SPM

Sorry, I should have said "all laptops sampled". NPD reported that out of US business to businesses resellers who sold a total of 14 million devices (laptops, desktops, tablets) in 2013 (not all but about a third of the total US market) and 21% of laptops sold and 9.6% of devices sold were Chromebooks compared to Windows which made up 34% of the laptops sold. I am pretty astounded that 21% of business to business laptop sales were Chromebooks - I would have expected consumer laptops to perhaps be around this amount based on Currys PC World's reports last year that 10% of their computer sales were Chromebooks, but I was surprised about business to business sales figures. What is not included in this number is direct OEM sales (as in Dell direct, Google Play store, Apple Store), nor any consumer sales (through outlets like Amazon online sales Best Buy and Staples retail sales etc). The mistake you and some others are making is to assume that consumer sales and direct sales of Chromebooks are zero. It is not zero, and the numbers there will be significant too. The other mistake people make is to look at web counter stats and equate them with sales. They are actually measuring two completely different things - the first is the number of existing users (and web stats can also show considerable bias), and the second is the number of newly sold devices. In other words total number of Chromebooks sold in US is greater than 14 million x 9.6% you estimated since Amazon online sales Best Buy and Staples retail sales etc. sold more than zero chromebooks. The numbers sold to consumers is not published, but I would suspect they are significant and somewhat similar to those sold by the business to business resellers since Chromebooks are essentially for casual users. Indeed I was surprised by the numbers apparently sold to businesses. I can only surmise that businesses are using them as thin clients. The other mistake you and others are making is to call world sales of Chromebooks low and suggest it is struggling. World sales are low because Chromebooks have only been marketed in US and UK, and only very recently have shipments to 6 more countries started. On top of that, even in the US and UK, availability in retail stores has been limited for most of the year, so effectively what we have had is test marketing of Chromebooks by Google. If Chromebooks can score 21% of business to business laptops sales, and possibly a similar number in consumer sales with limited retail availability and low key advertising, then I wouldn't say Chromebooks are struggling. It certainly has done that - all the main PC OEMs are now making custom designed Chromebooks - Acer, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, LG, Asus, and even Dell which has been given a $1 billion loan by Microsoft, presumably to push Windows and presumably with strings attached. HP and others are also experimenting with Android PCs, and dual Android/Windows devices, and all are getting into ARM based Android tablets. I concur with this, and when they need to buy an additional or new device, they keep the Windows machine, and buy a new tablet or Chromebook instead. Why throw away your old machine if it still works, and especially if you prefer them to the new Windows machines on offer with Windows 8 on them.

Not to be outdone, Windows 8 has its Mattel/Fischer Price UI.

I think NPD are talking about sales to businesses. Overall Windows sales dropped by 10% over 2012 as many other sites have reported.

21% of all laptops is pretty impressive compared to Windows' 34.1% of laptops, all achieved in a year. It is easy to see why Microsoft was spooked into launching its recent Scroogled attacks on Chromebooks. This isn't all Chromebooks sold mind you - just the percentages sold by US business to business resellers out of a sample of 14 million devices - which represents about a third of the US market. I think this must exclude educational specialist VARs who sell most of the Chromebooks and Apple Macs sold to schools, otherwise a 1.8% for Apple who have a big share of US school computers, and 0.2% for Chromebooks at the end of 2012 rising to 9.6% of all devices in Nov 2013 makes no sense, because Chromebooks had made inroads into the school market before end of 2012, and sales have been steadily increasing since rather than the 50 times increase shown. This means the sales in the 14 million sales sample are mostly to businesses rather than schools.

I am not sure about how IDC got their figures, but IDG are often unreliable and little more than crystal gazing. It should also be noted that until very recently, Chromebooks were only on sale in the US and UK, and even after expanding sales to 6 more countries late last year, availability outside US and UK is very limited. As far as worldwide sales are concerned, IDG's 1% of 360 million is 3.6 million, almost all of which are in the US and UK. NPD has some accurate sales figures based on data about 14 million laptops, desktops, and tablets sold through US "commercial channels" which they define as "business to business sales" ie. resellers/VARS like CDW and Ingram Micro that sell direct to businesses, government and education, in which they say Chromebooks made up 21% of all laptops sold and 9.6% of all tablets, laptops, and desktops sold. It does not count sales via channel sales like Amazon online, or Best Buy or Staples retail outlets or direct sales from OEMs like Apple Stores, Dell Direct or Google Play. The 14 million number of devices counted represents about a third of the US market. Chromebook sales growth: 2013 saw huge growth in business market | BGR There ie one thing that is strange about the figures - Apple has a very low representation of 1.8%, and Chromebooks before 2013 accounted for only 0.02% of sales, which seems to indicate that those selling supply and support services or supply and maintenance services as a package (which is most Apple and Chromebook sales to schools) aren't included, since both should have a very much higher representation based on their success in sales to schools before 2013. Basically this seems to be mainly business and government sales, which is damned impressive. Presumably they are being used as thin clients to access web based info services on servers.

I am not sure about the market size for these things, but it is a nice machine for those contracts to supply, libraries, public info systems, info workers, and government/large businesses with server based info-systems. A real competitive advantage too and a profit multiplier over Windows for those applications given the plug-in and walk away zero maintenance nature of these devices, and the fact that you can maintain 10-30 times the number that you can Windows machines with the same time and staffing levels, and the fact that Zero Touch Administration means you don't ever need to physically touch or log into one of these devices. That's a real force multiplier.

Google's play with Chrome is fundamentally different from Netscapes' OS in a browser concept. Microsoft saw Netscape as a threat to their existence which they had to eliminate because Netscape plug-ins allowed a means of running full blown (local) applications portable to any OS on which you could install Netscape on, without the application being tied to the Windows operating system. At a time before Windows 95 had established itself, had Microsoft not acted, Netscape plug-in apps would have blunted Microsoft's drive to gain its desktop app environment monopoly. Chrome is similar, but the difference is that it offers Native Client (which will become Portable Native Client this summer) for running C, C++, and C# code compiled into machine code locally. Unlike Native Client or Netscape Plug-ins which is just a way of running local apps in Netscape, the Portable Native Client technology is open and fully portable between any device regardless of CPU architecture, which is important for unifying the PC and non PC clients. The CPU independence will potentially make it a W3C standard candidate, unlike Netscape plug-ins but there is a lot of resistance to additions to the HTML standards by vested interests who keep blocking them, which is why video and audio standardization in HTML5 took so long. It is likely that Portable Native client will be a similar case with regard to HTML5 adoption for the same reason. Nevertheless with the addition of PNaCl and Google's spec for packaged offline apps, Chrome browser is a full OS in itself, capable of doing anything and everything that Windows can do. The big difference between Chrome and Netscape browsers is that where Netscape's plug-in environment was an OS in a browser which allowed local apps to be run on any OS supported by Netscape browsers, Chrome allows those apps to be fully portable via the cloud, and between different CPU architectures - even in the case of locally running code or offline apps. Where local data or code is required to be stored on the local device, it is stored in the cloud and cached locally, so that it is portable across the cloud. HTML5 is another big difference. Your comment about a document format was true of earlier versions of HTML, but not for HTML5 which is an asynchronous display format, not a static document format. It works exactly like your Windows desktop windowing environment, where individual elements in a window can be updated and can generate keyboard and mouse events, just like on Windows apps. Again, an HTML5 window can do anything and everything a Windows application can do and just as efficiently. The main difference is that Chrome web apps sync everything to the cloud automatically and only cache locally. It is not like the the old HTML markup language at all where you have to refresh the whole page to update any changed part of it. Basically HTML5 is like a universal, standardised windowing system that runs on every device conceivable. It will lead to a very rapid proliferation of web apps once it is formally ratified in 2014, although most of the pieces are in place now. Regarding Portable Native Client apps, I think it will be very important, but mainly for the use it allows of the huge range of C, C++, and C# code in existing libraries rather than speed. Rather having to recode it into server code and Javascript for the local side of the client server app, you can re-use these directly. You will also see applications requiring speed use it as well - mainly games, video/audio/photo editing, codec processing, 3D Cad etc. In particular I think you will see a lot of legacy C, C++ coded PC games jump to Native Client. I agree with you about not being able to protect against the host OS's vulnerabilities, which is why it is probably better to use a Chromebook to run Chrome on, and if you need Windows at all, to virtualise it on a Windows terminal server and access it via a Chromebook. Indeed if you want the highest level of security with Windows desktop use, that is achieved by putting Windows on a Terminal server, blocking off all access to it other than https via Ericom Access Now, and not allowing download of files from it other than in a tightly restricted manner. Once files are downloaded to a PC or laptop, it is very difficult to secure them. Not allowing it off your server and requiring users to log in and use the https interface to run apps and other desktop tasks on the secure server, and using a secure web client like a Chromebook which doesn't store data locally (except encrypted local temporary caches if not disabled), it the most secure way to do Windows computing.

I think that in the Chinese government hacking case, it wasn't Google's servers that were compromised. Rather it was individual user passwords that were intercepted by the Chinese government - probably by hacking a client device and using a key logger to obtain the passwords. Google to its credit pulled out of China to protect its users, while Microsoft did the opposite to try to take advantage of the vacuum created by Google pulling out by cosying up with the Chinese government.

Your comments attacking Google on privacy, are rather hypocritical to say the least. One thing Google does not do is sell private or any other kinds of information to third parties - all Google does with any information it may come across is the dastardly crime of occasionally targeting an advert at the user based on possible things that may be of interest to them. It makes no sense whatsoever for Google to sell any information on to others - after all Google makes its revenue from advertising, and if Google sells its information on, then it undermines its own business. The same is not true of Facebook or Microsoft, who do not have the same means of generating revenue from advertising internally, and for whom it makes sense to sell on personal information for profit - and it is these types of businesses that do sell on personal information. When information is held internally, then the terms of use can be held to account legally. When it is sold on, then there is absolutely no control over what happens to it nor any jurisdiction that the data can be confined to. Interestingly, while Google resists state requests for information where unenforceable, and even pulled out of China to protect its users against government intrusion into private and personal information, Microsoft seems to be to giving away personal information to governments when asked in most cases - and not just the US government, after all they want to sell Windows and Bing in Sudan, China, and other locations. This article says Microsoft provided personal information on 80% of government request worldwide. Microsoft discloses requests from law enforcement agenies worldwide - Business - The Boston Globe The privacy issue is a current FUD push by Microsoft to try to stifle Google's rapid ascendancy in education. Student Privacy Should Not Be for Sale - Microsoft on the Issues - Site Home - TechNet Blogs However it is complete and total hypocrisy. Unlike Google which does not sell private, personal or other data onto others, that is exactly what the Gates Foundation is doing with student personal data it has collected - in partnership with Rupert Murdoch, that other paragon of virtue when it comes to privacy issues. K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents | Reuters

I don't think this number is accurate. 1% of the market, which I think is from web usage statistics certainly is a lot more than 500,000. The figures come from a dodgy Taiwanese website called Digitimes which appears to be running an anti-Chromebook PR campaign with Microsoft's PR department. Digitimes cooks up some low Chromebook sales figures without any facts to back it up, and then it appears quoted by lots of other sites within a very short time as fact - seemingly PR guys (I can guess who) have pushed out to a lot of websites in a very short period of time. The 500,000 number looks like Acer's C7 sales over the last 4 months based on 5% of the notebooks Acer has sold. Acer says 5-10% which I taker to mean it started at 5% of Acers notebook sales when supply was limited and increased now to 10%. This figure excludes Samsung Chromebook retail sales which are much higher, given that it is number 1 in the Amazon list - above Acer's C7. The Acer sales, the Samsung Amazon and Curry's sales all exclude business sales and educational sales which is the major target for Chromebooks. This is business and education sales are made directly to the end user rather than through Amazon, PC World or other retail outlets. Acer's C7 is pretty useless for education because of its short battery life, so Acers current total sale numbers don't include education. Currys/PC World also announced that Chromebooks account for 10% of all their computer sales in UK currently - that is without advertising, and without the most popular Chromebook models and staff who know anything about it being available at most stores, which is amazing. I think the real sales figures would be higher than 1.5 million in the last 100 days given all this. in July 2011 Digitimes claimed that only 20,000-30,000 of the first version of the Chromebook had been sold in 2011. In that case, Digitimes seems to have reported the 25,000 Acer Chromebooks Acer sold in the first two weeks of availability after its delayed entry as the total number of Chromebooks sold in 2011. Again it was widely syndicated widely to other websites in a very short time. Again in summer 2012 it was claimed 300,000 Chromebooks had been sold. How was this number arrived at? Take Digitimes figure of 25,000 sold by Acer in the first two weeks of limited supply, assume that was for a month ignoring the fact that it shipped two weeks late, ignore Samsung sales which were greater and had been taking place for some time before Acer had started shipping, and ignore the education market sales which was the main sales push at the time, and multiply it by 12 for 12 months. Voila you have 300,000. Now it is claimed that despite a big price drop and reported 700% increase in Chromebook sales based on web browser ID string tracking, Chromebooks are actually selling slower with only 500,000 sold over the last two years. The figures simply don't add up! This latest Digitimes "report" looks like a repeat of the "independent" report plus PR push strategy being played by a rival who stands to lose market share if the Chromebook takes off - presumably in an attempt to prevent more OEMs and developers from jumping on the Chromebook bandwagon.

It may be better to try contacting Google again as well because c-learning looks like a Chromebook training rather than a provisioning/management service.

I can't afford it either. I would say it is a reference device to demo future technologies to allow OEMs to develop cheaper mass market designs, Chrome Web Apps developers to develop high end Native Client Chrome apps like games, and early adopters to try it out. Although they haven't really taken off yet, high res screens and touchscreens, will become more common, and Portable Native Client is due to be ready this summer - hence the i5 CPU. I would expect the features to appear on different devices in different combinations.

Google is giving it away because they know full well you aren't going to use up anything like that amount in reality. It is a psychological crutch for Windows users who are used to Windows filling up whatever size of hard drive you may have with rubbish within a year or two.

Sysadmins spend a lot of time limiting and locking down things for security and simplicity/ease of use and maintenance. Less flexible is a good thing for everybody other than computer hobbyists, provided it does the things you need it to do, and does it in an efficient and convenient way. You can also run Windows or OSX or Linux apps on them for the occasions when you need to - when I say run, I mean run them the same way Chromebooks run all apps - on a LAN or Cloud server (in this case a Windows terminal server or Linux or Mac server). Chrome OS devices are brilliant for useage where these requirements are met - they are Zero Maintenance, Zero Touch Management (ie. no admin has to ever log in or touch Chromebook/box devices), with sub 10 second boot, instant pause/resume when you open and shut the lid, and all your data and apps can be accessed on any device with a web browser (try doing that with Windows or Macbooks data or apps). They are secure managed networked computers out of the box, and don't need any server hardware or maintenance spend to achieve all this because they use Google's and ASP providers' Cloud servers to achieve this, although you can add your own if you want. They are 10% of Currys/PC World's total computer sales right now, and this will only increase. They will be everywhere within a couple of years.

The main benefit of USB 3.0 on a laptop like the ARM based Samsung Chromebook Series 3 is that you can use it to charge the Chromebook as well as power other devices - however there probably be too much power draw from the Pixel to charge it up via USB. The speed advantage of USB 3.0 isn't particularly useful on a device that uses local storage only for downloads.