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On Sun Sep 27, 2020 at 11:32 AM BST, Neil wrote: > My wife has an old laptop, over seven years now, and says it is getting > a bit slow. (Not an SSD). I agree it is time for an upgrade. She has > been looking around the internet and has come across chromebooks. I have > told her that it would not be a good idea to go in for one of those. Too > slow for a start. > > Did I do the right thing? > > Thanks, > > Neil I'd agree that a Chromebook is probably not a good replacement for several reasons. If she has dependencies on anything that is not web-based she's a bit scuppered, plus even with the recent changes to the Chromebook update procedure (https://9to5google.com/2020/09/14/google-chrome-os-separate-browser-updates/) they are still a bit useless after a certain amount of time. Depending on what she needs, updating the hard drive may be sufficient to squeeze more life out of the machine (I have an 11 year old Thinkpad which is still happily plodding along with an SSD), but if the idea is to get a cheap, light, and battery-friendly machine that is relatively new, might I suggest looking at the Pinebook Pro? (https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/) From a purely technical perspective Chromebooks aren't bad per se, and in my experience they aren't particularly slow (I used to have an HP 11 Chromebook and despite its very poor technical stats it performed relatively well). The problem with them is more that if there is ever a need for offline software you have to jump through hoops to get a Linux environment set up. At that point, the Pinebook is a much better option. Ciarán -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq