Chromebooks?

Does anyone here have one? I'm seriously considering buying a chromebook and I was wondering if non-download casinos would work well on this?

I'm also very interested in the Chromebook thing, though for different reasons. For me it would be a round-the-house laptop connected to a NAS/"home cloud" I'm also building. Since all major storage is on the NAS and most of what I do is web work seems like a good match.

FWIW I'd be upgrading the SSD straight away and dual-booting into Linux. ChromeOS is more-or-less an after-though for me, Linux is where I live. Seems there are some fairly good provisions for Linux in the ChromeOS ecosystem.

Promising candidates would seem to be:
Dell Chromebook 11
Asus C300 (if it's ever actually available to the public)
Acer c720p (previous generation chromebook but is still well-spoken of)
HP Chromebook 11 (previous generation, seems they borked it on the reboot)

maxd said:

Promising candidates would seem to be:
Dell Chromebook 11
Asus C300 (if it's ever actually available to the public)
Acer c720p (previous generation chromebook but is still well-spoken of)

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That's the one I want. It's supposed to become available in June (in Canada at least according to the ASUS website). I don't plan to upgrade or dual boot the thing, it will be for browsing/email/watch videos and (possibly) playing casinos (that's why I'm asking if it would work).

Balthazar said:

That's the one I want.

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Heads-up on the RAM. Apparently the Asus C300 will come in two variants, one with 2Gb RAM and the other with double that at 4Gb.

I was reading somewhere this morning -- will post the link when I find it -- that stepping up to 4Gb significantly improves the overall Chromebook performance, all other things being equal. I'd defo go for the 4Gb even if I had to pay a premium for it. In my experience RAM is one of the Achille's heals of web-centric laptops: too much is a waste but too little is a crippler, even a powerful system will choke and provide a degraded web experience if it's RAM starved. Since RAM is pretty cheap these days more seems a no-brainer.

Unfortunately the RAM in most chromebooks is soldered onto the board so what you buy is what you're stuck with, baring any adventures with a soldering gun.

At the risk of being one of those people that won't shut up about a subject once they get started I thought I might also add that all signs are that the Chromebook market is going to be very active this year.

Aside from all the traditional laptop manufacturers jumping on the chromebook bandwagon -- it is apparently one of the few sectors of the personal computing scene showing strong growth -- one of the key elements of chromebooks (relatively cheap, reasonably powerful but low-wattage CPUs) are just now going through a generational change. Both major CPU manufacturers (AMD and Intel) have or are releasing their latest generation of power-efficient, mid-range processors and they will almost certainly drive a new wave of change in chromebooks. Some of the new processors are pretty impressive in terms of energy efficient computing power, reaching as much as 10 times the raw CPU muscle that processors drawing the same or more wattage were capable of even 6 months ago.

FYI low wattage CPUs matter immensely in chromebooks because they directly effect battery life which is one of the top-list items on chromebook spec sheets.

In other words if you're not in a rush then by this fall you'll likely be able to buy chromebooks that are twice as powerful as the previous generation of machines that are currently being discounted to make room for the latest generation such as the Asus C300.

I play all non download casinos without problems on my Samsung chromebook.

maxd said:

FYI low wattage CPUs matter immensely in chromebooks because they directly effect battery life which is one of the top-list items on chromebook spec sheets.

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Which is why the C300 is fanless (and it's the main reason why I want it). Being able to use it directly on bed sheets without worrying about overheating is awesome.

gagamel said:

I play all non download casinos without problems on my Samsung chromebook.

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That's good to know! Thanks!

C720P is touchscreen and makes a big difference. I looked at this for my mum as all she does is browse and it was perfect although would have preferred a slightly bigger screen.

Balthazar said:

... the C300 is fanless ....

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I had forgotten that. Certainly would be nice. The heart of the C200/C300 (they were announced together) is an Intel Celeron N2830 which is a pretty modest CPU but it burns remarkably little power at 2-7.5 watts. By contrast your garden variety desktop CPU is usually up around 100w or more.

I recently had the chance to give a wee fanless mini-pc an extended test drive and I have to admit that the fanless thing was pretty nice. Without any fans or such the primary noise off the thing was the disk drive accesses. On the other hand I had the fanless mini-pc sitting on my desk beside my vastly more muscular Lenovo IdeaPad laptop and I'd have to say it was a toss up which "noise" was more noticable, the disk drive of the fanless mini-pc or the very soft and quiet fan of the laptop. For me the fact that the laptop has about 1200% more CPU/GPU juice on offer is significant. The fanless unit was interesting but I wouldn't buy one for myself: bit laggy, not great at multi-tasking or heavy duty browser activity, modestly capable with Youtube videos, etc.

It turns out that the CPU in the C200/C300 is only rated about 30% higher than the CPU in the fanless unit I tested and I think that might be a problem. Clearly your wants and needs are going to be different than mine but I'd rather spend $500-ish on something I'm going to enjoy using than $300-ish on something that I'm going to constantly be hitting the wall with. Of course I haven't actually used the thing but I'd bet the chances are that it's going to be barely adequate under normal internet usage by which I mean Firefox with 20 tabs + Spotify + a text editor or two + misc other things you'd normally be using. At least that's what my recent experience with the fanless mini-pc turned up. As ever YMMV.

My point is this: the next generation of low-wattage CPUs are coming out of the factories now and over the next few months. There certainly appear to be ideal Chromebook candidates in terms of their wattage requirements AND they are (roughly speaking) 2-3 times more powerful than processors currently being used (such as the Celeron N2830 in the Asus C200/C300).

Personally I'm in no rush so I'm happy to wait for a few months to see what the hyper-active chromebook market manages to produce. Something like the C300 with a distinctly more capable CPU is what I'm hoping to see by the fall or year's end, if not sooner. If wishes were horses eh?

PS. I do realize that the C200/C300 uses an SSD rather than a standard HDD. Also that on unhacked chromebook you'd be using Chrome, not FF.

i was looking at them last year another option vivobook

i won a fair few dollars on my holiday thought i might treat myself i had a look at them just as a travel laptop but then i thought i might want to run download casinos. so i ended up buying a frankenbook at the last min was about 500 aud seen them cheaper aat 380 on sale its a asus laptop win 8 os 11 inch touch screen full normal keybord battery life is good nice size hard drive hdmi out lots of usb ports for sim based dongles when travelling one issue 2gig of ram not upgradeable
apart from that i love it

So I got my first Chromebook a week ago. Got an older model (Samsung series 3) for cheap ($180 new).

Quick review:

The good:
-Chrome OS can do everything that I need online. I've not been restricted to do anything so far. In fact, I've not used my Windows laptop once in the last 7 days.
-It's lightning fast to boot and to setup, absolutely no BS.
-Fanless laptop is a dream come true. 100% silent, can use it on bed sheets, etc. Will never get dirty.
-Battery life is off the chart (like 7-8 hours)
-Never gets hot
-Runs online casinos and most flash applications like a champ.

The bad:
-11" screen is a bit too small for me
-Some native apps could be a lot better and it wouldn't require a lot of work. Like the photo viewing app has no zoom (ridiculous) and the music player will play all the songs in the folder if you play one. Couldn't find a way to disable the autoplay feature (also ridiculous).
-Processor and memory could be better, it does become a bit laggy on "heavy" webpages with a lot of media content on them.

Conclusion: I plan on using this one for a short while and then buy a new one with a better processor, more memory and a bigger screen. I think I've made the switch to chrome OS permanently. I do not miss Windows one bit.

nice one whats the battery life like? also i vid for you

im planning on replacing the drive in my frankenbook to a ssd as its the last moving part also i think the battery might last abit longer i was going to get a chrome book but i wanted to use download casinos while traveling..

also i have a video treat for you name this guy