Hi as per title really, my laptop is getting slower and slower battery not good and have just found out that google chrome and internet explorer are no longer supporting vista.
To be fair the laptop has been good cost around 800 quid some years ago.
Do i need another laptop or will a chromebook be good enough for emails,shopping,bills,banking etc?.
Have been looking today and the toshiba chromebook 2 hd has caught my attention at 270 quid,
opinions and thoughts please.

Try just using chrome on your laptop for a couple of weeks. That’s basically what a chromebook is.

I have been using a Samsung one for years. Great for the stuff you mention. Boots up in seconds, even years later. Runs silently. Just don’t expect it to do heavy stuff like photo or video editing.

If the battery’s an annoyance rather than a deal breaker, you could always try a clean install of Ubuntu on your laptop – it’s very easy to use, and you’ll definitely get a speed boost. It would be fine for general email + web stuff.

Of course, if you fancy something new and shiny go for it 🙂

Free upgrade to windows 10?

Not for vista iirc

I should add that I’ve been really happy with my HP chromebook 14 for the last two years

I installed Linux Mint alongside Windows 7 on an old laptop. It is really slow on win 7 but flys with Mint.

Yup, install Chrome or a flavour of Ubuntu, for what you need it for I doubt you will have any bother, modern wireless chipsets from the last decade are pretty well supported unlike older ones.

Spend the saved money on a decent battery, ram and ssd and you should be sorted.

you should be able to pick up a reasonable i3 for 270-350 quid.

I’d avoid the chromebook, personally, but that’s just me I couldn’t live solely on chrome.

I’ve jusyt gone through the same recently for the old man. Windows 7 can be had for £20, with a free upgrade to windows 10 (if the machine is man enough).

Try just using chrome on your laptop for a couple of weeks. That’s basically what a chromebook is.

Its not really though, is it.

An near instant on machine with 7-8 hours battery life, (mine is getting on for two years old and it rarely gets plugged in during the day, just an overnight charge)

No pop ups, reminders, malware, intrusive software updates or bloatware.
Silent, fast, cheap. No hot lap, no clogged cooling fans, and much better sound than my last two laptops as well.

When I first got it I missed the lack of photo editing, but with Google Photos, everything is synced on each machine and I can do most cropping/tweaking using the Sony software, or Google Photos, or any other app, on my phone. And I’ve just realised I can use the Google photos filters/cropping etc in the Chromebook browser as well.

emails,shopping,bills,banking etc

is what a Chromebook is perfect for. Mine is a Toshiba TB30.

My desktop and tablet don’t see much use now that I have a chromebook. Battery life rivals the tablet and functionality rivals the pc. Buy it, log in with your Google account and everything is there. Brilliant.

I’ve got the Acer 15 btw, would recommend it. Screen is a bit wishy-washy but it was £140 new from Pc World. You can complain at that price really.

Another vote for Linux mint, I installed it on an old XP machine, it’s very easy to do and use and is nice and quick.

Buy Windows 7 for £11.95 online, upgrade W10, put in an SSD – whoosh.

For what you describe a Chromebook is perfect. A simple, reliable, cheap, fast tool for internet stuff with zero hassle.

We got one of the very first Samsungs years ago – still as fast as the day it was bought. They just work. Not great for photo editing but that is more down to the processor etc rather than an inherent Chromebook fault.

We got another (very cheap Acer) which is also great.

My elderly parents replaced a Windows machine with a desktop version of Chromebook – they love it and far more appropriate for their needs.

Just got a new decent spec. Windows machine for certain aspects of the kid’s homework, CAD software, photos etc. And so begins hours and hours of waiting for updates to install the moment it is switched on, getting rid of bloatware, sorting AV. What a faff. Hate the thing.

Just got a new decent spec. Windows machine for certain aspects of the kid’s homework, CAD software, photos etc. And so begins hours and hours of waiting for updates to install the moment it is switched on, getting rid of bloatware, sorting AV. What a faff. Hate the thing.

Shite.

My win 10 installed in 15 minutes and was updated in about an hour with a 14meg connection, no bloatware since its vanilla by default and AV is included.

My Chromebook is nearly two years old, I’ve sat in front of it waiting for updates for precisely 0 minutes 🙂

If I click the taskbar I have a very polite, discreet icon that states updates will be applied when I restart.

Edit: I just restarted, it took 15 seconds to shut down, apply update and get back to my desktop.

And my 2 year old battery is currently at 68% with a mere 4h09m browsing time remaining. My Windoze laptop couldn’t do that fresh out of the box!

do chromebooks have no internal storage? they all seem to mention google drive online storage only.

Just thinking they are maybe no use for slow rural broadband if documents you are working on can’t be saved on the thing itself.

Some have 16Gb or so internal, others have more – the Acer we bought had a 320Gb option. Things can be saved locally.

Biggest pain is needing a network capable printer, but there are ways round it if you don’t.

And my 2 year old battery is currently at 68% with a mere 4h09m browsing time remaining. My Windoze laptop couldn’t do that fresh out of the box!

A lot’s changed in the last couple of years. Recent budget Windows laptops have similar battery life, are not far off as quick and they run full Windows. Chrome still has advantages but the gap’s closed a lot I reckon.

Just got a new decent spec. Windows machine for certain aspects of the kid’s homework, CAD software, photos etc. And so begins hours and hours of waiting for updates to install the moment it is switched on, getting rid of bloatware, sorting AV. What a faff. Hate the thing

Yeah the big update cycle is only once when you get it, you also no longer need AV. As for bloatware – choose your manufacturer wisely 🙂

I’m probably the perfect candidate in a lot of ways for a chrome book but – there is always one of those.
I end up out of WiFi too often.
Instant on is a minor thing as I rarely shut the laptop down.
There are a few desktop things I still use
For playing with the gopro and good camera I need some decent storage – clearing the gopro for a weekend can be 30gb or if I’m in the mood for proper photos 10gb.
Throw in the really small screen which means using it to watch stuff isn’t as good as the laptop then I’m out. As many have said above pc’s are closing the gap, battery life is up and win 10 is one of the least intrusive os’s I’ve used. It’s only been the really critical update that wanted something doing to it. On a clean install it took about 30 mins to find all my drivers and be ready to go. On the 4 machines I’ve upgraded on its been smooth, stable and in many ways not even noticeably which is what you want from an os.

Not disagreeing with your summary mike but there are chromebooks with bigger screens, just to point that out.

The other thing regarding screens is that the super cheap Chromebooks, whilst fantastically usable for the money, still have super cheap screens. May not be an issue of course, since they price is super low.

Thank you for all your replies.
Its definitely given me lots to think about, the laptop i have is older than i thought so not sure its worth spending money on, dvd drive not working, battery and charger not the best and worst off all taking around five minutes to boot up, and sometimes stopping when loading pages and just beeping loudly if not left to take its time.
The chromebooks really appeal to me in that it will be quick, continue to be quick and seems to fit my requirements well.(not sure about printing and word docs etc, But and its a big but perhaps its better to spend a little more and buy a laptop?.

You can get a wireless capable printer for barely more than the price of new ink for your old one, and it’ll work with Cloud print.

Except that it’s a little more complex than that – cloud print sends the document to your printer over the internet, which is slow. HP however had a Chrome app to print wirelessly over the local network which works spot on.

I should add i can also use my daughters much more modern laptop if needed.
I am looking at the toshiba chromebook 2 hd screen 4gb ram 240 quid from amazon dont think this can be betten for my needs.
Again thanks you all.

Chromebooks get used much more than laptop in our house. Me and eldest son (13) on Chromebooks, the Boss mainly iPad. Youngest (9) main laptop user for Minecraft, but he also has iPad mini.

We used to use laptop for iTunes and photos, but Spotify and chrome cloud have replaced that. I am on a Lenovo tablet 🙂

Your present performance problems will be down to the installation rather than any hardware faults.

Chromebook doesn’t *quite* do what I need, so I use a lightweight linux distro on it. For the money (180eur) it runs well and has had a very hard life for two years; it’s my classroom machine so gets passed around students and then thrown in a backpack at the end of the day. I bought it to be disposable but it shows no signs of dying anytime soon.

As an aside..

Where can you get W7 for £11.95?

Where can you get W7 for £11.95?

Yes – I’d like some of that too – even £20 sounded ok

Just go out and buy a laptop.

If you’re a beardy hipster endlessly despairing as how cool you look yet your life is full of shit that doesn’t quite make the mark then buy a Chromebook.

If you’re in marketing and really don’t care that you look good but your life is a hollow and expensive existence then buy a MacBook.

If you have the beard but it’s not clean enough to be a hipster and you prefer Monster to Craft Beer then get a second hand laptop and put Linux on it.

If you’ve just given up worrying about image and just want something that will work for a few years then do what most people do and get a cheap Windows 10 laptop.

There may be some sarcasm in this post, personally I’d go for a proper laptop with internal storage, better to have it than want it 🙂

£11.95 was the cheapest that came up on a Google search.

Well some will be happy i joined the chromebook gang others less so it seems.
After much reading and what we actually use the laptop for i have gone and brought a chromebook must say very impressed so far.
Thanks for all your comments and thoughts.

Just put my wife’s Chromebook on the classifieds, in case anyone’s interested.

Just to try and help molgrips out so glad I brought one its brilliant for my needs and battery life is awesome.
So go and buy his wife’s Chromebook so he can spend money on bike bits!
(and no I do not know him)

What are you doing with the old one, OP?

Cougar do you mean my old laptop?