Or rather, that’s what Google wants you to think. Since the end of last year, I’ve been thinking about getting a Chromebook (specifically an Acer C720). It’s a small (11 Inches) laptop, Haswell-ish celeron processor, 2GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Webcam etc. To be fully honest, at first sight, there’s nothing too exciting about this laptop. What really sold it to me was the price tag (pun intended). 199USD! Or 179USD for the refurb version, which I got. This is a laptop I would not be afraid of voiding the warranty.
My previous setup was a Macbook Pro 13.3″ (Early 2012, a.k.a. 8.1), I had made a few modifications on it, which included replacing the DVD drive by a SSD, upgrading the RAM to 8GB and adding some stickers (GPLv3, GNU and an inverted Debian logo over the Apple). Apart from a few annoyances I had with it initially (b43 didn’t support the WiFi card very well, AHCI didn’t work on BIOS mode), I must say I really liked it. My main problem with it was the price. I didn’t actually buy it, I received it as a gift. Which made it all more complicated. I felt like I was carrying a small fortune everytime I was with it. I felt uncomfortable bringing it to school or anywhere outside my apartment. If a mobile computer is not mobile, what is the point?
With these two facts in mind, I went ahead and bought the C720. I must say, I’m not disappointed. The C720 is a great little machine. The CPU + GPU chip is pretty powerful, the SSD is blazing fast (but originally pretty small), the battery life is superb (I get 8~10 hours), the touchpad is quite efficient (not as good as the MBP’s, but good none the less), the keyboard is soft and sensitive and it’s very light.
Of course, not everything is perfect. The camera and screen are both just “okay”, not bad, but not great either. The 2GB of RAM are sufficient, but barely. If I could go back, I would’ve bought a 4GB RAM version (they were misteriously taken out of the market a month or so after launch). Having said that, I can still run an entire GNOME3 session with no major problems, except for opening a large number of tabs in the browser.
With the sale of my trusty MBP, I was able to also buy a desktop computer for the heavier computation and gaming sessions. I’m not much of a gamer, but I like to play once in a while. The game I play the most is StarCraft II, but I’ve have a few games on Steam that I enjoy sporadically.
The point of this post is just to tell people about my experience with the C720 Chromebook Laptop, which serves me better as a mobile computer in comparison with my previous setup. I don’t believe this is a perfect solution to everyone, but the Desktop+Laptop duo is working well for me. In the next posts, I might explain how I installed Arch in it.