Chromebook for Christmas

[jgradyc]

I've been wanting to try the Chromebook for some time now and when Groupon recently offered the 11.6" Acer C710-2856 for $129, it was too good to pass up. After a three week wait, it finally showed up yesterday. Here's my take.

 

I was looking for a laptop I could take with me to coffee shops or to show pics to friends without having to use a tiny phone or a big, heavy laptop.  I also wanted to be able to edit docs and spreadsheets and read ebooks.

 

Keyboard, screen, resolution, and weight are all very good. It's a bit slower than I had hoped... not sure why. I usually have six or more tabs open at any one time... maybe that's it. The keyboard is surprisingly good for a $129 machine and the touchpad works fine. 

 

I'm going to hack it with crouton to run linux, but first I wanted to see how useful a browser OS can be. So far, I can read, create, and edit MS Office files with rollapp, but the fonts aren't as crisp as I would prefer. I've found an app to read ebooks offline (MagicScroll) which has an auto scroll feature that irritates the heck out of me. It's hard to keep it turned off. I haven't yet found a way to watch movies offline, but I'm sure there is a workaround out there somewhere. 

 

A Chromebook can't print directly to a printer unless it is a cloud-ready printer, but that's not an issue to me. I can send files to my other laptop via Google Docs or Dropbox or even email when I need to print something. 

 

One big unexpected plus was that even though this was a refurbished chromebook, I still got the 100GB free Google Drive storage. 

 

I'll probably load crouton today once I decide which flavor of Linux to go with, probably cinnamon wheezy or cinnamon raring. It's hard to see exactly what the differences are. The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour, most of which will be doing something else while the files are loading. 

Edited December 12, 2013 by jgradyc

[E4 No More]

Careful...don't get "Screwgled." :)

[jgradyc]

I just downloaded an avi and an mp4 video. Both ran fine offline. I'm not concerned about privacy issues. No one cares what I say anyway...  :pleased:  :pleased:

[Joseg]

Hmm, looks like a good candidate to install more memory, and a decent size ssd and install a full version of linux instead.. 

[tnguy]

I have the Samsung. It's fine for what I use it for but pretty locked down wrt upgrade-ability.

[jgradyc]

I'm installing linux using crouton tonight. My biggest surprise so far is that I can't find a decent ebook reader to read free ebooks offline with the Chrome OS. With crouton, I'll be able to hotkey between Chrome yet OS and linux with both running simutaneously.

 

Edited: I think the screwoogled ads are an indication that Microsoft is targeting this market and wants to keep Google from establishing a strong foothold in this new market. At present, Chrome OS or Windows for tablets have major limitations. My Chromebook with Linux is a harbinger of the future. It's a basic system for grandma to check Facebook and email and with a single hotkey, it transitions into a full-fledged Linux Mint or Ubuntu OS with full MS Office compatibility.

Edited December 12, 2013 by jgradyc

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Get thee behind me, Google.