KW1003 Acer Green

Jun 12

This week Knightwise travels to the Acer Green show and brings a couple of interviews with from the show floor as well as some “live” music.

Acergreen_Picturebystefaanlesage

Links

Music

maptrio

Credits

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kw905 : Life on a Chromebook.

Jan 01


We deep dive into the world of Chromebooks and find an answer to the question : Can you survive on a Chromebook. We walk you through the possibilities and limitations of the Chromebook. We enlighten you  on how to use it for work, connect back to your home network and how to use your Chromebook to entertain you. If thats not enough we go beyond the design specifications and sideload Linux on your Chromebook turning into a low budget sliders dream machine. All of that and more .. in Kw905 : Life on a Chromebook. Catch the live recording of this podcast in the Youtube video below and see if you can catch Sulu the dog as our Podcast assistant.

Shownotes.

  • The Acer C730
  • First impressions
  • Hardware – Software
  • Taking the Chromebook to work (Article)
  • Using the Chromebook to entertain you (Article)
  • Connecting back to your home network via a Socks5 proxy over SSH (Article)
  • Dual Booting your Chromebook with Linux (Distroshare.com)
  • Sideloading your Chromebook with Crouton (Youtube instruction video)
  • Epilogue

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The Acer C730 Chromebook : First impressions.

Dec 21

Acer-Chromebook-C730-and-CB5

Sometimes i’m an early adopter. So much so that if we ever had any kids I would probably be trying to teach our unborn child all the names of the Star Trek DS9 characters before it was born. Sometimes I just can’t wait for things to just ‘get there’. However, when it comes to Chromebooks i’m late to the party. While others raved about how they could ‘do everything in a browser’ I was not impressed with this locked-in substitute for a terminal client. But… yesterday I budged and forked over some cash for an Acer C730 Chromebook (Also known as the Chromebook 11) and am preparing to set out on a quest to answer the ultimate question : Is a Chromebook enough ?

So join me in my quest as I discover the Pro’s and the cons of a 249 Euro device that has sold his soul to the Googleplex and try to “Cross-platform-slide” the Chromebook.

Knightwise, Meet the Acer C730.

The Acer C730 is Acers 3rd iteration of their popular Chromebook line. As the successor to the immensely popular C720 model (Loved by many because of its ability to dual boot into Ubuntu) it is a low budget – low powered “Terminal to the cloud”. At 249 euro’s you what you pay for. A plastic 11 inch Laptop (I got the girly “White” edition by accident).

The C730 has an Intel Celeron CPU, (specifically a dual-core Haswell 2957U) and comes with 4 gigs of Ram. The on board SSD gives you 16 gigs of storage and the AC Wifi should be able to get you the speediest of wifi connections. The 11 inch screen comes with a standard resolution of 1378×768. As for auxiliaries the Chromebook comes with a webcam, 2 USB connections (1x 2.0 , 1x 3.0), an SD card slot a full HDMI port and an audio jack.

First impressions.

Unboxing the C730 reminded me a little bit of unboxing my first Asus EEEPC back in the days. For some strange reason you are extremely excited about buying a 249 euro Laptop .. so when you unbox it .. you get a 249 euro experience. The box is bland (brown), there is no Styrofoam (eco frienly) and the laptop is packaged in one of those little veils to keep it scratch proof.

The Chromebook itself is pretty sturdy. Not too light to feel flimsy, not to heavy to feel like ‘a real laptop’. which is a good thing. The plastic unibody design feels .. plasticy. You have keep reminding yourself : This is not your average laptop. Its basically a mainboard, a network card and a battery having a threesome inside a plastic shell. And that is all you need.

Well, you need to interface with the device of course and for that you need a keyboard and a screen. I feared for a flimsy crappy keyboard to ruin things for me but was pleasantly surprised with a fairly decent Chiclet-keyboard with enough space between the keys for fast typing. The screen is a little more ‘sobering’. We didn’t expect Acer to bring us a Retina Amoled display but the viewing angles on the screen do remind us of a laptop from the 80’s. As long as you sit right in front of the (fairly bright) screen its fine. But don’t expect to have a pleasant experience from any other angle. The colors on the display are a little washed out and the contrast is lacking .. But we aren’t going to edit the next Victoria’s secret calendar on this thing anyway.

What we do love is the battery ! It just keeps on going. Even if we don’t make it to the promised 8 hours of operational use .. we still have a very light cheap laptop that you can chuck in your bag without having to worry that you forgot the charger.

The OS.

Chrome OS is exactly what it should be. A very thin layer of functionality that glue your browser (and your apps) to the hardware. There are not a lot of options, there is limited storage, you can’t tweak the crap out of it … and as Grumpy cat would say : GOOD ! It helps us realize that this is a web-terminal with a keyboard and a mouse.

Conclusion.

The Acer C730 is a great gateway into the Chrome and Chromebook experience. You get what you pay for … and then some. What I love about it is the great battery life, the decent keyboard and the fact that the combination of ‘light and cheap’ make it a great device to chuck in your bag and carry it around anywhere.

I have a 15 inch Macbook pro that is my main production machine. But every time I need to take it on the road i’m afraid it might get stolen. With the Acer I don’t have that concern.

In the next couple of days I’ll be writing up some more posts on how the Chromebook works for me in my Cross platform Lifestyle .. Stay tuned.

Links.

The Acer 730 Chromebook.

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BLOG : Why the Acer Iconia W8 is the tablet for everyone .. and their dog.

Oct 30
When we got invited to Acer’s “A touch more connected” press event yesterday we kind of knew what to expect. Basically it was going to be a re-hash of the line of products and services Acer had presented at IFA earlier this year. Like every year Acer spreads it’s product line across the board. In a “Cross platform” approach they offer a variety of laptops, tablets and smartphones across the Windows and Android eco systems in a variety  quality for everybody’s budget. From a 69 euro Android smartphone to a 1700 euro convertible laptop .. Acer has something for everybody. With the  addition of their Chromebook line , Acer now dips their toe in another pool with 11 and 13 inch Chromebooks ranging from 250 to 400 euro.
Iconia_Tab_8W_front
If their is one constant in the acer product line is that you get (a lot ) for what you pay for. Depending on what device you pick (in what pricerange) you get quite a bit of value for money (See their Jade smartphone series) but try not to compare a 200 euro Jade with a 900 euro Iphone. Again .. you get (a lot) for what you pay for.
That trend was broken yesterday as through some tear in the Acer Space time continuum we were presented with the iconia tab 8 W tablet. This 8 inch tablet doesn’t look a lot different then the earlier iconia tablets Acer presented last year. These “Looks like an ipad Mini-Runs android-does not require you to sell your kid” tablets were interesting but not that impressive.   The iconia Tab 8 W  is light and  has a bright display (although it only has a 1280 by 800 resolution) that looks very nice thanks to Acers “zero Airgap” technology.  Its aluminum back makes it feel sturdy and with 32 gigabytes online storage it would make for a moderately interesting tablet in the lineup.  However, THIS is Acers first Windows tablet sporting a full version of Microsoft’s “Windows 8.1 -with-Bing” operating system. This means it sports the much debated Metro interface with a “full version” of Windows 8.1.  at your fingertips. The device reminds us of a lighter, cleaned up and better looking version of the Dell Venue 8 Pro we talked about in the last podcast. But the iconia Tab 8 has a better screen, feels nicer to hold and has a MUCH more interesting price.
So lets play “the Price is Right” on this one. How much would an 370 gram, 8 inch Windows Tablet with 32 gigabytes of storage, and , a FULL version of Windows 8.1. -with-Bing and a YEAR access to Office 365 and Onedrive  ? … The actual price is the very reason for this article. It is the very reason that this device falls out of line with everything that is currently available on the market with specs/services like that. Its … 149 euro’s.  !! For less then the price of a stupid B-Grade Yarvik Android Tablet (with Gingerbread) you get a full Windows device that lets you install ‘regular’ apps, pick apps Windows App store and use Office 365 for a whole year. Its rridiculous!
So what might this mean. This means that this physical device costs less then the cost of its Windows and Office 365 licence combined. It is a part of Microsoft strategy to fight of the rise of the Chromebook with the addition that THIS device lets you actually do things offline (or open up the command prompt 😉 ). The device is ONE TENTH the price of Microsofts Surface Pro 3 ! (ok , its a lot less powerful with only a Quad core Atom processor) but still.  This puts this tablet (and its Windows 8.1.  environment) in the hands of your kid to use for school/play/porn at a price point that is comparable to a pair of a Senseo Coffeemaker It is a disruptive price that might tear the Geek space time continuum a new one.
We haven’t had a chance to do a deep-dive with this device. But you know we are a sucker for ‘high value for money’ devices and .. at 149 euro’s we WILL be trying this baby out soon. It shows that the market is changing rapidly. From 900 euro high end smartphones to small 8 inch portable ‘computers’ at 145 euro .. this is going to be a VERY VERY interesting holiday season. By this time next year we predict everybody AND their dog will own some kind of computer. And at 149 euro’s a pop .. they probably can. 🙂

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kw803 : Girls Gone Geek

May 10

Its time to be Mr Journalist and cover Acer’s launch event for their Liquid E3 smartphone in Brussels and take some interesting interviews. We talk to two different sides from the girl-geek spectrum and interview Sunny, a ‘beauty blogger’ who just got her first smartphone and Mee Hyang, one of the members of the ‘Brussels Girl Geek Dinner’ who has been around the tech block a couple of years.  Both ladies give us their vision on technology and the “Girl vs Gadget” ratio in their lives. As an added bonus we talk to Lars Christensen, the Acer Product manager about some of the cool new functionalities Acer will be supporting in their smartphone and ask him the pesky question : ‘What is a PC going to look like in 3 years’.  Enjoy KW803.

Shownotes.

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