My son expressed an interest in one for Christmas. I'm not really familiar with them. Why would you want one instead of a laptop and what are the pros and cons of these things?
Useless without an internet connection as they are "cloud books" graphics power is lacking... they just barely can stream 720p youtube videos. probably tons of apps in the google store but i haven't messed with it. My brother has a beta one, and it was fun to play with, but it is very limited, and its a paperweight without an internet connection. the graphics power may have improved but i dont keep that close tabs on it. What is he looking to do with it? surf the internet? for productivity it cant run microsoft office suite, and you cant "install" anything since it only has a small amount of physical disk space. I'd be more inclined to get a decent laptop instead, YMMV
I was curious about the Chromebook myself, if not that one, which would you pc guru's recommend? I was kinda intrigued by the Surface, any good?
I'm waiting for him to call me back so I can find out exactly what he wants it for. He's probably at work.
Chromebook is cool if you buy into all of Google's services...gmail for email, google docs for...docs, etc.
Go with a tablet of some sort. Ipad, Android, whatever. Chromebook is kinda cool and all, but it is useless for most things. If he wants a small light laptop the get him a netbook. I got my son one that is dual core, 250gb, and all. Much more usefull
Chromebooks aren't as bad as these guys are making them out to be. I've been in the beta program for a long long time and the last big update made a lot of good improvements. Lots of apps to install too... The guy saying they don't have a lot of storage is missing the point. It is a fast streamlined OS that is very small. You don't need 250gb in it. If you use google docs, you have a full set of your standard office applications that are compatible with the Microsoft version. No need to worry about antivirus programs, nearly instant on thanks to the ssd, extremely long battery life. 10 hours easy on mine and its gotta be two years old now. In the end it does come down to your needs though, it is not a gaming powerhouse, that's for sure. Chrome.google.com/webstore to see how much is available. Another good thing is if it breaks for whatever reason, you get another one and sign in, and it updates it based on your login and you've lost nothing... No personal settings, no docs, no apps, etc.
Back to life after almost a year. I'm thinking about getting my stepdaughter a chromebook. Her school uses Google Docs for most everything so I think it will work well. I don't want to get her a laptop for several reasons: viruses, complicated use, potential for loss of data (stored on hd instead of cloud), and she'll probably destroy it. Plus not having a huge hard drive will keep her from filling it full of a million duckface photos, etc. Who has recent experience with the latest versions?
i'm using it right now. i also dual boot to linux in it but mainly just use the chrome OS. it works just fine. motogp streams just fine and so do youtube videos. where it DOES lack is trying to play large movie files, avi files in particular. i've made plenty of spread sheets and made my current resume on it. it's wonderful for what it is. 10 hour battery life (6-8 if you use it A LOT) i've been using it for 6+ months. it's $250 bucks and worth every penny of it.
Also the lack of being able to put real applications on it is an issue. I can't put iTunes on it to update my phone. Even through Linux I can't because the arm processor won't run wine to run a windows program.
Function isn't necessarily a good thing. This kid could find a way to tear up a crowbar in a sandbox.
