chromebook

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's expensive Chromebook giveaway here at its I/O 2013 conference can't handle connecting to digital cameras, but that's just one of many problems the laptop causes for its owners.

Chromebooks, which run Chrome OS (read review), are a perpetual work in progress. Updated every six weeks or thereabouts, just like the browser they're based on, Chromebooks rely on the promise of the modern Web.

But getting browsers to talk to commonplace hardware like USB ports, Webcams, and microphones is no easy task. Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), a plugin-free way to stream video, … Read more

For Google, less is more.

That's the case with the tech giant's latest giveaway at its annual developers conference, which at face value might seem less generous than years past, though that turns out not to be the case when you do the math.

This year's haul: a Chromebook Pixel with LTE, the company's top of the line Chromebook, which sports a very high pixel density screen. Google sells it for $1,449 on its online store, though gave it away to all 6,000 I/O attendees.

All told, that adds up to $8,694,… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- At this year's Google I/O developer's conference, a promise was made: Chrome on Android will start feeling more like Chrome on the desktop.

This is as it should be.

I've never understood why Chrome and Android function as separate environments. They're two sides of the same coin; Chrome handles superior cloud-computing and Web use, and Android handles the app-based, offline world: documents, physical media, and files. Chrome has excellent touch-pad and keyboard support, and Android has touch. The two can use each other.

Actually, the lines are already blurring: the Pixel has … Read more

It's time to find out the raison d'etre of the Chromebook Pixel. I refuse to believe that all that high-end hardware is meant to run a really fast Web browser, and I have a conspiracy theory about the secret mission of the Chromebook Pixel. I'm going to be looking for clues coming out of Google I/O this week to see if they support my theory.

I'll confess that I'm infatuated with the Pixel. I shouldn't really like the world's most overpriced and overengineered Web browser -- that's truly what the Pixel … Read more

With Google's I/O developer conference just a week away, all eyes are on the company's plans for the next version of Android.

For much of the last year we expected to see Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. After all, leaked slides from a January Qualcomm presentation showed a midyear debut for this next build, but they were immediately pulled from the Web site.

But now, recent rumors suggest that we might actually see the debut of 4.3 Jelly Bean instead of Android 5.0. Details found in various server logs show that a JWR23B build … Read more

Google Keep wants to be the app that you dump all your little notes and big thoughts into, and Google introduced a Keep Chrome Web app version on Thursday.

To install it, you must use the link above, as it's not yet available by searching the Chrome Web Store.

Like Keep in Google Drive and Keep for Android, it lets you write notes in a stripped-down interface that lacks all but the most basic features. In addition to standard note-taking, you can change the text color or insert an image.

Keep for Chrome launches in its own window, and … Read more

If you've got a brick-and-mortar business with a reason to have public computers, Google's got a Chromebook for you and it's not the high-end Pixel.

Google extended the new Chrome management console to Chrome OS on Tuesday in the hopes will make businesses think again about the expending some capital on the browser-based operating system.

The Chromebook management console will let businesses configure as many as "thousands" of Chrome OS-devices simultaneously, tweaking features such as setting default Web sites and Web apps, customized homepage branding, group policy creation, blacklisting sites and apps, configuring device inputs … Read more

In the first part of our Living with Chromebook series, I outlined the initial hardware and account setup required to use a laptop running Google's Chrome OS. In this second installment, the focus is on productivity.

For my long-form Chromebook test-drive, I'm spending most of my computing time with the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook. Like the smaller 11- and 12-inch Chromebooks we've reviewed, it operates almost entirely within the Chrome Web browser, which looks and feels the same as the Chrome Web browser you may be using right now on your Windows or Mac OS computer.

That … Read more

The fact that Microsoft and Intel no longer rule the personal computing world isn't news. But what happens next is.

I'll start with a flashback from the early '90s. I remember attending the launch of Windows 3.1 when I lived in Japan. Kazuhiko Nishi, former friend and business partner of Bill Gates, made a statement that foretold the fate of the Japanese PC industry as well as the global PC market.

I'm paraphrasing, but he said Microsoft was the chassis and Intel the engine of the personal computer. The point, of course, was that the two … Read more