I owned one of these and used it quite a bit. The HP 11 has a nice shape, a good keyboard, and a decent touchpad. The CPU is a few years old and bit slow, but adequate for web browsing as long as you are not watching HD video.
However, the two best things about this chromebook are: 1-the screen is IPS - nice and bright with great viewing angles; 2-the charger is closer to cell phone size instead of the bricks used by Acer.
This would be an easy purchase at $150 or less, but not so sure at $199.
I have three Woot refurb’d Chromebooks, a 14" HP and two 11" Samsungs (one was a gift for my wife).
My morning routine is to turn on the HP, check email, read news, check out Woot and look at a couple of Facebook pages. I can also look at my camera files, do some modest editing, and post them to FB as needed. The unit is fine, I get few popups, and the sites’ video play.
I can also do some offline writing and fill in a spreadsheet used by one client when I want them to pay me. I use another invoicing program to bill another client.
Sometimes I will watch movies on Netflix or even on YouTube. No delays or jerky playback.
I’m not a gamer, so I cannot comment on that. But with super long battery life and nice keyboard, this does a lot of what I need. The only thing it doesn’t do for me is audio editing.
Most people will not want to hack, crack, fiddle and diddle these machines. But there are always some who delight in trying to convert a disposable lighter into a blowtorch. Their criticism should always be taken in that context.
I’d like to know how buggy it is, what set of tools it has (could probably google that one, yes)… and just generally how it works. If they bring out InDesign for a Chromebook too, I could really work remotely without the employer needing to have a second seat license for my ——oh, right, this is Adobe. They’ll still charge for it.
But anyway, I’m curious about workflow, especially with print-sized files.
I still use Google because I don’t search for much that I would care about whether anyone knew or not. Except yesterday somebody on facebook posted that there was a brony convention at his hotel. That would have been a good time to use the Duck. I can’t wait to see what ads Google serves up now…
I opted specifically for a 4GB RAM/32 GB storage with Intel processor so that I could also install Ubuntu via crouton. It’s easy, all kinds of youtube videos showing you how to do it. I can switch back and forth between Chrome and Ubuntu with hot keys and arrow. I even have the full PC version of Minecraft running on the Ubuntu side for my son. I love Chromebooks, this one today though is dated and over-priced for the hardware.
“Most people will not want to hack, crack, fiddle and diddle these machines. But there are always some who delight in trying to convert a disposable lighter into a blowtorch. Their criticism should always be taken in that context.”
BTW, the model you mention is pretty much gone everywhere except that eBay seller. If he didn’t have a 99.6 rating, I’d be concerned about the low price AND the free shipping.
That’s understandable- but why would you elect to buy something with less performance and less RAM and less storage for the same price? Let me put this into your language radiojohn. If there is a fully automatic point and shoot camera for $200, but for that same money I can buy a DSLR similar in size, wouldn’t it make more sense to buy the DSLR? Even if you were not going to use all the features of the DSLR, wouldn’t you want to have the better hardware of that camera? Basically the functionality would be the same, since you can put that DSLR into full auto mode, but you have a better piece of hardware for the same $$. And who knows, maybe one day you’ll purchase the book “How to use the digital camera you just bought” and actually learn how to fully use the DSLR that you bought for the same price as that point and shoot. I would rather own the blow torch that I could use as a disposable lighter.
Much better offering than today’s woot. If you are planning on just running a chrome OS this would be great, if you have aspirations to running Ubuntu in addition to chrome, then I would still suggest going to a 4GB RAM Intel platform
For the price, I honestly like the HP Stream http://tinyurl.com/pnyv967 at Walmart. It has more storage and I’m super impressed with it - first thing I’ve paid full-price for in ages.
Come on. Admit that it would be the coolest thing ever to be able to clear the snow off of your driveway with the flamethrower that once was your Bic butane lighter . . .