Aiming high

Chromebooks have a long way to go to attract the power users

68-Chromebooks

For long it has been a two-horse race in computer operating systems, with one horse, Windows, running about three-fourths of the computers in the world. Apple’s MacOS (OS X) has always had a loyal following, and it has been on the rise, but it has never given Windows a real fight in the mass market. Linux operating systems have been promising, but they still remain so.

Google, which had massive success with the Android OS in smartphones, has been trying to break this duopoly with its Chrome OS. Most big computer manufactures make ChromeOS-powered laptops, called Chromebooks. HP has some, Samsung has some, Asus makes some, Dell used to make them, and Google itself has made a few, called Pixelbooks. But none of them brought in the numbers that Google had wished.

Google made the last Pixelbook in 2017 and it is said that the tech giant is unlikely to make another attempt. But it has not given up on Chrome OS yet. HP and Asus have active lineups of Chromebooks and are said to be working on making more of them. Samsung last week launched probably the best built Chromebook so far. The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook runs on a 10th generation Intel i5 processor, brandishes a 4K display (still a rarity even among flagship notebooks) and is better looking than most laptops in the market. And it costs as much as a MacBook Air or a Dell XPS 13.

A Chromebook’s comparative advantage against a Windows computer is the longer battery life and lower price tag. But Samsung here clearly is aiming for power users. That could be a problem because no Chromebook is ready to take on a Windows machine with reasonable specs, largely owing to the limitations of the Chrome OS.

The two horses, it seems, will continue to race for a while. 

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