Chromebooks are awful. And here are some examples why.

[thatdennis]

Well if you compare two devices for different uses, then I guess it's a given that there are different strong opinions here and there.

The Chromebook as others in this thread would say is cheap, fast, long-lasting and web centric. Now from my perspective, yes this is all great for a person who's looking for a laptop for work - that is if you're in a country where WiFi is everywhere. In 2nd world or 3rd world countries, it is hard for WiFi to come by in public as they are a)very slow or b)there is literally none. So Chromebooks is great for productivity, only in 1st world countries or in your house. Or if you have invested heavily in the Google ecosystem.

Now usual Windows laptops are varied, but also flexible (as one can find a laptop specifically for their need). Be it either gaming or work, Windows laptops are always there. It's the norm and could be used for everything . However, the drawback is it's sometimes slow or short-lasting (depending on the amount you invest or the manufacturer), or perhaps the ergonomics is at fault (again the manufacturer), so it's more of a wildcard.

No one mentioned Macs here. I think they're great honestly, with long battery life, light-weight and fast. But too much hipsters use it, I hate it (and also Apple in general).

 

[UJ95x]

Well if you compare two devices for different uses, then I guess it's a given that there are different strong opinions here and there.

The Chromebook as others in this thread would say is cheap, fast, long-lasting and web centric. Now from my perspective, yes this is all great for a person who's looking for a laptop for work - that is if you're in a country where WiFi is everywhere. In 2nd world or 3rd world countries, it is hard for WiFi to come by in public as they are a)very slow or b)there is literally none. So Chromebooks is great for productivity, only in 1st world countries or in your house. Or if you have invested heavily in the Google ecosystem.

Now usual Windows laptops are varied, but also flexible (as one can find a laptop specifically for their need). Be it either gaming or work, Windows laptops are always there. It's the norm and could be used for everything . However, the drawback is it's sometimes slow or short-lasting (depending on the amount you invest or the manufacturer), or perhaps the ergonomics is at fault (again the manufacturer), so it's more of a wildcard.

No one mentioned Macs here. I think they're great honestly, with long battery life, light-weight and fast. But too much hipsters use it, I hate it (and also Apple in general).

I wouldn't really say hipsters use it. More like people who are willing to pay a few hundred dollars more for the brand name. They do make great laptops. Not a fan of the iOS devices though

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[JeffDenver]

Portal, Half-Life 2 now available for NVIDIA Shield | Android Central

LOL, thats a game console. Show me that running on a Chromebook.

Both games are far more demanding than Zoo Tycoon.

So why have we not seen anything like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon on Android? Where are they hiding?

 

[JeffDenver]

Well if you compare two devices for different uses, then I guess it's a given that there are different strong opinions here and there.

I don't hate Chromebooks. But they are obviously less capable than Windows laptops. Read the article in the original post...that guy explains it's limitations in detail.

The Chromebook as others in this thread would say is cheap, fast, long-lasting and web centric.

Sounds like a tablet to me.

No one mentioned Macs here. I think they're great honestly, with long battery life, light-weight and fast. But too much hipsters use it, I hate it (and also Apple in general).

Better take out a loan too. They are not cheap.

 

[Almeuit]

Less of what? What exactly am I missing by not having a chromebook? Still waiting for someone to answer that.

And I'm still waiting for an answer from you from before .

I never said anything about a Chromebook doing it better.. You simply bashed using the Internet and only using local. I said.. What's the harm in both? That's my question.. What is the harm in a simple sync?

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[JeffDenver]

Portal, Half-Life 2 now available for NVIDIA Shield | Android Central

This is the type of games I am seeing on Chrome:
Play Chrome Games - Play Games on Your Chrome

No Team Fortress. No MMOs. No Tycoon games...just the normal crap I see on my phone. Which is not a bad thing mind you, but it is not comparable to a PC/Laptop. They look like phone games.

The "OMG but Half Life 2" thing reminds me of all the lines Mac users used to feed me about how awesome Mac gaming is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiAgrrwL_mk

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

LOL, thats a game console. Show me that running on a Chromebook.


So why have we not seen anything like Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon on Android? Where are they hiding?

It's a mobile SoC (tegra 4) running a more demanding game than Zoo Tycoon. Show me Portal or Half-Life 2 running on those overstock.com laptops you linked to at a consistent playable framerate.

Funny how you keep picking games that you know have controls that just wouldn't transfer over to Android very well and would be a poor experience from a user perspective (perf would be fine, though).

Some of what's holding back Android from being a premier gaming platform is Android itself. There are SoC's that are plenty powerful now to provide a great gaming experience (Tegra K1 for example) on Android, but the platform needs to catch up a bit. There's nothing stopping something that from being inside a Chromebook

But back to my point.

Chrome Experiments - WebGL Experiments

9 More Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos

WebGL – Demos (yes, there's an Unreal Engine 3 demo on that page)

Quake 3 WebGL Demo (Quake 3)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/tag/tech:webgl

HelloRacer™ WebGL

https://code.google.com/p/webglsamples/

30 Inspiring WebGL (Chrome) Experiments

WebGL is the answer you're looking for. That's what will allow gaming on a Chromebook. No, it doesn't get rid of the need for an Internet connection, but we've gone in that circle a few times already. You asked for gaming on a Chromebook and I just showed you how it's possible. Heck, maybe someone will port over Zoo Tycoon for you. And yes, some of the sites might have some overlapping demos.

 

[JeffDenver]

You can post all the videos you want. It won't change the opinion I have of my own machine.

Maybe you should have bought one of my machines instead.

This one is a gateway. But I have set up cheap HPs and Asus machines that are comparable to this. All of them under $300. This one was $250 or $275 at the time I bought it (bought it as a Christmas gift for my BF).

Dual core CPUs, 4 Gigs RAM (all of them), Windows 8 (this one is 8.1). All have full hard drives and DVD players/burners, USB ports, ect. All of them have RAM upgradable to 8 gigs.

VID 20140513 213946 - YouTube

In this video I have Steam, multiple browser tabs, Acrobat, and photoshop open at once and can swap between them easily and quickly. I probably would not play any games with other stuff open, but thats mostly because of RAM. 8 gigs of RAM would fix that too.

This one also has support for SD cards btw. There is a port for them on the front.

The jerkiness you see is because I am trying to use a track pad with one hand...holding the camera with the other. It's not caused by the system. At the end I clicked Steam twice...I did not realize it had already opened under the other windows. Because I was clicking on other stuff I didn't see it come up.

 

[JeffDenver]

It's a mobile SoC (tegra 4) running a more demanding game than Zoo Tycoon.

So...why do we not see any games like Zoo Tycoon then? I've seen some clones to be sure...crappy watered down phone versions of the real thing.

That goes for all simulation games. Even the sims is a watered down version of the real one.

Show me Portal or Half-Life 2 running on those overstock.com laptops you linked to at a consistent playable framerate.

Right after you show me those same games running on your $200 Chomebook.

Funny how you keep picking games that you know have controls that just wouldn't transfer over to Android

LOL!

Chromebooks have the exact same controls as laptops.

Some of what's holding back Android from being a premier gaming platform is Android itself.

And why would that matter to the end user? It's an excuse. And regardless of how valid it might be, the end result is the same.

You follow up with tons of links to demos...not actual games I can download and play on my Chromebook. Which was my entire point to begin with. Laptops are not better than Chromebooks because of their hardware capabilities...they are better because of the OS they are using. Windows is a more mature and better supported platform. For pretty much everything, not just games.

WebGL is the answer you're looking for. That's what will allow gaming on a Chromebook. No, it doesn't get rid of the need for an Internet connection

You don't say.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Maybe you should have bought one of my machines instead.

This one is a gateway. But I have set up cheap HPs and Asus machines that are comparable to this. All of them under $300. This one was $250 or $275 at the time I bought it (bought it as a Christmas gift for my BF).

Dual core CPUs, 4 Gigs RAM (all of them), Windows 8 (this one is 8.1). All have full hard drives and DVD players/burners, USB ports, ect. All of them have RAM upgradable to 8 gigs.



In this video I have Steam, multiple browser tabs, Acrobat, and photoshop open at once and can swap between them easily and quickly. I probably would not play any games with other stuff open, but thats mostly because of RAM. 8 gigs of RAM would fix that too.

This one also has support for SD cards btw. There is a port for them on the front.

The jerkiness you see is because I am trying to use a track pad with one hand...holding the camera with the other. It's not caused by the system. At the end I clicked Steam twice...I did not realize it had already opened under the other windows. Because I was clicking on other stuff I didn't see it come up.

My machine:

[TD="bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"] Microprocessor [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"]1.3GHz AMD E-300 Accelerated Processor[/TD]

[TD="align: left"] Microprocessor Cache [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, align: left"]1MB L2 Cache[/TD]

[TD="bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"] Memory [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"]2GB DDR3 SDRAM (1 DIMM)[/TD]

[TD="align: left"] Memory Max [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, align: left"]Maximum supported = 8GB[/TD]

[TD="bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"] Memory Slots [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: left"]2 user accessible[/TD]

[TD="align: left"] Video Graphics [/TD]
[TD="class: columnReducedMargin, align: left"]AMD Radeon HD 6310 Discrete-Class graphics[/TD]

Dual core, 6GB RAM (that I upgraded to), all the other things you have listed; $200, and it can't multi task well. This is among the PCs you claim the Chromebook shouldn't be able to beat, and mine can. Plain and simple.

'Chromebooks do enough of what a PC does that they can pose a credible threat to low-end laptops.'

 

[JeffDenver]

That settles it, Chromebooks are the bee's knees. /thread

Declaring victory and going home already?

At the risk of narrowing the focus or changing the subject... Golfdriver mentions Hangouts conversations, while Jeff talks about smooth and speedy tabs. I, myself, have generally good performance from my (albeit high-end) Windows machines, and equally (if not somewhat better) experiences on Chrome OS devices. That changes when I have Google+ open, especially with Hangouts. It's sluggish and jumpy.

GMail on my cheap windows machines is quick and predictable. I have used google+ on them before (though I don't now) and it was as quick as any other website.

Now, Chrome OS is a web-centric platform, and it makes sense that the Chrome browser wouldn't skip a beat.

Chrome is very quick on my PCs and laptops, which is why I use it as my default whenever I can. I use IE at work only because I am forced to.

I am not even attempting to argue which OS is more efficient or whatever...I am only arguing end-user experience. I am not seeing anything Chromebooks are offering that makes it worth giving up the many conveniences on a Windows laptop. Saving $25 or $50 is certainly not enough IMO.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Maybe you should have bought one of my machines instead.

This one is a gateway. But I have set up cheap HPs and Asus machines that are comparable to this. All of them under $300. This one was $250 or $275 at the time I bought it (bought it as a Christmas gift for my BF).

Dual core CPUs, 4 Gigs RAM (all of them), Windows 8 (this one is 8.1). All have full hard drives and DVD players/burners, USB ports, ect. All of them have RAM upgradable to 8 gigs.

VID 20140513 213946 - YouTube

In this video I have Steam, multiple browser tabs, Acrobat, and photoshop open at once and can swap between them easily and quickly. I probably would not play any games with other stuff open, but thats mostly because of RAM. 8 gigs of RAM would fix that too.

This one also has support for SD cards btw. There is a port for them on the front.

The jerkiness you see is because I am trying to use a track pad with one hand...holding the camera with the other. It's not caused by the system. At the end I clicked Steam twice...I did not realize it had already opened under the other windows. Because I was clicking on other stuff I didn't see it come up.

At 2:05 that jerkiness is the system. I can see the mouse cursor move fluidly, but the window itself is jerky. That's not caused by the one handed trackpad use. If both were equally jerky I would agree with you, though.

I also didn't see any youtube clips playing or hangout conversations, which are two things that have been sited as causing perf issues on low end windows machine (I've experienced this as well).

Using the programs is also not the same as just having them open, either. There is a difference that I'm sure you're aware of. I can open tons of things on my Windows laptop and let them all sit there, but if I open a YouTube video in one tab and then go to apply filters (or just autocorrect) a group of photos in Photoshop (not an uncommon task) perf is terrible. Core i7, 4gb RAM, Win7. Not a low end machine.

 

[JeffDenver]

Dual core, 6GB RAM (that I upgraded to), all the other things you have listed; $200, and it can't multi task well. This is among the PCs you claim the Chromebook shouldn't be able to beat, and mine can. Plain and simple.

Well, it does not appear to be the norm. The video I posted is pretty clear...that experience is normal on all the machines I have set up so far (at least 6 that I can remember). So I'd have to conclude that you got a crappy machine, not that all cheap laptops are that crappy.

Who is the vendor for your laptop? What brand and model is it?

 

[JeffDenver]

At 2:05 that jerkiness is the system. I can see the mouse cursor move fluidly, but the window itself is jerky. That's not caused by the one handed trackpad use. If both were equally jerky I would agree with you, though.

They can't be tested, because Chromebooks will not even run Photoshop or Steam.

I also didn't see any youtube clips playing or hangout conversations, which are two things that have been sited as causing perf issues on low end windows machine (I've experienced this as well).

Ok. I'll do another video =)

Using the programs is also not the same as just having them open, either. There is a difference that I'm sure you're aware of. I can open tons of things on my Windows laptop and let them all sit there, but if I open a YouTube video in one tab and then go to apply filters (or just autocorrect) a group of photos in Photoshop (not an uncommon task) perf is terrible. Core i7, 4gb RAM, Win7. Not a low end machine.

I am happy to debunk any other myths you want. Let me know what you want to see done.

Feel free to show your own Chromebook videos as well. Don't be shy. Show me how awesome they are.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

So...why do we not see any games like Zoo Tycoon then? I've seen some clones to be sure...crappy watered down phone versions of the real thing.

That goes for all simulation games. Even the sims is a watered down version of the real one.


Right after you show me those same games running on your $200 Chomebook.


LOL!

Chromebooks have the exact same controls as laptops.


And why would that matter to the end user? It's an excuse. And regardless of how valid it might be, the end result is the same.

You follow up with tons of links to demos...not actual games I can download and play on my Chromebook. Which was my entire point to begin with. Laptops are not better than Chromebooks because of their hardware capabilities...they are better because of the OS they are using. Windows is a more mature and better supported platform. For pretty much everything, not just games.


You don't say.

Nice how you parsed my reply ignoring the explanation for why Android is held back as a gaming platform (it actually answers one of the questions you asked me). (this is also the reason some people choose not to engage in a conversation with you)

Your point was that Windows is a better gaming platform. I challenged you to show me one of your low end windows machines running Portal or Half-Life 2 at a playable framerate as proof. You deflected. Portal or Half-Life 2 not being on a Chromebook doesn't matter if it also won't run on a cheap windows laptop like you keep recommending to everyone. That street does go both ways.

A Chromebook does not run Android, so it having the same controls as a windows laptop doesn't apply to the statement I made. I was discussing Android as a gaming platform because you made a statement that you haven't seen demanding games (really, you just want a specific genre of games) on smartphones or tablets.

"download and play on my Chromebook" - I'll refer back to the statement that you're stuck on things that have .exe on the end.

 

[JeffDenver]

Nice how you parsed my reply ignoring the explanation for why Android is held back as a gaming platform
Because it's a non-sequitur. The "why" does not matter in this context.

I am not attempting to argue that it is impossible for Android to become a valid gaming platform. Only that it is not equal to the PC right now (and, IMO, in the foreseeable future). This is just one facet of my argument as to why Chromebooks are not as good as Laptops...not that Android sucks as a platform.

Your point was that Windows is a better gaming platform.

...in the Chromebook vs Laptop discussion. Specifically. You are attempting to respond to arguments I never made. I never made the claim that Android will never ever be able to compete with Windows on gaming...just that it does not right now.

A Chromebook does not run Android, so it having the same controls as a windows laptop doesn't apply to the statement I made.

All the more reason why it is weird you would bring it up. The thread is not about Android Vs Windows. It's about Chromebooks vs Windows Laptops.

I challenged you to show me one of your low end windows machines running Portal or Half-Life 2 at a playable framerate as proof. You deflected. Portal or Half-Life 2 not being on a Chromebook doesn't matter if it also won't run on a cheap windows laptop like you keep recommending to everyone. That street does go both ways.

No it doesn't...I said it would run better games than a Chromebook. And it does. The rest is an argument you manufactured yourself.

Is this a tacit admission that Chromebooks cannot compete with Windows Laptops when it comes to games?

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

They can't be tested, because Chromebooks will not even run Photoshop or Steam.


Ok. I'll do another video =)


I am happy to debunk any other myths you want. Let me know what you want to see done.

Feel free to show your own Chromebook videos as well. Don't be shy. Show me how awesome they are.

You misunderstand. You have stated multiple times that the machines you recommend are smooth and fluid with no performance issues, but your video didn't show that. This isn't a case of "chromebooks are faster" this is a case of you misleading people. At the timestamp I noted there is a clear performance issue that you have said before doesn't happen.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

I am not attempting to argue that it is impossible for Android to become a valid gaming platform. Only that it is not equal to the PC right now (and, IMO, in the foreseeable future). This is just one facet of my argument as to why Chromebooks are not as good as Laptops...not that Android sucks as a platform.


...in the Chromebook vs Laptop discussion. Specifically. You are attempting to respond to arguments I never made. I never made the claim that Android will never ever be able to compete with Windows on gaming...just that it does not right now.


All the more reason why it is weird you would bring it up. The thread is not about Android Vs Windows. It's about Chromebooks vs Windows Laptops.

Is this a tacit admission that Chromebooks cannot compete with Windows Laptops when it comes to games?

You brought up smartphones. I replied to that. So, you in fact did bring it up.

You made the argument that Windows is better for gaming. So go ahead and show me Half-Life 2 and Portal at a playable framerate on a low end Windows machine. It's better at gaming right? It should be able to do it, since a mobile SoC can, right?

"Android is not as good for gaming as Windows, so Chromebooks aren't either" - how does one relate to the other in that argument at all? My response was to your statement about smartphones not having demanding games.

 

[JeffDenver]

You misunderstand. You have stated multiple times that the machines you recommend are smooth and fluid with no performance issues

IMO, they are.

but your video didn't show that.

I disagree.

But in any event, I have actually provided evidence so you can see for yourself. Have not seen anyone posting Chromebook videos so far.

Show me video of what your $200 Chromebook looks like in action.

This isn't a case of "chromebooks are faster" this is a case of you misleading people.

How is it misleading if I actually post video? LOL

I am backing up my claims with actual evidence. No one needs to take my word for anything.

At the timestamp I noted there is a clear performance issue that you have said before doesn't happen.

IMO, your standards are unreasonably demanding if that ONE hiccup is a dealbreaker for you on a cheap laptop. Lets see how much smoother your $200 Chromebook is. Bring on the video.

 

[JeffDenver]

You brought up smartphones. I replied to that. So, you in fact did bring it up.

You made the argument that Windows is better for gaming.

...on Laptops...

I can totally understand why you' want to change the argument though.