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Looking for an affordable laptop for the holidays? Google is making their popular Chromebook line a lot more enticing by upping their previous 100GB of free Google Drive storage to a whopping 1TB (that’s 1,000GB) for 2 years. The offer is good for any new Chromebook user buying a laptop either in-store, online, or through the Google Play Store.
It’s not a bad deal by any means. A 1TB Google Drive plan runs about $10 a month and over the course of 2 years, that’s a $240 in savings. By comparison, the cheapest Chromebook is barely $200 meaning you even get to save a little bit of dough in the process (if you were planning on getting the storage anyway). Don’t forget, Google Drive storage is all encompassing spanning across Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and even includes your Gmail storage.
Typically, internal hardware storage on Chromebooks are lacking compared to “full fledged” PCs, but with 1TB of Drive storage, it should take some of the sting out of moving all your pictures, music, and other media to the cloud. The deal is only good until January 1st, so get a move on.
[Google]
Still not convinced what use a chromebook is
Cool, it’s not for you then.
Actually, I should have made that a question. With Windows tablets/laptops in the same price point, wouldnt that be more use?
Nah.
Not necessarily. I won’t claim that the Chromebook is for everyone, but for a lot of people, it’s perfect. It weighs less than a comparably priced laptop, runs a good long time on a charge, can mirror up to a TV for those with HDMI ports – and no concerns about keeping updates straight. Anything that you can do on the Chrome browser or with the cloud apps – and that’s quite a bit – is right there for you. You can pop in an SD card and do document editing offline, syncing to the cloud when convenient. I have a teenage granddaughter using one – replaced her old messed up laptop – and she loves it for all of the above reasons. Does schoolwork, submits assignments with cloud links and syncs her personal music with it and her phone. You have to be OK with the cloud and you have to be OK that it’s not going to do everything. But if does what you need, it does it insanely well for the price. And if you find one with an Intel processor, it’s easy to dual boot a compact Linux and get access to even a bit more.
As you can guess, I plan to get one. Not because I expect to replace my desktop (haha forget about it) but – my laptop is about end of life and most anything I needed it for on the go I can do with my phone.
But what’s in between? Compare a Chromebook to a tablet with a good sized screen and an add-on keyboard – compare performance and cost, screen and keyboard size. If you can run web centric for your needs, the Chromebook wins hands down.
It doesn’t necessarily replace your main PC (but it might) and it doesn’t replace your phone (no sarcasm intended or implied ok). It’s a different class of device.
Excellent. Thanks for going to the time for typing your reply. Thats exactly what I wanted to know. I have a WIn 8 Tablet which I replaced with a Android tablet – because I find the Android mores suited to touch operation and easier to use on the fly. Ie. When commuting.
I use Chrome a lot too. The Chrome book would be a great device for what you described. Quick question – Can you play video (MKV) locally from one? Or should I think of it as a “Chrome” operating system.. <– probably answered my question there.
thanks again
If you’re OK with adding Linux, try that and then –
sudo apt-get install vlc
No guarantees but it reportedly works for others with mkv videos. Others have trouble. Ymmv but it’s free to try.
Oops! I see that ArchLinux now supports the Samsung Chromebook with the Exynos processor.
Boom, done, as my friend Johnny T would say. :D
As I literally sit here cleaning endless numbers of randomly installed junk programs off my mother-in-law’s horribly underpowered win 8.1 computer, I can say with conviction that for certain use cases, a chromebook is a better option.
You absolutely WILL NOT find a Windows laptop at the same price point with equal displays (or some other feature that’s superior). People always make same comment you made, but very noticeably neglect to include a link to a WIndows laptop “at the same price point” because there aren’t any that are comparable. You’re ALWAYS saving at least $100.
I don’t have a Chromebook, but that’s because I was okay with spending the $1000 on a Windows laptop with a great display AND a discrete graphics card. If anyone actually made a decent medium-price-point Chromebook, I would have bought that instead and put Windows 7 on it.
Even if you don’t use the Chrome OS side of things much, a Chromebook is still the cheapest way to get a notebook PC that can run linux. Netbooks aren’t even available anymore. Just make sure to get one that is intel-based, not ARM-based. 4GB of RAM works better than 2, and while it seems that it will work fine on 16GB units, 32GB would be better if available. Get one with an SD card, and then you can put GB’s and GB’s of media file on there and play them via the hdmi port, even at 1080p.
Microsoft has apparently just released cheap notebook PC’s to compete, but the Windows OS just can’t be contained. The units are underpowered.
You need to know that Chromebooks aren’t designed to be connected directly, via USB, to printers. They’re supposed to use the cloud or other connected PC’s for printing. I’m not sure if installing linux gets around this or not . . .
Chromebooks are amazing little devices. I use mine anytime I need the full website experience or want a big screen or need a keyboard. I pick it over my windows laptop every time bc I don’t have to work about battery life since it lasts forever and bc it takes about 5 seconds to boot from cold. That is a huge deal! It’s fully loaded in 5 seconds. My windows laptop with an i5 takes several minutes to boot and then everything is slow ams unresponsive for a few more minutes while everything finishes loading. This doesn’t exist on a Chromebook. Plus now they can edit Microsoft office documents natively without having to convert to other file formats. I also don’t have to update virus software or use ccleaner or malware bites with a Chromebook. So unless I just have to use an app that only works on windows, I’m using my Chromebook bc I don’t have to take a charger with me anywhere and it is fast and boots in seconds. I have the white HP Chromebook 14.
Thanks for the details. I get it now :-)
Think of it as exactly what chrome can do, that being said chrome can play .mkv which is a wrapper but not all codecs within that wrapper
You da man! :)
Much better than the one deal.
Too bad this pops up as I can’t even sign in to my current Chromebook. Couldn’t recognize password, then said we updated passwords and it’ll wipe local storage if we don’t enter an old one. I emailed support.
It’s for recent purchases as well. I bought mine in August and I got it.
I have a question. How are display models of Chromebooks set up in the States (and around the world)? Chromebooks with Japanese keyboards, for the consumer market, just came out here in Japan last week. The display models, though, aren’t connected. You can’t really do anything with them other than look at the hardware.
I asked in the Kawasaki Bic Camera if they could log in to an account, and they said no, so I made an account on the spot with my tablet and then explored a little (somehow the Chromebooks did have the login credentials for the in-shop wireless). The shop people asked me to stop, though, as they feared I would activate the 200GB Google Drive bonus. I told them it was too late; I had already logged in (I did share the account ID and password with them). I insisted on exploring more and they just around me watching. I did a powerwash at the end and went home and changed the password to the account. It didn’t seem to have triggered the google drive promotion.
I went in again this week and had to use my own phone to WiFi tether as the previous WiFi login was missing.
There must be a better way. Doesn’t google have dedicated accounts just for display models? A sandboxed collection of sample documents would be helpful . . .
This free storage offers bug the crap out of me. I got a 2TB free offer for Dropbox with Samsung (The S1 I think?) for 2-years.
I kind of forget its an offer and think “Wow, great! 2TB of storage!”.
Then the offer expires and I lose it all. The reason this seems pointless to me is right now 1TB is a good amount of storage. In a year, two or more it wont mean a whole lot as prices go down and storage rates go up. Why cant we just get this offer for lifetime? Im sure in one year 2TB for Google Drive wont hurt anyone and means more to the end user than it does to Google.
Well if you want more storage then pay for it. Its only 10 bucks a month after the free deal expires.