Chromebooks (part 96)

 For years I used to use an HP Chromebook to read my mail in bed on winter mornings.

As a device it lasted well, even once it was out of updates, and I only stopped using it when the battery died part way through the pandemic.

By then I had my android tablet and a couple of windows laptops so I didn't replace it. I did buy myself a chromebook - a Lenovo Ideapad duet a year or so later when I needed a really lightweight device to take on our Kimberley trip in 2022 - essentially I needed a device with a keyboard I could use with spreadsheets at the start and end of the trip - as we were going to be out of internet range apart from some very slow satellite internet - no Starlink then - it didn't seem worth taking a laptop.

Taking the Chromebook, especially as the duet can function as a tablet when the keyboard is folded back, proved an excellent solution, but I must admit I havn't made as much use of it as perhaps I should, preferring to take a windows based laptop when travelling.

Well, all that changed a few weeks ago when we broke down on our way to Melbourne. On a whim, because after all we were only going overnight I'd taken the Chromebook instead of a full size laptop as probably all we would need to do is find somewhere for dinner that evening, and of course check my email the next morning.

Well, things didn't work out quite as planned. And this is where the Chromebook came into its own, letting me search for transmission specialists, pull up breakdown insurance documents, write emails, book train tickets home, all things that could have been done on an ipad, but with a little more difficulty due to not having a keyboard, and which obviously could have equally been done on a laptop.

But the Chromebook, which is often perceived as less capable device due to its association with its use in schools, let me do all this with relative ease.

I came out of the experience impressed by the Chromebook's ability to act like a super tablet, and with its ability to run android applications as well as quite meaty applications like Libre office in a linux container.

And with the ability to run android applications I could access our Evernote archive where we keep all the electronic copies of all the car and insurance documents given everything comes as a pdf these days.

So, quietly impressed.

One of the major objections to Chromebooks used to be their dependence on the internet, but then we're all dependent on the internet these days.

More importantly I was able to do all I wanted to do over a 4G Telstra connection - increasingly these days its the quality of the network connection that is the limiting factor, no matter what device one is using.

Certainly, with the distraction free machine I find that while it will let me work quite happily without an internet connection, when there's a connection available, it's amazing how much I use it, even if only check information.

When we went to Tasmania earlier this year, I took a full capability laptop, and I still would on an extended trip, if only because the Ideapad Duet lacks an SD card slot for easy backup of camera cards, but for an overnight trip the Chromebook is more than capable, especially given its excellent battery life ...