If you need an inexpensive laptop, look at a Chromebook

[Trackrig]

On a recent trip my laptop lost it's hard drive and I wasn't staying in any one location long enough to have it looked at. I called a couple of places and they wanted 7 - 10 days. I looked at buying a new laptop but didn't want to pay the 8.2% sales tax (Phoenix area) and I didn't have my discs with me to load programs like MS Office. I was going to be home in Alaska in several weeks where there isn't any sales tax, so I lived using my phone.

Anyway, when I got home a local computer shop only charged me $213 to put in a new 1T HD and that included labor. Since I had been looking at new laptops and wanting a back up unit from now on, I still wanted to buy something. The "something" that caught my attention were the Chrome books. I bought a Samsung Chrome book and so far it's been a perfect machine for emails and the internet. The local Best Buy matched Amazon's price of about $217 - you can't beat that and I didn't have to wait for it.

Because I use Gmail, about a year ago I accidently got Chrome on my Windows laptop. Since I didn't load it on purpose, I didn't realize what was going on and didn't know what Chrome even was since I didn't have any interest in it. Eventually I got it off of the laptop.

Because of the low cost, just about all of them are in the $2 - 300 range, I started looking at them as a back up unit. Chrome books have both advantages and disadvantages. And forgive me here for the items I miss as I've only owned mine for two weeks and am not a tech person.........

The Chrome book operates off of Wi-Fi only - it will not connect directly to the internet without going through Wi-Fi from the RV park, you home router, Starbucks, or you smart phone hotspot. And, your storage is on the cloud or an SD card.

NOTE: You cannot load any software onto a Chrome book - it is a locked or closed system. Chrome has it's own App site from which to download apps. Because Chrome books have a closed system, you don't need (that may be debatable) and can't load things like Norton anti virus software even if you wanted to. The closed system keeps the Chrome book secure. I believe Google has a $1.4M bounty out for anyone who can hack a Chrome book and no one has collected it yet. If you're using Windows XP and thinking about buying Windows 7 or 8, you can buy a new Chrome book for about the same cost.

And because it's closed, you aren't going to load MS Office, S&T or any other software on it either. There are Chrome apps to replace Excel and Word and of course there Google Mail and Calendar. All and all this is a big cost savings - have you looked at the cost of MS Office, Windows 7 or 8 and Norton 360 lately?

Pros
- Very lightweight, partially because the screen is 11.6", but it also doesn't have all of the hardware in it that a regular laptop has.
- Very good battery life, I've getting 7+ hours out of it
- The power supply is a lot lighter and smaller
- It has an HDMI port for plugging into a monitor or TV with an HDMI port, this actually then gives you dual monitors
- Has both a USB2 and 3 connection
- It will take an SD or mini-SD with an adaptor
- The volume control keys are better, they're separate keys so you don't have to also use the Control key
- Though the unit is smaller than my laptops, I have no problems using the keyboard and I have large hands. (I'm 6' 2") and the keyboard has a nice feel - it is not back lit.
- Start up time from pushing the button until it's ready to go is 15 seconds - have you timed your laptop lately?
- There's no cleaning up the Startup registry anymore
- You don't have to download MS's updates every month


Cons
- No optical disc drive, but then very few of the new laptops have them anymore
- The battery cannot be removed with a couple of buttons like my old laptops if I needed a second battery when on a long flight - but then none of the new laptops I looked at had changeable batteries either
- It doesn't have a dedicated Cap Lock key
- I haven't figured out how to scroll Page Up or Down
- I can't use my Western Digital Passport portable hard drives the way they are
- So far I haven't figured out if there's a GPS program for it, but I haven't really looked for one.
- The hard drive in it is very minimal (16gig) and is mostly taken up by Chrome. You have to store your info in the cloud though you can store it to a SD card (they're now up to 64GB for $47 at Costco) using an SD card adapter in one of the USB slots.
- Because of no storage except for an SD card, I wanted to use my Western Digital Passport hard drives. My understanding is I can make them work, but since I'm not a technical person, I think it's going to be a pain. Apparently I have to transfer the data from one HD to another, then reformat the empty hard drive and then put my info back on it. This is because Western Digital, like almost all of the other small hard drive makers, requires that the HD transfer some of the program to the laptop it's connected to. This doesn't work with a Chrome book because you can't load anything on it. The new formatting of the WD HD then won't transfer part of its program to the Chrome book. I'm also looking at a Seagate HD that creates its own hotspot and transfers the data wirelessly to a laptop without requiring any of its software to be loaded on the laptop. This wireless HD from Seagate is also neat because up to 7 people can access it at one time - think watching movies if everyone wants to watch a different movie at the same time.......
- For correcting typing errors, I found and use the backspace key, but so far haven't found a delete key to delete things in the going forward direction

Pros & Cons
- It will only print wirelessly

If you look at a Chrome book, I found out after I bought mine, there is one out there that has a larger internal hard drive, but the battery life is not as good. I think either Asus or Acer make it, but I haven't gone looking.

From now on, I'll travel with both my laptop and Chrome book. After using the CB for two weeks and starting to use the laptop again after getting it back yesterday, I think I'll be using the Chrome book more than the laptop.

Bottom line - this is a very good and inexpensive back up in case your laptop fails or someone else always seems to be using the laptop. You don't have to worry about spyware or being hacked. It seems high to me, but I read that 20% of new laptops being sold are running on Chrome. I thought I should learn more about it before I forced into it someday by Google.

Look at a Chrome book before you buy your next laptop so that you make an informed purchase.

Bill

[Trackrig]

Winterson wrote:



First I've heard of that - where did you come up with it. Do you use Chome?

Bill

[wintersun]

Google Chrome is the most vulnerable to viruses and adware and other malware of any operating system. It is worse than Windows which is really saying something.

There is the old saying of no free lunch and it definitely applies to computers. When I can buy a new Windows netbook for $300 there is too little to save and too much risk in terms of my personal information to go with the Chromebook.

It is a great gift for someone you dislike immensely and it will be one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

[Fizz]

strollin wrote:

wa8yxm wrote:
... the 500 Gig HD best price at the time was 350 bucks in a box with no supporting electonics, You'd need to add a shell putting it up to around 400 bucks. ...

Where the heck do you buy your hard drives? For 400 bucks I'm sure I could buy at least 8TB of storage, complete with enclosures!

External HD $85

[strollin]

wa8yxm wrote:
... the 500 Gig HD best price at the time was 350 bucks in a box with no supporting electonics, You'd need to add a shell putting it up to around 400 bucks. ...

Where the heck do you buy your hard drives? For 400 bucks I'm sure I could buy at least 8TB of storage, complete with enclosures!

[wa8yxm]

cleo43 wrote:

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, you can store files on a USB HDD, if you shun the 100G cloud drive from Google.

Well yes you can, but the 500 Gig HD best price at the time was 350 bucks in a box with no supporting electonics, You'd need to add a shell putting it up to around 400 bucks.

I got the Tosh computer complete with the 500 Gigs and Windows 8.1 for only 250, thats 100 LESS than the hd by itself.. So how much did the the computer cost? Well, basically it was free.. Since I can not use ALL of that 500 Gigs for storage.

And of the apps on it.. I paid for one.. The Firewall, Anti-virus, all the programs I run save the ones that came with the computer and Stardock's Modern Mix (About five bucks as I recall) which fixes what Microsoft broke.... All free. FOR LIFE.

I could blow doze away and slap Linux down but.....
1: Some of the software I run is not linux compliant and
2: Though I'm comfortable navigating through a linux environment I do not really know it all that well.


If all I needed was Storage+Internet access.. A ChromeBook might just be the answer.. But for assorted reasons I trust Google less than Microsoft... Far less.. Cause Google is .. well, a virus.

[strollin]

cleo43 wrote:
...
*** I just checked, there is OneDrive app for Android, but not Chrome.

Yes, you're right. You have to use the Chrome SkyDrive app which is really a OneDrive app that needs to be updated to the new name. 🙂

[cleo43]

Yes.
But reading PPS, Spreadsheets from someone who created them with Microsoft Office can be a problem.
Doc & Docx are OK though, and that is mostly what they (students) need.

*** I just checked, there is OneDrive app for Android, but not Chrome.

[strollin]

You should be able to use a free OneDrive account and the OneDrive app from the Chrome Store to create Power Point presentations. Google Drive can also create Presentations.

[cleo43]

wa8yxm wrote:
Gee... Visited Staples to get some ink for ye old printer.. Noticed the deal of the week. Came back a few days later (Pay day, still same week) and for 250+ tax walked out with a Toshiba Satellite C55D 4 Gigs Ram, USB 3.0, 500 Gigs of HDD. 15.6 screen (i think) and Widders 8.1. Chromebooks might have saved me a few bucks but the best price I could find at the time on a half gig HD was .. Well 250 bucks with the TOS wrapper.. or 350 for just the drive in a paper wrapper (Shipping box). So I got the cheaper drive.. The half gig drive is doing exactly what I wanted it for (Storing movies) and .. Well the computer was better than free.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, you can store files on a USB HDD, if you shun the 100G cloud drive from Google.
I just add bunches of apps on my Chromebook without costing me a penny. The investment on a Windows PC never stops at the purchase price.
I say for a student that on tight budget, a chromebook is perfect. The only thing it cannot do maybe some Power Point Presentation, but you can use Impress, if you install Chrubuntu on it. Actually students push the sale of Chromebooks leaps and bounds right now.
Microsoft worry

[strollin]

wa8yxm wrote:
Gee... Visited Staples to get some ink for ye old printer.. Noticed the deal of the week. Came back a few days later (Pay day, still same week) and for 250+ tax walked out with a Toshiba Satellite C55D 4 Gigs Ram, USB 3.0, 500 Gigs of HDD. 15.6 screen (i think) and Widders 8.1. Chromebooks might have saved me a few bucks but the best price I could find at the time on a half gig HD was .. Well 250 bucks with the TOS wrapper.. or 350 for just the drive in a paper wrapper (Shipping box). So I got the cheaper drive.. The half gig drive is doing exactly what I wanted it for (Storing movies) and .. Well the computer was better than free.

If I read this right, you paid $250 for a laptop in order to have a 500GB drive to store movies? I recently paid $160 for a 4TB drive to store movies and backups. A 500GB drive should run about $60, not $350, so I disagree that the computer was better than free, it cost you at about $190. 😉

[wa8yxm]

Gee... Visited Staples to get some ink for ye old printer.. Noticed the deal of the week. Came back a few days later (Pay day, still same week) and for 250+ tax walked out with a Toshiba Satellite C55D 4 Gigs Ram, USB 3.0, 500 Gigs of HDD. 15.6 screen (i think) and Widders 8.1. Chromebooks might have saved me a few bucks but the best price I could find at the time on a half gig HD was .. Well 250 bucks with the TOS wrapper.. or 350 for just the drive in a paper wrapper (Shipping box). So I got the cheaper drive.. The half gig drive is doing exactly what I wanted it for (Storing movies) and .. Well the computer was better than free.

[strollin]

1775 wrote:
... if you want to do anything with documents, spreadsheets, etc. you have to have wifi to be able to connect to Google Drive. Google designed the Chromebook around their online suite of apps. With a Chromebook you are working completely in the "cloud" that the computer/tablet industry now wants us to believe is safe and foolproof which it is far from. At least with an Android tablet there are a number of apps that allow you to work on the tablet with not internet connection at all.

Wow! There's some of that misinformation about Chromebooks that keeps getting bandied about. It's true that Chromebooks use Google Drive and can store documents in the cloud. However, the documents can be accessed while offline, viewed/created/edited or whatever, then when an internet connection is re-established, those docs will be synced with the cloud. You are NOT forced to work completely in the cloud.

If you check the Chrome app store, you'll find a whole section on offline apps. Here's a link to the offline app section: Chromebook Store offline apps
There are games, music & video players, Kindle Reader, Google Drive, Utilities, etc... that can all be used without an internet connection.

[1775]

Basically if you are using the internet and email only a Chromebook is a solution but as stated it cannot run Windows software and it also cannot run Android apps either. So if you want to do anything with documents, spreadsheets, etc. you have to have wifi to be able to connect to Google Drive. Google designed the Chromebook around their online suite of apps. With a Chromebook you are working completely in the "cloud" that the computer/tablet industry now wants us to believe is safe and foolproof which it is far from. At least with an Android tablet there are a number of apps that allow you to work on the tablet with not internet connection at all.

[cleo43]

Trackrig wrote:



Thanks, I'll take a look at this. I thought the updates would be pushed automatically to the Chrome book? More research.

Bill

Yes, updates are automatic at reboot, when there are any.