Samsung Chromebook Series 5 review

It's clear we're going to a place where local storage is going to be less important. However, there's only three groups of people I buy hardware for: my family, my employees, and me.

- My family wouldn't have any clue what to do with this. When their friends recommended programs, they couldn't run them, and I'm pretty sure my grandmother is never going to understand that when the Internet in her house goes out she'll need to reboot her router before she can save a document.

- My employees need to be able to handle whatever gets thrown at them. From clients who want to run Java GotoMeetings to people who receive powerpoints, Google apps just doesn't cut it.

- Me. I'm never going to be satisfied with a $400 computer and I'm willing to spend to get something great.

I can think of no one in my life who I'd buy this for and I'm sure most of us are in the same boat.

To compound it, the home page of Bestbuy.com is selling a perfectly reasonable Toshiba Satellite Laptop with a faster intel processor, 15.6" screen, 3 gigs of ram, a 250 gig hard drive, wifi and Windows 7 for $299. I bet it runs the chrome browser too. Sure it won't blow your mind, but neither will the chromebook.

I understand that Google isn't really targeting technically oriented users, but Engadget is (or should be, haven't really followed them for a while now) and the review video was a joke. The reviewer spent 2:20 talking about the plastic and the look of the laptop. This was all I needed to know what a horrible review this was going to be. Followed by the "revelation" to the reviewer that were the "F5" key usually lied was now replaced by a refresh key. If you don't know why this is ludicrous, then perhaps this chromebook is for you. Anyways, if anyone finds an actual review, let us know.

That's pretty sad. My only real complaints about the Cr-48 were the low-quality screen, the trackpad, and the performance. Looks like they hit two out of three, but, like the review says, for $430 I expect more.

Still not sold on the entire chromebook idea.

Offline apps are still not here.

They have a 3G plan, but no bundled wifi hotspot plan? At least an iPadWifi/iPodTouch would be fairly functional offline at say, a coffee shop.

All in all, this seems rushed or not fully thought through. Why even release these devices to reviewers before offline apps are ready?

Anyone know what 3G chipset this thing uses? Is it something like Gobi that can be reprogrammed for other providers given the right firmware?

Why isn't this running Android? I think I might pay $299 for a nice 12'' netbook running linux...

I really like the idea of the Chromebook, but I actually think something like a WebOS netbook would be better potentially. Saying that everything IS a webapp is a bit stupid at this point. Forcing everything through the web browser is just as draconian as the rules on iOS frankly.

Of course Google wants everything to be on the web so that they can make more money with ads, and that is to be expected, but I kind of wish that there was a better app development story around HTML5 local storage.

Like, it would be great if say a game like Angry Birds could be downloaded and played offline on a Chromebook. iOS, Android, and every other platform gets this. Chromebook is clearly not designed for the offline world...yet. Not everywhere has wifi/3g/4g connectivity 100% of the time.