Cloudbook or Chromebook – what's the difference?

what do I need to know?

used for:
Home browsing
managing stuff online
bits of spreadsheets and word processing

Choice of two from Tesco at £179
Acer AO1, 11.6″, Cloudbook, Windows 10, Office 365 (1 year), Intel Celeron, 2GB RAM, 32GB
or
Acer CB3-111, 11.6″, Laptop, Intel Celeron, 2GB RAM, 16GB -Chromebook

I’d not heard of Cloudbooks before, but it sounds like they are basically Windows machines with some of the stuff they do offloaded to the cloud, notably storage from the spec above! I think they used to be called ‘netbooks’.

So it looks like it’s your usual Windows vs Chromebook debate, with the price difference reduced to make some of the compromises of Chromebooks look a bit less worth making.

That said, for what you’ve said you want it for a Chromebook would do fine.

Any idea if the Cloudbook will slow up over time? This is apparently the main reason for going with Chromebook.

with windows on it, I’d place a hefty wager it will slow up over time.

MS can’t help themselves.

FYI all my chromebooks are as fast as the day they arrived. 2x different models, download update quietly in the background when needed, restart boot (7secs) to implement update. PoP.

Bump for the late crowd..

Personally I’m a Windows fan – but then I do lots of stuff with a computer most people don’t. For most people’s requirements (which look much like those in the OP) a Chromebook is fine. Despite my preference, I’d go for the Chromebook out of the two you mention every time – no point having Windows if you’re going for the cloud model which Chromebooks work well with unless you really need to use something which is Windows only.

As always though, unless you need a new machine I’d recommend saving your pennies and going for a refurb:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/psa-samsung-121-chromebook-106