If you are on a budget, but still want to use a decent laptop under $500 or a little more, you should really consider the Samsung Chromebook Pro. There are, of course, other Windows laptops available on the market, but this model is the only one that offers so many features for this price.
Chromebook Pro was announced at the CES event last January, together with the Chromebook Plus model. The differences between them are quite important, since the Plus runs on an ARM processor, while the Pro uses an Intel Core m3 chip. When it comes to graphics, the Plus has integrated graphics, but the Pro runs on an Intel HD Graphics 515.
Not surprisingly, the Pro is running on the Chrome OS system designed by Google. It is mainly based on the Internet and it brings the cloud-based services offered by the company, for example Docs, Drive, Gmail and some more of them. The best thing about them is that they offer sync options for various platforms you might be using.
There have been reviews for the Pro even before it was released, and most of them are quite optimistic. CNET declared that they are really satisfied with the way in which Pro presents itself, even saying that it will convert Chromebook skeptics.
Perhaps the most appreciated feature that comes with the machine is that you can run almost all of the Android apps that are available on the Play Store, so you won’t be limited to web-based apps anymore. Despite this, some apps may not function as it should on the Chromebook, such as Uber, Snapchat or Pokemon GO. Mainly because of this, but also because of the great features, Forbes said that it is a serious competitor for MacBook and PC, but it remains to be seen if many people would convert to Chromebook.
Moved kids to Chromebooks from Macs and best thing I did. Chromebooks are so poorly understood and often times thought to be a browser which requires you to be online.
Simply not true. Anything you can do on a Mac or Windows you can do on a Chromebooks offline. So listening to music or watch a video or write a paper or work on some spreadsheets, etc.
My only negative with Chromebooks is they need to ship with bigger SSDs. My preference is to give us an optional 2nd that we can use ONLY for the containers persistence so separate from the system drive. So basically Crouton with its own disk.
Dumb kids down with Google’s crippled and controlling platform that has practically zero “real world” usage? What a great idea. /SMH.
“Jack Smith” is the alias of Glenn Rivard, an obsessive Google shill who spends most of his day posting comments on the investment website Seeking Alpha to boost Google and trash Apple. Glenn’s notion that “anything you can do on a Mac or Windows you can do on a Chromebook” is pure balderdash. But he thinks if you repeat a falsehood over and over again, people will start to believe it.