Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Laptop advice

May I ask why you chose the Pixelbook Go, Stewart?

The c. £1300 segment is pretty hotly contested at the moment, with Dell XPS 13, Apple Macbook Air, and Pixelbook Go all with some pretty attractive models.

Just had it recommended to me for its ease of use, quality quiet keyboard and long battery life and it came out tops in a review for best laptops for writers and journalists

I just wanted a laptop for word processing and spreadsheets and emails when I’m out of the office. So wanted something compact and straight forward with a good quality keyboard as I touch type

Mine is the base model at £629

Stewart mentions a really good point about the keyboard. The new superlight and thin devices have only got room for a tiny key movement and it is often very odd to deal with at first. We had a director buy a very expensive Apple MacBookPro only to hate the keyboard. He then bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 and loved it. I have to agree with him the last generation of butterfly keyboards on the MBP are not my favourite. Short travel and dull contact.

I quite like the latest MBP keyboard - still fairly short travel, and quiet.

Yes the latest model has improved it. I did not intend to say it was unusable but if you are used to hammering a keyboard or a desktop with a mechanical keyswitch it is off putting.

Yes, the battery life is appealing, as is the simplicity. I'm not sure how I'd get on with Chrome OS, but I've just found out you can download a version from NeverWare to turn an old laptop into a Chromebook as as I have an old 11" MBA kicking around I think I'll give it a go.

That's interesting, I might do the same (if I can remember where the old box went into hiding).

I'm doing it now, Graham, just waiting while it writes a bootable USB disk. My MBA is a 2010 model with a Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and a 120GB SSD. No good at all for a modern MacOS install, but it should be good for a ChromeOS device.

Just to say I'm still here .... not contributing on account of it being me needing the advice

However, I am mulling over the posts as they come in.

Thanks

K

And the jury has returned from its deliberations.

On the first question: Can you install Chrome OS on a clunky old laptop to give it a new lease of life? The answer is a resounding Yes. It works very well indeed on my old Macbook Air and is much quicker.

On the second question: Is Chrome OS a good alternative to MacOS or Windows? The answer is that for basic internet-centric usage, and if you only want to use web-based applications, then it's fine - in fact, for the kind of web browsing/social media/email/bit of word processing/occasional spreadsheet level of use, I'd say they are pretty much ideal, especially if you have a cloud-based storage account and use the relevant apps to go with them like Google Drive & Google apps, iCloud & Pages/Numbers, or OneDrive & Office 365. Fast, simple, and good battery life as there's much less load on the hardware.

But: If you have all 3 cloud servies as I do but want to mix & match your apps (like use MS Word on a iCloud doc for example) then it becomes a lot clumsier: you cannot simply open/close/move files from one to the other in a single move like you can with a 'proper' operating system.

2nd But: (and for me it's a very Big But indeed): If you want to use any non-web applications for things like advanced photo or video editing, music production, local programming/networking tasks, CAD/3D printing, SQL databases, or anything beyond the 'simple', then your luck is out unless you are a Linux brainiac and aren't afraid to get down and dirty with the operating system.

Shall I leave it installed on my MBA? Yes, it makes much better use of the hardware than Mac OS Mojave, which is the latest version that will run on it. But I probably won't use it much, I'll leave it in the dining room or somewhere for those times when I want to look something up on t'internet but can't be arsed to go into the living room and use a proper computer.

As with all these things of course: YMMV.