One of the recommended options was to go for a Chromebook, which, honestly, sounded like the best option for her — local storage is not a high need, her document work is being done through Google Drive (all district students have an account), and the battery life and instant on /off seem to make a lot of sense.
So we just bought her one of these new Acer C720s, one of the new ones with the Intel Core i3s. It's a bit pricier than some of the other alternatives, but it brings with it additional storage and CPU to make it more likely to last her for the next four years.
So, we'll see how the Chromebook life works. She'll still have her Windows notebook for doing Wintel-based games, so I don't see any reduction in capacity to do stuff. How it all works as a portable working device for her will be an interesting thing to see.
Review: Acer C720 Chromebook with Core i3, best value yet | ZDNet
The C720 is one of the first Chromebooks to ship with an Intel Core i3 processor. We go hands on to see if all the excitement is justified.
I bought a refurb HP Chromebook, which had the new CPU, plus free 4g data from t mobile. So far, I've been really impressed: fast, easy to use, Very functional (given that I'm currently committed to Google tech.) My only falling so far it's that sound isn't as good as my laptop…so group hangouts don't with as well as I'd like.
I've been using a Chromebook Pixel as my only laptop for almost a year now, and I've also switched to an Asus Chromebox as my work desktop machine. Loving the experience so far; the fact that there's basically no local state means that things don't get randomly messed up as even the best-maintained Windows or Mac laptop tends to. I also have a MacBook Pro for those few tasks which require applications there's no online equivalent for, like Illustrator, but I expect that even that too shall pass over time.
I love my Chromebook. I rarely touch my desktop anymore. Mine does have a slightly annoying habit of shutting itself down, but it's back up and running so quickly (with all my tabs restored) that I can't really get mad.
I have to say that, for myself, I could get by about 95% of what I use a computer for right now. It's that remaining 5% that I'd be concerned about. We'll see en I get to the point of needing a new home machine for myself, informed by Kay's upcoming experience.
The biggest, non obvious, difference is that Google Docs is not as good as ms office. It's good, but not business class. One example…you can't (or couldn't) do conditional formatting of one cell based on the value of another. 90% of users wouldn't care…I do
And I was thrilled at 16 to get a notebook with a photo of the attack on the Death Star on it.
+Greg Stockton Agree completely — which is why I won't be exchanging my Windows / Office machine at the office any time soon. (Though I note that conditional formatting based on value is now possible, so who knows when that will show up.)
I have found that Google Docs is getting better and more featureful at an accelerating rate. I wouldn't be surprised if that "90%" was already 99% and still growing.
Considering to get rid of my Macbook pro to get one of these. I'm really digging the Google ecosystem and the constant improvements.
I ordered one of these a little while ago, can't wait for it to come in!
I own this device and use it every day for work. I upgraded from the previous Haswell based C720 which I was pushing to the limits with all of the multitasking I do.
This machine is a beast, has a great price point ($359 on Newegg), all day portability, and the same solid build. You made a great choice.
I purchased the C720P – I love it! The touch screen is great and i get almost 8hrs battery too.
I have a few machines, a Linux box for home, a windows laptop given via employer and a netbook with WIndows 8. Since I purchased my chromebook, i've used my Linux box and Windows 8 machine maybe once.
+Jamie-Lee McLean-Davis The new C720P with the i3 doesn't have a touch-screen, but that's the only trade-off.
I have a Win7 netbook that I use for writing; the tool I use is (still) Windows-based, so that's not going to change any time soon. But I kind of wish it would.
+Dave Hill What's the tool? I noticed that I can used Google Docs for whatever writing tasks I need to do.
I've been using YWriter the past 3-4 years. It provides some solid structure for notekeeping outside the actual work that I'd be reluctant to go to a more unstructured GDocs set up.