionality of a Windows or OS X computer.
Priced at or below $249, the latest generation of Chromebooks have been selling quite well. They're typically in the bestseller lists at Amazon and other retailers, and those shops have a hard time keeping the cheapest Chromebooks in stock.
Given the popularity of inexpensive Chromebooks, it can seem a bit baffling that the first Chrome OS laptop designed by Google is priced more like a MacBook than a netbook.
The Chromebook Pixel sells for $1299 and up. And if you look at the hardware, it's actually probably worth the asking price. Google's first laptop has a sturdy, well designed case, speedy hardware, and one of the best displays you'll find on any laptop. It also has excellent speakers and a great touchpad, and a responsive touchscreen.
What confuses many folks is that there are so many things you can't do on a laptop running Chrome OS that would be simple on another laptop that it's easy to overlook the benefits of a Chromebook.
After spending a few days with the Google Chromebook Pixel I'm convinced that this laptop isn't for everyone. But that's not to say there isn't an audience for the Pixel. It just may not be the audience you'd expect.
What is Chrome OS?
The first thing to keep in mind about the Chromebook Pixel is that it runs Chrome OS. This may seem like an obvious point, but when most people look at this device they'll see first and foremost a laptop — and that's what it is. But it's a laptop designed first and foremost for the web.
It doesn't run Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, or iTunes. You can't download and install any Mac or Windows apps on it… at least not easily. But that's a feature, not a bug.
Chrome OS is an operating system designed to be fast, light, and web-centric. It's frequently described as little more than a web browser, but there's actually a bit more to Chrome OS than a web browser. In fact, the earliest version of the software that would one day become Chrome OS used Firefox, not Chrome. And it wasn't designed to be a glorified web browser, it was designed to be fast.
That's because that early operating system, like today's Chrome OS, is a light-weight OS that loads itself into RAM to run. RAM is typically much, much faster than a hard drive or even a speedy solid state disk, so an operating system that runs from RAM tends to feel pretty zippy.
You can't store your movies, documents, or programs in RAM though, since RAM requires a constant flow of power to store anything at all. So Chromebooks also tend to have small solid state drives or hard drives you can use to store music, movies, or other documents.
But the emphasis is on web apps and cloud storage. That makes sense for two reasons: First, Google is essentially a company that makes its money from advertising on web services including search and email, so part of the goal of Chrome OS is to make it as easy as possible to spend most of your time online.
Second, if you don't install apps, you don't bog down your system. You know how Windows laptops start to feel slower and slower after months or years of use? That's at least partly because of all the apps you install over the years which can slow boot times and drain system resources during everyday use.
Chrome OS doesn't have that problem. You can "install" apps from the Chrome Web Store, but many of these apps are just links to websites. Others tie into the web browser to let you do things like read documents when you're o
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