Well I don't really know how "newsy" this is, but i saw this article and thought I'd let those in the know here concur with its premise of "this is a good value notebook, especially vs an MBA" OR rip it apart. Have at it.

[www.wired.com]

You're kidding right? Maximum storage of 16GB? This thing depends on constant network access.

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SteveO
Well I don't really know how "newsy" this is, but i saw this article and thought I'd let those in the know here concur with its premise of "this is a good value notebook, especially vs an MBA" OR rip it apart. Have at it.

[www.wired.com]

Not up for searching right now but there was a decent discussion not to long ago-- think Kap had bought one and decided to return.

It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

As long as one keeps that FIRMLY in mind, it can be a wonderful and incredibly useful device... (we have 60 of them, and will be buying another 30 this year).
It does what it does extremely well... just don't expect it to be what it's not.

---

Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
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Eureka, CA

Dumb terminal, I see, makes perfect sense. Yeah 16gb is nothing for onboard storage. Thanks Black for the kap mention, I will go look for that.

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

Believe this has already been discussed on the forum (sorry for not providing a link), but you can hook into other services as well.

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anonymouse1
You're kidding right? Maximum storage of 16GB? This thing depends on constant network access.

My Asus Netbook runs Lubuntu 14.04 LTS with 16GB SSD. I supplement storage with SD cards and network resources. You could run a Linux distro on that box and I would take the much better screen on this $330 notebook over the rather awful MacBook Air screen. I keep saying to anyone who will listen, I don't care as much about retina on the Air, I just want something better than a $400 screen on a $900 laptop. With these cheap notebooks shipping with higher res IPS panels, I'll amend that to $200ish notebooks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 03:49PM by silvarios.

The MBA has a fine screen.

Chromebooks do a great job at what they are designed to do. I think they are ideal for education labs.

Waaaaaaaahhhhhh my Chromebook only has 16gb of storage in a device that doesn't USE hardly any local storage, it uses Google's 'cloud'... Waaaaahhhhhh....

How about you do some reading about how the thing operates before complaining how inadequate it is?

They're NOT the perfect device for everyone...
But listening to people complain that their Hyundai doesn't accelerate like a Bugatti Veyron is probably equally amusing to car folks.

---

Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

---

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I agree with Paul. Chromebooks serve a great function:

1) You give your students a full google account. Docs and files are all there.

2) You give you student a chromebook. They log into the computer, they are ready to go with google docs, etc.

3) When that student leaves, they log out. A new student logs in, repeats step (2).

I think this is a great thing. The student has all of their data stored in the cloud, they don't even need to bring their own hardware.

The MBA screen IS awful. There's no excuse for it. Our school district and many others have gone to google for email, docs, etc., so the chromebooks are becoming a good option for the classroom. kj.

$330 should be enough for a refurbed i5 notebook runnning Windows 8.

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sekker
The MBA has a fine screen.

Some people seem to think this is true, but from my own experience and the experiences of reviewers, there's not many people who think a TN panel with poor viewing angles and bad color is a proper display on a $1000+ notebook. A $330 notebook shouldn't have a better panel than the 13" Air.

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GuyGene

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

Except you don't have to use Google services. Couldn't you use Microsoft's or Apple's almost equally well?

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silvarios

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GuyGene

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal for Google services, not a full-fledged laptop.

Except you don't have to use Google services. Couldn't you use Microsoft's or Apple's almost equally well?

Waste of time and energy. Just use Google Services.

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silvarios

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sekker
The MBA has a fine screen.

Some people seem to think this is true, but from my own experience and the experiences of reviewers, there's not many people who think a TN panel with poor viewing angles and bad color is a proper display on a $1000+ notebook. A $330 notebook shouldn't have a better panel than the 13" Air.

Yup, a 1080p 13" IPS panel on a $330 notebook should not put the MBAir's screen to shame. Apple made this TN mistake with the 20" screens on the first gen Aluminum iMacs and fixed it later with much IPS-laden fanfare. Time to fix this in the MBAirs.

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal

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vision63
Waste of time and energy. Just use Google Services.

You can login to the sites easily enough. Don't see why any web app wouldn't work well enough to make this a pretty nice setup.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 06:08PM by silvarios.

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Black

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MGS_forgot_password
It's a dumb terminal

I would argue, a lot more people use their home computer as a dumb terminal to the web than people here might think. Everyone, including Microsoft and Apple are pushing more and more features into the cloud. Any of the big players would love to be your incompatible silo pushing their own brand of vendor lock in.

We are perfectly content with the 13" screens of our MB Airs.

We tried the $250 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor as my wife isn't a heavy user. Besides slow speed, the breaking point was the really crappy trackpad.

Apple's trackpads are the gold standard. I've tried many others and they all make me cringe.

I'll probably buy this Toshiba and give it a spin. Hopefully the trackpad is passable along with the Intel Baytrail CPU.

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bhaveshp
We are perfectly content with the 13" screens of our MB Airs.

We tried the $250 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor as my wife isn't a heavy user. Besides slow speed, the breaking point was the really crappy trackpad.

Apple's trackpads are the gold standard. I've tried many others and they all make me cringe.

I'll probably buy this Toshiba and give it a spin. Hopefully the trackpad is passable along with the Intel Baytrail CPU.

This needs to be emphasized: Apple trackpads just work, and they work awesomely.

The trackpads of every other PC (many dozens) and Chromebook (2 of those) range from Ok (Dell) to terrible (Toshiba). Much of this is due to most people buying low-rent PCs (see average PC selling price) but the trackpad is half of the interface on most laptop computers and for it to work as universally meh as it does on PCs really kills some of the computer's utility.

Perhaps that's why PCs are going to touchscreens. Though while helping someone out last Friday who was an experienced TS user, he averaged 2 taps per thing he had to select on the screen on his Win8.1 laptop. It did not inspire confidence in the efficiency of using the TS for everyday use.

What's worse, poor trackpad or poor display? I would almost rather have the former, at least I can pretty easily add an external mouse and still retain portability. Of course, I would prefer not to compromise either.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 07:17PM by silvarios.

IPS screen or not, a modern 13" MBA is one of the best laptops around. True all-day battery life is amazing, plus the rest of the excellent Apple polish.

I think it's an unfair expectation to try to put ANY sub-$500 chromebook or laptop in the same category. I've not seen any of them that come even close.

As for Chromebooks, I do not understand why there is this push-back against google services. They work well in general, are far more stable than Apple's iCloud services, and they are typically free. You don't HAVE to use the gmail account to use google drive, google docs, etc.

Compared to Adobe and microsoft cloud services, google look fantastic, too.

I see nothing wrong with google pushing for good hardware to make it easy to get stuff done.

I love my MBA. Best traveling computer ever.

I have a 13" MBA and I think the screen is great, even with my 67-year old eyes. When I bought it, I wasn't expecting it to be equal to a retina screen, even though it was a lot more than $900. I will agree that the 11" MBA screen leaves a lot to be desired, but that is only because of the size, not the quality of the screen.

You can't flatly say that the screen is awful. It may be awful for YOU (and others), but many others find it to be quite acceptable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2014 09:26PM by richorlin.

As someone who knows a thing or two about Chromebooks, Apple devices and Windows, I have to say:

1) "Dumb terminal" - more like a SMART terminal - how is any iPad, similarly network dependent, any less so? At least both device platforms CAN if a network is present be very useful independent of a powerful server/VDI infrastructure.
2) Chrome Remote Desktop - allows you to access a more powerful workstation as remote system. Biggest limit is the scaling of high-res desktop displays to most chromebooks' pathetic 1366x768 resolutions. A 1080p chromebook screen is a huge improvement for this.
3) Crouton - allows chroots to standard linux distributions utilizing the existing ChromeOS linux kernel; so you can run ChromeOS side-by-side with Ubuntu or Debian for "real computing experience."

For $350 for the Toshiba with an IPS screen - beating out the Samsung has a $400 1080p model in their Chromebook 2 - I'm seriously thinking of picking one of these up for its existing capabilities. Potential to boot Windows or OS X via hacks is also intriguing. Since it has USB3, additional storage as needed shouldn't be a big deal. The money I save over an MBA will get me a really nice hackintosh rig for that powerful backend.

It does what it does extremely well... just don't expect it to be what it's not.

This is sig material.

And the latter part is the tough part.

People want one thing and yet choose something fundamentally different to criticize for not being what they want. I see this all the time. And yet it's neigh impossible to make them aware of what they're doing.

"Getting a hybrid cut my gas bill by 60%!"

"Yeah, but I bet it won't haul sheetrock like my F-350!!"

"um, yeah, ok."


As far as choosing between a poor trackpad and a "poor" display, I'll take the "poor" display.

For years I had to use a PC laptop with a lousy trackpad. Where I could, I used an external trackball but that wasn't always possible. PC trackpads, to me, are mediocre at best, even when only considering basic performance. You must physically interact with them constantly, and are constantly reminded that they could and should work much better than they do. This is all the more frustrating when going from the trackball back to the trackpad.

I've looked at the MBAs several times and almost whipped out the plastic on more than a couple occasions. I'm waiting to see if Ocotober brings anything new in the 'Book arena. But I see, literally, their screens and being quite acceptable.

Every 'Book I've owned and every laptop I've had to use has had a TN screen. Viewing angle isn't particularly important for me. I'm not sharing the view with two or three people, and titling the display is a set and forget thing for me. Maybe if I was a graphic artist or regularly used a laptop with a really good display, this would bother me. But it doesn't.

I will agree that a $900 computer should have a display as good as or better than a $300 computer, all other things being equal.

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richorlin
I have a 13" MBA and I think the screen is great, even with my 67-year old eyes. When I bought it, I wasn't expecting it to be equal to a retina screen, even though it was a lot more than $900. I will agree that the 11" MBA screen leaves a lot to be desired, but that is only because of the size, not the quality of the screen.

It's not about the pixels in this case, it's about color, viewing angles, etc. I'm not a designer, but if I plunk down $1000+ for a laptop, I don't want an entry level TN display. Seems fair to expect more when you pay more, right?

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richorlin
You can't flatly say that the screen is awful. It may be awful for YOU (and others), but many others find it to be quite acceptable.

Nah, it is objectively poorer than other displays on similar Apple devices. While not the worst display in the world, it is not the right panel for that price point. Probably good for keeping fat margins intact. If nothing else the poor viewing angles should be immediately apparent.

From the MacWorld UK MacBook Air 2014 review:
We used a Datacolor Spyder4Elite display calibrator to test and measured just 63 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. That’s a particularly disappointing result, which was borne out subjectively by off-key screens colours visible to the eye. The wider Adobe RGB gamut was measured with only 48 percent coverage.

We found that viewing angles for this twisted-nematic (TN) glossy panel were limited, with marked colour inversion effects evident as we tried to view the screen from the sides and above/below.

Contrast ratio was measured using the Datacolor calibrator, to gain an idea of the display’s contrast quality. We recorded at the display’s highest peak output of 308 cd/m2 and discoverd contrast ratio was 600:1, rising to 680:1 at its nominal 75 percent brightness setting (corresponding to 143 cd/m2).

Delta E from 48 spot tones averaged a poor 8.39, with the highest deviation of 13.75 coming from the test’s ‘3E’ swatch (lilac tone).

This is all quite disappointing, but while a Retina display for the MacBook Air would be nice, it's probably not essential for the majority of users. Anyone who would benefit from the extra pixels can upgrade to the MacBook Pro with Retina display but beware that there will be a sacrifice in battery life. Read our Retina MacBook Pro reviews here. "



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 01:42AM by silvarios.

RAM,
Yeah, that's the gist of it. All things being equal, Apple really should be offering a better display at this price point. I get it, in 2008 when the 13" MBA was launched, a lot of compromises were made, but it's been 6 years. Many of the complaints have been solved, but display quality is still that main niggling issue which has persisted through every revision.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 01:46AM by silvarios.

Wish the SSD was upgradeable, but I doubt it. Don't think its predecessor offered an upgrade path.

gabester,
Nice observation.