Anyone have a Chromebook?

[swee'pea99]

My daughter's looking to get a laptop to take to university. Her main criteria are battery life, toughness and - probably most important - weight. I've suggested to her that she's probably best off looking at Chromebooks rather than full on laptops. They look good to me. (And they're shiny too!) Is there a downside?

 

[Drago]

My wife has one for social use. Slick, fast, switches on in seconds.

Downside. If you're using it for work everything is stored in the cloud on Google, so if your daughter using if for her studies she'd need a decent internet connection. Working offline round a friends house or on the train mat be problematic as a result. The Google suite of apps are ok and perfectly useable, but not as polished as the Office stuff she's probably used to.

Upside. If its lost or stolen, all her work is safely stored in cyberspace. There's no hard drive to wear out or fail. They switch on and are ready for action in less than 3 seconds cos there's no operating system requires booting to the memory - its already there. For general web browsing they're very sleek and swift.

 

[rich p]

I've no idea why but I sent mine back as it was incredibly slow. I tried all the recommended fixes but to no avail. Amazon even replaced it but the second one was the same. I bought a laptop instead.

Here's an example of the complaints on the web I saw at the time.

Resting setting & powerwash only delete everything on the chromebook.
I keep nothing saved on my chromebook and it is still EXTREMELY slow with only one tab open, the frustration it brings me is ridiculous... i bought this so i could surf the web fast as promised my google and this chromebook, it is honestly the slowest thing i have ever owned.
I don't even dare to try and watch a movie (say from Netflix or xfinity)on it yet alone try and surf facebook... yes even facebook runs very slow to load, even the google webpage google.com the most basic of website somthing the should have the fasted load time to any other website loads slow...

 

[Drago]

The Missus' one is an Asus when it flies. I use a bloody expensive Dell laptop for my SAR work and it kicks in in the nuts and steals its lunch money. I don't remember what make her previous one was, but that was also a hot rod in comparison to conventional hard drive based stuff.

Perhaps she's just been lucky?

 

[drummerbod]

We use a variety of these at work - everyone complains about them. My 7 year old laptop works faster and better so I use that.

 

[ianrauk]

I bought one for my 5yo for his homework, (it's sent online from his school), games, simple IT for him to learn etc.
They are very simple to use. Very quick starting too. Browsing is nice and quick Everything is saved to the cloud so the hard drive won't get stuffed full of crap and slow the computer down. No hard drive means less to break.
Nice computers imvho. Well worth the money.

 

[swee'pea99]

So, they're really fast, but slow. And they're great to use but so unusable that a 7 year old laptop is preferable.

Well, that's put me in the picture(s).

 

[albion]

http://chromebookvswindows.com/

That educates from an original Microsoft perpective, but I suggest you first check whether tha Uni has reommended/compulsory software that wint run on Chromebook.
The other thing to note is that whilst CB does not have endless updates Sync uses data negating some of that advantage.

Obviously, she is not flying with Chromebook but compare battery life data.

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks all - this is really helpful stuff. I'll fw a link so she can have a look. I don't have any idea, eg, whether her Chemistry course might involve fancy software that needs Windows.

 

[phil_hg_uk]

Depending on the computing power you need an HP Stream 11-d000na maybe worth looking at it only has a celeron CPU in it but it has a 32gb ssd drive so not much space but surprisingly nippy and can be had for around £179 and also available in pink they call it magenta but its pink, also it runs windows so you are not reliant on an internet connection like you are with a chromebook.

 

[Andrew_P]

the easiest way to explain them is that they are huge Android phones that can't make a phone call..

 

[Chris S]

I was going to get one but there didn't seem to be any software that would allow me to do a Remote Desktop Connection to my PC at work. I don't know if your daughter would need to log into the PCs at uni?

 

[Drago]

Certainly on the ASUS there's PCLink software for remote access.

 

[Chromatic]

Thanks all - this is really helpful stuff. I'll fw a link so she can have a look. I don't have any idea, eg, whether her Chemistry course might involve fancy software that needs Windows.

Being a Luddite I cannot comment on the original query but I would just like to say I'm pleased she's studying a proper subject.

 

[Roadhump]

I use a Toshiba CB30 - 102 Chromebook and I think it is great. I was persuaded to buy it instead of a Google Nexus tablet and glad I made the choice I did. It has 2 GB of RAM, but boots up much faster than my 4 GB RAM laptop and even than my 8 GB RAM desktop. It also has a 16 GB hard drive so whilst you can store a few files, it is primarily designed for cloud computing via your personal Google account.

I have read some Office files on it, but never made changes to any; as I am not particularly savvy in respect of techy stuff I use my other machines if I have to do that, but for stuff like general web browsing, internet banking, watching Netflix (casting to TV via Chromecast is a piece of cake), doing Amazon or eBay it is the first device I look for .
Having said all that, I don't think it would be a good choice for a university student to do their work on. The first issue for me is that most universities seem to want work submitted in Word or Excel formats, and whilst others may argue that you can get some type of software that makes using Office easy enough, as a Johnny Average non techy type, that seems to make things a bit more complicated than they have to be. The other issue for me is that the keyboard is somewhat simplified from a normal laptop, which would make writing long pieces of academic work a bit more awkward. I am sure these issues are not insurmountable, but having seen both my kids go through university in the past 5 years, and seen the type of work they do, and having used both types of device myself, I would rather just pay an extra £150 - £200 and get a good conventional laptop, which personally I feel would help them cope a bit better.