Chromebook users.

I loved my Pixelbook, fantastic piece of hardware. When that ended, I went with an Acer Chromebook. Works fine, just not the same.

I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.

I will most likely get a Googlebook, and would be more likely to do so if it was not named Googlebook and did not have Gemini built in.

I think it's a successor to the Chromebook. In the vast majority of modern K-12 public schools, the school district owns the hardware, not the students.

Gembook or Geminote would've been cooler. But no one asked me unfortunately.

Googlebook is cringe? It's just the name of the company, calm down.

They used to have something called the pixelbook, which is the most generic name you can possible have. Neither of these names are unarguably better than the other.

If this ends up being great for developing android apps, and running them on the desktop, plus having 15+ hour battery life, it could be interesting. Knowing google, it probably won't though.

I'm a happy Apple ecosystem user. However, there are many more Windows and Android users worldwide.

I think that the appeal of this product is that the Wintel monopoly of years ago is dying. If the Googlebook is well executed (as the Apple M1 line was), it can be an option for Android users who wish to move away from Windows but are not knowledgeable enough to use Linux. I think the only problem here is Google's track record of abandoning product ideas. A new product like this requires multiple iterations to get it right, but if Google abandons it as soon as the results are not what was expected, it will not have the time to mature in areas like gaming or app support.

You might be surprised how good cloud gaming has gotten. I play AAA games at max settings on my MacBook Pro through GeForce Now, and with fiber internet it's nearly indistinguishable from native.

At this point, if you want a laptop, get a mac and be done with it.

Until other manufacturer step up their game, there will be years and years.

I thought Microsoft had the market cornered on terrible product naming but "Googlebook" is extremely awful.

My suggestion, if they really want to go this route, is to shorten it to "gBook".

> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo

8GB of RAM for MacOS is a concern. ChromeOS is probably more RAM efficient..

>but my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"

i'd hate for my computing choice to lack fashion forward qualities -- I wouldn't want to be embarrassed at Gate A-13 with my new Apple perched on my lap proudly while waiting for the next question from my adoring fans.

I hope they appreciate the new color!

real talk : my favorite excuse for using an Apple product throughout my life is the tried and true "my company stuck me with it and I hate this piece of shit.", so I find it kinda fascinating that they're such cult objects -- and to be fair I am sure i'd say exactly the same thing if I was ever stuck in a company stupid enough to try to make me be productive on a fancy chromebook, too.

Why anyone would view a non-upgradeable phone slapped into a laptop case with minimal computing capability for the price would ever consider a Neo is beyond me. At that point, get a damn tablet. It’s literally the same thing but, like, designed with intent rather than a bunch of scrap pieces.

Seriously, what’s the draw? The 8 gigs of ram? The 200 gigs of storage? The major lack of ports?

Got a cheap Acer Win11 machine for like $500 last year. I don’t think they even know what the low-end market is like, it is all about getting the most RAM/storage while everything else is reasonable and cheap enough. In which it is really hard to make a profit there because the price is the most important thing

MacBook neo is not expensive but it's not cheap.

Crossover has allowed me to 100% Spider-Man Remastered on a base M5 MacBook Pro. Gaming is not out of reach.

There's an entire world outside of Silicon Valley and the Apple ecosystem. Apple has a ~9% PC market share. Who is buying the other 91% if there is no demand?

supposedly macbook pro's M-series are quite adept for gamers these days.

Googlebook sounds funny now, but so did iPad when it was announced.

It's sad that the M5 Apple chips don't support Linux better. I'm in the market for a laptop, and I'd buy a MBP in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and put Debian on it.

My 2013 MBP was going strong with Debian until the battery started puffing up last year, and I finally had to recycle it.

I get it, I know I'm not their market, but it still pains me because it was a great laptop.

The Neo is amazing as an "AI thin client" the Googlebook seems to be trying to be.

> I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"

A "GBook"? "Goog"? "Gook"? "Glook"? "Boogle"?

What, you mean you don’t want to sound like a turkey when describing your computer to others?

> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo

I would recommend the same. I absolutely love my Neo. It's such a nice machine for the price.

>I really don't see the market fit for this,

Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price? Especially considering you can install linux on it natively.

Other then that, Gemini is the biggest advantage. Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits.

Overall, if you are in Android ecosystem, you don't really even need a cheap laptop anymore, considering things like Samsung Dex exist.

I would rather buy this shit than anything Apple.

Of course, there are more than 2 options for laptops. Thankfully those two shit companies didn't get to round up that market yet.