Hardware Chromebooks ?

[pwsincd]

Thinking ahead to christmas , thinking of a pc for my little girl shes 7 . If i assess when she uses a pc for its anything thats related to the web , she obviously aint gonna be pushing out powerpoint presentations or mixing tracks , designing images in photoshop or anything that you would really want a pc for , plus on top of this she can quite easily fuk a pc right up with messing with setting etc etc ... i know nothing of chromebooks other than me imaginineing them to be kinda tablet style laptops.. i know nothing of their power , variants and recommended specs , or even if they are crap in general . Does anyone here have any ideas on them ?

 

[FAST6191]

They are not a complete farce but they feel pretty redundant for what they do, though for the price and if you bother to hack them a bit then it is not bad. If I found myself lumped with one I am sure I could get some stuff done but no more so than an android tablet with proper keyboard and a rugged case, and if you care for the playground cred (and the games that earn it) then it ain't going to happen with a chromebook.

If you are planning ahead to next March or so when the boredom kicks in then I dare say you will enjoy using a tablet more than a chromebook, and before then you can probably get moaned at for using it at night and forgetting to put it back on charge.

 

[pwsincd]

when you say hack them a bit : to what end ? the way i see it , she can play shitty android apps , and can watch netflix etc etc , its all currently she uses a pc/tablet for . The boredom of march im fully aware of im also aware of the to-ing and fro-ing kids go through with regards to tech . her galaxy tab collects dust for weeks then isnt ever away from her then its a repeat cyccle , she is after all a child. My main aim really is for her to feel like she has "her own laptop" and for that laptop to do what she wants (aka streaming n shit games )(aka all things android) and for it to be kind on the pocket . i know itll be a few yrs down the line before i need to consider a more useful tool with regards to productivity and schooling etc. im aware its probably a few yrs at best toy. Im not really sure what the OS is : is it android ? . Are they a tablet with buttons ? or is there more to them ? is one chromebook pretty much as good as the next .. or are we into the realms of tablet specs ?

all this info i could simply google , but i value opinion.

 

[FAST6191]

ChromeOS is not quite as locked down as android (you will actually feel like the owner of the device), however it is like buying any vendor laptop in that you will probably want to spend a couple of hours tweaking things. However they are more locked down than the netbooks they probably can be said to have descended from. For what most people use them for then android with a worse app store and a browser that pretty much is a desktop browser. If you have ever had a marginally locked down work laptop then it feels much the same.

Specs wise they are different. The main one will be screen size and resolution, and possibly battery life. There are some vendors that will chance a weak build but it is more or less like buying a normal laptop (ram, processor, storage..., all stuff you have probably dealt with rather than having to read up on the many and varied ARM processors this week). For the money I probably still would consider a full fat windows tablet with a little docking station.

On owning a laptop unless she expressed an interest or attempts to commandeer yours/the house's then kids today do not seem to approach laptops in the same way they might have 10 years ago. As you already have a tablet then a nice bluetooth keyboard and if you are really pushing the boat out then a HDMI out will perform much the same task.