Joe Doakes from Como Park emails with a request for some geek help:
I know some tech people read this blog. Anybody have an opinion on the Samsung Chrome Book, $249 at Staples?
On vacation, I use a Toshiba Excite 10” tablet to surf the web and check email and Facebook. No keyboard = frustrating. The Chrome Book would solve that without adding a Bluetooth keyboard to lug around.
At home, the grandkids use the tablet to play touch-screen games like Angry Birds but I don’t play them so touch-screen gaming is irrelevant to me.
Any other serious drawbacks I’m missing?
Joe Doakes
Might have to see if AM1280’s assistant ops manager Jon Osburn is tuned in…
I’ll weigh in on this topic.
Boiling in all down, the Chromebook will only use Google apps, which you have to be online to use. If you want to work offline, you have to do a lot of extra work, so it’s not really as versatile as a PC. The Engineers at my company laugh at people that buy one, thinking that they are getting a great PC for low bucks. Plus, anything tied to Google is giving info directly to the Feds and I, for one, refuse to use Google for anything. Here is a great review from PC Magazine that might help you.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413773,00.asp
I like a cheap PC with Xubuntu better. *shrug*
That’s the long and short of it, Joe: it’s tethered to a WiFi/Cat5 network (without some extra work) and it’s all Google. If you can live with that, I know people who enjoy theirs.
Lugging around a bluetooth keyboard? I have a Logitech Ultra-thin keyboard for my iPad2 and it is great. It’s light, attaches magnetically to the pad in the same way Apple’s smart covers do, and the back of it is the exact same color and material as the pad. When closed it clamshells to the pad for solid protection the way it looks has caused several people to ask if I was carrying an Airbook. The keys have a very nice feel and the battery lasts 6 months or more on a charge.
I use my iPad to take copious notes at work and in my personal life (I use EverNote), plus there are all the books and web browsing I do on the pad. Together, this keyboard and pad have really become my “helper brain” and they’re very light. The keyboard cost $99 two years ago.
One huge drawback – It’s a google…
Good feedback, people. Thanks.
So what do you recommend for a person who wants to surf the web and check e-mail, with a keyboard, for under $500?
.
Original Surface with a keyboard will run you under $500.
I’d have to say it completely depends on what you want to do with the system. Local connects on WiFi and limited usage is the Chromebook-way. I’d say it’s a less than optimal setup in general, but it’s very simple to use and the ecosystem is relatively safe.
Personally, I’d suggest you put a Crouton on that Samsung salad and have a fully fledged Ubuntu Linux on it in addition to ChromeOS. That’s far more versatile and lets you choose between safe, boring, privacy stealing, constantly connected ChromeOS and full blown Ubuntu Linux power. It would also serve as a nice intro to what you can do with Linux, too.
I bought a Samsung Chromebook from Amazon a few weeks ago, model XE303c12. As a Chromebook it uses google apps for a word processor, etc. The biggest drawback to this, other than privacy concerns and the need to be on a network, is that you can’t easily print from a Chromebook.
Battery time is fantastic, 6+ hours, and the Chromebook is very light, about 2.5 lbs. The battery is not removable, but it charges very fast. It has an ARM processor that is very quick compared to an Intel Atom processor. The Chromebook has no fan and it has a small SSDD. It is silent. The screen could be brighter, and the touchpad may take some getting used to.
I didn’t like the Chrome OS, so I put Crouton on it. Crouton is Ubuntu Precise in a chroot environment. The only limit the Samsung Chromebook has when running Crouton is that some of the power management stuff is difficult to configure. For example, I can’t turn screen blanking off w/o disabling the power manager completely. Other than that Crouton works great. I have access to standard Linux apps like openoffice, gnumeric, Eclipse for develpment, etc. Configuring the sound to work with Crouton is a bitch, I am not sure I have it right, yet.
Last summer I went to the mainland for two weeks. For internet connectivity I took a wifi-to-go cell network AP (Walmart, $70) and a Lenovo S12 netbook, and a B&N Nook. If I go to the mainland again this summer, W/O a doubt I will take the samsung Chromebook in place of both the Lenovo and the Nook. The only accessory I bought for the chromebook is a USB to internet dongle (WiFI use is forbidden in a few places I take the Chromebook). The Plugable USB2-E100 works out of the box.
Configuring the sound to work with Crouton is a bitch, I am not sure I have it right, yet.
That was the one reason I foresook Linux long enough to buy a Mac; I was trying to configure Ubuntu on a roll-your-own Wintel desktop to do multi-track recording. It all came down to configuring Jack. I can’t do Jack, as it were. When I saw an awesome deal on a Mac Mini, I ran with it.
Which ties in with my long-standing observation about Linux in general; it’s great for people who loooove tinkering with computers. I like producing things with computers; the end matters more than the means.
Which ties in with my long-standing observation about Linux in general; it’s great for people who loooove tinkering with computers.
Yep. For someone like me who’s done ‘nix for decades it’s not a load, but for most folks I don’t recommend it unless you’re trying to save a really old system and keep using it. In this case ChromeOS just isn’t very functional off-line and you need something like Crouton to get back to functional.
Personally, when you can get a refurbished i3 Dell Inspiron I15R-3521 with 500GB disk, 4 GB ram, for $399 I think Chromebooks just don’t make sense unless you absolutely need 6 hours of battery life and are willing to put in the work. Heck, when I’m on a trip I love having the big disk of the laptop to dump pictures on, as well as having a ton of movies to watch, songs to listen to, etc.
I love those Mac Minis, though. I got one for my dad, hooked it up to a 44″ TV and with his low-vision he absolutely raves about it.
I look at it this way: you’re going to pay one way or another. If you go the Linux way you pay in your time and effort but you might learn something about computers along the way if that interests you. Otherwise, spend the money up front and get on with your life. Some of us have already spent that up front cost…
To fill the gaps in the Crouton/Chromebook capabilities I bought a refurbed Lenovo X100e for < $200. It is a lightweight, small-footprint, low power laptop. It does some things very well that the Chromebook does not do, but it is noisy, it runs hot, and the battery life is terrible (about 90 minutes with the 3-cell battery).
I believe that many of the sound issues with linux and netbooks are caused by the integration of an HDMI port into the sound system. I have seen both win 7 and Linux machines where a "no sound!" problem was caused by an obscure option that routed sound to the unused hdmi port. The sound system should be able to sense when hdmi is connected and when it is not connected. Often the sound system can't, or won't, do this. It seems like a problem that is due to feature bloat. It makes marketing sense to have a tiny laptop system with a million sound options, but in reality most people want a laptop sound system that just works reliably with head phones or onboard speakers.
Stop listening to Apple fanboys. Just get a Surface. It fits all the requirements you described without any of the hassle associated with all other options. Unless of course you are an MS hater like all the other Apple fanboy hypocrites.
That is the problem with all the options. It’s Microsoft, or it’s Apple, or it’s Google, or it’s Linux. Pick your poison.
You could just spend $230 and get this:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/429702/Aspire_E1-510-2602_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Clarinet_Black
with Windows 8.1 on it. It would probably work great. I would replace the drive with an SSD and install some Linux, but I like that sort of thing.
JPA-
I think that many on the Left believe that Jobs was a successful entrepreneur and businessman because he was a genius at design.
Oh, foolish, foolish liberals. Jobs made money the old fashioned way. He created a vertically constructed, hierarchial organization that relied on leveraging intellectual property rights and on abusing his employees — said abuse including immoral and possibly illegal wage fixing.
I’ve been using an Acer Aspire netbook as my primary computer for a couple of years. It was cheap, has a decent size harddrive, and works just fine for web-surfing, email, and organizing the many podcasts and audiobooks I listen to. I occasionally wish I had a dvd drive, but that would be a bigger clumsier unit.
All of my personal machines are Linux Ubuntu or Mint. We do have one old laptop with Microsoft XP on it to use Quick books, but we never, ever go online with it.
Besides being a great platform, Linux has the advantage of getting moonbat nerds to work for you without having to give them any cash they might use to support their asshat political action groups.
No, PM, Jobs followed a Liberat path of brainwashing the sheep. How else would you explain people wanting to buy an overpriced, underpowered, undersecured, horsehhit quality piece of eye candy. And buy a new model year after year due to withholding of features? Brainwashed sheep (BS) will do anything for their master – ingenious and superior marketing, but not the product. And these premiums BS shelling out are subsidizing Apple products in screwools (oh no, not ties to Big Education there, no sirree Mingo!), creating more brainless brainwashed Apple fanboy sheeps. Heckuva template there for success! You wanna be a sheep – go right ahead, it is (still) a free country. But I don’t want to hear your brainless twaddle about how MS is stifling the competition, how closed their architecture is, how monopolistic they are… Nobody in the industy is more closed-shop than Apple. Nobody. Apple fanboy hypocrisy is staggering…
I never should have asked computer techs for opinion, I can’t even understand the answer!
I decided not to buy the chrome because the rap on them is screens crack too easily. That won’t work with grandkids. thanks for your help, I appreciate the feedback