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Comment by lostmsu | Hacker News Reader

So, why don't you just use Windows or Mac laptop? You'd have all the same advantages without hardware/firmware problems.

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>why don't you just use Windows or Mac laptop?

Linux tooling support is still very important to me. I want to be able to enjoy Konsole and Sublime text.

Windows Subsystem for Linux is getting there, but I don't think it's as advanced as ChromeOS' yet. Besides, I don't like the Metro interface and Windows 10 in general.

Mac means tying to Apple hardware. Apple hardware means crappy keyboard, heavy laptop, and no touch screen.

I'm just using Windows with Linux in a VM. All the hardware support and all the Linux goodies. (Some extra memory is required, but my thin-and-light 14" laptop had 32G, so it's ok.)

I finally sprung for VMware instead of VirtualBox and running a Linux guest on Windows has gotten so much better for me.

I had a Win 10 laptop with WSL and a touchscreen as my main workstation for a year and I loved it. Sublime is already superceded by VS Code in my mind. Haven't tried Konsole, but I've seen some threads to indicate it can be done. My new job requires me to have a Mac because we do some iOS work and generate a lot of Keynote decks and I just hate it.

I don't know if this is his reason, but at the price range of a Chromebook I assume all Windows notebooks are crap and Macs are non-existent.

You're wrong, but only because the Chromebook price range goes from $200 on the low end to $1650 for a Google Pixelbook with the high-end configuration. In between you can find lots of usable hardware from other vendors, including two configurations of the 13" MacBook Pro with retina screens.

The first reason given was the ability to write on the screen with a pen. That wont happen with an MBP.

A "crap" Windows notebook becomes perfectly usable, even quite snappy, when the Windows install is wiped out and replaced with Linux. (Barring hardware issues, of course.) It's not like low-end Chromebooks have better hardware specs for the price.

I'm not talking about the hw specs, I'm talking about the shitty build all cheap Windows laptops have. Correct me if wrong but I think all Chromebooks are sturdy and durable regardless of the price.

There's plenty of refurbished hardware that's built in a sturdier way. Or you can pay a few hundred dollars more and get a new laptop with a better build - it's worth it just to not have to deal with the weird issues in Chromebook firmware. I'm sorry but a computer that will wipe its install simply because you did not press the right key combination at startup is a useless toy, nothing more than that. (And no, I'm not going to look up my Chromebook model in a firmware-replacement guide and spend my weekend tinkering with it just so it doesn't do that anymore. That's ridiculous.)

Some cheap laptops are available with basically the same hardware running either ChromeOS or Windows. See for example HP's Chromebook and Stream line, they are near-identical aside from the keyboard layout and the Windows models having more storage.

My partner has an Acer £250 Chromebook and their work machine is a £1000 HP, I bought a £140 Lenovo, and the build quality of the HP and Lenovo is on par. The case and screen on the ACER is better than both. The battery is quite poor on the HP, but compared to the other machines it has a better CPU - so could explain it. I'm not saying machines are much of a much-ness, but sometimes more money doesn't buy you better quality. There are HP lines that start from £200 - £1000, and they have the same cases but different flavours of memory and CPUs, I doubt there is much between them in build quality.

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