Good, cheap lap-top

There's some decent deals going on right now for a laptop that would suit your needs. If you find a particular model you like just google it and read some reviews about it to see if it's any good.

 

I have a samsung chronos laptop from a year ago and it still can play diablo 3 and such no problem, but I rarely PC game so it's MORE than sufficient for anything I need to do.

In fact like 80% of my time on EC I don't use a computer it's an iPad I use.

 

They usually have some internal storage, mostly 16 or 32 GB SSD's. They do have USB ports and card readers along with a HDMI port. I think they come with 100GB of "cloud" storage, also.

From Google: Chromebooks come with popular Google products built in: Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Hangouts. So you can work, play, and do whatever you want, right out of the box. Create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings with apps like Google Docs, Zoho and SlideRocket. Enjoy full screen video chat with up to nine friends using Google+ Hangouts.

The Chrome Web Store offers thousands of free apps, themes, and extensions to help you make the most of your Chromebook. Watch movies, play games or get work done (if you really have to). The Chromebook will keep it all fresh with automatic updates.



I would definitely just get a charger for your Chromebook and use that. Done!

 

ChromeBooks are essentially laptops; but yes, you have to internet access in order to access basically everything. You can install Unbuntu on them, which is fairly easy (and free!) to install if you follow youtube instructional videos. After installation of the operating system, install openoffice and that will allow you access office products offline, it won’t be the official office suite, but it will pretty much be the same. Let me know if you need some additional instructions installing unbuntu.

Also, in your case, is your music somewhere on the cloud or is less than 1,000 songs. Chromebooks generally only 16gb of storage, which is not a lot at all, and you will have a problem putting your entire music collection on a chromebook if it greater than 1,000.

 

Chromebooks are basically designed to be Internet connected laptops. So yes, there is that spooky Google cloud. Although, based on what I see available for the Chromium web browser (which is open source equivalent of Chrome web browser), some applications work with other cloud services. Also some can work offline, but how well that works is another question.

Also there is the fact that whole Chromebook concept is a Google product. Thus those who don't trust Google at all might wish to totally avoid the Chromebook.

I personally have mixed feelings about the Chromebook idea. I can't honestly see using a Chromebook as my only computer. The bias towards the cloud is one issue. I don't do anything top secret, but there are some things I want to keep fully controlled on a local level. I don't keep a diary, but if I did, there is no way I'd put it on any cloud service.

Also worth noting: there appears to be some sacrifices in features. For example, Google Docs does not have the power of a full word processor. While a lot modern word processor features are probably worthless for 99% of us, I personally feel like Google Docs is a little too stripped down. For one thing: it cannot save documents as the older ".doc" Word format, which I sometimes need. (It does support other formats, including the newer Word ".docx" format.)

However, at the same time, I think Chromebooks are an attractive option, and I certainly could see having one as a secondary computer. For example: a travel computer if I took a vacation. Or if I were a student today a cheap Chromebook might be a nice choice for a laptop I take everywhere I go. (And some limitations would simply not matter to me. I could not care less if someone hacked into my Google Docs account and read that 15 page term paper written in Academic Dry Style.)

---------- Post added 10th Feb 2014 at 11:01 AM ----------

I think the fact that you have a Chromebook might make it worth getting up and running just to play with. It might well be all you'd want.

I can't really speak about the quality of Samsung, but I will say I was quite impressed with what I saw of the Samsung Chromebook on display at Office Depot last fall.

---------- Post added 10th Feb 2014 at 11:05 AM ----------

Ubuntu is an option. The one problem I hear is that it's not as easy to install Ubuntu on a Chromebook as it is a regular computer. Perhaps in time Ubuntu will make a version that is specifically easily installed on Chromebooks.

---------- Post added 10th Feb 2014 at 11:08 AM ----------

Ubuntu default installations have LibreOffice (which is based on OpenOffice. I like LibreOffice better since it seems to have better development). LibreOffice is as much office suite as most people will ever need. And it supports MS Word documents.

 

We usually get laptops around $300 and they're great! And if you do want to actually use them for gaming they're usually fine, I mostly just play Sims so yeah