Chromebook or Laptop

sajag83

My 4 year old Dell Vostro laptop has stopped working and needs a new motherboard. I need to buy a new laptop but I don't want to spend too much money. I am thinking of buying a Chromebook.
I have always used windows laptop all my life and never used a chromebook before. Smartphone wise I have been an android person so have always owned android phones starting from the nexus series to current Xiaomi Phone 

So what is your experience of does who have owned and used it?

I only need it for emails, web browsing and some online stuff like banking, ebay and so on.

What I have been reading about Chromebook is it is, quick and fast to boot up compared to windows because it doesn't contain any 'bloatware', and always up to date with software revisions and there is very little chance of viruses and of course relatively cheap.

I have shortlisted 2 option below 

Google Pixelbook Go/i5-8200Y/16GB Ram/128GB SSD/13"/ChromeOS/Just Black/B - CeX (UK): - Buy, Sell, Donate
Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook| 11 inch 2K Touchscreen Laptop | Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c | 8GB RAM | 128GB eMMC | Chrome OS | Storm Grey USI Pen 2 : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

also have looked at windows laptop below 
Lenovo T480S/i5-8350U/16GB Ram/256GB SSD/14"/W10/B - CeX (UK): - Buy, Sell, Donate

Please suggest which one i should go for 

Thanks Guys

Grumpy_chap

I can't advise, but the Lenovo Duet 3 was £250 at Argos for Black Friday (£400 today)
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3065310

You may be worth watching the price in the Boxing Day / New Year sales.

Bonhomie

sajag83 said:

My 4 year old Dell Vostro laptop has stopped working and needs a new motherboard. I need to buy a new laptop but I don't want to spend too much money. I am thinking of buying a Chromebook.
I have always used windows laptop all my life and never used a chromebook before. Smartphone wise I have been an android person so have always owned android phones starting from the nexus series to current Xiaomi Phone 

So what is your experience of does who have owned and used it?

I only need it for emails, web browsing and some online stuff like banking, ebay and so on.

What I have been reading about Chromebook is it is, quick and fast to boot up compared to windows because it doesn't contain any 'bloatware', and always up to date with software revisions and there is very little chance of viruses and of course relatively cheap.

I have shortlisted 2 option below 

Google Pixelbook Go/i5-8200Y/16GB Ram/128GB SSD/13"/ChromeOS/Just Black/B - CeX (UK): - Buy, Sell, Donate
Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook| 11 inch 2K Touchscreen Laptop | Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c | 8GB RAM | 128GB eMMC | Chrome OS | Storm Grey USI Pen 2 : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

also have looked at windows laptop below 
Lenovo T480S/i5-8350U/16GB Ram/256GB SSD/14"/W10/B - CeX (UK): - Buy, Sell, Donate

Please suggest which one i should go for 

Thanks Guys

The only way I would ever own a Chromebook is if someone gave it to me for nothing. Better to just use your phone in that case. 
There is already a £250 laptop thread running.

Syman

i switched to chromebook from a Windows 10 machine a couple of years ago. So far i have not needed encountered any issues with the change.

I use the lenovo Duet3 at work as my day to day machine, and again, it does everything i need it to. They are reasonably light, and the touchscreen is very responsive. current machines guarantee update until 2027 i believe. the camera is not great IMO though.

sammyjammy

I've had a chromebook as my single laptop for years ,wouldn't go back.

Neil_Jones

sajag83 said:

What I have been reading about Chromebook is it is, quick and fast to boot up compared to windows because it doesn't contain any 'bloatware', and always up to date with software revisions and there is very little chance of viruses and of course relatively cheap.

There is very little chance of viruses on Windows, nine out of ten of them are self inflicted.  A chromebook is no different.

Chromebooks do not support USB printing (this may not be a problem) and there is little if any offline/local storage, its all online.  So if your internet goes down, so does your ability to do anything.

400ixl

Chromebook will by the looks of it suit your needs. Doesn't take much to get used to it.

I would say if you have a local Currys / PC World near you then go in and try one as they will most likely have one on display.

MilesT6060842

Neil_Jones said:

Chromebooks do not support USB printing (this may not be a problem) and there is little if any offline/local storage, its all online.  So if your internet goes down, so does your ability to do anything.

It is possible to buy a network to USB print server to share an existing printer onto the network, for not too much extra money (secondhand on eBay).  This will enable printing from phones as well. Chromebooks also can work with older printers that more recent versions of Windows do not support.

Chromebooks can store documents locally (although storage is limited) and automatically sync files to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, best of both worlds.  You can work on some documents even without an internet connection, and certainly read and compose emails with Gmail (maybe not the web version of Outlook).  Chromebooks can work OK with most USB memory sticks as well, and some USB connected hard drives.

I have both Windows (work machine) and Chromebook (an old one for personal use) and for light computing needs the Chromebook is fine, and the Google docs and online Microsoft applications will get most tasks done and can be exchanged with others using Microsoft applications without too much hassle.

The more expensive/recent Chromebooks can run many Android applications as well (similar to how they would run on a phone, trackpad instead of touchscreen), and many can also run Linux at the same time, which enables some more complex software to be run such as free LibreOffice/Apache Openoffice (closely compatible with Microsoft Office Word/Excel/Powerpoint, but not Access, Project, Visio, and some Powerpoint fonts are not available), image manipulation tools, and other useful software as well. Setting up the software using Linux isn't the easiest there are free "cookbooks" on the internet.  Some professional software developers use the Linux capability for development work.

If you want to use Microsoft Access, Project, or Visio, then you will want Windows.  If you need a specific accounting package that isn't "in the cloud" then you will need Windows.