What Is the Point of Google's Chromebook Pixel? Google, as you've probably noticed, has become a hardware company. It's designing phones, tablets and even laptops. Its Chromebook laptop concept has some extremely compelling aspects. As I wrote in November, it's a fast, silent, light, beautiful laptop - for $250. The catch, of course, is that a Chromebook has no hard drive and very little storage; it's exclusively for online activities. It's great for Web, e-mail, YouTube and apps like Google Drive (free online word processor, spreadsheet and slide show programs). For $250, many people might find a fine value proposition in the Chromebook as a second computer. But what if it cost five times as much? That's the baffling news from Google's latest offering, the Chromebook Pixel. It's a high, high, high-end version of the earlier laptop that made so much sense at $250. What does the additional money buy you? Not much, really. The Pixel looks and feels better. It's made of metal - sleek, crisp-edged aluminum. The trackpad feels nicer. The keys light up in the dark, and there's a colorful light that comes on when you wake the Pixel or put it to sleep. The beautiful screen distinguishes itself twice - once because it has extremely high resolution (239 pixels an inch, slightly more than even Apple's MacBook Retina screens), and once because it's a touch screen. But why does it have a touch screen? Web sites aren't designed for finger operation - links are generally too small. So the addition of the touch screen is a little superfluous, and of course it adds thickness, weight and cost to the laptop. And it's a lot of weight: 3.3 pounds. For a stripped-down, online-only laptop, that's ridiculously heavy. Why would you give up a hard drive, DVD drive and a full complement of ports, if not because you wanted a superlight laptop? (Speaking of ports: $1,300 for a laptop that comes with USB 2.0 ports instead of the much superior USB 3? What is this, 2009?) There's also a $1,450 version of the Chromebook Pixel that includes a built-in 4G LTE modem, so that you can get online almost anywhere. That's a delicious luxury - if you're willing to pay $20 to $50 a month, or $10 a day, for the privilege. But in the end, the screamingly obvious argument against the Chromebook Pixel boils down to two words: MacBook Air. The Air costs $100 less. It weighs 12 percent less and has four times as much built-in storage, 128 gigabytes vs. the Chromebook's 32. Its battery lasts longer, six hours vs. the Chromebook's five. It's thinner. At the Air's hinge, it's one millimeter thicker, but it tapers down to almost nothing, so it feels much thinner than the Pixel, which is a solid, non-tapered block. Above all, the Air, or a similar ultralight Windows laptop, runs real desktop software - Photoshop, Quicken, iTunes, games - that the Chromebook can only dream about. If you're going to spend $1,300, why on earth would you buy a laptop that does nothing but surf the Web? At $250, the Chromebook is an easy recommendation as a homework computer or TV couch accessory. But at $1,300 or $1,450, the same concept just doesn't make much sense. The Chromebook Pixel is lovely, polished and just a little bit silly.