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Asus chromebook flip: update for android apps live!

S

slackerinabox

Lifer
Running it now - apps are sluggish (I blame the rockchip processor), but my god is this potentially game changing. Running word in android full screen with a keyboard is shockingly useful! This is going to put the hurt on Microsoft/Windows (I'd suggest a more potent SOC though, unless the slow downs are beta related)
 
I do wonder if Microsoft would have released Office for Android had they known Google was going to do this in the future.
 
Do me a favor, go to CBS.com, and see if you can play episodes of their shows with Chrome...

I'm seriously considering getting a Chromebook.
 
Artdeco said:
Do me a favor, go to CBS.com, and see if you can play episodes of their shows with Chrome...

I'm seriously considering getting a Chromebook.
Click to expand...

Once Android apps go live/official I am definitely getting a new Chromebook and it will become my everything computer. Except for PC gaming anyway, but I do that less and less each month.
 
Artdeco said:
Do me a favor, go to CBS.com, and see if you can play episodes of their shows with Chrome...

I'm seriously considering getting a Chromebook.
Click to expand...

Yep, watched 10 seconds of an episode of 48 hours.

Games run sluggish and there are crashes (project gotham racing), I'd say a flip type chromebook with snapdragon 810+ would be great.
 
Red Storm said:
I do wonder if Microsoft would have released Office for Android had they known Google was going to do this in the future.
Click to expand...

I can see them locking things down to devices without keyboards - word on android with clouddrive supports 99% of what I use a word processor for, for free!
 
slackerinabox said:
Yep, watched 10 seconds of an episode of 48 hours.

Games run sluggish and there are crashes (project gotham racing), I'd say a flip type chromebook with snapdragon 810+ would be great.
Click to expand...

Nice, will keep my eye out for one with a bit better cpu
 
From Google's blog post about Android apps in Chrome OS:

And, we've also been working with our partners to launch some great new devices specially designed for Play. Stay tuned for more details to come over the next few months.
Click to expand...

I would wait and see what these new products are - maybe Chromebooks with more internal storage or better touch screens or other components? - before buying in.
 
Red Storm said:
Once Android apps go live/official I am definitely getting a new Chromebook and it will become my everything computer. Except for PC gaming anyway, but I do that less and less each month.
Click to expand...

Yep, macbook airs were always my easy breezy recommendation (hey, I don't have to give tech support) but chromebooks have the lead now. Tablet mode actually makes sense now, it was kind of silly on the flip before apps.
 
games run sucky (candy crush stutters) but productivity apps fly. My chromebooks now a great tool to stay organized, with docs, officeLive, evernote and spotify full featured apps (not web apps). Fantastic. Apps with pop ups are a little weird, like Facebook messenger. But give this 2 major updates and we've got a serious threat to windows - this $200 laptop flies compared to every cheap winbook i've tried
 
slackerinabox said:
Running it now - apps are sluggish (I blame the rockchip processor), but my god is this potentially game changing. Running word in android full screen with a keyboard is shockingly useful! This is going to put the hurt on Microsoft/Windows (I'd suggest a more potent SOC though, unless the slow downs are beta related)
Click to expand...

Word is the first app I tried on my son's Flip. It works great, but my workflow requires accessing Word files from multiple devices and platforms, so cloud-type storage is an absolute must. I tried with OneDrive but there's a syncing problem, Dropbox doesn't seem to work (still not sure why), and I couldn't figure out how to save to Google Drive.

Did you try saving to any kind of cloud storage while testing Word, and open/edit the file from another device?
 
cronos said:
Word is the first app I tried on my son's Flip. It works great, but my workflow requires accessing Word files from multiple devices and platforms, so cloud-type storage is an absolute must. I tried with OneDrive but there's a syncing problem, Dropbox doesn't seem to work (still not sure why), and I couldn't figure out how to save to Google Drive.

Did you try saving to any kind of cloud storage while testing Word, and open/edit the file from another device?
Click to expand...

Yes, I used onedrive. My dad's an office365 subscriber so maybe I use some of his 1tb, and it seems to work fine. I haven't experienced sync issues but I keep my onedrive only for documents, and I only open from the cloud anyways since Office365 is so well integrated and I can be positive it's the latest version. So sync issues aren't a problem for me, in fact I don't even sync my laptop, I just always open from the cloud. I'd love to use gdrive, I pay for 1tb myself and would love to just keep all of my files in one spot, but for now Onedrive specifically for office docs and Gdrive for everything else is a livable compromise.
 
I wonder how this chromebook "containers system works" someone who knows more should comment on it.

From what I understand it is like virtualizing an OS but the virtual container is not keeping things sandbox with this implementation. This is in contrast to an official "virtualized" system like a virtual machine, you will be keeping at least double copies of many resources such as system stuff since the virtual container must have the necessary stuff just like the main windows since itis officially sandboxed.

I ask for from a curiosity standpoint, I wonder will this make comparing specific arm chips like the qualcomm 820 vs one of the intel chips like core m or the best cherry trail. Or will not really help with that for there is enough unique binaries for the arm version of android vs x86 and that reallys some tweaking of the software via the various hardware manufacturers like intel and qualcomm to optimize their software for their hardware make this not useful at looking at the hardware efficencies and differences of the chips, for the hardware to software layer is just as important.

In other words part of me wants to see which chips are better in an objective sense and the various pros and cons and the trade offs, and I wonder if this chromebook to android may be a useful tool for that or not. I understand what I want partly does not matter for the OS and real world implementation is better, but the tech nerd in me wants to know the various efficiencies of each hardware chip design.

In some ways this does not matter for ARM mobile chips at this very second in technology time has little to no competition with Intel's main dominated markets with the decline of atom, while arm in mobile is really dominating. Yet I am curious for I want to see how far behind is ARM, sure the desktop and laptops have way more tdp but I am curious on total performance comparison. I want to know for it helps imagine what the future progress over the next few years will be like when X total performance is achievable in smaller and smaller form factors, and at cheaper price points.

In other words I hope someone can answer my geek out for I find this stuff interesting.
 
Last edited:
kpkp said:
Rough official explanation:
https://youtu.be/yDy1WWUdlY8?t=13m
Click to expand...

Thank you for that link, I will now watch the 10 minutes that you outlined in the link.

Even though I am about to watch the link and digest this, I am just going to leave a comment

I think this could be a great article Anandtech can write, for if I have this question other people will, and while it does not deal with hardware it is something that is a deep dive that anandtech can give good explanations on for deep dives and explanations is one of the things that anandtech specializes in.

Once again thank you for the link.
 
slackerinabox said:
Yes, I used onedrive. My dad's an office365 subscriber so maybe I use some of his 1tb, and it seems to work fine. I haven't experienced sync issues but I keep my onedrive only for documents, and I only open from the cloud anyways since Office365 is so well integrated and I can be positive it's the latest version. So sync issues aren't a problem for me, in fact I don't even sync my laptop, I just always open from the cloud. I'd love to use gdrive, I pay for 1tb myself and would love to just keep all of my files in one spot, but for now Onedrive specifically for office docs and Gdrive for everything else is a livable compromise.
Click to expand...

Yeah I have a family 365 account so I really want to utilize the 1TB OneDrive, but it kept flaking on me.

However, it turns out that it's a combination of the OneDrive installation and the older version of Office installed on my computer that's the culprit (i.e. absolutely nothing to do with the Flip at all). So I updated my Office to the latest one (sort of the point of having a 365, to always get the latest version of Office, so stupid me for not doing that all along), rebooted my computer, and now OneDrive syncs both/multiple ways without a problem.
 
cronos said:
Yeah I have a family 365 account so I really want to utilize the 1TB OneDrive, but it kept flaking on me.

However, it turns out that it's a combination of the OneDrive installation and the older version of Office installed on my computer that's the culprit (i.e. absolutely nothing to do with the Flip at all). So I updated my Office to the latest one (sort of the point of having a 365, to always get the latest version of Office, so stupid me for not doing that all along), rebooted my computer, and now OneDrive syncs both/multiple ways without a problem.
Click to expand...

Speaking of office, noticed my first bug running word for Android - printing. I have cloud print set up properly on my Chromebook but word bypasses Chromebooks printing settings and relies on androids. I installed cloud print for Android but that did Nada. Easy work around is print to PDF, but all is not perfect in productivity land.
 
slackerinabox said:
Speaking of office, noticed my first bug running word for Android - printing. I have cloud print set up properly on my Chromebook but word bypasses Chromebooks printing settings and relies on androids. I installed cloud print for Android but that did Nada. Easy work around is print to PDF, but all is not perfect in productivity land.
Click to expand...

You're right. I actually got the cloud printer to show up once from Word, but then it crashed before I got to print anything.

Anyway, there's an OS update yesterday that screwed up the Play Store apps on the Flip. None of the installed apps worked anymore. Uninstalling and reinstalling made them work again, but extremely slow, unstable and prone to crashing. Probably best to wait for the next update before testing again.
 
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