Chromebook Takes Top Place In Laptop Sales On Amazon 372
rtfa-troll writes "Amazon's latest table of the top selling laptops will be a surprise for many on Slashdot whose first reaction when we discussed this before was 'so what,' with pundits describing it as 'an enterprise contender.' Given the recent launch and huge advertising campaign, you might expect that the top selling consumer laptop would be based on Win8. If you read recent discussions about Microsoft's troubled new system you might expect a Mac to be leading, but Google's Chromebook topping the sales chart on a consumer site without any major advertising campaign is a major surprise. We've discussed before that apart from its web based ChromeOS, Chromebooks are also very fast running Ubuntu Linux and have several other distributions already ported."
And Windows 8 almost edges out 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
2. OSX
3. Win 7
4. OSX
5. Win 8
6. Win 7
7. Win 7
8. OSX
9. Win 8
10. Win 8
So, certainly, laptops come in so many different flavors that the OSs that circulate in "one size fits all" SKUs will float to the top. We'd expect Macs and Chromebooks to sell more of a given configuration than a Microsoft box. But two months after the launch of Win 8, to see Win 7 beating it in the retail channel, that's news.
Re:People not aware that it runs ChromeOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
My big question is what the return rate will be like. I suspect that some people are expecting a full desktop OS, like Windows.
The big question is how few will tell the difference. Apple knows this, Microsoft knows this, google knows this. Slashdot doesn't.
Re:Great system for parents (Score:5, Insightful)
Try Google Hangouts. It works much better than Skype.
Re:People not aware that it runs ChromeOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that it is possible to install Ubuntu (and several other Linux distributions) not that it is sold with Ubuntu already installed. For most buyers, the experience out of the box is what counts. Fwiiw, I think this will be perfectly acceptable for most bearing in mind the price tag.
Re:Lame? The Slashdot blessing (Score:4, Insightful)
You might be on to something there, since Slashdot just yesterday had a story about how net books were dead. Most poster didn't realize that the netbook simple morphed into chrombooks.
Doesn't surprise me that much (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't surprise me for a number of reasons:
- There have also been plenty of prime-time ads for Chromebooks on TV - at least in the UK, and I imagine elsewhere.
- IME, most people don't really like Windows, they see it as a necessary evil. The advent of smartphones and tablets has very efficiently demonstrated that it's no longer necessary.
- Why don't people like Windows? There's a number of reasons, but most of them relate to incomprehensible and/or nonsensical error messages, a death-by-a-thousand-cuts of other expenses you pretty much have to incur like antivirus software, cheap hardware that's so damn nasty it doesn't look very cheap once you start trying to use it and dealing with the fallout when despite all of that you still click on the wrong thing and need to get someone in to fix it. (Yes, I know Android, iOS and ChromeOS are all hypothetically susceptible to similar issues. But the important point is they're not being actively exploited today).
- What is the recommended fix for these issues? Go out and buy the next version of Windows! (Which many people automatically assume means "buy a new PC", even if that's not true. You'd be surprised how many people honestly have no idea that you can replace Windows with a different version or even with something else entirely).
- Google has carved out an extremely strong brand. People see the word Google and associate it with finding what they want quickly and easily with a minimal amount of bullshit getting in the way. Associate Google with a laptop that doesn't do any of the things people dislike about Windows and you have a very interesting product indeed.
Re:Targeted customers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising if you think about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Not being able to deal with UEFI is a limitation of windows. Apple didn't do anything to intentionally prevent Windows from running.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)