Does Google use it internally? If so this is just them letting us buy their employee laptops.

Or do they use Macs?

Funny enough, I had an OG Pixel ordered in January and decided to cancel the order for no real reason. So glad I did that.

Jumped on the i5/32/8gb version. Almost went with the LS, but with 8gb of ram in my Windows desktop using Chrome as my primary browser, I've never had an issue. I figure 8gb of ram for just running Chrome is more than enough. I do share Scott's views on not owning the best version of the gear I own. However, the $300+tax will go nicely towards a dinner next week in Hawaii for the wife and I.

I'm sure the i5/32/8 version will do perform admirably, but I was lured in with the "Ludicrous Speed" designation. :D

64GB max disk storage seems pretty paltry*. Does it use a standard form-factor SSD, i.e. one that can be upgraded?




* It just doesn't seem like it was that long ago that this statement would have sounded completely ridiculous . . .

It's welded to the board, so it's difficult if not impossible to replace. There is a slot for an SD card, which makes it trivial to add as much as 512 GB (though extremely expensive for anything over 128 GB).

Chrome OS is built around the cloud, and most everything is done online. As such, there isn't a need for much on-board storage. If you either don't trust the cloud or cannot operate within it reliably, then Chromebooks are not likely a good choice.

I was skeptical until I used a CR48 for a while (the first official Chromebook, distributed for free by Google as a beta testing device) and I have been using a 2012 model Samsung Series 3 Chromebook with just 16 GB on-board storage as my primary travel laptop for 2+ years. I keep an SD card loaded with movies for air travel, but otherwise 16GB has been far more than enough storage for my usage of the device.

Google has positioned this as a device for developers. The CPU, RAM, display and ports exceed what is needed today to use Chrome OS, but the idea is that the machine will not become obsolete in a year or two, even for development purposes.

There is also an SD card slot.

With Crouton, it's simple to install a full Linux OS that can even run within a Chrome tab. These specs will make those instances run as smoothly as a purely native installation.

Thanks to both of you. Unfortunately, I don't believe SD cards are yet in the same league speed-wise as SSDs. I don't know if that's an issue of the controller or the media, though. The performance of add-on storage would have a significant impact on the usability of the device.

I'm looking for a replacement for my Lenovo T420, which currently has 16GB of RAM, an i5-2520M @ 2.5GHz and 730GB of SSD (1 480GB in the usual place and 1 250GB in the UltraBay). I'd prefer something that is expandable beyond 16GB of RAM since I run multiple virtual environments, but weight/portability is also a consideration.

I realize this is a Chromebook, but was wondering if it might be re-purposeable if its other specs met my requirements. My use cases preclude cloud-based alternatives, but local storage notwithstanding this would be a decent upgrade if it also ran something other than ChromeOS.

SD cards are much slower than internal SSD's, there's no doubt about that. That said, the difference would be effectively unnoticeable for media retrieval.

You can install Linux on the Pixel, and people are working on getting Windows 10 to work but of course there are no guarantees on that yet.

In any event, if you aren't primarily working in the cloud I'd venture to say it's not the best choice for you.

Not media retrieval in my case. Virtual Machine images and active storage for transient data, primarily.

Agreed. Thanks.

I'm hoping a teardown of the new Pixel will show replaceable mSATA or something similar.

I saw a teardown on reddit that showed a soldered-on SSD. I'll try to find the link.

Mine will be here tomorrow. I have a feeling I'll be leaving work early. :D

Mine came in yesterday. I played with it for a bit lats night, and it really is impressive. It has the best screen of any computer I've ever used and it absolutely flies. I got ti all set up and synced, but didn't have a ton of time to use it. I'll try to do some more today, but so far I'm very happy with it.

I have left it on Stable for now, but will move to Dev-mode and install Crouton and Ubuntu soon when I have some time.