My beloved Dell 6520 finally passed away a couple of weeks ago. There probably aren't too many people who would refer to a Dell business laptop as "beloved," but I've been using I'd been using this one for work and later as a personal laptop for almost five years now. It was heavy, islow, it gots three hours of battery life with an extra-large battery, and was old enough that the wireless card wouldn't work with Windows 10.
It did, however, have the best keyboard I've ever used on a laptop., hence the "beloved." To extend its life, I'd upgraded the memory and installed Ubuntu, which doesn't require quite so much in the way of processor speed. That kept it viable for a while, but the hard drive finally gave up the ghost. I was faced with replacing the drive in an old machine that approached and long since passed obsolescence.
With a little encouragement from Nicole, I decided to retire the Dell and get something new.
So, behold! I am writing this post on a brand new Acer Chromebook For Work (yes, that's really what it's called). My main requirement was that, whatever I got, it needed a minimum 1080p resolution.. The other thing I wanted was something that would allow me to work if I needed to, but work wouldn't be right there in my face every time I turned it on.
The thing that made a Chromebook viable was the appearance of decent remote desktop apps on the Google store. Now, I can log into a terminal server at the office if I need to, but that functionality is off to the side. With that out of the way, I can concentrate on what I really want a laptop for: Reading, writing, and watching the occasional video.
I just unboxed it, so I don't have any in-depth thoughts to share yet. It's ridiculously fast, much faster than my gaming desktop. The battery life is supposed to be in the 10-12 hour range, but I haven't had a chance to check it out for myself yet. I currently have only seven tabs open, which is low for me, and there's no hint of a slowdown yet, so I'm pretty sure that power isn't going to be a problem.
So...neat. I really like it so far. I haven't had a chance to play with the offline mode yet, but, obviously, it's going to be pretty limited. I won't be playing any games or editing videos on this machine, but that's what the desktop is for. This is for sitting in a comfortable chair and relaxing. I'll miss ya, old Dell 6520, but based on my first impression with the Chromebook, I don't think I'll be missing ya for very long.
-RK
