I have said this many times but I love my Chromebook. It does nearly everything I need and anything it can’t do, there is a work around. The world of Google is much more robust than I ever expected and it makes surfing the internet and school work a breeze.
Point of clarification – in the CNet review you linked to it says:
“the new 14-inch Chromebook will pair standard Wi-Fi connectivity with support for mobile broadband. And that’s contract-free broadband, care of T-Mobile in the US and HP DataPass in Europe.”
But there’s no mention of this in the specs listed. Any idea?
[MOD: These are Wi-Fi only, no cellular function.]
Ditto, but for my work, not schoolwork. I think there are a lot of people who just need a simple computer for simple tasks.
Some “enthusiasts” may disagree as they sometimes view simplicity as limitation.
For those of you who just want to use the thing as-is, you can safely ignore any advice or critiques that have the words “crouton” and “Ubuntu” in it. They are at the deep end of the pool.
This is a decent netbook at a decent price. If you are just planning on running chrome -OS this is a nice deal. But the K1 is an arm processor, and will restrict you in some ways if you load Ubuntu or want to play certain games like Minecraft.
Instead I went with the Asus C200 4GB/32GB 11.6".
I wanted something that had an Intel processor, 4 GB RAM and 32 GB storage so I could run crouton on it with Ubuntu. I have successfully even loaded minecraft (pc version) on it for my son, and it’s actually quite playable despite it using a Bay Trail-M Celeron N2830. Both Chrome and Ubuntu work well on this, not hard to do with crouton just google it.
I can’t put the link in (it will probably get removed by woot) search C200MA-EDU-4GB on Ebay it’s $190, new and there are only 4 left.
As an added bonus, I was able to activate 1TB of storage on Google drive for 2 years for free. This basically made it like they were paying me $50 to take this Chromebook, since I intended on buying this online storage at some point anyway (1TB storage Google drive=$10/month).
I wasn’t sure what the rules were different for Ebay. Either way, its an easy search on Ebay. TT if you’re looking for a Chromebook, I highly recommend this Asus.
See that no LTE is a deal breaker for me. I keep waiting for a 4G enabled model to pop-up on Woot. Come on guys make my Chromebook dreams come true…you have my information, you know where to mail it.
[MOD: This is the latest (2014) model of this Chromebook. HP no longer offers a cellular/LTE version at all. Only older models have celluar.]
I got one of these last time and it is what I am writing on now. I like the hardware and most of the software. If you are in the Google ecosystem it is great.
However, there are two specific things that it can’t do. The first is use Silverlight, so I can’t access the video lectures from my collage. The second is that I can’t use a CAC card, so limited access to .mil websites.
Other than those two things, I like the device.
I bought this in December, has the TMobile 200mb option which works surprisingly well. I was looking for something more portable than the laptop and more functional than the tablet. This works great and the LTE is now the least important since there is WiFi almost everywhere and hot spot for the phone is easy.
The camera works well through Hangouts but I still prefer using the phone. Good battery life, boots up really quick, decent screen for videos and once I learned the tricks for the touch pad and keyboard shortcuts it is very useful.
It is one of the few purchases that is better than I expected.
I really love my pre-2014 HP Chromebook from woot. From what I have read the 2014 one is definitely faster, stronger, better and lasts longer but can’t say the old one is doing anything to warrant getting a new one. If you got to have 4G get your self a hot spot, 3G is fine for me when I have needed it, it’s really an email thing not intended for video. Since I do not have T-Mobile for phone or hotspot it has helped when I had no signal for the others.