Smokybob's Chromebook Pixel insights

by: +Mauro Solcia (Smokybob)

I've been using the Chromebook Pixel for a month now, not 100% of the time I'm on the PC, but mostly every evening: and I've found out that the interface of the whole system is a lot more distraction free than using a Win7 pc to do the same things.

The notifications are quieter, less intruding and I still see them all.

The videos are fantastic, but we the upper and lower black bands are a little annoying (V2 16:10 please?).

The touchscreen is not one of the things I use the most, but it's really handy when I have to jump around a lot of links in blog posts used as sources for my own (about that.... I need to post this quickly and get back to work :-P).

Still a little bit short on the development side, but as I'm mostly connected to the Interweb, there are a lot of great online IDE and the latest one I'm trying is +Codenvy  and I'm really impressed of how well it's working: a packaged app would be good with online functions (like deploy and such) enabled only when needed, but the core coding ones available even offline.

Google Drive, AppScript, Calendar (fixed it XD) and Gmail are great; G+ and Google Play are working even better than on my Win7 pc that is more powerful.

The audio is awesome but the volume is a bit strange... seem like the first 80% is fine tuning than it's like "What the hell you want to kill your ears, so I'll add 20db every step"

The brightness is astonishing, it's a little bit disturbing that every time you turn it on or plug the power in it goes to 100% and normally blind you for a couple of seconds if you are in a dark room (I like to write at night within dark rooms :-P).