Purchase a Chromebook or "regular" laptop?

archevel
2023-06-26T16:05:46Z

I'm looking to buy a new device and have started to look at chromebooks to see if it would be a suitable option. My use cases are pretty mundane:

Online banking and other similar services

Emailing

As a tool for GMing RPG campaigns (probably managed through some online service)

Stream video while traveling (eg Netflix, YouTube)

Note taking & drawing (possibly with a stylus)

Occasionally ssh to remote machines

Arguably the heaviest of these would be streaming, but I guess most devices can handle that decently. Since I won't be doing any gaming or heavy dev work (on the actual machine) I figured I don't really have very high hardware requirements. As such perhaps a chromebook would be a good option. There are some downsides, mainly for me that it is heavily tied to the Google ecosystem. Can chromebooks be easily jailbroken and run a lightweight window manager on Linux? If so does the device retain its battery life okish? Could I still use a stylus with the device? Would I be better off buying a cheap laptop and install linux on that?

Finally I've read that Google cancled their Pixelbook 2 last year. Has there been any updates or rumors of it coming back (I tend to like Google's hardware)?

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tech/170a/purchase_a_chromebook_or_regular_laptop

Votes: 24

Comments: 42