Advice on Chromebook

Sonics2k

Howdy folks,

Pretty quick and simple question really. My mother's laptop has died a death apparently, and needs a new one.

It's very light usage, mostly Facebook etc, but also needs to be able to do a bit of photo/video editing and access to Microsoft office.

As I use Chromeboxes at work, I was suggesting a Chromebook due to good batteries, lightweight and the whole Google Family being set up.

Budget is about €300, but can maybe stretch a bit more, already have an external HDD.

ACER CB3-431 14"

Can I get some opinions on the above and any thoughts, or should she stay with Windows OS instead? She's tech savvy enough to pick up a new OS pretty quickly.

Mantis Toboggan

Chromebooks are great but if you're looking do some editing and access to Microsoft Office I'd probably just stick with Windows.

I got the Acer chromebook 15 at Christmas for €340, it has the next processor up and is extremely fast, starts in seconds, battery life around 12 hours, quick and is also touchscreen. Really handy for being able to handle android apps.

yes for the uses described best off sticking to windows 10 as the experience and options for ms office and photo editing on chrome are definitely more limited.

with ssd drives these days there won't be really noticeable slowdown like in the past with windows machines (due to ageing spinning drives over time) and also speed up windows boot-up and operation dramatically. ssd drive prices have come down a lot recently meaning that they are now found in budget machines.

this laptop costs 360 but has an ssd. as a bonus the ssd is the 256gb size whereas usually it's the smaller 128gb size. the n5000 cpu is as good as an i3 a year or so back so it's more than enough for those uses and will run smoothly.

4gb ram is ok for general windows use also once you don't have 50 tabs open in chrome. due to current relatively high ram prices you have to go up to 500 euro laptops at least to get 8gb

I wouldn't go any lower in spec than this.

https://www.currys.ie/ieen/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-vivobook-f407ma-14-intel-pentium-laptop-256-gb-ssd-grey-10181701-pdt.html

you can see that the reviews are good from the uk site

https://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-vivobook-f407ma-14-intel-pentium-laptop-256-gb-ssd-grey-10181701-pdt.html

Sonics2k

Cheers for the thoughts all.

I strongly suspected that Windows would be the way to go here sadly, largely just due to the storage space on the Windows laptops alone.

BionicRasher

Daughter has this machine for college - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Chromebook-R11-CB5-132T-Touchscreen/dp/B01NARTQ2G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546869573&sr=8-2&keywords=acer+r11+cb5-132t
It more than does the job for all she needs - including MS Office - Office 365 is all online but there are apps in the Play store also for it. Unless you need something niche then I would think this will do for 95% of Office users.
Photo editing is also possible (although the screen is not top notch on the Chromebook she has it is more than good enough) Snapseed is decent as is Polarr
battery is great, its light, portable and auto updates are great as its not as messy as Windows OS. External drives are no problem but online storage is also cheap
I would recommend a Chromebook

BionicRasher

BionicRasher wrote: »

Daughter has this machine for college - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Chromebook-R11-CB5-132T-Touchscreen/dp/B01NARTQ2G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1546869573&sr=8-2&keywords=acer+r11+cb5-132t
It more than does the job for all she needs - including MS Office - Office 365 is all online but there are apps in the Play store also for it. Unless you need something niche then I would think this will do for 95% of Office users.
Photo editing is also possible (although the screen is not top notch on the Chromebook she has it is more than good enough) Snapseed is decent as is Polarr
battery is great, its light, portable and auto updates are great as its not as messy as Windows OS. External drives are no problem but online storage is also cheap
I would recommend a Chromebook

wouldn't recommend a small 11 inch screen for an older person. plus even though it's only a chromebook where the OS is lighter than windows that cpu is awful and 32gb doesn't give you a lot of storage options.

as I said ssd drives becoming cheap and common have sorted out a lot of the complaints with windows.

windows 10 is also a pretty good product at this stage.

the acer chromebook 15 is not bad but unless you can get it on sale it's fairly expensive for what it is.
e.g. 400 sterling on amazon uk at mo.

the recent trend on chromebooks is that far fewer of them are being released on the market and the ones that are at a more premium price - 600 euro + .

thus, the cheaper ones that are available tend to be from years ago - even the acer chromebook 15 is out for at least 2 years.

so they have old cpus (3x series celerons and mabye the n4200 which iteslf isn't great ) and haven't been upgraded to the modern low-end chips which are more powerful - like the n5000 pentium or the one below that the n4100 (which despite the number is newer and better than the n4200)

BionicRasher

glasso wrote: »

wouldn't recommend a small 11 inch screen for an older person. plus even though it's only a chromebook where the OS is lighter than windows that cpu is awful and 32gb doesn't give you a lot of storage options.

as I said ssd drives becoming cheap and common have sorted out a lot of the complaints with windows.

windows 10 is also a pretty good product at this stage.

perfectly sufficient for a 20 yr old student who is a heavy YouTube/Netflix and social media user. She does all her college work on this machine and its a real dinger. All files are stored online and she has an external portable hard drive for any larger files she needs offline. The Chromebook has had no issues in handling anything she has thrown at it. 11 inch screen may be too small but there are other options for 14/15 inch in the same price bracket
I have a brand new Lenovo T480 Win 10 laptop for work and its a pain in the backside if I want to fire it up and do something quickly. Its also slow compared to the Chromebook and it has an i5 processor in it

BionicRasher

BionicRasher wrote: »

perfectly sufficient for a 20 yr old student who is a heavy YouTube/Netflix and social media user. She does all her college work on this machine and its a real dinger. All files are stored online and she has an external portable hard drive for any larger files she needs offline. The Chromebook has had no issues in handling anything she has thrown at it. 11 inch screen may be too small but there are other options for 14/15 inch in the same price bracket
I have a brand new Lenovo T480 Win 10 laptop for work and its a pain in the backside if I want to fire it up and do something quickly. Its also slow compared to the Chromebook and it has an i5 processor in it

any modern win 10 laptop with an ssd and a chip of the class of pentium n5000 or above should boot to win 10 login in 10 seconds.

and will wake from sleep in 1 or 2 seconds.

I imagine any delay beyond that is down to work IT Dept scripts running or high-impact programs being loaded in start-up

some new budget chromebooks coming out from CES from Acer and HP that will use AMD chips

I guess that they will eventually be on sale in Europe - about 350 to 400 euros and up I'd say.

https://www.androidauthority.com/best-new-chromebooks-941599/

people who have this idea of getting a decent new chromebook for 250 euro are mistaken tho.

Sonics2k

Cheers for all the help and advice folks, much appreciated.

In the end she's gone for a Windows Laptop, not because she wasn't interested in going from a Chromebook, but more that she's far more used to the video editing, full Microsoft Office suite and also the internal storage.

Completely honestly the cost of the Chromebooks are massive when you start to look at decent storage options.