Interesting! I’ve been thinking about getting one of these ever since I started experimenting with nitrous.io (cloud dev vms – you can get vim working on it too with your plugins – granted it takes a lot of messing with though!) as they have a chrome app.

Looked at the prices though (£229 exc. delivery) and I think its kinda steep really for what it is. Still tempted!

Luke Maciak wrote:

Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the Hexxeh builds are missing some features: flash and PDF plugins among them.

Yes, you’re right. Proprietary plugins I guess… But it seems to be a way, though: https://gist.github.com/dz0ny/3065781
Gonna go try it in a VM!

@ ST/op:

Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the Hexxeh builds are missing some features: flash and PDF plugins among them. So you’re not getting the full experience, but merely a decent approximation of thereof.

Dr. Azrael Tod wrote:

Well… Asus T100 comes with Windows 8.1

My point stands :P Pretty much all the non-technical folks I know that took the plunge and switched to Win 8.x haaaaaaaaaaate it with a passion of 10 thousand fiery suns. And this is after I installed the Classic Shell thing ensuring they get their Start Menu back.

Luke Maciak wrote:

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Yeah, running full blown Linux does make a machine more flexible. The advantage of the Chromebook however is that it is accessible to just about anyone.

Well… Asus T100 comes with Windows 8.1

@ Karthik:
You can try Chrome OS on any PC or laptop by running it live from an USB stick: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Yeah, running full blown Linux does make a machine more flexible. The advantage of the Chromebook however is that it is accessible to just about anyone.

You can use the Crouton script to sort of “dual boot” Chromebook with a lightweight Linux distro. I have not done it yet, but I’ve seen few videos/tutorials and it is kinda cool since ChromeOS is still running in the background and you can “live switch” between them. So you can run ChromeOS and drop to a full blown bash shell. It does eat memory and drain battery faster though. Also you have to put the machine in Dev mode which puts up an ugly scare-message every time you boot up.

@ IceBrain:

As far as I can tell the iPad does not even have a mouse cursor mechanic. Pairing it with a Bluetooth mouse does nothing. Also iDevices have no USB ports so you can’t “plug” stuff in. Apple has everything on lock down. :P

@ Victoria:

I’m pretty sure it asked me for the language when I first booted it up, but I wasn’t really paying attention because US English was the default and that’s what I wanted. I’ll go back, check and report back. :)

@ Karthik:

You do get local file access. If you do have bunch of PDF files saved locally you can read them. Not sure about editing documents, though. I haven’t really used it anywhere that didn’t have online access. If you plug in a USB it will show up and give you access to the contents.

But yeah, I think there is very few things you can do without internet. I think the inline spell check does Google looks-ups so it stops working when your WiFi drops.

I did watch a Youtube video without stuttering on it, though I didn’t pay attention to the resolution because it was a clip of a cat saying “Old Long Johnson” so it didn’t seem important. :P

This is quite tempting, but I have one question: Is it a brick if you’re not online?

Or can you edit and save documents with no connection? Load and play music? Read PDFs/CBRs? Do you get filesystem access, and use it as a low capacity pen drive?

Also, can it do stream Youtube at 720p without stutter?

@ Federico Poloni:
well.. i bought it “new” on eBay for 70€, because there was a time when prices for these dropped for they came with shitty Android and Updates were never really avalable. shortly there after supplies ran low and prices exploded again.

Hi Luke!

Can you add another language to the system?

Can’t the iPad use a mouse? I’ve plugged in a mouse and keyboard to my Nexus 7 (using a USB hub, of course) and it worked out-of-the-box. It even has keyboard shortcuts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Nexus7/comments/1b63r0/keyboard_shortcuts_for_ nexus_7/

Carrying a laptop body is obviously easier than tablet + hub + keyboard + mouse, but I feel guilty enough buying a “useless” device like my Nexus, I couldn’t possibly justify buying that – it just feels too wasteful.

That said, I hear it can run a real Linux distro, besides ChromeOS, so when my normal laptop craps out I might consider replacing it with one of these. I end up doing all heavy processing on my desktop or VPS, anyway.