Chromebooks

[Ms Tigger]

I need to think about replacing my old laptop in the near future and was considering a Chromebook. Has anyone had any experience with these, upsides, downsides etc? I mainly use my laptop for listening to music, storing pics and music, emails, stuff I need to do on t'interweb, youtube etc, so will need to be able to do the same on a Chromebook.

[Eindhoven]

No need to do such a thing. Consider upgrading your old laptop or just buy an inexpensive laptop with a solid state drive of 128 GB minimum.

 

Unless you want to utilise Android applications on a laptop, there is no reason to limit yourself to the Chrome OS and the cheapest hardware. I would not buy a laptop/Chromebook that uses an SD Card for storage.

 

Plus with a ChromeBook; Google Drive is considered your storage. No Internet; no access....unless you download the whole thing to the ChromeBook...if there is space. My opinion? Don't.

[Windynoi]

I've been using a Chromebook for about 4 years. It can do everything you mention in your post. They have plenty of onboard storage which can be expanded with an ad card. You don't need to be connected to the internet all the time for a Chromebook to work, like a lot of people believe.

Very fast to open/shut down, OS is kept up to date and secure by quick and easy downloads.

I'm very happy and will never go back to a normal laptop.

[Eindhoven]

32 minutes ago, Windynoi said:

I've been using a Chromebook for about 4 years. It can do everything you mention in your post. They have plenty of onboard storage which can be expanded with an ad card. You don't need to be connected to the internet all the time for a Chromebook to work, like a lot of people believe.

Very fast to open/shut down, OS is kept up to date and secure by quick and easy downloads.

I'm very happy and will never go back to a normal laptop.

 

so just like Windows. You are comparing new with old. Your old Windows laptop had an old style spinning magnetic drive; technology from decades ago.

 

Modern laptops, like Chromebooks, use solid state storage. So the problems of yesteryear are gone.

Chromebooks are usually recommended by people who have transitioned from old style magnetic spinning disc storage drives and are amazed by the speed difference.

Now Windows laptop are just as fast, because most are now sold with SSD and they are far more versatile. You can use all of the Google stuff and more. So why limit yourself?

I am using a more than ten year old laptop; I took out the old HDD and replaced it with a solid state drive. Now it is quick to open and shut down and the OS is kept up to date and secure with quick and easy downloads.

Chromebooks were sold on the basis that the OS was smaller and lighter than Windows. So they could sell them with cheap and nasty hardware and an SD card for storage(called eMMC but really just an SD card) In fact it predates SD cards. It's usually used in mobile phones.

So no, I would not buy a Chromebook, unless it was very very cheap and I wanted to use Android applications. 

If I wanted to use the Chrome OS(Chromium), I can even install it on my old laptop. Cannot the other way around. 

Chromebooks are always going to have their fans, for the reasons I described. But no one is going to transition from a modern Windows laptop with super-fast PCI-e solid state drives capable of transfers of 3000 MB/s and more, to a Chromebook with an eMMC drive capable of perhaps 100 MB/s.

It comes down mostly to cost considerations in the end. If the Chromebook is super cheap and it does the job, then maybe. 

But I have 80 GB of music on this laptop alone. Where would that go on a Chromebook?

 

The transformation of normal laptops with solid state drives is the reason why Chromebooks now have the gimmick of being able to use Android applications. Because the old reasons for buying a Chromebook have been eliminated.

 

You try to stop Google tracking your every move on a Chromebook. Cannot.

 

You can, a lot more successfully, on a normal laptop.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Eindhoven

[Greenwich Boy]

I am a computer dummy. I have a tablet that I use for email, banking and pretty much anything that requires a password.

I have a chromebook to stream TV, live sports from sites which may not be considered completely legal. It is fast, the picture is great and works for me. It seems to be bullet proof around viruses. Others may understand the technicals better but it works for me.

[Eindhoven]

4 minutes ago, Greenwich Boy said:

I am a computer dummy. I have a tablet that I use for email, banking and pretty much anything that requires a password.

I have a chromebook to stream TV, live sports from sites which may not be considered completely legal. It is fast, the picture is great and works for me. It seems to be bullet proof around viruses. Others may understand the technicals better but it works for me.

 

 

So just like a modern Windows laptop but less versatile.

 

Look at Lenovo's blurb for their Chromebooks:

 

Quote

• Long battery life: The minimalistic Chrome OS and absence of a typical spinning hard drive means unplugged times can be longer on a Chromebook.
• Optimized for Google apps: If you already rely on Google's popular apps such as Calendar and Gmail, the Chrome OS is optimized for using them conveniently.
• Fast boot times: With an OS that's intentionally minimalistic and data stored on a solid state drive, a Chromebook has less to accomplish when booting up, so it's ready to use much faster.
• Browser-based simplicity: If you can use a web browser, you can use a Chromebook, since it's primary user interface is the Chrome browser.
• Extremely thin and light: With fewer bulky internal components, Chromebooks are among the thinnest, lightest PC devices available today.

 

 

All of the things I wrote earlier. Sold on the basis that old style laptops had old technology spinning disc drives that were very slow and made the Windows experience somewhat painful.

 

I haven't had anything like a virus on my Windows laptop for a long as I can remember.

Browsers themselves block a lot of the things that you used to see on laptops in the old days.

 

Modern laptops now have exactly the same attributes. Long battery life, thin and light, can also use just a Browser if you wish, a lot faster with SSD.

 

Picture is also great on a normal laptop. Picture isn't great on a Chromebook with a not great screen. It's all the same, other than Chromebooks having cheaper and nastier hardware because they are built down to a price...unless you buy a premium model, which then defeats the object.

 

[Eindhoven]

https://www.chrmbook.com/no-wifi-2/

 

You can read some of the comments there. 

[Eindhoven]

In addition, now that Windows 11 will have the ability to run Android application, even that advantage will be slipping away from Chromebooks. It remains to be seen if Google allows it's Play Store on the Microsoft platform. 

 

[Ms Tigger]

Thanks for all the comments people, whether they be positive or negative they're appreciated, thank you????