Per my tweet, Google is lending out ChromeBooks on Virgin America flights, and I have taken them up on it. And thanks to Google providing free in-flight WiFi, I blogging about this thing at 30,000 feet.
The ChromeBook that Google is handing out is the Samsung model, so my comments will be about that. I did spend some time last year with a CR-48, and while I never blogged about it, I'll try to compare compare this production Samsung model against the beta CR-48 that I played with earlier.
The keyboard is decent — the key layout is good, and it is easy to type on. However, the lack of backlit keyboard is a bit annoying, especially with the mood lighting on Virgin America.
The touchpad is vastly improved over the CR-48, but I have still found that resting my thumb on the bottom of the touchpad (in order to be ready to click), sometimes messes up the pointer.
The display brightness is pretty good, but the viewing angles are poor, especially when compared against Apple's excellent IPS displays (such as in the iPad and MacBook Air).
The size and weight is pretty good — while I would still vastly prefer a MacBook Air, I have few complaints about this Samsung ChromeBook. The display hinge isn't quite as firm as I would like, but the overall construction feels relatively solid, especially for a machine that is all plastic. And for $350, it's really hard to complain too much about the materials and components used in this machine.
However, the thing that I will complain about is performance. When I tested the CR-48, I was deeply unimpressed with the performance — that machined used a fairly anemic Intel Atom processor. Unfortunately, the Samsung Chromebook continues to use an Atom processor with Intel graphics, and as a result, complex web pages just feel sluggish. Scrolling down on my Twitter home timeline is glacially slow. And tons of other sites are slow too. While a lot of the slow performance could be due to flash, JavaScript heavy sites (like Twitter and Gmail) are slow too.
And what's really damning is that the iPad feels so much faster when visiting the same sites. And this is I think the real competitor to the ChromeBooks. The MacBook Air is much more expensive, but offers a full computing experience. The ChromeBook and the iPad offer more limited experiences, and that's where I think the battle is. And given the level of polish of the iPad and iOS, and all of the amazing apps in the App Store, I feel like the iPad is worth the extra $150 over a ChromeBook.
But if Google sticks with ChromeOS, and really drives the price down, and the performance up, then it could be a contender.
-Andy.