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Ask HN: Why are new Laotops so much worse yet more exoensive?

4 points by Podgajski ↗ HN
I picked up a Chromebook for $229 at Best Buy the other day and promptly returned it. It was running an Intel N100 chip 4 GB of ram but it was on sale so I decided to pick it up and try it.

Now, I can go on eBay and buy a three year old Lenovo X1 carbon and get way way way way way more usable experience putting linux on it then I can out of this Chromebook.

If anyone can explain that to me other than pure profit exploitation I’d like to hear it. But from what I understood processor speed was supposed to increase, so why does it seem like it’s decreasing?

20 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] thread
st3fan
Huh. You are complaining that a $229 laptop is under powered? Maybe your expectations are a bit high :-)
fasthands9
I'm curious how old OP was. I remember as a kid getting my first laptop ~2003 and it must have been 1500. Not only was $1500 a lot back then, it was huge and slow compared to what we have now. The battery was terrible and had to be replaced after a year.
Podgajski
I’m in my upper 50s and my first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 in 1985. I was also programming in ForTran in college in 1986 so don’t tell me how big and expensive computers used to be.
dave4420
I thought CPU clock speeds had plateaued for nearly two decades now?
I_Am_Nous
I think the main issue here is that Chromebook =/= laptop. They may have the same form factor as a laptop, but a Chromebook is not intending to do the same general purpose computing job a laptop does, so the hardware doesn't matter as much.
Podgajski
But a Chromebook with the specs should at least be much much cheaper than this, shouldn’t it?

And remember I bought that Chromebook for $150 off.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285615350696?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...

I_Am_Nous
Not really, because most people aren't buying it for the hardware, they are buying it because it's a Chromebook. Maybe their kids need it for school, so the price is that high because it's a guaranteed supported and has the correct version of ChromeOS the school requires. As long as it can run whatever webapps the school needs, it doesn't matter what the underlying hardware is.

So basically, the incentives are lined up differently. I can take a real laptop and install whatever I want on it, but the same is not true for a Chromebook. That is by design because they also don't need to be powerful to run webapps for kids at school.

Podgajski
You’re still missing the point. Why can’t they build a Chromebook with the same internals as the Lenovo laptop I posted? That would be 1000 times faster than the Chromebook I picked up.
I_Am_Nous
1. The Chromebook doesn't need that much performance. That would be like putting a V12 engine in a golf cart and limiting it to 5 MPH. ChromeOS is very limited.

2. That eliminates the budget-friendly aspect of the Chromebook which schools love.

You are complaining that a product meant for a different purpose and different users doesn't meet your expectations. You are not the target audience for the device.

Podgajski
?

Then why are they selling it for a price that is so much faster and 3 years older?

I_Am_Nous
You are seeing the retail price. The price schools get through vendors are much lower. Sure, you can find laptops used on eBay and reformat them as needed. That's a terrible way to run a school's IT department with modern 1 Chromebook per child policies.

You couldn't reliably source enough cheap laptops to endlessly have to work on them to get them provisioned for students while also repairing the 2-3 broken Chromebooks per week because kids are hard on them.

Volume discount Chromebooks are the de facto way schools run because they can basically get them at cost. The only profit is when people pay retail prices, which as you pointed out is not a reasonable price for the pure performance of the hardware. But again, they are really designed for schools by definition so they are very limited and can't do much general computing. As a result they do not need performance parity with anything but ChromeOS and any web apps that might get installed.

The final thing I'd like to point out is that we have been gaining less raw performance in CPUs each year and moving toward better performance per watt instead. Laptops especially don't need huge, hot, power hungry CPUs anymore. So instead of making them faster and faster for minimal end-user benefit they chose to make battery life the priority because that really does give much more benefit to the end user.

Most devices are now aimed at media consumption rather than more power hungry media creation. We've reached "good enough" performance that the N100 can consume YouTube videos and run web apps while still having a battery that lasts all day (or close). That's all schools need for a basic computing device.

You seem like a power user who needs more than a basic computing device. The Chromebook is not designed for your needs :)

Podgajski
> Most devices are now aimed at media consumption rather than more power hungry media creation. We've reached "good enough" performance that the N100 can consume YouTube videos and run web apps while still having a battery that lasts all day (or close). That's all schools need for a basic computing device.

Then they should be much much cheaper that a three years old laptop that can do so much more!

KomoD
> But from what I understood processor speed was supposed to increase, so why does it seem like it’s decreasing?

According to who? Of course a cheap chromebook isn't going to be better?

Podgajski
Maybe you’re misunderstanding my comparison. I know a cheap Chromebook isn’t going to be anything better than a new more expensive laptop.

But compared to this, which I found on eBay. Putting Linux on that? it would outrun that Chromebook by 1000 fold.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285615350696?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...

So what I’m saying is I want to buy a new laptop with older hardware that runs faster than a newer laptop with newer hardware for the same price.

wmf
You can't really compare used vs. new pricing. Also at the low end the cost is dominated by fixed costs (the screen, case, power supply, etc) so price/perf is going to be really poor.
Podgajski
What do you mean? I can’t compare it. I’m actually comparing it right now.

But you’re saying that the cost of making these devices has gone up? Because if they just had building Lenovo from three years ago, then the cost would’ve went down? And I could buy a cheaper laptop with better performance?