The Chromebook

Leisher
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Post by Leisher »

Article.

So it's a laptop, but more like a tablet...so it's a tabtop or laplet...
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TheCatt
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

We own 2 now. My daughter got one form us for Christmas. And I just bought the Samsung Chrombook Plus. The Plus is really nice for this type of device. Got it for abour $360 after coupons from Best Buy. For light web browsing, apps, etc, it works great and has a very decent hi-res screen for the price.

Kid can do her schoolwork on hers, and I can use it when I want something better than a tablet, but don't want to use my real laptop. Much cooler (temp wise) and much better battery life. The convertible modes work well, but a bit heavy for tablet mode at 2.4 lbs
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GORDON
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The Chromebook

Post by GORDON »

Got one for my kid as well, they use them at his school and if you don't have one then you have to use one of the community Chromebooks.... so you can't customize it and use your own apps on it, or whatever. So my kid uses his frequently.

They even used them in his computer programming club.
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TheCatt
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

Which did you get your kid? We got the Asus R13 first.
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The Chromebook

Post by GORDON »

I had to look it up but we got this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0188 ... ge_o02_s01

Which may not actually, technically, be a Chromebook. I don't know. But he uses it in lieu of one at school.
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TheCatt
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

Yeah, that one runs Windows :)

I've been using the Chromebook more. Not much I miss from using Windows for basic stuff (surfing, email, etc). Since so much of my work is moving to the cloud, will be interesting to see what it can do there.
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Leisher
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The Chromebook

Post by Leisher »

My oldest has one that she's used for school for two years now. The ones they give schools are cheap pieces of shit. From what I understand half of her entire grade has either gotten new ones or the ones they have are severely damaged.

I think the OS is very meh. It's absolutely passable, but it's nowhere near good enough to be a threat to Windows at this point.
“Every record been destroyed or falsified, books rewritten, pictures repainted, statues, street building renamed, every date altered. The process is continuing day by day. History stops. Nothing exists except endless present in which the Party is right.”
TheCatt
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

Leisher wrote: My oldest has one that she's used for school for two years now. The ones they give schools are cheap pieces of shit. From what I understand half of her entire grade has either gotten new ones or the ones they have are severely damaged.

I think the OS is very meh. It's absolutely passable, but it's nowhere near good enough to be a threat to Windows at this point.
The addition of Android apps on the OS has made it much better. It's not really intended to be a Windows-replacement... more like sufficient for most things.
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TheCatt
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

$400 seems to be a pretty solid price point for Chromebooks. We just upgraded the one I mentioned above (R13) from 4 years ago, with a $400 HP 2-in-1 (https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-2-in-1- ... Id=6407695 - $500, but $100 off with student discount, and free set of Sony NC bluetooth headphones).

It's very quick and responsive, with sufficient RAM (8GB) to open a bunch of tabs. My youngest, who inherited this one from the older kid a couple of years ago, is EXTREMELY happy with her upgrade.
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thibodeaux
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The Chromebook

Post by thibodeaux »

Acer makes some chromebooks around $250...what do you think about that? Too cheap?
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Post by TheCatt »

thibodeaux wrote: Acer makes some chromebooks around $250...what do you think about that? Too cheap?
The general consensus I saw was to avoid Celeron or Atom processors, if possible. I would try to get the 10th gen i3 (model 10110U or similar), those U chips just got refreshed, and are on the smaller die size, iirc.

This was the model I was going to buy had that HP not gone on sale for $400: https://smile.amazon.com/Lenovo-Chromeb ... 423&sr=8-3

Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5 13" Laptop, FHD (1920 x 1080) Touch Display, Intel Core i3-10110U Processor, 4GB DDR4 OnBoard RAM, 64GB SSD, Intel Integrated Graphics, Chrome OS, 82B80006UX, Graphite Grey
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thibodeaux
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The Chromebook

Post by thibodeaux »

I really have to fight my cheapskate urge here : ok thanks for the info!
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

Chromebooks are OOS everywhere for the under $500 ones.
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thibodeaux
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The Chromebook

Post by thibodeaux »

I decided to buy a crappy used one off Craigslist for $60. Partly because I am a Mac user and tbh I've kind of gotten used to the keyboard layout and keyboard shortcuts (btw, a preemptive fuck you too if you got a problem with that---Macs are for-real fantastic dev machines).

So, the crappy HP Chromebook. It's crappy, but it's not unusable. The left side ctl and alt keys are like double-wide, which is weird. I was able to swap/remap them, and my key combos are close to normal. The trackpad has slightly different dynamics that I could probably actually tune a bit more. And the screen is only 11" so it's pretty small.

However, it browses the web, and can play spotify, and do pretty much what I wanted it to do (it's my "burner" laptop for travel and, uh, viewing DTMan and other nsfw websites). I like it.
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The Chromebook

Post by TheCatt »

thibodeaux wrote: I decided to buy a crappy used one off Craigslist for $60. Partly because I am a Mac user and tbh I've kind of gotten used to the keyboard layout and keyboard shortcuts (btw, a preemptive fuck you too if you got a problem with that---Macs are for-real fantastic dev machines).

So, the crappy HP Chromebook. It's crappy, but it's not unusable. The left side ctl and alt keys are like double-wide, which is weird. I was able to swap/remap them, and my key combos are close to normal. The trackpad has slightly different dynamics that I could probably actually tune a bit more. And the screen is only 11" so it's pretty small.

However, it browses the web, and can play spotify, and do pretty much what I wanted it to do (it's my "burner" laptop for travel and, uh, viewing DTMan and other nsfw websites). I like it.
Ah, didn't realize what you were aiming for, thought maybe you were looking for the kids going back to school.
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thibodeaux
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The Chromebook

Post by thibodeaux »

Nah they all have their own laptops already.
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The Chromebook

Post by GORDON »

Well now I'm picturing Thib in a coffee shop writing his novel.
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thibodeaux
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The Chromebook

Post by thibodeaux »

Too little bang for the buck

I'm mining btc, bitch
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The Chromebook

Post by GORDON »

thibodeaux wrote: Too little bang for the buck

I'm mining btc, bitch
That reminded me of a thought I had the other day... if a limitation of bitcoin mining is that the cost of bitcoin has to be higher than your operating costs (electricity rates), then you'd make pure profit if you did it in a dorm room or military barracks where you didn't pay for the juice.

SInce I remember peeps used to get fired from their jobs for loading BTC miners on work PCs.
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