HACKER Q&A
📣 Podgajski

Why are new Laotops so much worse yet more exoensive?


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?


  👤 I_Am_Nous Accepted Answer ✓
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.

👤 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?


👤 st3fan
Huh. You are complaining that a $229 laptop is under powered? Maybe your expectations are a bit high :-)

👤 dave4420
I thought CPU clock speeds had plateaued for nearly two decades now?

👤 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.

👤 gregjor
I think you don't understand the target market for cheap Chromebooks. Do you really want someone to explain why a Lenovo X1 Carbon that costs 6-7 times more gives a better experience? What older laptop is the Chromebook "so much worse yet more expensive" than?