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¿Should You Buy Your First Chromebook?

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Vince

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I finally found my first Chromebook, made sure that I had a seven-day return guarantee, and got to work.


When I plugged it in and turned it on, it asked me what language I wanted. Choosing English was easy. Unlike Windows, there is only one Chrome Operating System. Chromebooks cannot refuse updates, so they all have the same OS.


Then it asked me what language keyboard I wanted. Bought in Mexico, it had a Spanish keyboard, so I chose that.


Then it scanned all available Wi-Fi and asked which one I wanted. I typed in the password on our modem, and I was online.


It then asked me to sign in to my Google account. I had already gone to Google.com on my Windows 10 machine and set up a free account. If you don’t have one, Chrome will help you set one up.


That’s it. I was online with the Chrome Operating System.

To be continued...
 
Part 2


Chrome has a Chrome icon in the bottom left part of the screen. Remember that ¨Chrome¨ refers to both the operating system and the internet browser. A Chrome toolbar appeared on top with a link to my Firefox bookmarks from my Win 10 machine. Chrome easily took me to Facebook and other sites, although I had to sign into all of them the first time. (This is normal for any new computer or OS).

With the standard two gigs of RAM and a quad-core ARM chip, my Chromebook is THE cheapest Chromebook available today ($150 US). Yet it rapidly flipped pages, opened tabs, played Christian music from Youtube, and ran multiple tabs with no problem.

When I added bookmarks to Chrome, they appeared on a toolbar at the top and were easy to find.
 
Part 3


There is a ¨magnifying glass¨ icon in the bottom left corner of the screen, and an identical key on the keyboard. This takes you to your list of Chrome apps, including a link to the Chrome Store. I found hundreds of free apps, including a pretty good Solitaire game. I installed some diagnostic tools, games, and word processing tools with no problems. The ¨Bible App¨ has always been a disappointment to me, but it was the best they had.


I am typing this post on Google Docs, which works as well as any free Windows word processor.


And yes, every app that I installed works fine offline.
 
Part 4

Okay, I was having fun with my new Chromebook, but we have Mexican kids from our church, an orphanage,and the neighborhood come over in the evenings to play and do homework on our three laptops. How would they like Chrome?

Using my poor Spanish, I pointed to the icons for the internet, Facebook, and Youtube. Despite the small screen, they like it because it is faster than my two Windows 10 laptops. And despite never having seen a Chromebook before, and despite the fact that my WIndows 10 laptops use Firefox, (They had never used the Chrome browser before), they immediately got to work with no problems.

Folks, Chrome is that easy.
 
I have been some time now trying to convince folks that Ubuntu, Mint, Red Hat, Fedora, Linux Puppy and now it looks as though I can safely add Chrome to my list as having an almost flat learning curve for windoze users. And it was almost impossible for me, as a Windows Tech to comprehend why Linux Techs spelled Windows as windoze. The first time I dual booted a Desk Top I could not believe the difference in the speed difference of everything between the speed of everything on the same machine. My present Quad Core AMD APU (Accelerated Processor Unit) is a 1.6 gig and every time a new person see it run with Ubuntu they want to know the speed of my processor and when I explain that it is an all in one chip running at 1,6 gig they cannot believe it. And if I open the box and they see the single 30 mm fan over the processor and no Box Fans in or out they are always floored.

And when they see my power supply is an Inline 60 Watt Lap Top Power Supply, they are usually asking, "How can that be?" Oh, and if I do for them what I never do anymore, and I fire it on Windows 10, it is so difficult to sit still and wait, for me and for them. You should be pleasantly surprised to find that if one of the youngsters unplugs or holds the power switch to turn it off, the Linux Kernal does not care and is never, never injured.

Happy Computing brother.
 
Folks, what Bill is saying is true. It takes my Windows 10 desktop (upgraded from Windows 7) a minute and a half to boot up. My Chromebook takes about two seconds.


Part 5

Understanding Chrome

Google invented the Chrome internet browser, which in April 2016 passed Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser. Then they invented the Chrome Operating System, whose only function was to go online with the Chrome browser. Then they invented Chromebooks, whose only function is to run the Chrome Operating System.

Chromebooks have improved and can now work offline. They can do serious work and play low-ĺevel and mid-level games. They go on the internet better, faster, cheaper, and safer than Windows.

Chrome does less than Windows offline, but online, Chrome is the champ.
 
Folks, what Bill is saying is true. It takes my Windows 10 desktop (upgraded from Windows 7) a minute and a half to boot up. My Chromebook takes about two seconds.
And in truth, windoze no longer boot up. It awakens from Hybernation because they cannot fix the several minute boot time because they have built the system on the disease ridden Registry. Does that leave windoze open to Black Hat Hackers, there are multiple reports of pictures of young ladies discovering nude or partially nude pictures of them. taken through the cam lens of their Laptop or Desktop... after they had left it sit with the power turned off.
 
Part 6 Peripherals

I can’t stand touchpads, but the one attached to my keyboard works well.

You can attach the following peripherals form both Windows and Macs to a Chromebook:
  1. Mouse. The cheap Windows mouse that I attached works great and does the same things with its buttons that it does on Windows.

  2. Monitor.

  3. Thumb drive. However, it can only use Chrome documents and programs off the thumb drive, not Windows or Mac programs. You can convert documents to PDF files and transfer them to other machines.

  4. Speakers. Would you believe it? The speakers on this cheap Chromebook of mine work great! I’m listening to George Beverly Shea right now. But you can attach external speakers if you want.

  5. Earphones

But you cannot attach:

  1. A printer. Documents have to be sent over the internet to a Windows or Mac computer with a printer. You can write on the internet and you can cut and paste Google docs (like this one) onto websites. You can convert Google docs to PDF files and transfer them with a thumb drive.

  2. Optical drive (external DVD player). A few newer, more powerful Chromebooks can have an external optical drive, but can only read Chrome documents and programs off it.
 
Part 6 Peripherals

I can’t stand touchpads, but the one attached to my keyboard works well.

You can attach the following peripherals form both Windows and Macs to a Chromebook:
  1. Mouse. The cheap Windows mouse that I attached works great and does the same things with its buttons that it does on Windows.

  2. Monitor.

  3. Thumb drive. However, it can only use Chrome documents and programs off the thumb drive, not Windows or Mac programs. You can convert documents to PDF files and transfer them to other machines.

  4. Speakers. Would you believe it? The speakers on this cheap Chromebook of mine work great! I’m listening to George Beverly Shea right now. But you can attach external speakers if you want.

  5. Earphones

But you cannot attach:

  1. A printer. Documents have to be sent over the internet to a Windows or Mac computer with a printer. You can write on the internet and you can cut and paste Google docs (like this one) onto websites. You can convert Google docs to PDF files and transfer them with a thumb drive.

  2. Optical drive (external DVD player). A few newer, more powerful Chromebooks can have an external optical drive, but can only read Chrome documents and programs off it.
Good morning Vince,
I recall as you brought the Chromebooks up, looking and finding they have a feature on the latter models to use a switch and then boot from and install another Nix system, does your's have that ability? And if not can I have the model number to run through the Linux forums for some answers to assist you?

I know in Ubuntu it appears the drivers are unlimited and the system auto detects and configures the attached printers on install. And for the benefit of other readers, every nix system I have tested comes with ntfs3 installed making all the Windows files and disk space available for use in the Nix Mode.
 
Bill, I have a Haier Chromebook 11. I cannot find any switch for dual/booting. Because it does not have a Pentium (Celeron) chip, it probably won't run Ubuntu too well.
But cheer up! Tomorrow I pick up my Ubuntu flash drive and hopefully I will be running Ubuntu on my Windows desktop tomorrow evening.
 
Bill, I have a Haier Chromebook 11. I cannot find any switch for dual/booting. Because it does not have a Pentium (Celeron) chip, it probably won't run Ubuntu too well.
But cheer up! Tomorrow I pick up my Ubuntu flash drive and hopefully I will be running Ubuntu on my Windows desktop tomorrow evening.
I have a query posted at linuxforums.org about possible experiences and looking at the specs on you chip I find it has four Cortex cores and is an ARM Processor type, the same as my latest toy, a Raspberry Pi and it runs linux very well only my processor is two points slower than your with mine at 1.6 and also a quad core.
 
Part 7 The Free Chrome Store

Offering far less than the Windows Store, the Chrome Store did have some very simple apps for running its camera. The kids enjoy making movies of themselves with comical effects added.

They had apps for analyzing your Chromebook and describing its hardware, but nothing for monitoring the internal temperature.

The kids found Minecraft and enjoy playing it.

I actually found some puzzle games that I enjoy.

Two poorly-designed financial programs wanted too much private information.

I was not interested in the usual collection of health, news, and sports apps, but they have them.
 
Part 7 The Free Chrome Store

Offering far less than the Windows Store, the Chrome Store did have some very simple apps for running its camera. The kids enjoy making movies of themselves with comical effects added.

They had apps for analyzing your Chromebook and describing its hardware, but nothing for monitoring the internal temperature.

The kids found Minecraft and enjoy playing it.

I actually found some puzzle games that I enjoy.

Two poorly-designed financial programs wanted too much private information.

I was not interested in the usual collection of health, news, and sports apps, but they have them.
Chrome has great need to catch up. Ubuntu has better than 40,ooo free packages. But considering the OS is originally, I believe the yare working on interfacing gto allow more Nix apps to run, we'll see but from what I've been reading, it looks to be going that way.
 
Part 8 What model should you buy?

Folks, this obviously comes down to “What do you want to do?”

My blazing fast Haier Chromebook 11 is THE cheapest Chromebook on the market. But its tiny 11” non-touch screen helps explain its speed.

Google is setting up Chromebooks to run Android apps. Everything I find on the web states that Android apps are better than Chrome apps but most of them need a touchscreen. Designed for smartphones, Android has expanded into a great series of tablets, so you would probably want a “2-in-1” device that allows the keyboard to swing out of the way to form a tablet.

The standard 16 gig hard drive makes it difficult to successfully run Linux as an alternate operating system. Linux is free, easy to install on a Chromebook, and opens up a lot of possibilities. But I recommend at least a 32 gig hard drive if you want to run Linux.

Surprisingly, the two gigs of RAM isn’t a problem. Even with a larger touchscreen a dual-core Celeron chip is more powerful that the quad-core ARM chip that I have. Everything I’ve found states that 4 gigs of RAM shows no improvement.
 
I received advice from the LinuxForums and it was that except it is specifically one of the latest generation, set up for two OS Systems, not to try it with yours.
 
I received advice from the LinuxForums and it was that except it is specifically one of the latest generation, set up for two OS Systems, not to try it with yours.

Agreed, Bill. I am enjoying using Ubuntu from a flash drive, and frustrated to learn that I have to actually install it in order to save my downloads. But that-s on my Windows desktop. I don't think that my tiny Chromebook can handle it.
 
Agreed, Bill. I am enjoying using Ubuntu from a flash drive, and frustrated to learn that I have to actually install it in order to save my downloads. But that-s on my Windows desktop. I don't think that my tiny Chromebook can handle it.
What size HDD on your Windows unit?
 
Bill, I'm kicking this one over to the Ubuntu thread. I'm collecting advice before I try to install Ubuntu.

I understand Chrome and Windows pretty well. I'm new at Ubuntu, however.
 
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