Hard Core Shopping: Best Laptop Buy For The Buck SSD ?

Gdetrailer wrote:

dieseltruckdriver wrote:
If you mainly do internet, maybe light word processing and spreadsheets a Chromebook would be perfect.
My mom has the first one I ever bought, and it still works like new. It has to be 5 or 6 years old now. Both my wife and I use our Chromebooks much more than the Windows 7 or 10 machines.

Edited to add:
You can work with spreadsheets and word processing without internet, and you can get by with a $200 to $300 computer that will work faster than Windows 10.
Just wanted to add that before someone says they don't work without internet.

Chromebooks are not a real substitute for all things "PC".

You do realize that a Chromebook is nothing more than a highly crippled Android OS?

Has very limited processing power, very limited on board RAM, has very limited onboard drive space, pretty much all of your "APPS" sit out on the "Cloud" not on your Chromebook, your "data files" sit out on the "Cloud", your printing sits out on the "Cloud"..

Want to install some PC software you have, NOPE, not going to happen on a Chromebook..

Can your Chromebook PRINT directly to a printer without the Internet? NOPE, not going to happen there.. Have to use an Internet printing app..

Can you plug in anything USB? Nope, not even close, some do, most do not.. The ones that might have a USB port, well most likely will not support say optical drives, printers or anything other than a flash drive..

Heck an Android phone has pretty much everything you need except for a bigger screen. But Mex WAS asking about a PC, not a wannabe pretend PC, a PC where you can install your own software LOCALLY, store all of your FILES locally, operate at 100% even without Internet.

Sure, it may be possible to do SOME very limited stuff on a Chromebook, but to REALLY do most anything it REALLY NEEDS 100% Internet connection, something that Mex does not have the luxury of.

The only thing the Chromebook has going is the cheap, cheap price, it really does not compare to a real Laptop running a Windows version of some sort for compatibility with the world..

If you want limits and be cheap then Chromebook is definitely your cup o tea..

:R
I deleted most of what I originally replied because it was getting too long.

You are right about the printing, I forgot about that, and should have mentioned that. Many of your other points are incorrect.

Standard USB is available on every Chromebook I have seen. Every USB device I have tried works the same as on a Windows machine. This includes keyboards, mice, and optical drives, I have several 1 and 2TB external drives that work the same as Windows.

No they can't run Windows software, that shouldn't even need to be said. Expecting them to is honestly ridiculous.

I stand by my original post, if all you need is offline Word or Excel compatible work and online surfing, a Chromebook CAN NOT BE BEAT for the price compared to a RAM hog Windows machine. 4 GB of RAM is more than enough for most casual users. Plus there are no moving parts inside a Chromebook to go bad, so they handle vibration much better, in my experience.