{"id":949,"date":"2014-06-03T17:35:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T16:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=949"},"modified":"2014-06-17T10:45:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T09:45:18","slug":"life-with-a-chromebook-the-first-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/life-with-a-chromebook-the-first-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Life with a Chromebook: The first month"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"acer-c720\"<\/a>About a month ago, my very expensive and much-loved MacBook Air died a sudden and painful death. \u00a0The screen fractured, initially displaying some thin vertical lines that I could ignore,\u00a0and then becoming completely useless.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The “geniuses” at the Apple Store “Genius Bar” told me that it was all my fault and couldn’t possibly be an issue with how the thing is manufactured, and as a result, it wasn’t covered by the warranty and a repair would cost around \u00a3380 (US$636).<\/p>\n

For that price, I thought, I could pick up a couple of brand new Chromebooks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So I bought one (an Acer C720) and have been using it for 28 days.<\/p>\n

(Meanwhile, the corpse of my brand-new MacBook Air sits on a shelf as I try to decide what to do with it. \u00a0Any suggestions welcome.)<\/p>\n

There are basically four kinds of laptops you can own these days. \u00a0Most people buy Windows laptops. \u00a0Those with a bit more money buy Macs. \u00a0(A word of warning to them: don’t let your screen fracture.) \u00a0The more ambitious configure their laptops to run a variant of GNU Linux. \u00a0I’ve done all three over the years.<\/p>\n

The fourth kind of laptop is what is properly known as a “thin client”<\/em>, meaning a laptop with little or no actual software or memory. \u00a0It’s essentially a web browser, with screen and keyboard.<\/p>\n

Like everyone else, I thought the problem here is what could I do with a thin client — don’t I need a “proper” laptop?<\/p>\n

Short answer — no, I don’t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now this is not for everyone, but everything I did on the MacBook Air (and on my desktop, which is a Mac Mini) I can do on the Chromebook<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This includes the following:<\/p>\n