Chromebooks on sale at Amazon for $349

When I first saw the Chromebook, I figured it would be priced around $150, so that it was a no-brainer decision (especially with it's limitations over a normal laptop). But at $349, its still $75 more than an Acer Aspire One.<p>Make it $100-$150, and I'll buy it. As it stands though, its too much money and too little benefits.

Don't buy one. I got the Samsung Series 5 3g Chromebook a month ago, and I definitely regret buying even at its low price point. The OS is still very unstable and not performant. The speakers are very bad (but I wouldn't watch video or listen to music anyway - YouTube/Pandora/Turntable.fm tend to crash quite a bit). The screen is not that great. The only upside is the long battery life but you're better off spending a couple hundred more and getting an Air.

&#62; It just works.<p>Can we stop saying this please?<p>&#62; "Your apps, documents, and settings are stored safely in the cloud."<p>Until Google deletes your account for no specific reason and refuses to give it back (this has happened to more than one person)<p>&#62; Millions of apps.<p>[citation needed]<p>&#62; Friends let friends login.<p>Every OS ever has had this feature. It's called "Users"<p>&#62;Gets faster over time.<p>What does this mean? That you designed it to be inefficient so you can speed it up and gather favor from your users? That you just stopped optimizing halfway through and pegged it 1.0?

The price is astronomical. I can turn my EeePC into a homemade chromebook with $0 and I paid much less for that years ago. I would assume that you could strip the chromebook down to $150-200 precisely because the hardware specs required for a glorified browser ought to be considerably lower than for running a full-fledged OS. Perhaps I'll have to wait for some Tegra chromebook to get the price/perf figure to a more sensitive level: even the latest smartphones should be able to match the requirements for a chromebook.

I think Google's strategy for ChomeOS is all wrong. Nobody wants low powered laptops without a proper OS. As soon as the iPad blew up the netbook market Google should have retargeted ChomeOS as a tablet OS. A lightweight (zero-weight) OS is perfectly suited for a tablet. I use an iPad almost exclusively for browsing the net and checking email and I bet I'm not the only one. A Chrometablet with some decent specs and maybe some hardware WebGL support might even open a whole new online gaming market.

If they sell this at $49 with a 2-year data plan contract - would rock! Two reasons:<p>1 - This is a brick if you don't have internet.<p>2 - This is a brick if you can't use it on road. People have internet at homes.<p>So consistent always on internet with a very low buy-in cost would probably be better, imo. I mean, this thing needs to sell as a complete experience.

$350 should be the max pricing point for a higher quality Chromebook, not the starting point. The starting point should be like $200. They should also make them only with ARM chips to cut the cost significantly. Ideally, it should be like $200 wi-fi only with Tegra 2 (or other dual core ARM chip) and $350 for a better built one with 4G and Tegra 3 (or similar).

They've been on sale for over 10 days now. I don't see them flying off the shelf.<p>I've been thinking about buying a 12.1" Samsung Series 5 3G or a 12.5" Lenovo X220 or an 11.6" Macbook Air or an 11.6" Samsung Series 9. If I could get emacs on a terminal, with ssh access I would be sold on the Chromebook. Does anyone know if ssh + emacs + term is possible? (w/ the same battery usage - i.e. I don't want to bother with installing Linux if I can only get &#60;2 hours of mobile use).

Imagine you have a chromebook, and imagine Google deleted your account, now do you have a very expensive paper-weight? (or is there some salvation?). I see some opportunity for two ideas: 1. insurance against the event that a company will delete your account. 2. a backup-for-orig-company.com (browser plug-in? desktop-background-app?), that backs up (and keeps track of) everything you do with company X - so you can retrieve it all someday if the need be.

Wow, that seems a little pricey for what is offered. I would think they would be able to use an "off the shelf" netbook that already costs ~300 dollars, without Windows, and sell it for ~200. Windows accounts for a nice chunk of the price of a netbook, does it not? I know they don't pay store prices for Windows, but I'm sure they are still paying a decent amount. Does anyone have an insight in to how much Windows adds to the price of netbook hardware?

I've been using a Samsung Series 5 for a couple weeks (I have the 3G model which is priced at $499).<p>After having tried this out, there's no way I would call it worth $499. Maybe I'm just spoiled from my MacBook Air but the Series 5 is heavy and has a cheap/plasticky feel to it. The trackpad has responsiveness problems and in general just feels funny to use. All in all it gives off kind of a "toy computer" impression which is unfortunate.

I too struggle with the price of Chromebooks. I do love my CR48 but expected price to be around $200 considering the OS is very limited.

Chromebooks are like bigger and worse netbooks. Great at doing nothing but still not the cheapest!

Is the main market for chrome books (a) people who want to install Linux and other OSes on them and (b) people who do not want the hassle of adminning a traditional OS?

The biggest Chromebook advantage, in my opinion, is that it never slows down because you never change the software in any meaningful way. For the average person who bloats their computer over time until it isn't usable, that is huge.