HP Chromebox G2 - A Viable Desktop Alternative

Chromebook laptops have been around for several years now - available from HP, Dell, Asus, Acer and Samsung these often entry level laptops running Google's ChromeOS offer an alternative to traditional MS and Apple devices.

 For many use cases - they can offer a user effectively "everything they need" in an extremely light and maintenance free OS where all services are on-line.  

 From the Chrome browser and add-ons, Google Office, Drive, You Tube, Mail, Calendar, Maps, Play Music & Movies are all available.  Add to that 3rd party apps like Spotify, Instagram, Netflix, Lightroom, EverNote and others and for many folks it a really great alternative to a Windows PC or Mac.

 Goggle themselves recently updated their Pixelbook which while seemingly pricey with a starting price @ $1000 actually offers an excellent experience.  

 As so while a great laptop solution, if you wanted to go Desktop and use a big monitor and traditional keyboard/mouse - your choices suddenly got very limited.  There was a niche called ChromeBox/Bit - but the early versions introduced back in 2014/2015 where pretty limited.

 That has all changed....

 HP recently announced the Chromebox G2.  This Intel NUC sized device is available in 3 CPU configurations - Celeron 3865U , Core I5-7300U and Core I7-8650U and changes the game.
The units come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, 1 x USB Type-C, 3 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, RJ-45 Ethernet and an SD Slot.  They support 16GB of RAM and have 32 or 64GB M.2 SSD.  While not called out in any of the public specs I assume there is an Intel 8260 or 8265 802.11ac Wifi/BT there as well.  At least I hope so...

 Pricing was not announced and HP states these will be available in April - but the i5 unit with Intel 620 graphics really looks like the sweet spot.  I have an Intel NUC with a i5-7550U and 640 graphics and it's great.  

 While you could go ahead and buy a NUC, then load ChromiumOS (the Google Open developer version of ChromeOS) and then upgrade - the fact that you can effectively buy a complete ready to go unit from a Tier 1 OEM like HP is great.

 I for one am going to take a serious look at one of these come April.  Now sure you have to prepared to run inside the ChromeOS world - but when I look at what I run and the potential for running Android apps as well - I can see using this is a heart beat.  

 Even for diehard MS fans - you can easily run all the O365 online apps and even support VDI via Plugs-ins to Chrome.  And when compared to the current hot mess that Windows 10 is - I'd love a device that is effectively maintenance free,  boots in seconds and just works.

 Nice work HP...





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Solar Storage - 2023 Update

  A few years back I published a 2 Part post discussing Solar Energy systems.  The discussion focused on all the due diligence and prep work needed and what were some of the key considerations around designing and implementing a solar system. One of the discussion points was around solar storage or batteries.  What were the use cases for batteries and if they were a good investment and should you incorporate them into your design. Back in 2020 - the math around batteries said no - that you wouldn't be able to break even on the cost of a storage system over its normal warranty life of 10 years. So here we are three years later and so I figured it was time to revisit.   There are two primary uses cases for solar storage.    First is what's called peak offset or peak shifting.  This is a concept where you utilize stored solar generation to run your home during what many utilities call Peak Periods that are part of a general category of rate plans kno...
Read more

Journey to Solar - Part 1 - Understanding your usage and getting skinny

I manage a group of homes/ranches as a side hustle - and recently started down the path for one of my clients of researching the aspects of adding solar power to the home. The solar market has really matured in the last 5 - 10 years.  Prices for PV Panels has dropped considerably and there are a wide range of both DIY and One-Stop shop companies to choose from. For residential energy alternatives - especially here in AZ - solar seems to be the obvious choice and with the addition of storage capabilities like Tesla's PowerWall - you can seriously start to look at the potential of minimizing your reliance on the utility grid for energy.  To me the combination of Solar Generation plus battery storage is potentially very compelling. With that said - there is a lot of due diligence and additional expenditures in preparing for solar that I learned and will discuss here While you can go to many sites and just enter a monthly bill amount and have a tool spit out a system size and pric...
Read more

ASUS RT-AC68U Router & WDS - a nice solution for a large home.

I recently had a newer Asus RT-AC87U Router die.  The wireless chipset never seemed to work well and first the 5Ghz bands started to fail and then the 2.4Ghz failed leaving my 25 wireless device household high and dry. So after some due diligence I decided to replace with 2 of the older RT-AC68U and implement a Wireless Distribution System (WDS) configuration. In the past - I've mentioned an open source router OS called DD-WRT.  The Asus routers come pre-installed with their version of DD-WRT.  Asus does utilize their own UI overtop DD-wrt and overall I do not like nearly as much as the traditional UI - but core dd-wrt capabilities are there.   Additionally you can flash the RT-AC68 with native DD-WRT if your so inclined. In my previous configuration I was also using an older Linksys 4200 running dd-wrt configured in Client Bridge mode that allowed clients to connect to the Linksys as well as use some of the bands to connect back to the RT-AC87U. Whil...
Read more