Origins

I've been using Windows my whole life. I've grown up with Windows XP with those huge, clunky CRT monitors that get distorted next to magnets (don't question my childhood) and massive, space-taking, dust-filled, heat-induced PC towers. Those days, my life revolved around flash games on Internet Explorer and just having fun.

When Windows 7 came around, technology became more modern with smaller PC towers and better laptops. I spent the remainder of my Windows days on my first laptop, the Lenovo Z575 Thinkpad, as a birthday gift. I thought it was the most beautiful laptop at the time with its brushed metal finish and amazing keyboard. It was where I spent the majority of my time from gaming, doing school work, to watching movies.

As I got older and understood specs and did more intensive work, I realized my laptop wasn't the greatest for any of those things. It had a dual-core AMD processor clocked at 1.5GHz, which couldn't even watch a 720p 60fps video on YouTube without a little Chrome extension help.

As the years went on, I started having school projects that required taking them to libraries, school, houses, which caused me to realize again that my laptop was a hassle to carry around because it was so damn heavy, and the battery life was just horrible. It overheated quickly and only lasted 1–2 hours on a charge with medium brightness, which forced me to leave it at home as a home desktop. It was fine, since I had an iPad 4 with a bluetooth keyboard that held up way better because it didn’t overheat and lasted hours. Oh, and it also had games, because I was a kid.

In 2014, my WiFi adapter/card inside the laptop killed itself on me, probably because it finally realized just how bad it was. I resolved the issue by using a slow-ish 15Mbps ethernet connection (I get 65Mbps on 802.11ac devices), which also meant that my laptop was forever tethered to a wall, as if it were on life support, waiting for its owner to pull the plug. They were some dark times.

The Turnaround

One day, my friend asked me what they thought about Chromebooks:

"Are they good? Should I get one? I don't want to spend a lot of money."

Honestly, as far as Chromebooks went, I knew that they were cheap budget laptops that ran Chrome and that was about it. I’ve seen them from Google I/O presentations showing off some features, but I didn’t look into them that much. When I got home, I decided to look into Chromebooks and see if they really were just laptops that ran a browser. I wanted to see their appeal.

I ran into Google’s own ChromeOS video that explained a few things, and it showed me their philosophy and mindset towards a computer. To me, it made sense. The browser is the number one application that people click on when they want to do something on their computer.

After looking at what ChromeOS was, I started looking at a few Chromebooks. I ran into The Verge’s Chromebook video, and looked into the Toshiba Chromebook 2. It had a stunning 1080p screen which was eons ahead of my 1366x768 display, amazing battery life, and more.

I hate to say it, but it was the Macbook of Chromebooks. It looks really similar to a Macbook, and that’s not bad at all. I want a laptop that looks good, performs well, and is portable.

That’s where the Toshiba Chromebook 2 comes in.

I really wanted it after doing intense research to see if it would fit my needs. I hopped onto my Windows laptop and wrote a list of all the programs that I used and determined if I needed them or not. For the most part, yeah―I can use a Chromebook without ever needing to run those programs. If I did, I could just use my Windows laptop for a few minutes and go back to my Chromebook. That’s the most important thing about this article.

Anyway, I got the TCB2 after a lot of consideration, and went for it―kind of like how I gunned for Android from iOS.

Highlights

There are things that a Chromebook just can't do, but what it can do, it does well. Really well.

Here are the biggest things when it comes to a Chromebook:

1. Price. The biggest point of a Chromebook is that you’re getting an amazing laptop with a small budget. If you put that same budget into a Windows laptop, you’re getting junk. I’m sorry, but that’s really how it is.

2. Performance. Even with mediocre specs, a ChromeOS will make it fly. Again, it’s just a browser―you’re not doing anything else, really. You can be running a 1366x768 display with a 1.5GHz processor that works smoothly on a Chromebook, or a Windows machine that will sputter and ask for its owner to put it out of its misery. Your choice.

3. Battery Life. Since a ChromeOS is a very light operating system, it’s very simple. You use the browser, and that’s it. Since there’s nothing else really going on, you can run even the cheapest Chromebooks for 14 hours. There’s no funky things like an Anti-virus running in the background, or a Windows update installing while you relentlessly mash your keyboard or mouse trying to get things to work.

4. Reliability and Longevity. In terms of reliability, you can damn well expect the Chromebook to work all the time, every time. If I start a word document at school, I can close the lid, bring it home, and open my laptop to continue it without any worries that my files might be lost, or the app crashed. It’s already saved in the cloud. If anything does happen, factory resetting is insanely simple―click Powerwash, log back in, and everything downloads and syncs everything back within minutes.

You can count on Google to keep your Chromebook updated for many, many years. My Toshiba Chromebook 2 can expect updates up until 2019, which is 5 years of free support without having to buy an update or illegally pirating product keys.

5. Portability. This applies to 95% of all Chromebooks: everything is portable excluding the Pixel series and the larger 15" Chromebooks (Acer C910). This is the biggest thing I look for in a laptop: how light it is, and how thin it is. Frankly, when it comes to a Windows laptop that can come anywhere near what I want, I’d need to shell out 800–1300 dollars to get a Macbook Pro equivalent (Dell XPS 13, Asus Zenbook). My Chromebook does everything I need at under 3 lbs.

6. Browsing the Internet. It’s obvious, but you are buying a Chromebook because that is basically all you do. If that is true like it is for me, then you’re better off getting something that can last hours on a charge. I can watch Netflix, YouTube, write articles, browse Twitter, etc. all in a single day without having to think about charging.

7. Cloud connectivity and Google Services from the heavens. I'm not trying to say that Cloud services are a Chromebook exclusive, but a Chromebook has to deal with cloud services in a very different way. Since all Chromebooks have 16–32gb of storage, you have to put everything into the cloud including Music, Documents, Photos, etc. 

Luckily, Google’s got you covered. But that also means that a lot of your stuff requires an internet connection.

Here is what you can't do with a Chromebook:

1. Run intensive programs. Yeah, you should already know this. You’re not going to be able to run any programs, like Final Cut Pro or anything like that. Don’t even try. If you want to do something along these lines, you can install a new OS like Ubuntu, and dual-boot it! (As long as your processor supports it―Intel Processors, to be exact)

2. Support your phone. This one is tricky. If you have an iPhone, good luck backing it up to iTunes―it doesn’t exist. If you have a Samsung, LG, etc, then good luck trying to use Samsung Kies or LG Support Tool. That doesn’t exist, either. If you want to update your phone, you have to do it through OTA or on a Windows machine or Mac. This is actually why I keep my Windows machine around, actually―to root, install, etc.

3. Play PC games. This should be obvious, but some #pcmasterrace people complain that a Chromebook isn't capable of doing anything like playing games. This is not why you are buying a damn Chromebook. If you want to do that, build a PC, because you've spent hundreds of dollars by buying a Chromebook anyways. There’s some games on the Chrome Web Store, but not real games.

4. Everything else. There’s just so many things that a Chromebook can’t do, but you should know what you’re getting into. Do what I did, and look at everything you do and evaluate it. You can’t do simple things like downloading torrents, unzipping RAR files, etc.

4A. WiFi: Okay, look. It’s in the name. Chromebook. 90% of what you’re going to be doing on this laptop is on a browser, which needs WiFi. Does that mean that your laptop is rendered useless if you’re not in a coffee shop? The answer is actually no―You can still access your offline files, create files, and modify files (such as Docs) without the internet. When you get connected to WiFi again, then everything syncs back.

4B. Entertainment: Yeah, don’t expect to listen to music if you use Google Play Music. It’s in the cloud, not your laptop. Just use your phone or something. Oh, and good luck with the whole movies thing.

Why I use a Chromebook and a Windows Laptop

My biggest advice to anyone that isn’t in the intensive-program industry (AKA everyone else, including me):

Buy a Chromebook, and keep a Mac/Windows device handy. I actually use my Windows laptop once every 2 months or even less, because I rarely need it. But when I do need it, I need it. I do things involving Android a lot, so that means I need my Windows device to root and install flash images to test Android M, etc.

Overall, it’s been the best investment I’ve made. I love this Chromebook. I bring it to school way more often than my old Windows laptop because it’s reliable and lasts forever.

To me, the best combo is this: rather than buying a $1,000+ laptop, buy a Chromebook for under $350 and then build a PC for $800-$1000+ for all your big workloads. That’s what I plan to do when I get the money. I would even go as far as buying a Chromebook and a nice Windows laptop because I like both a lot, but ChromeOS more. It’s a simpler OS, and it’s also the prettiest between ChromeOS/Windows10/MacOSX.

If you can only afford a Chromebook, that’s still probably your best choice. For $330, I bought the Toshiba Chromebook 2 that has a better screen than even an 800 dollar laptop, and the battery life just kills everything under 800 dollars. Research every possible option.

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you guys next time.

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