ChromeBook

[Andrew1972]

I am have been pleasantly surprised how well a $110 computer after some Black Friday stuff is. We purchased a Lenovo 100S Chromebook with 2GB ram and 16GB SSD for daughters bday. It works amazingly well on the web. Cold boot is 2-3 seconds and normal sleep is near instant. Honestly faster then a iOs. It blows any PC with away because no BIOS stuff loading in front.

The keyboard does feels cheap/works well and 11" screen is low-mid grade but what a useful 2 lb computer.

My daughter uses it for school work as smartly the school is using these over the expensive iPads. Battery life is really 8ish hours. My wife uses a lot to work where a keyboard makes more sense. The nice thing about this is for $110 we don't worry a lot about it. We tend to bring along and use our iPhone hot spot to use it briefly.

 

[Hokiefyd]

I use our 6 or 8 year old Samsung Series 3 every day. Love that little thing. ARM processor -- nothing inside moves (fanless). The entire thing is solid state. Our Dell XPS 12 with Windows 10 boots and wakes as fast as our older Chromebook does, but it's the only traditional PC we own that can touch it from that aspect.

 

[kschachn]

I bought my wife a Chromebook a year ago and she uses it constantly. It's good for about 90% of what anyone wants to do on a computer, especially for general web browsing and stuff. She's gotten pretty proficient at Google Sheets and Docs once you learn the things you need to know vs. Word and Excel.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Does a Chromebook have access to all the same apps as any Android device? Or is there a separate app store for Chromebook?

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: kschachn
She's gotten pretty proficient at Google Sheets and Docs once you learn the things you need to know vs. Word and Excel.


I even use ours with Word and Excel. I keep our often-used documents on a Microsoft OneDrive account, and use the Word and Excel web apps to create and edit files -- it's completely free! Another benefit is all of my PCs, with local copies of Office, have all of those files always sync'd up in the local OneDrive folder automatically. It really works like a charm. I do like it a lot better than Google Drive, which I used to use extensively.

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Does a Chromebook have access to all the same apps as any Android device? Or is there a separate app store for Chromebook?


There is a separate store for Chrome apps since, in most cases, they're really just extensions to the Chrome browser. There has long been talk of Google trying to harmonize Chrome OS and Android. I think it's difficult because they're conceptually two different things. I think both platforms have individual pros and cons. But, no, Android apps as a general rule can't be "installed" on a Chromebook. I think there are some workarounds and exceptions to that rule, though.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

One of my favorite computers is a netbook from 2009. With the 9 cell battery and SSD, it will go all day on a charge!

It's just slow ... because Intel Atom.

 

[SrDriver]

I have a 11.5 and 14 inch Chromebook and a HP Chromebox for home use. I added 2 gigs of RAM to the Chromebox and it works great. I have found that it meets my needs. Still have a Windows 10 computer at home but don't use it much anymore.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
It's just slow ... because Intel Atom.

I have one of these, too. Running win xp and traditional HDD, it's become painfully slow. I bet throwing an SSD in it and installing Mint would help revive it though.

 

[Alfred_B]

No need for investing in SSD on such an old device, Mint will make it run properly. I revived an old laptop with Pentium 4 that became usable after installing Mint instead of Windows XP.

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Does a Chromebook have access to all the same apps as any Android device? Or is there a separate app store for Chromebook?


It runs "apps" within Chrome only. Nothing to do with Android, it runs distro of linux underneath.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Miller88
It's just slow ... because Intel Atom.

I have one of these, too. Running win xp and traditional HDD, it's become painfully slow. I bet throwing an SSD in it and installing Mint would help revive it though.


Oddly enough, it works better and gets better battery life on Windows 7 than in Mint. It can't do youtube videos in Mint.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Miller88
It's just slow ... because Intel Atom.

I have one of these, too. Running win xp and traditional HDD, it's become painfully slow. I bet throwing an SSD in it and installing Mint would help revive it though.


Oddly enough, it works better and gets better battery life on Windows 7 than in Mint. It can't do youtube videos in Mint.


Because of software, or because of hardware? Is it lack of a plug-in or just not enough horsepower? If you install Google Chrome (not open source) on it, you should be able to view anything on YouTube.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Miller88
It's just slow ... because Intel Atom.

I have one of these, too. Running win xp and traditional HDD, it's become painfully slow. I bet throwing an SSD in it and installing Mint would help revive it though.


Oddly enough, it works better and gets better battery life on Windows 7 than in Mint. It can't do youtube videos in Mint.


Because of software, or because of hardware? Is it lack of a plug-in or just not enough horsepower? If you install Google Chrome (not open source) on it, you should be able to view anything on YouTube.


Choppy playback. Doesn't seem to be a plugin issue. Just seems that Windows has better drivers for the chipset.

 

[CarlShirleys]

I believe Chromebook is a Tablet PC, and I found it easy to use. It is much faster especially the specifications of the Chromebook I bought is higher than the usual PC. It made me buy it because of the good reviews I read at http://www.laptoprunner.com/. It's really worth a penny. I love using it until this moment.