OT -need information about Chromebooks

[jackal]

I am looking at Chromebooks for my business.
Most of the things I see are about office type work.
My main computer stores my bookkeeping, important tax papers, copies, etc.
I end up putting quotes, material prices, reminders, pictures of parts, etc. on my phone.
I've had phones go dead on me the past several years.
Luckily everything is backed up frequently.
Mty thoughts are to get a Chromebook and use it similar to a tablet.
Write quotes, figure materials, gets lists, keep notes with it, and set up date reminders, send pics from my phone to it.
Some of my customers ( and myself) have trouble looking at pics on a phone screen.

I see some of the student models on sale now for Black Friday.
These have an SD card slot of storage expansion.

Let me know your experiences, pro + con with these.

I have some stacks of spiral notebooks that I have to sort thru sometimes looking for something.
Some of it is scanned to my laptop.

Thanks

 

[technocrat]

Cheap and good, but have a built in end of life date.

 

[hansvandongen]

I read (on account of it being all googly): "A Chrome book is not a computer; it is a data-milking device, and you are the cow..."

this is why, when given one, i converted it to Linux (GalliumOS), and now it's usable as a tablet-sized browsing thingy.

Kind regards,

Hans

 

[GregSY]

Chromebooks are related to Google, which is a criminal organization. You can figure out the rest.

 

[jackal]

I read (on account of it being all googly): "A Chrome book is not a computer; it is a data-milking device, and you are the cow..."

this is why, when given one, i converted it to Linux (GalliumOS), and now it's usable as a tablet-sized browsing thingy.

Kind regards,

Hans

Is it very difficult to change the operating system?
I see that these use cloud storage for almost everything.
I would rather run another system, and store/backup info on an SD card.

The schools are now using these and the kids take them home.
Their idea is that if they have a snow day the kids can still work from home ( if they have internet access).

Most of my information would be prices, and pictures.

 

[hansvandongen]

Is it very difficult to change the operating system?
I see that these use cloud storage for almost everything.
I would rather run another system, and store/backup info on an SD card.

The schools are now using these and the kids take them home.
Their idea is that if they have a snow day the kids can still work from home ( if they have internet access).

Most of my information would be prices, and pictures.

I remember that is was a bit nerve-wrecking at first "if you do this you will risk damaging your computer"
It's been a while, and my 14y kid is using it now, so I don't have access.

info at https://galliumos.org/ with wiki and forum support

The change involved opening the case and setting a few jumper switches to override the standard settings - allowing you to override the Google operating system and booting from somewhere else ("are you sure you want to do that, Dave?") -
and then running a couple of scripts which do the grunk work (downloading the approprate files and installing them, automagically detecting "your" machine type). You just have to really, really remember that password, or you'll brick the device.

In the end I wasn't particularly scared of this, mostly because I could afford to lose the device. The firm I work for was involved in sending these, for free, to Google devs and these were last years models (or the year before, or the year before that). Let say it was my small way of fighting BigTech dominance:-)

After running the scripts and rebooting - which is where that password becomes important - I downloaded Firefox, and had been using it to surf the webs. Works basically like any mac or win computer, but I don't know how LinuxCNC or OpenOffice or something would behave on what is basically a limited computer.

I'm a computer guy myself (in an unrelated field though), so YMMV

Kind regards,

Hans

 

[Fiddley]

I think you'd be better off spending slightly more and just getting a basic PC. Not sure if you use any programs like excel, word, etc. for your business, but a lot of PCs come with a free one year subscription to those products so you wouldn't have to pay for them. Plus, better overall performance and longevity in my experience.

 

[jackal]

I think you'd be better off spending slightly more and just getting a basic PC. Not sure if you use any programs like excel, word, etc. for your business, but a lot of PCs come with a free one year subscription to those products so you wouldn't have to pay for them. Plus, better overall performance and longevity in my experience.

I have a large desktop with all of my files, autocad, QuickBooks etc.
A laptop is in my shop for sending invoices ( Quickbooks) to my main printer.
This would be just a portable tablet for notes, pics, etc

 

[JBTR]

This would be just a portable tablet for notes, pics, etc

My wife has a chromebook that she uses for limited tasks like this, but mainly web browsing. It's in a nice aluminum case and looks similar to a Macbook. She's happy with it for that use, I've used it several times and I generally like it.

Question: how will you get the notes and pics into and out of the chromebook? If it's via email, and your email is gmail or similar free email service, then they are vacuuming up your info anyway. So if you're not putting personal, secret, proprietary or incriminating info on it, maybe it doesn't matter.

It's already been mentioned that chromebooks have a limited lifetime before they stop getting updates for security etc. Make sure you find out when yours will turn into a pumpkin before you buy it, and make sure you're OK with that lifetime.

I also have a couple of old chromebooks with GalliumOS. These had already lived their lifetime in classrooms and I bought them on eBay for $40 - $50 each. Not all chromebooks can be converted, and many of the current ones cannot be. You sort of need to be a geek with some patience to get them converted. But that's what I use for my shop PC, mainly for browsing web usually looking up answers to my current befuddlement on PM, looking up stuff at McMaster, occasional Y-tube videos, etc.

John

 

[memphisjed]

google os is chunky to use and as said- you are the product. Low end ipad or surface rt just work. Something to be said for non-open source software that is refined.

 

[jackal]

My wife has a chromebook that she uses for limited tasks like this, but mainly web browsing. It's in a nice aluminum case and looks similar to a Macbook. She's happy with it for that use, I've used it several times and I generally like it.

Question: how will you get the notes and pics into and out of the chromebook? If it's via email, and your email is gmail or similar free email service, then they are vacuuming up your info anyway. So if you're not putting personal, secret, proprietary or incriminating info on it, maybe it doesn't matter.

It's already been mentioned that chromebooks have a limited lifetime before they stop getting updates for security etc. Make sure you find out when yours will turn into a pumpkin before you buy it, and make sure you're OK with that lifetime.

I also have a couple of old chromebooks with GalliumOS. These had already lived their lifetime in classrooms and I bought them on eBay for $40 - $50 each. Not all chromebooks can be converted, and many of the current ones cannot be. You sort of need to be a geek with some patience to get them converted. But that's what I use for my shop PC, mainly for browsing web usually looking up answers to my current befuddlement on PM, looking up stuff at McMaster, occasional Y-tube videos, etc.

John

I saw a salesman last summer taking pics with his phone and sending them Bluetooth to his Chromebook.
That was sort of when this idea clicked.
I save a lot of sketches that customers send me a long with a picture.
This would be good storage for that.
Sometimes when away from shop a customer will ask me a current price on a part.
With the Chromebook, it would be easy to just open a file and look at the last total price, where material came from, material cost ( then), and a quick view of the part.
Also a note that I quoted too low last time, or multiple parts could save customer money.

Thanks for everyone's info so far.

Jack

 

[Hightemp]

My wife has a chromebook that is like 6 years old. It was pretty cheap, but it still works perfectly well and hasn't seemed to slow down over the years like windows machines always seem to do. Google docs/sheets/etc have pretty good compatibility with office.

 

[DanielG]

I would go with a real computer, either Windows or Mac, over a Chromebook. Either way, I highly recommend Backblaze for backup. It backs up almost all of your data* and recovery actually works. I've used it to successfully recover from an SSD failure. The big advantage of it over the competitors is that there aren't data caps and you don't have to tell it what to back up. It automatically backs up pretty much everything except the Windows and Program Files directories.

* The exception is that Solidworks stores some of its user configuration data in the program files directory, so it's not backed up.

 

[Fiddley]

I have a large desktop with all of my files, autocad, QuickBooks etc.
A laptop is in my shop for sending invoices ( Quickbooks) to my main printer.
This would be just a portable tablet for notes, pics, etc

You're prob fine with a chromebook in that place. Like people have said, the OS isn't great but it should be fine for what you plan to do.

 

[crickets]

Is it very difficult to change the operating system?
I see that these use cloud storage for almost everything.
I would rather run another system, and store/backup info on an SD card.

The schools are now using these and the kids take them home.
Their idea is that if they have a snow day the kids can still work from home ( if they have internet access).

Most of my information would be prices, and pictures.

It's typically not very difficult to replace the OS on them with a version of Linux, but the thing about Chromebooks is that they're optimized to use cloud storage for everything and reduce local storage utilization... so in many cases the type of storage built into these machines is equivalent of a memory card / flash drive (as opposed to true SSD) with a fairly short lifespan. The "Disk" is soldered in, and is not replaceable.

I had a Chromebook and also installed GalliumOS like was suggested earlier. It worked relatively well, but the disk eventually failed and the entire machine had to be scrapped.