[Closed] cheap laptop - Chromebook? or something else?

I'm typing this on a chromebook so you know it's good. 😉

Light, fast, cheap and reliable in my experience and I'm getting about 6 hours off a charge. Relatively secure as well which is a bonus.

For browsing, emails and home office/study type stuff it's ace, obviously you're unlikely to be video editing or anything on it but you know that already. The "needs wi-fi" thing is generally overstated if you're even remotely organised and I've no trouble tethering to a phone so it's even less of a drama.

The one thing which bugs me is the lack of direct printing but apparently there's an upgrade coming to deal with that and if you've got a wi-fi enable printer then it's not an issue anyway.

Im a bit of a chromebook evangelist.

love mine to bits. fast, light, cheap. I live in googleworld so it suits my needs perfectly - even RDP to my desktop if I need to do some heavy lifting on Excel.

cloud print works well as does wifi printing.
7s boot and 6hr battery is fantastic.

and learning the shortcut keys has been handy.

Do chromebooks tether OK to iphones? I remember reading somewhere the iphone needs to be jailbroken...Is this the case?

only the very ancient iPhones would have needed to be jailbroken. Think anything since about 3GS (or even older) has supported tethering?

ta

Intrigued - Can you edit between two different document types on screen at the same time?

Hmmmm, never tried....

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Yes - 3 x browser windows (potentially all with multiple tabs) so I'm writing this in one, reading some ethics guff in another and writing an assignment in the third.

Yes, you can open active pages in new tabs or windows and alt+tab between windows. You can also tile the desktop with the windows as you want. Although on an 11.6" screen you would probably just alt+tab, but both chrome books and chrome boxes support multiple screens with extended desktops so you then you might use tiling.

bought a Samsung chromebook for £230 in the end. Very impressed. Much better tool than wife's ipad 😉

the revolution continues comrades 😀

so what [i]can't[/i] a chromebook do without wifi ?

Can any of the above be rectified by having a biggish usb storage stick (not data dongle) with you ?

cant go online, natch...

It supports offline documents and gmail. I havent tried local video playing yet, but pretty certain there's an application that will do it.

BTW - just copying an avi, an m4v and an mp4 file over to a usb stick to do some testing and will report back later. got to go out now.

avi & mp4 play straight off the stick on a local media player no problem.

and of course will output in HDMI too.

Ta - might get one for 'ar lass

Do they Bluetooth? Or alternatively could I stream music from it, or I suppose the cloud, to my amp/hifi?

I suppose I could plug in the headfone jack but it would be nice to do it cable free.

Cheers.

Looking at the old hard drive version for a mp3/internet/remote work thing.

This may well be a more sensible, hugely cheaper alternative to a Macbook Air for me as I'm about to start my MA dissertation and need something portable for uni work.

This may be a daft question, but are there any issues between transferring files between google docs and word files?

Are there apps for MS Office, particularly Powerpoint?

Mush you should download google chrome and then add the google docs and google drive apps and have a play and see if it supports exactly what you want.

google docs does seem to support powerpoint presentations but id be suprised if it supports all versions.

chromebook & bluetooth:

https://support.google.com/chromeos/answer/2587653?hl=en

I have no first hand experience as I dont use BT for anything.

Mush, download Chrome from here:
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

Get a google account (w gmail address)

get going on google drive & google docs as dobo suggests and have a go.

I've found going from ms office programs to the chromebook to be ok but the other direction sometimes needs a bit of reformatting.

it really was a daft (and lazy) question...I use chrome, drive and docs already so should have just checked out if it can do what I need. Thanks anyway

google reads your emails; why wouldn't they rifle through your data in the cloud?

im really not bothered if they did.

As I subscribe to an ad-free google apps for business I dont have to put up with lots of targeted ads though.

im really not bothered if they did.

good for you; perhaps people with important data might be? It's a consideration.