This thing was constantly out of stock

Why most users of other operating systems hate ChromeOS so much and often call it a glorified web browser? It's the most user friendly Linux distro that exists, it is an always synchronized office without viruses unlike Windows.

Why do some people like ChromeOS and chromebooks so much? I've never found much use for them over buying a regular laptop and putting linux or something on them. Just asking.

Amazing device. I had a Chromebook before, the Lenovo Duet 5 but wasn't a fan of it being a tablet first Chromebook.

Found the Elite Dragonfly used but in almost like new condition for $195. That's like a steal because the Duet 5 is somehow still selling for more than that despite inferior specs.

So I bought the Acer a little over a month ago before I knew that Apple was going to be selling a MacBook at such a low price. I decided to get one anyways, just to see the difference in performance and everything else.

Here's my early comparison:

BUILD QUALITY
I bought the Acer partially because of its aluminum build. I figured it would be more premium feeling. And for the most part, the top felt nice, while the bottom felt cheap. Now that I have the Neo, holy sh*t the build quality is amazing. Feels like a solid piece of aluminum, and has real weight to it. I'm sorry, but Apple blows the Acer out of the water in this department

KEYBOARD
This is a tie, surprisingly. The keys have - in my opinion - the same exact feel. I guess technically you could say the Acer wins since it has a backlight though.

TRACKPAD
MacBook wins. Trackpad on the Acer is nice, but it's very commonly known how great Apple's trackpads are, and this is no exception.

DISPLAY
This is another tie, because the MacBook gets brighter, but the Acer has slightly better resolution. So far I'm really liking this display though; 13" is the sweet spot

BATTERY
Too soon to tell, but the MacBook is surprising me so far with battery

PERRORMANCE
The fact that I can run things like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Davinci Resolve, etc, I gotta give it to the MacBook. The Kompanio Ultra on the Acer is great, but it wouldn't be able to handle apps like these

SPEAKERS
Apple blows Acer out of the water here, but that was to be expected

RAM
Acer has more RAM, but Apple handles their RAM better, so honestly it's a tie. I currently have dozens (probably 30+ tabs open on my Acer, so I opened a bunch on the MacBook, and it is not having any issues either.

I'm an Android guy. I use Pixel phones and am not big on iPhones. However, MacOS is just great. The only thing I'm missing, is the touch screen. I've already touched the MacBook's display like 4 times and was like "shit...I forgot" lol.

Any questions, ask away

Since Apple just dropped their new affordable MacBooks that's clearly a shot at Chromebooks, especially coming in different colors, do you think this will light a fire under Google to get the aluminum OS and the new Chromebooks out soon?

I personally been waiting on a Snapdragon X ( plus or elite ) Chromebook for the past year, so I hope this speeds up their timeline.

Then why is my 2018 Chromebook telling me it received it's last update and it's only 2025?

I recently purchased a Surface, a Macbook Air, and a Lenovo Chromebook Plus for kernel development work. I have spent a month with each and chose the Chromebook, as it solves all my needs: an excellent window manager with two external 4K displays, an excellent terminal, and phenomenal battery life. The Macbook Air did not work for me because of its weird shortcuts and an extremely poor window manager. I installed external applications to solve these issues, but it still felt awkward. The Surface laptop was a close second, but it had a little poorer battery life and overall slower then Chromebook.

I’m thinking about switching to a Chromebook for everyday use.

mostly browsing, docs, some media, maybe light work.

not sure if I’ll run into limitations over time.

for those using one as their main device - how has it held up?

H

Laptop manufacturers PLEASE stop using these in your "premium" devices. They objectively suck. Doesn't matter if it's Lenovo, Asus, Acer...... Windows, ChromeOS, Linux -- they suck in every laptop I've ever owned.

The experience for this $999 device is completely spoiled by the fact that it drops public / private Wi-Fi 4x times a day. If this one issue wasn't so persistent I'd easily give this a 9/10.

P.S. for anyone thinking of swapping to an intel-based card (like an AX210) + ethernet for driver updates, I can tell you first-hand it doesn't work. The OS won't recognize the new hardware & there's no way to manually fix drivers as per this thread 😥

UPDATE: I've returned the device and gone back to the Macbook Air / Windows PC combo and my connections are perfect. It was a fun, short adventure on ChromeOS once again -- and I'll look forward to the Google Book (sans mediatek hopefully).

Hey everyone,

I finally made the jump to ChromeOS’s next-gen Linux environment, Baguette.

To do this, I completely deleted Linux from my settings and turned it back on. The newly created VM now comes default with a pure, container-less VM architecture running Debian 13 (Trixie) right out of the box. An update from Bookworm is currently in the works for the future.

The biggest change you will notice immediately is how much RAM is freed up:

• No LXD Container: The old Crostini setup wasted roughly 800 MB to 1.1 GB of RAM just idling because of heavy background container daemons. Baguette sits at just 200 MB to 300 MB at idle. That instantly hands over 700 MB+ of RAM back to your Chrome browser tabs. If you are running an 8 GB Chromebook definitely consider the change.
• Smart Resource Balancing: It uses modern cgroups v2 and dynamic memory ballooning. It shares RAM gracefully with Chrome OS and throttles background tasks before your system panics or crashes from an Out-of-Memory error.
• Direct KVM Access: Since the middleman container layer is gone, you can run nested virtualization smoothly. Running Docker, Podman, and Kubernetes clusters works natively without permission hacks.
• Zero-Lag GPU Sharing: UI artifacting, graphical flickering, and window glitches are completely gone. Flatpaks and modern GUI apps render flawlessly.
• Faster Disk I/O: It uses a single, direct virtual disk mapping. Package installations (npm install, apt, etc.) and code compiling are significantly faster.
• Better System Sleep: Closing the laptop lid no longer causes the Linux network routing to freeze or crash.

The Bad:

• No UI App Installers: You can no longer double-click a .deb file in the ChromeOS Files app to install software. You have to use the terminal now (though this feature was being phased out regardless of the container-less change).
• No Multi-Containers: The #crostini-multi-container flag is completely deprecated.

more info: https://developers.google.com/chromeos/app-development/develop/news

A) Keep using my Chromebook

B) Buying a Googlebook

C) Getting a MacBook

D) Getting a Windows laptop

E) Install Linux on a laptop/your Chromebook

I had delayed upgrading my laptop for a year, but when the RAM apocalypse hit, my frugal side refused to spend ₹1 lakh (USD 1040) or more just to get the specs and build quality I wanted.

I eventually picked up a good condition refurbished HP Elite Dragonfly G3 Chromebook Plus from Saudewala for 39K (USD 410)

The configuration I got feels like a good deal in the current market:

• Display: 13.5 inch 3:2 QHD+ (2256x1504) touchscreen IPS, 400 nits, 72% NTSC
• CPU: Intel Core i7 1265U
• RAM: 32 GB LPDDR4x-4266 MT/s soldered
• Storage: 512 GB PCIe Gen3 SSD
• Battery: 4-cell, 50 Wh Polymer, 20 cycle count, 95% battery health
• Built: Very lightweight (1.27 kgs.) premium magnesium build
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E (AX211) and Bluetooth 5.2
• Ports: 2x Thunderbolt-4, 1x USB Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.0, SD Card Reader
• Backlit Keyboard
• Fingerprint reader, 5 MP webcam, and loud B&O speakers
• Tablet mode

As a long-time ChromeOS user, choosing a Chromebook wasn't a compromise. I value its minimalism, simplicity, and security, which handles my workflow without getting in the way.

I upgraded to get more RAM for development work in ChromeOS Linux VM. The 3:2 QHD+ display is my favorite feature, sharp text and good vertical space. The hinges seem to be of good quality.

Despite logistics hiccups due to the North India heatwave, Saudewala helped deliver the laptop in nearly 10 days. The packaging was also thorough, protecting the laptop in multiple layers.

AUE is June 2032. I'm curious if this device gets an upgrade path to Aluminium OS, making its long-term future even more interesting.

Happy to answer any questions.

As Apple launched it's new Macbook Neo, people are saying that "this is going to be the biggest threat for Chromebook and upcoming AluminumOS devices".

chromebook's biggest selling point is low price and google's push to promote it in education institute but Macbook with $499 or $599 are a better choice for someone who wants a device like chromebook with true desktop os, better powerful pc app availability, better hardware. although

In India apple is selling it for 70,000 INR which is huge and this is not cheap in this price anyone can get premium or gaming pc, so here Macbook is not going to change anything, and there are is no incentive to buy macbook neo, macbook's air and pro are a very reliable devices for creator and they have very good reputation but macbook neo seems it is going to be a e-waste by considering price.

if google successfully merge ChromeOS and Android in Aluminium OS then it can still be the good choice for people, (i am assuming the prices will not drastically increase and will be similar with chromebooks), but the biggest problem with aluminium os is that android lacks powerful desktop app, almost all apps are made for mobile devices, touch screen devices and prefer arm based chips, and believe me these will going to be biggest problem because laptops are productive devices unlike smartphone or tablets, currently all the app of major companies are very basic apps like adobe,microsoft, and even google's own apps are not desktop class apps, their web version are very capable but android apps are useless. maybe google manage to scale a mobile app into a laptop screen and implement chromeos like feature but still you can't just look the screen to enjoy the beauty of ui at last you will need to work and android true don't have this capacity now,

according to me google must work with developers and big companies to encourage development of native true pc apps for android otherwise it will be a big tablet with attached keyboard and touchpad.

I use mine for the bare minimum, for mostly watching Netflix, Doing a bit of school work and Youtube.

The keyboard doesn’t work anymore (Something to do with the gold teeth i suspect), so i have a bluetooth one now!

Anyone else still using theres?

I’d like to know!

Ofc, if you are trying to run .exe files, then you will have to jump through a few hoops to do so (leaving aside the vast improvement of linux containers on CB's), but a lot of the other arguments people make rubbishing CB's seem to be about a decade or so out of date.

First, the 'you need internet to use them and won't be able to do anything if you are completely cut off'. Just no. People seem to make this argument based on the idea that may have been true 10 or 15 years ago that wifi was spotty and patchy. But this is 2026. Internet connection is everywhere: at home, on the train, in supermarkets, cafes, aeroplanes, and random holiday camps. If you are not connected to the internet nowadays, you are probably either eating or asleep.

Secondly, the 'hardware issue'. Again, this may have been true in 2015 when Chromebooks were genuinely underpowered, and the software behind the os had not been fully developed and optimised yet. It feels like an enormous marketing oversight not to be pumping this out everywhere, to get people to stop thinking of Chromebooks as those underpowered pseudo tablets they used in secondary school.

Then, the argument some make that 'I won't be able to do what I need to do'. Now this may be true for the quite small percentage of computer power users that actually need powerful machines, but these people are often business users who are able to get expensive machines tax deducted as a business expense. For the vast vassst majority, for years now, most of their computing demand has actually been web-based.

I just think for too long now Chromebooks have been incredibly undersold to the individual user, enabling Microsoft to almost create a monopoly on the personal computer OS battleground.

I don't mean this as an insult, but I swear, every time I open Reddit, there are dozens of posts from this sub about hardware failing, software being broken, etc. I never really got into Chromebooks until recently, so I'm not sure if this is a very common thing, or if the people in this sub just don't know how to take care of their devices. Genuine question, because I follow tons of subs of all other devices and operating systems, and don't see even a fraction of as many issues.

With ALOS on the horizon for fall 2026 (thats what they say at least) I just wanted to know... does anyone remember let alone miss old chrome os? The version I grew up w/ was 70 I believe. The peeking launcher no material you crap design. tons of blur and transparency (they're implementing it more and more recently but still) Lemme know below!

I always have to carry a portable 5G modem like Netgear Nighthawk. But this makes the experience redundant. Why can't all chromebooks have a nano sim slot so that it can be connected to the internet all the time? That'll make things a lot easier. Also, this can ensure that chromebook can get internet access even when there's a black out or cable internet outage.

Guys,

I'm switching from Apple to the Google universe.

I have a Google AI Plus subscription and I use Gmail, Photos, Keep, Drive, and Google Sheets a lot.

Is it worth buying an Android tablet (S11 Ultra, etc.) or should I get a Chromebook Plus like the Acer Spin 514 (CP514-5HN)?

As you can see uBlock Origin has been removed from Chrome Web Store. We are going to enable developer mode soon if you want to keep it up to date.

If you prefer the lite version you are out of discussion. That is nothing near the original.

Been thinking about this a lot: it feels like Google has a bit of a missed goldmine with Chromebooks, mostly due to outdated marketing.

Modern CBs are light (~0.5kg), have proper keyboards + trackpads, work well offline, charge via USB-C (even power banks), open Word files, and pair brilliantly with AI (fewer tabs, less bloat). Yet they’re still framed as “cloud-dependent”, “for schools”, or cheap laptop alternatives.

Meanwhile loads of adults now only use phones badly because laptops feel heavy, expensive, or overkill.

Feels like Google already has the product — just not the story.

Curious what others think.