First Chromebook.

[Glebe]

Typing this on my first Chromebook, an Acer 514 14" with 8GB/128SSD and Intel Core i3-11.

It's decent, but I have a few gripes. Went with Chrome 'cos I don't do any heavy work, I've been trying to get to grips with Pixlr for photowrong fun as I can't install my preferred image editor, Photofiltre. I'd been using Edge on my old 14" laptop, text seemed to automatically scale to a decent size but I'm having to zoom using Chrome, which I can't remember having to do before the last time I used it on me old 14". I dunno maybe I sound like a complete dunce!

In any case my main gripe isn't with Chrome itself but the laptop's screen brightness which is pretty low, although it's okay if you whack it up full. That's been a problem with previous laptops and I really should have checked the specs properly before purchasing, but everything else decent seemed to be sold out in the Black Friday sales.

Ah well, guess I'll get used to it.

[QDRPHNC]

Nice one. I'd love to move all my work to a Chomebook, but unfortunately I need to use the Adobe suite all the time. Still, I have a Chromebook for travelling and casual surfing, and love it. Build quality (especially the screens and keyboards) can be a bit iffy, but that's the trade-off I guess.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nice one. I'd love to move all my work to a Chomebook, but unfortunately I need to use the Adobe suite all the time. Still, I have a Chromebook for travelling and casual surfing, and love it. Build quality (especially the screens and keyboards) can be a bit iffy, but that's the trade-off I guess.

Whenever I've thought about it I've compared them to a used thinkpad (<£200) with a user-friendly linux distro (pop_os is good) and they've just not seemed great value. Although I appreciate I'm probably not the target audience.

Dunno how recent your adobe needs are, but I think some recentish versions are capable of running under wine. I'm not going to pretend it's going to be a great experience though.

[QDRPHNC]

My Adobe needs are consistent and stringent. Looking forward to the day I no longer need it, but we're not there yet, and I have 20 years of old AI and PSD files I need to access. Figma and Sketch are both very good, but printers still struggle to work with the vectors/PDFs they output.

Chromebooks are good if you're invested in the Google ecosystem. Although I originally picked up my first Chromebook because every time I travelled with my MacBook (not for work, just generally) it was always in the back of my head how exorbitant it would be to replace if it got lost or stolen.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Although I originally picked up my first Chromebook because every time I travelled with my MacBook (not for work, just generally) it was always in the back of my head how exorbitant it would be to replace if it got lost or stolen.

I picked up a second hand chromebook for that reason a couple of months ago, it was only £60 from Cash Converters but whenever I visit my family in Surrey I take it with me and no longer worry about dropping or breaking my more expensive laptop. Plus I have it open when teaching and if the students ask me a question I don't know I can quickly look it up while rambling away until I have the answer in front of me,

[touchingcloth]

You've chosen horned viper, okletsgo

Second Molybdenumbook
Third Tungstenbook
?

[Glebe]

Thanks for the replies folks. So I've done a bit of research and made a few adjustments that have improved things. Disabled some extensions and scroll bar overlay (scroll bar was virtually invisible on a number of sites) and set text size to large. Also using alt-click for saving images, trackpad is a bit odd. Brightness level still an issue, don't want to whack it up full all the time 'cos I don't want to fuck the battery. Screen is otherwise good, sharp IPS 1080p.

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

Also using alt-click for saving images, trackpad is a bit odd.

Apologies if this is teaching granny to suck eggs, but you know you can do a two-finger tap on the touchpad in lieu of a right mouse click, don't you? This brjngs up a contextual menu > "save image as..."

More generally, I shifted onto chromebooks full-time around 2015, and my experience has generally been really good. I'm now on my fourth. At this point it seems impossibly quaint, not to mention restrictive, to keep one copy of a file on a single device and have to fret about backing up, rather than being able to access it from anywhere.

For context, 2015 was when we left the UK for SE Asia, so portability and ease of replacement were top priorities for me at the time. Chromebooks passed the test with flying colours.

[Glebe]

Oh cheers Pavs!

[touchingcloth]

Do any Chromebooks come with SSDs and no (or at least silent) fans?

I'd be up for something that's got a lot of the pros of a tablet, but in laptop form and under £500.

[Dex Sawash]

I just got one and can't figure out how to enable right click cut/paste/search but otherwise amazing machine for black friday $120. Screen is dim/washed out looking but I haven't done any video or such yet.

Do any Chromebooks come with SSDs and no (or at least silent) fans?

I'd be up for something that's got a lot of the pros of a tablet, but in laptop form and under £500.

I think most are fanless

[QDRPHNC]

Do any Chromebooks come with SSDs and no (or at least silent) fans?

I'd be up for something that's got a lot of the pros of a tablet, but in laptop form and under £500.

Yeah, don't think they have fans. Most have a small SSD inside, but they're really designed for cloud storage. You won't be able to do any serious image or video editing on them, but I think most Chromebooks can install Play Store apps now.

[Glebe]

Yeah Mine has an SSD. Does make a little bit of noise though.

[Dex Sawash]

searched for how to rightclick and glebe covered it already... alt-click brings up the stuff that right click does.
Also, click pad with 2 fingurs does it which I like better if I can member it

[Glebe]

The click pad thing doesn't seem to work for me. Meanwhile I'm getting to grips with Pixlr, though the clone stamp tool is causing me probs.

[touchingcloth]

Photopea.com, @Glebe ! It's a much closer clone of Photoshop than Pixlr.

[Glebe]

Photopea.com, @Glebe ! It's a much closer clone of Photoshop than Pixlr.

Ooh, thanks for the tip TC! Will give it a go so!