chromebooks are they ok ?

jackel

Hi there - Don't know if I'm allowed to ask this here - sorry if I'm out of order but as a none tech. who needs a new "computer" and looked for the cheapest way to access the internet with as little hassle as possible, we looked at Chromebooks. Before we decide I really would like to know what folks think of them. Above all are they really simple to use ?

Hope you can help, thanks in advance. jac.xx

armyknife

They're a polished product, I don't think they'll lose their lustre.

topsales

I have a Chromebook - really easy to use especially if all you really want to do is access the internet. I have had various PC's over the years and find the Chromebook great as it boots up really quickly, updates very easily and is all round simple to use - I am not very technical either!

terra_ferma

The main issues is that you are totally in the hands of Google and without internet access they are useless. No choice of software either.
At least the last time I looked at them.

jackel

Hi Armyknife,Topsales and Terra-Ferma -Thankyou all so much for your answers to my enquires about chromebook. Really appreciate your comements. jac.xx

issey

I have a Chromebook for internet browsing and doing work in Google docs and Google sheets. As long as you know the Chromebooks limitations and it can do what you want it to do then buy one/. it updates automatically and its performance never slows.

I would look at when support for the Chromebook stops before choosing which model you buy.

I have the Samsung series 3 Chromebook, its light, thin and looks good for the £180 i payed for it.

almillar

and without internet access they are useless

This is very much out of date. They can use local storage now and can do anything offline (write an email for example) that doens't require the net.

John259

There used to be a problem with printers on Chromebooks, meaning (I think) that you either had to print via a Windows PC or buy a special printer. Does anyone know if the situation has changed now?

The other obvious problem is small screen sizes, mostly 11" with a few 13" but AFAIK nothing bigger.

However, I like the concept and suspect that Chromebooks might become the standard method of computer usage before long as the migration from all things Microsoft is being hastened by Windows 8.

myhooose

In our house we bought a chrome book and a windows I7 laptop around the same time.

Initial setup and updating on the chromebook took a couple of minutes.
Initial setup and updating on the windows laptop took a few hours.

For general day to day stuff, I use the chrome book, and only use the laptop when I need to use a particular piece of windows software or play minecraft with my Son.

I have a cloud enabled printer that cost £50 which allows me to print from the chromebook.

AshleyPomeroy

John259 wrote: »

There used to be a problem with printers on Chromebooks, meaning (I think) that you either had to print via a Windows PC or buy a special printer. Does anyone know if the situation has changed now?

As I understand it you have to use Google's Cloud Printing service, e.g. anything you want to print is uploaded to Google and then downloaded into your printer:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1069693?hl=en

If you have a "classic" printer - amusing use of language - you can print things out using the cloud service via Google Chrome running on a separate PC, which might be handy if you have e.g. a desktop at home and use the Chromebook on the move.

I understand it's not difficult to install Ubuntu on a Chromebook, in which case you would end up with a kind of large-format netbook. I wonder if you could dual-boot Chrome and Ubuntu, and use Ubuntu purely as a printing client for the Chromebook?

Looking at Amazon the prices are tempting; on a personal level I'm not interested in something that can't run Ableton Live or Photoshop. The fact of being able to install Ubuntu is nice to know, in case e.g Google goes bust tomorrow (unlikely... but the same was true of Enron).

John_Gray

We tried to get some Chromebooks to print to non-cloud-print printers a couple of months ago. We gave up because of insufficient time, and used some ThinkPads instead, which of course printed problem-free.
(I suppose if we didn't have to go through so many hoops for such a trivial operation we might have persisted with the Chromebooks.)