Reason #2: is not even a netbook. It is a "net appliance" with a keyboard. It has less functionality than a netbook.
Reason #3: $28 * 36 months = $1,008 .... for something that has less functionality than a similarly spec $200 Acer Netbook.
At Google’s I/O conference this week, the audience erupted into cheers when they heard the news that they were getting a free notebook powered by the Chrome OS. It’s too bad that the audience was filled with developers instead of the IT pros who Google is counting on to actually buy these things. Something tells me that the latter audience would have been sitting on their hands for most of the session, and they wouldn’t have been swayed by that Oprah moment.
My ZDNet colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is convinced that the Chromebook is going to finally usher in the era of desktop Linux. You can read his rosy perspective here: Five Reasons why Google’s Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer.
As for me, this looks like the same old movie we’ve seen over and over. I’m certainly not ready to buy it yet, and here are my five reasons why:
1. The price is wrong. Every used-car salesman with a shiny suit and a bad toupee knows the first rule of selling a clunker: focus on the monthly payment and don’t talk about the total price. That’s exactly what the Googlers have done. That $28 a month price tag sounds OK until you realize it comes with a three-year commitment. The total for those 36 monthly payments is $1,008. For a glorified netbook?
That same grand will buy you one hellacious PC or even a MacBook, which you can configure according to your users’ needs instead of retraining your users to work with a whole new set of unfamiliar web-based apps.
2. Automatic updates are a nightmare. Google’s pitch for Chrome OS is that its automatic updates mean “continuous improvement.” Automatic updates are a new idea? Funny, I thought Windows (and OS X, for that matter) did that just fine. Indeed, Microsoft’s commitment to sustained engineering and regular updates is legendary, which is why Windows 7 today is more reliable and secure than it was when it was released a year and a half ago.
The trouble with pushing updates to every user automatically is that sometimes those updates break things. That’s already the case with Google’s browser, Chrome, whose frantic update cadence finally drove Technologizer’s Harry McCracken away:
[I]n recent days, some of the Web sites I use most—WordPress.com, Twitter, and Facebook—have stopped working properly in Chrome. I’m uncertain of why, but the most likely explanation is that they’re reacting badly to the newest version of Chrome, which, like all Chrome updates, was installed automatically on my computer. So I’m switching for the time being to Safari, where all those sites behave like they should.
That’s annoying but tolerable on a platform where you at least have the option to use an alternative browser. But do you really want to be the IT guy when your users begin calling you on Monday morning to tell you that your mission-critical, browser-based, line-of-business app isn’t working anymore? Just like it did last month when you had to pay your crack team of custom programmers triple overtime to fix things?
Old-fashioned IT people like to have control over update cycles because they want to test OS updates before they deploy them. Even if you save a few bucks by going Google, you’ll spend it all on Tums and Rolaids if you have to work at Google’s pace.
