Sandy Bridge has arrived

I'm waiting for a Sandy Bridge MacBook, so I can finally replace my aging 2008 MacBook Pro 13"... They've been sticking to Core 2 Duo this whole time, with no i3 or i5 options.
 
No can do. I literally take my MacBook with me everywhere, the extra 2" would be a real killer. I don't care much for the weight or slimness because the real bottleneck at this point is just the width/height of the thing.
 
Yeah, I got my 15-inch Dell but since I've got this CR-48 its been a real blast. Lightest portable computer I've ever owned. I was really thinking about a Macbook Air but I think I'll wait for the MBPs to be upgraded as well.
 
Yeah, how is the CR-48? I know you had trouble getting the internet to work, but since then?

Has it become your primary PC?
 
Does everything I want except maybe watching videos. I do all my TV watching online now so its still useful to have the bigger screen for that (and the video isn't choppy on my desktop). I think the real killer is the CPU. They're all about the browser, but these web apps can be just as demanding. They haven't really been pushing out updates though (even if I opt-in to developer builds). I hope they'll continue with it, it really is nice having an auto-updating, no headache system with a browser ready to go in under a minute.
 
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Nope. I know they're working on that in Chrome, but this is very low-tech machine on an Atom processor. They're kinda like netbooks (though Google calls them notebooks). Google's idea is that you don't need a powerful computer, because the supercomputers that run your web apps are just a click away. Acer well be coming out with Chrome notebooks sometime this year in the $300-$400 range.
 
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Chromes supposed to actually keep things like flash up to date automatically. They've also got an extension in the Chrome web store that'll alert you when anythings outdated and disable the plugin until its updated.
 
They still got the page up. I don't know. Original estimates reported Google only had 60,000 of them. I didn't know I was getting 1 either. It showed up about a week after I applied. They don't tell you you've been selected either. Mine was just sitting on my porch when I got home. So thankful no one took it, cause I don't exactly live in the best of areas. Remember though that not everyone who applies well get one. If you do get one, hold on to the box it comes in. I saw them on e-bay as a collectors item for as much as 90$ :smile:.
 
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And I just got an e-mail in concern to the pilot program. I don't think I can disclose any information, but its safe to assume they've probably shipped out all the notebooks they plan to ship out by now.
 
It just seems logical to me that if they weren't going to ship any more units they would shut down the web application page. See the story below from Saturday, January 15:

Google To Ship More CR-48′s This Month
“During the last few weeks it seemed as if there was more bad news coming for even those still awaiting shipment of Google’s Chrome Notebook within the USA. Google stopped shipping CR-48′s during the Christmas period and hasn’t sent out a single unit ever since. This has left many frustrated and annoyed as after-all, only 15,000 CR-48′s have been shipped (at the writing of this article) out of a projected 60,000.
Good News – More Shipments are coming

Well, for all those who are still left in limbo, you’ll be glad to know that it seems as if Google will continue CR-48 shipments this month. A tweet by Sundar Pichai from earlier on this week confirms this; he was asked by a prospective CR-48 owner ( bryantdunivan) if Google was still pressing on with their initiative:

Yes we will have another batch that will ship out this month. Should be an exciting few months ahead.

So, there you have it, from Google’s Product VP. Keep checking the CR-48 Tracker and hop into the forums to stay up to date with what’s going on. It’s probably just a matter of days until you get your CR-48 (fingers crossed).”
http://chromeossite.com/2011/01/15/google-to-ship-more-cr-48s-this-month/

As an aside check out this story:

Google fends off near-loss of Chrome OS head to Twitter

“Internal slips today revealed that Google's Chrome OS product management VP Sundar Pichai is staying onboard despite a poaching attempt by Twitter. The search engine reportedly paid an unspecified but "significant increase" to Pichai to keep him. Google declined to comment on the AllThingsD assertions.

Google has faced sudden and mounting pressure in the past year as other companies have been either recruiting or trying to recruit some of its senior staff. The company has in some cases paid even engineers millions of dollars to stop them from going to Facebook or other rivals.

Pichai is known to be particularly vital to Google's efforts. As the leader of both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS teams, his loss would have derailed both its browser efforts and its fledgling attempt at a desktop OS. The latter, web app based platform has already been delayed by a year to mid-2011 or later and could have been set back further with a leadership change. Gmail's creator Paul Buchheit has already posited that Google might have to quietly end Chrome OS and roll its technology into Android if it doesn't take off.

Twitter had been hoping for a new product VP of its own that would help it expand. The microblogging tool has spent much of its recent time simply hoping to sustain its exiting traffic and only little expanding its features or profitability.”

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/01/14/googles.chrome.lead.pichai.stays.despite.twitter

Addendum:

Dual booting Ubuntu and Google chrome OS on the CR 48

Would it be possible to dual-boot Ubuntu and Google chrome? What is the boot loader for Google chrome OS? Is it GRUB-1?

I think it would be more advantageous if people could figure out how to dual-boot the CR 48 rather than simply try to figure out how to replace the operating system. Then they could run Google chrome OS to perform as much as possible. Then when the Google chrome OS can’t get stuff done, users can boot into another OS like Ubuntu.

How to install any OS on the Google Cr-48 Chrome notebook
http://liliputing.com/2011/01/how-to-install-any-os-on-the-google-cr-48-chrome-notebook.html

Google Cr-48 seen running Android
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/google-cr-48-seen-running-android-2011017/


See post on Chrome Lounge Forum:
http://www.chromeoslounge.com/cr-48-chrome-notebook/405-has-anyone-tried-dual-boot-cr-48-ubuntu-2.html


Addendum:

http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2010/12/easy-way-to-install-ubuntu-on-your-cr.html
 
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Yeah, I wanted to get my hands on a CR-48 to figure out how the dual-booting works. I actually mentioned that in my application form, so maybe that's why they didn't ship me one :lol:
 
No matter how you slice it, Intel’s new 2600K is a cold-blooded killer

"People will look for a lot of reasons to hate Sandy Bridge: Overclocking is limited to the K parts, you have to buy a new board, and the graphics core is switched off once you install a GPU. But once you get to raw, ripping performance, it’s hard not to gush over Sandy Bridge. Frankly, it’s an astounding amount of performance for
the money.
The top-end Core i7-2600K smashes every other quad-core Intel chip by healthy margins. This is aided by the new microarchitecture, the ring bus, and other magical stuff, we suppose, but we see no reason to buy any other CPU for the money. Even the once-powerful Core i7-975 Extreme Edition is flatly punched in the nose by the 2600K. While the 975 is long gone, you can extrapolate that the 2600K will outgun the Core i7-950, i7-930, and the poorly priced i7-960. Against non-Intel chips, it’s no contest. AMD’s hexa-core Phenom II X6 1090T, which was already getting beaten up by existing Hyper-Threaded Core i7 chips, also takes a serious thrashing from the Core i7-2600K.
Even the mighty Core i7-980X loses a few benchmarks to the Core i7-2600K chip. These are mostly in benchmarks that can’t exploit the six-cores of the 980X, and where the Turbo Boost 2.0 gives the Sandy Bridge part a key advantage.
Certainly, overclocking the older Intel parts and the Phenom II can help, but the 2600K, we must add, also overclocks like a champ. So, haterz, set aside your hate. If performance is what you care about (and you don’t want to shell out for a $1,000 hexa-core), Sandy Bridge, particularly the K versions, should be on your radar."

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/sandy_bridge_washes_ashore
 
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Thanks for making me even more impatient than I was already! I'd purposely been not reading the benchmarks, for fear of feeling the age of my MB. :tongueout: :smile:
 
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