Chromebook

[LOKNLOD]

I got one of the small 11.6" screen refurbs off of Amazon, got a smoking deal on it. I use it solely for a "fiddle around on the web" laptop while my wife or kids are watching shows I don't really care about but I don't have something better to go do at that moment (aka, my "I should probably be dry firing or working out instead" laptop ).

For web surfing it's great. Basically anything you would normally do through your browser, it works very well. I vastly prefer it to the iPad for browsing forums and such. Battery life is very good.

Hardware wise, it does feel lighter and flimsier than a "real" laptop. I don't think it would take much physical abuse.

[LittleLebowski]

The new Samsung 13.3 is coming out next month.

[JV_]

For web surfing it's great. Basically anything you would normally do through your browser, it works very well. I vastly prefer it to the iPad for browsing forums and such. Battery life is very good.

That's precisely what this will be, a surfing box.

I hate the iPad, and I don't want a huge/heavy laptop that I need to constantly update with anti-virus or windows updates.

[JV_]

The new Samsung 13.3 is coming out next month.

Yes, that's the one I'm waiting for.

[LittleLebowski]

It looks like Cisco VPN support is sketchy for Chrome OS?

https://support.google.com/chromeboo.../1282338?hl=en

[JV_]

Yes, it is sketchy. Basically, you can't do an SSL VPN (AnyConnect), which is what I use at home.

I could reconfigure it to work with the ChromeBook, but then I might not get through some firewalls.

That's my single biggest issue.

[Kennydale]

My son got a good buy on Chromebooks and bought for the whole family. Then he asked me to help him out to understand it. Me I'm a windows (7) guy he finally gave up on the chromebook and bought a cheap windows 8 laptop. I really don't understand them.

[will_1400]

My son got a good buy on Chromebooks and bought for the whole family. Then he asked me to help him out to understand it. Me I'm a windows (7) guy he finally gave up on the chromebook and bought a cheap windows 8 laptop. I really don't understand them.

I'm rocking a Win 8.1 laptop after my Win 7 laptop's audio and video cards bought it (I'd had it since 2007 and it was my primary computer so I got plenty of use out of it). My main beef with it is the obsession with the Cloud which I find to be the least secure way of doing any kind of computing. Other than that, so far it's not that bad, actually. I run it in desktop mode and it hasn't done anything to garner any serious complaints yet.

ETA: my old laptop was an "obsolete" display model I snagged for a song and I'd had it for a couple months before 7 went online and wound up with a free upgrade when Vista finally bought it. It served my uses well.

[JV_]

the obsession with the Cloud which I find to be the least secure way of doing any kind of computing.

I understand the issue with everything Cloud. For me, I'm only using it for documents which have no real value, like my cycling training plan, or it's something which is already in a cloud (Gmail or Google History).

I'm 100% certain that Google already knows my bookmarks because every site I've bookmarked has probably come from a Google search, or it's a site which uses GA/Google Analytics (which > 75% of the sites I visit use). I go out of my way to block GA, but I realize that I'm behind the curve.

For me, it's a very small trade-off for the convenience of having some sync'd data across multiple systems.

[MDS]

My main beef with it is the obsession with the Cloud which I find to be the least secure way of doing any kind of computing.

I feel you. I know little of these things, but I've given up on doing any kind of computing securely.