Return Of The Chromebook

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been using my almost six-years-old Chromebook for blogging and web-surfing at times. Despite having half the memory of my phone, it's performing well for what it is, I'm glad to say. Who knew that after so many years and other computers, I’d be enjoying my old Chromebook again?

My HP Chromebook (here's my review of it) is now 5.5 years old — since time of purchase — and is still firing on all transistors. Sure, the CPU is a pokey Intel Celeron with relatively few fancy circuits (it's a few teraflops short of a workstation), yet it gets the job done. And as mentioned, the RAM is 4 GB whereas my Moto Razr phone has 8 GB. But for ChromeOS, 4 GB goes a lot farther than it would on a Mac or Windows machine.

My main computer is still my PC gaming laptop with 40 GB RAM (ten times more than my Chromebook!). But when I want to use my Googly laptop, I don't push it beyond light web-surfing and a little multi-tasking. I avoid having more than a handful of tabs open or apps running at the same time. Some journaling and blogging is about it. Well, actually, I did edit a photo with it, using the touchscreen to swipe sliders in the Google Photos edit module — it worked perfectly well. (I'm using Google Photos alongside Adobe Bridge on my PC...)

It helps that I’m all-in with Google’s ecosystem (again), which has reliable and fast web-apps for all the basics:

• Keep (notes)
• Gmail
• Google Photos
• Tasks
• Calendar
• Docs
• Sheets

My main device is a new HP Victus PC gaming laptop running Windows 11 and mostly lives docked to my home desktop setup. Undocking and reconnecting is tedious enough that I avoid it. So when I want to plop open a laptop on my bed to settle comfortably into “writing mode,” where I can relax and think, my Chromebook fits perfectly.

Also, its keyboard is wonderful to type on, something like a 7 out of 10 (my MacBook Air would be like a 9 out of 10).

Generally, it's delightful to use ChromeOS due to its simplicity. And while part of me likes the old-school paradigm of local-first computing on my traditional Windows PC, another part of me really likes the new-school paradigm of web-first cloud computing, which is Google's forte. Trying to balance the two, sometimes I lean to one side or the other...

Chrome to rust?

Not to be overly dramatic, but Chromebooks in general might soon face an existential crisis. The US DOJ has threatened to send a giant planet-killing flood to Google (antitrust, monopoly, etc), aimed at divesting or selling the Chrome browser. No Chrome browser, no Chromebook, right? If Chromebooks go the way of the dinosaur, then what will happen to my ChromeOS laptop?

Well, I doubt Chromebooks will vanish, though they may change in some ways. And it will be a while before anything happens, so I’ll use my Chromebook for the time being and delay buying a modern one until the ultimate fate of Chrome is more clearly in view.

Assuming Chromebooks continue mostly unchanged, I'd like to eventually upgrade mine since it's so old. While it gets the job done, it's:

• a tad slow at times
• can't connect to my Android phone
• is too weak to run many Android apps
• is stuck with Wi-fi 5 instead of 6 (I can't fully utilize my home's gigabit fiber internet)
• could use a sharper display

Those things add up...but at least the battery life is still holding up nicely, and it never heats up on my lap, much like my fanless MacBook Air never got warm.

Summary

So, yeah, I enjoy my powerful Windows PC laptop in desktop mode. And I enjoy my simple Chromebook as a mobile laptop. What a blessing my Chromebook has been all these years. It was my main device for a while. It became a shared laptop for my kids for a while. And now it's my companion machine at times. And I paid a mere $180 for it! Now that's thrifty tech.

Best value computer ever. 64 GB local storage but can take a 1 TB Micro SD card.