Samsung Chromebook (Wi-Fi, 11.6-Inch) Reviews
The keyboard is AMAZING, the battery life is AMAZING, and of course the fact it runs on an ARM processor means it has no fan so ZERO moving parts and it still stays cool! It is not going to do everything that a Windows computer can but for the price you shouldn't expect it to. If you need a good second computer for work or, like me, for a school computer you can't do much better. I would highly recommend this product!
I really feel like this is one of the best bargains I've ever gotten. I wanted something that was cheap enough for me not to worry about it being stolen but of a good enough quality for it to be enjoyable to use when travelling. When I'm at home I use it for email and web surfing in front of the television. A relative of mine got a new Macbook Air, which I was surprised to find was heavier than my new Chromebook. The keyboard is full sized and like the one I'm used to working on on my Mac. It's great. I bought the first Asus EEE netbook when it came onto the market years ago and it's almost laughable how much better my Chromebook is. And it was cheaper! I think it's also a great candidate for someone who is not tech-savvy who just wants to surf and check email, since all security updates are automatically downloaded and installed when you power it on. It boots up so quickly from being completely powered off I don't even bother putting it to sleep. I couldn't be happier with my purchase.
I wanted to share my experience with this little device with Amazon user. First I checked the device in Best Buy and it seemed very much like a apple macbook air without the $1000+ price tag. It is web based device and if you do off line computing spreadsheets etc, this is not a device for you. Anyways I decided to buy one and give try. The first unit I bought was keep crashing or screening getting frozen and all kinds of issues. I was very disappointed and keep sending google a report indicating that Chrome OS sucks. But shortly after I decided to give a try to second device and see how that goes. Well I got the second unit and so far zero problems. It works perfectly and I am very happy with it. If you are experiencing issues with the device such as sw crashes or screen locking up on you, don't waste your time because the issue is the hardware and replace the unit ASAP.
My 9 year old Toshiba laptop died recently. The hard drive crashed, it was in need of a new battery and fan (both for the third time) and the screen hinge had broken. I was not interested in either a Windows machine or a Mac. I bought a Samsung Chromebook and I'm very happy I did. I had already moved most of my music and documents to the cloud so the change was easy. In two weeks with the Chromebook I haven't missed the local apps that used to clutter up my machines (word processing, video editing, anti-virus, etc.). I open the screen on this thing and in a few seconds I'm on the web for email, Google apps (calendar, documents), games, Facebook, you name it. I have enough local storage on it to save various things but I haven't found the need to. I get about 6 hours of battery life, it runs cool all day, connects to all WiFi networks without incident. and the keyboard is a pleasure. Around two pounds to carry, it slips into my work bag and I hardly know it's there. The other day it did a system update in about 10 seconds. The fact that it is always up to date and virus free only adds to the advantages. Thanks Google and Samsung! As far as I'm concerned, you hit it out of the park!
I love my laptops (a beautiful Asus for personal use and a reliable Lenovo for work), and I've been a heavy iPad user since standing in line for the first generation model several years ago. Between laptop and iPad, I wasn't sure there was much space in the middle for a Chromebook. But, when I started reading the rave reviews of the next gen Samsung Chromebook, and when the price fell under two hundred and fifty bucks, I decided to give it a try.
And I love it! A huge percentage of my laptop/tablet use is for web browsing and emailing. The Chromebook is purpose-built for both. The Chrome browser works just like it does on my laptop, and being able to have multiple browser windows open is a very nice advantage over my iPad. As you'd expect, the Chromebook works beautifully with gmail, Google Voice, and Google Docs. I wish it ran Skype, but since I've been using Skype and Google video chat and Hangouts pretty interchangeably over the past year, so I don't really miss having Skpe on the Chromebook.
For emails longer than a short paragraph, the Chromebook is hugely more convenient than my iPad. I've always loved the convenience of the iPad, but responding to emails that required more than a sentence or two was a pain. In the week I've had the Chromebook, I'd bet my iPad use has dropped by 75%, mostly because I now use the Chromebook as my default email device.
I didn't expect to do much if any document creation on the Chromebook, but Google docs works so well that I've found myself using it for short documents (the equivalent of Word docs) and spreadsheets when it's not worth booting up my laptop. I hadn't used Google Docs before, and was very pleasantly surprised by how easy they are to use.
Printing: I have two HP printers at home. One is a bit over two years old, and the other is about a year old. Both are new enough to be ePrint compatible. Configuring the Chromebook to print to these printers took only a minute or two -- less time and work than configuring printers on a laptop. Printing to either printer from the Chromebook is just like printing from a laptop -- same dialogues and everything. Slick and simple.
Although the Samsung Chromebook will work for anybody, it really comes into its own if you're already embedded in the Google ecosystem. Gmail, Google docs, Google Voice, Google video chat, etc. are ridiculously easy to use on this Chromebook, as you'd expect.
In terms of specs, the Chromebook is noticeably lighter than my "thin and light" laptop. The screen is a bit smaller than I'd like -- comparable to the screen on my Lenovo X200 series business laptop, whereas I prefer a minimum 13" screen. But it's a reasonable tradeoff to get a small size, light weight, and great battery life.
The battery life has been a real surprise. I used the Chromebook Thursday night, all day Friday, and Saturday morning on a single battery charge before it shut down. The shut down was a bit startling (no warning), but because the Chromebook stores settings, and because the docs I was working on are all in the cloud, everything came back exactly as it was once I plugged in and restarted.
The Chromebook starts up very quickly, even when doing a complete reboot. I typically leave it running, and it goes to sleep after a while or when I close the lid. When I open the lid or swipe the touchpad, it comes back to life in about two seconds. This is close enough to instant that I never feel like I'm waiting for the computer to start up. The experience is much closer to using an iPad than a laptop in this regard.
And the price is a bargain. A tablet with a keyboard would cost significantly more. (Speaking of price, the cost of this product on Amazon goes up and down dramatically because the device is still in very short supply as of Feb 2013 and stocks out regularly. If you see a price over two fifty, and you're not in a big hurry, wait a week or two and it's likely to fall back to that level.)
Bottom line: I couldn't really see why I'd want a Chromebook in addition to my laptop and tablet, but this device actually fits very nicely into a gap between those products. My laptop is bigger, bulkier, and power hungry; and my iPad is great, but is limited without an external keyboard (at which point it's clunkier than the Chromebook) and too expensive to upgrade regularly. The Chromebook has the efficiency, portability, and battery life of an iPad, but with a very nice keyboard at a fraction of the cost.
By the way ... a few years ago, I bought a "netbook" for many of the same reasons that attracted me to the Chromebook. But the netbook turned out to be slow (it was Windows based) with a bad keyboard and terrible battery life. The Samsung isn't like the old netbooks, which were basically ultra-cheap laptops. Instead, it's a very sleek machine optimized for web browsing, emailing, and Google apps (Google docs, Google video, Google voice, etc.). In a world that's going to the cloud, I have a feeling that laptops are quickly going to become horse-drawn wagons.
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