revtothelimit - motorbike forum

The wife and I have a couple of old Acer chromebooks that are now beyond updates and past their best. So we need a couple of new laptops or chromebooks. Tis only for internet browsing/social media reading. Can anyone recommend something cheap that will do this? 15"+ screen needed,
TIA

Before buying have you tried resetting your existing ones to factory settings?

Mussels wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:13 pm Before buying have you tried resetting your existing ones to factory settings?

Yes, but they are the old ones that don't do security updates anymore?

Taipan wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:20 pm

Mussels wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:13 pm Before buying have you tried resetting your existing ones to factory settings?

Yes, but they are the old ones that don't do security updates anymore?

Good but very annoying reason.

I worked for a company that sold ALOT of chromebooks to school. The age/update thing is a bit of a pain, but it's usually something like 5 years from model launch.

There's a google page somewhere with all the dates/models on.

BTW, if you have an older laptop instead of Linux you could try Neverware's CloudyReady, it makes an wintel device into a Chromebook.

https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text

KungFooBob wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 1:06 pm I worked for a company that sold ALOT of chromebooks to school. The age/update thing is a bit of a pain, but it's usually something like 5 years from model launch.

There's a google page somewhere with all the dates/models on.

Ours keeps flashing up that updates are no longer available. Tis a shame as its till faster than my POS Surface!

If it still works, I wouldn't be too concerned about the updates. You could probably turn the notifications off somewhere. An unpatched Chromebook is still a hell of a lot more secure than anything else.

With a five year life span I'd be tempted to buy Windows instead, that doesn't seem to have the same forced end of life that Apple and Google do. Sods law that will change that but at the moment I'm running a five year old work laptop that looks to have plenty of life left in it.

KungFooBob wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 1:30 pm If it still works, I wouldn't be too concerned about the updates. You could probably turn the notifications off somewhere. An unpatched Chromebook is still a hell of a lot more secure than anything else.

That's good news, many thanks.

My Father-in-Law's windows laptop is slower than a slow thing. He only uses it to surf the web and play games like solitaire on. I assume a Chromebook would do all he wants, if they are still going? Any recommendations in Currys or Argos?

I'll treat him to one. This one look okay for his needs?

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/asus- ... 31078.html

Chrome has bought Cloudready now and has released Chrome OS Flex - it's like Chrome OS but without the App store.

https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/

I've got it running pretty quick on an old core 2 duo with 4gb RAM. It's still Beta but it's stable and it's getting more recent Chrome updates than Cloudready.

As it wipes the old hard drive on install you could buy an cheap SSD and it would be super quick.

Stick an SSD in his old one and put cloudready on it.

https://www.neverware.com/freedownload#intro-text

It's not as cool as putting linux on the thing, but it's hell of a lot easier to install and use... it's Chrome OS!

IIRC Cloudready will run from USB stick, it'll be dead slow, but you can check it out without having to wipe the windows install.

Thaks Chaps.