Say a friend is looking for a new system, and said person is not particularly savvy with technology, what system would you point them toward?

  • Mantzy81@aussie.zone
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    4 hours ago

    Nah I get why - it’s mostly a matter of perspective. Many had to deal with crappy school-supplied Chromebooks or the cheapest model their non-tech parents bought them for under $150. Or early models. And those were very poor implementations. Still are. I have a weak tablet style model and it takes a while to get going. My wife though, she has a Chromebook as her personal laptop, a higher end model from 7 years ago and it’s still stupidly good and fast for a computer that old. But it also cost a lot more too - can’t remember exactly how much but closer to $500-600 range. Was pre-Chromebook+ but all the specs were above those requirements. She uses it for browsing and web stuff primarily and it only ever causes issues when she forgets to update it for a few months and then wonders why she can’t video call her parents.

    If all you’ve used is a shit one, you’re going to assume they’re all shit - it’s unfortunate that they “can run” on a potato and they sell them like that too which they really shouldn’t. I also understand that I didn’t choose one of the three options so would get discussed for that. And also, I get why some might not want to support anything Google-related too.

    • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      Yeah I fully agree. Even worse, millions of students being given crappy Chromebooks really built a culture of despising the entire platform, which spread elsewhere. It’s just like iPhone users writing off android phones because “they’re cheap trash,” when all they’ve looked at are supermarket prepaids.

      And yeah, high quality Chromebooks are prevalent too, it’s just you need to know where to look. I’ve personally been quite interested in the Lenovo Chromebook plus 14, since it’s really a good look into how, despite the unsavoury reputation of the Chromebook brand, it is actually a really nice arm based laptop with MacBook like build quality, great screen, and has incredible battery life, although I do hate how arm Chromebooks are completely locked to google firmware without a proper way to run anything else on it.

      What is actually deplorable though is the fact some companies still sell 16gb eMMC Chromebooks, which isn’t even enough for simple school tasks that aren’t exclusively browser based. I’d say 32gb eMMC is a much easier pill to swallow since you can actually store at least something without having updates be its slow agonising death