I’ve recently discovered Chromebooks:

Ok, it’s not like I just heard about them, but it was over the past few weeks that I realized they can serve a useful purpose.

1. I needed a cheap portal serial terminal. Beagle Term and a cheap USB -> RJ45 serial cable fit the bill perfectly.
2. I wanted a device to leave at my girlfriend’s for casual use. Never cared to Android tablets, didn’t want to spend real money on an iPad or a Windows tablet with a decent CPU. The Chromebook works nicely for this.
3. The girlfriend’s kids have started 3rd grade and need access to a computer for school assignments. Was going to give them one of these Chromebooks… but she’d prefer they use something not portable and eventually I snagged a good eBay deal on an LG Chromebase instead.
4. My mother needs access to a computer. For both her and the kids, giving them a computing environment that’s real difficult to screw up is high on the priority list. ChromeOS is perfect for this.

My Chromebook of choice is the Asus C300SA — 3lbs, 13.3″ screen, 4GB RAM, and a legit 10+ hours of battery life. The best part is that Amazon regularly offers reboxed returns at a low price, I’ve picked up four for $100-$115/ea.

Weak points are the sub-1080p display, non-backlit keyboard, and of course, the N3060 dual-core CPU (~989 CPU Mark score). Not gonna sugar-coat it, this thing strains under the load of 10-20 browser tabs I routinely have open… but it does far better than those cheap Windows tablets on Z-series Atom quad-cores.

Apps are also a weakness. For the kids and mom, the browser is all they really need. For myself… I need more, and I’m not real impressed with the selection and quality of what’s available in the Chrome Store in the categories I care about. I don’t want to go the Crouton / Linux route either, as that disables many of the security features of ChromeOS. I think I’d be happiest using the Chromebooks as thin clients to Windows. Guacamole and the various Chrome RDP clients haven’t been appealing to me from a UX perspective, so I’ll be digging into Horizon next.

Regardless, for $100-ish the Pros far outweigh the Cons. They’re not good enough to be my only PC, but they are good enough to be the only PC that I take with me.