The Gaming Den

I didn't want a chromebook. But my laptop died, and every other fucking thing available in this town comes pre-loaded with Windows 8, and I cannot fucking abide that. So instead of a proper laptop, I will do what critical business I can on my chromebook, at least until I can afford to order a proper PC off the web in a couple weeks.

This hypothetical period may be extended if I'm furloughed. Gotta play this by ear.

Anyway, pros and cons time.

Pro
Cheap as fuck. US$300 for the top-of-the-line chromebook (when I say "top of the line," I don't mean "the best chromebook money can buy" - that would be a $1400 Pixel. I live in the shithole that is Middle Georgia, and they don't have those here). It's a full-sized chromebook, which is to say it's a mini scaled up to masquerade as a real laptop.

Con
Not a real laptop. No DVD drive, not really any memory worth talking about, not that you care. Why do you not care? Because this is not a real laptop. ChromeOS is basically Microsoft Bob 2.0. There are no programs, there are only apps. There is no harddrive, there is only GoogleDrive. There is no try, there is only an app for that or there is not. Seriously, you can either do something on the chromebook, or there is no way to do that that thing on chromebook.

Pro
Slick and easy. I was in and out of the store in less than ten minutes. I turned the thing on and it immediately booted up and connected to the internet. The last time I tried to coldstart my PC, I took a piss, made and ate a sandwich, brushed my teeth, flossed, scratched my ass, read a couple pages, sat down and it still wasn't done loading that. Getting to google mail, blogger, and pretty much all the rest of my online shit was damn quick, even intuitive.

Con
Okay, so there's no Microsoft Word. There's not even OpenOffice. There is only GoogleDocs. This is...okay. Not great. Terrible for tables. You need converters for a lot of file types (.rtf, I'm looking at you) because it will shit itself and die if you try to open them. The converters are available as apps. Using GoogleDrive instead of a harddrive takes some getting used to, and using GoogleDocs itself takes a bit of getting used to, and I still don't think I'd ever want to try anything professional with Docs. I also don't think I'd ever want to try coding on this thing, though I'm sure that's theoretically possible.

I admit, it took me a bit to sort of apps and extensions. Part of the problem is that my first, instinctive response on opening up the apps store was to download and install NotScript, which is like NoScript for Chrome. This didn't really work, because to make NotScript work you need to set a password which means actually locating a password file and editing it, and I'm not entirely sure that is even /possible/ on the Chromebook, because again: you have no harddrive. You can't see your actual files and applications. I'm sure somewhere there is some hack around that, and I'm sure that if I really wanted to I could scrape the hardware clean and do an install of Linux, but then I'd be exchanging my functioning-if-weird chrombook for a really shitty laptop running Linux. So I'll deal for the moment and resort to googling help as needed. Chromebook is good at googling.

Kinda-pro-ish
Apps are painless to find and install, and you don't need quite so many as you think. Once I heard it was app-based, I had all sorts of nightmare scenarios of having just bought a cheaper but scaled-up version of an iPod, where if I wanted to get up from it for 30 seconds and take a piss I would need to spend 99 cents on an app to accomplish that magic feat. To my surprise, everything I've really needed has been already installed or free, and even sites like Amazon.com, Ebay, and Facebook don't require special Google apps to work right. Which is how it should be, pretty much.

Kinda-con-ish
I don't think I'd want to look at porn on the chromebook. Don't get me wrong, I'm confident I could look at porn, and that it would look fine on my 14" screen and probably load quickly and all of that. However, I don't think it would be a good idea to go to a porn site without NotScript operational, I have no idea what kind of antivirus this thing comes with or how susceptible it is (or even how to get it off if it gets infected), and I'm pretty sure that Google is sucking information out of my every move on this computer. Plus...well, I haven't figured out how to make Chrome auto-delete its history yet, if that's even an option, and once I get a Real PC(TM) I'm probably going to pass this toy off to my mother. So, yeah. Mixed feelings there.

I really do not understand this "It's a cheap almost computer for $300."

Here is a real computer for the same amount. Why not buy that?

EDIT: And unless your computer was made in the 80s, this:

Ancient History wrote:The last time I tried to coldstart my PC, I took a piss, made and ate a sandwich, brushed my teeth, flossed, scratched my ass, read a couple pages, sat down and it still wasn't done loading that.

Is complete bullshit.

I needed the computer tonight to meet a deadline. So I was restricted to what was available at local stores.

Really, I'm going to buy a real computer. It's going to be an Intel i7 with 16 gigs of RAM and a 1 TB harddrive, Windows 7 and a graphics card that doesn't melt if I point it at Steam. But that takes time and money, and I don't have quite enough of either. So I spent $300 for a bandaid. It's not ideal, but it works, and that is all I ask of it.

Kaelik wrote: EDIT: And unless your computer was made in the 80s, this:

Ancient History wrote:The last time I tried to coldstart my PC, I took a piss, made and ate a sandwich, brushed my teeth, flossed, scratched my ass, read a couple pages, sat down and it still wasn't done loading that.

Is complete bullshit.

Not bullshit, but keep in mind that my old laptop is a little over 6 years old, with all the cumulative damage that comes from hard use. There's corrupted sectors in the harddrive and errors in the boot disk and ghost only knows what else was going on it before it simply refused to start anymore.

I'm on the fence about Chromebooks. I have a hard time seeing one serving in a role other than that of "2nd laptop" - and more most folks that niche is probably better served by tablet (small and portable) or refurbished laptop (cheap enough to use as spare) or linux box (if you're into tinkering)

that said, some questions

Not a real laptop. No DVD drive

Does it have a pair of USB ports for me to plug my external DVD drive into? Is it even worth playing DVDs from redbox using whatever inferior to VLC app is available?

you have no harddrive. You can't see your actual files and applications.

Again, what about external storage. Can it read/write/use things from USB drives / SD cards / Micro SD cards, etc?

It does have a pair of USB ports. I don't know if your external DVD drive would work or not; there is a Google Play Media app. I honestly haven't looked at whether VLC has an app; I've been watching free documentaries off Amazon Prime and that works fine.

It does have a slot for an SD card, and it can read data from external harddrives just fine (provided you have the right converter apps, as I've proved to my satisfaction). I haven't tried to move anything onto the external harddrive yet, since everything is on GoogleDrive at the moment.

Also, if you're looking around, see if you can't find some store offering you a "down"grade to win7 again.
Or, hell, simply grab a cheap win7 license and install it yourself afterwards.

Chromebooks just run an android flavor right? And you can install basically anything from the GooglePlay store right?

Then you want something like ES File Explorer, which is awesome and will integrate with your local storage, google drive storage, network storage, and all sorts of other nice things.

If you want full access to the book though, you may need to root it. Google for directions for it based on your model if that becomes a thing you need to do I guess.

And if your chromebook doesn't do that app (or any other file manager app), you might be able to get something useful from this old blog post.

Thank you for posting this. It was perfectly timed with a question my husband had.

TarkisFlux wrote:Chromebooks just run an android flavor right? And you can install basically anything from the GooglePlay store right?

It's not a direct android flavor, and you can't install android apps directly - although apparently there may be some sort of workaround by installing android on your chromebook.

Really, a lot of the time it feels like I'm trying to out-smart the developers to find ways to do shit that they don't want me to do.

isn't that the case with basically all electronic gadgets? O.o

I don't know... When I had my iPod, I didn't bother to jailbreak it because I really didn't see any benefits. Ess has a Kindle Fire that he rooted for a while, but the effort wasn't worth the reward, so he just has a normal one now.

sideloading/rooting the kindle annoyed me. My main reason was to access the app market but that would only work half the time. It doesn't really matter anymore because my Kindle's out of commission these days.

I rooted my nook tablet. It was nice, but with hardware limitations, not really anything special. Then it bricked a bit later, and I've been hesitant to root the replacement I got.

Prak_Anima wrote:I rooted my nook tablet. It was nice, but with hardware limitations, not really anything special. Then it bricked a bit later, and I've been hesitant to root the replacement I got.

Prak: Have you seen this faq?

Prak_Anima wrote:I rooted my nook tablet. It was nice, but with hardware limitations, not really anything special. Then it bricked a bit later, and I've been hesitant to root the replacement I got.

Prak: Have you seen this [url=http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... 1663836faq?[/url]

edit: ninja faqs!

Nope. I have not. And I'm still not seeing it.

Prak_Anima wrote:Nope. I have not. And I'm still not seeing it.

Oops. edited above post and hell, I'll post it again.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... ?t=1663836

Interesting, thanks! Fortunately, since the nook was completely bricked, to the point of not even turning on, B&N couldn't tell it had been rooted and just replaced it under warranty.

Prak_Anima wrote:Nope. I have not. And I'm still not seeing it.

Come on, he posted it twice... heh

I've done coding on one of these, it's not so bad. You don't install text editors locally, what you do is install the app that turns a tab into an SSH session and do all your editing from that using your favourite editor (emacs for me).

Obligatory "Have you thought about Linux?" comment.

I borked the Windows license on my laptop and decided to try Linux before shelling out for a new Windows license. I've been reasonably happy with it.

The trick with Linux is doing due dilligence to find the distribution that works for you. As long as you have broadband and a few 4+GB USB keys there's essentially zero opportunity cost to trying a dozen distros.

For the record, I ended up going with Linux Mint. It's got an Ubuntu base (so the majority of programs come pre-compiled for it) without the Ubuntu baggage. And it has quality support for the things that are still finicky on Linux (media codes, wireless drivers) so I didn't have to do any command-line tweaking to have a usable system.

Sashi: I don't think A_H's decision was based off of ease of use. It was more about availability and urgency. He bought a chromebook and then he found that he liked it.
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I wouldn't go /that/ far.

Ancient History wrote:I wouldn't go /that/ far.

Fine, I'll put some other words in your mouth and say that you *maybe* appreciated it.