Windows or Chromebook? A Best Buy salesman told me it isn't even close | Hacker News Reader

Windows or Chromebook? A Best Buy salesman told me it isn't even close

zdnet.com

18 pointstones41118 comments

Why is a Best Buy employee's opinion relevant? They hire teenagers off the street who don't know anything but are willing to talk all day like they do.

I used to work there, albeit years ago, but the amount of misinformation spewed by "product specialists" rivaled politics.

Is Bill Nye's opinion relevant in this either?

At some level, they understand what people who go into best buy look for and buy. But those who work there usually have big personal preferences, so it may wash out. They are rarely the super casual user. At the very least they're not on commission (though they DO have sales targets, and sometimes those can be for specific brands). Best buy built their business on taking the commission model and not paying anyone commission.

Not really related to the topic at hand, but it's just occured to me that this is what passes for journalism now.

It’s a humor column. Lighten up.

I've wondered about this a while ago: Is it possible to do real work on an android or chromebook device.

I'm on trains, busses, ... a lot, in general without internet. And I just take a laptop. Dont care about mac win or linux. I do some bookkeeping in a spreadsheet, or some programming, I write some text.

I hate to do anything productive on this (cheap) smartphone. No keyboard or mouse, basic software is missing,... It's great for consuming content, for a quick search or checking a map. But as soon as I want to do something, it all falls apart experience-wise. So I waste time in a game or HN when im on a bus, instead of doing something I like or have to.

So how do you people do it?

I prefer a small factor notebook (or netbook if they become relevant again) with as long battery life as I can find. As soon as the smartphone breaks down I pull out the compact laptop and do what I need to do. I haven't seen any reason to do anything else that isn't a hyperspecific kludge. Especially when you are issued a work laptop.

Termux on Android plus Apple Bluetooth keyboard plus Chromecast to anything with HDMI port is the most compact / portable enviroment I have. And quite powerful with latest VIM, node, nvm, Go, awscli, gcloud and whatever you like.

For everyday work I use ChromeOS on MacPro 13 and 10 year old Thinkpad x230. With Debian sid in chroot. All apps work in GUI (so in Chrome as apps) like Instagram, Tinder, Spotify, Youtube Music, even MS Word. There is also VirtualBox included.

I haven't used Windows laptop in 10 years or so. What am I missing?

You’re running ChromeOS on a 13 year old Mac Pro? What am I missing?

On 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina 2015..

best buy guy is right: a cheap windows laptop can do everything a chromebook or linux machine can do and more, probably better.

However (this is big) cheap windows boxes come loaded with, basically, viruses right from the manufacturer so you need to be technical enough to clean them up.

Chromebooks are better if you can't uninstall all of the junk from Toshiba or whoever but vanilla windows on the same price point is, by almost every measure, better.

You realize that MS lets you download an app which puts an installer for a clean Windows install on a usb stick?

I had not heard of that. Is it a new thing?

does it clear this? https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-steer-clear-of-windows-...

The power of marketing campaigns. It's a bit disturbing to see Google push so hard for this - and still majority of ordinary of customers just want a cheap Windows laptop. The Best Buy guy gave pretty reasonable advice. Also confirming my suspicion that actually hardly anyone wants that expensive Pixelbook. But as long as one can install Linux it should be fine - but I'd rather pick a slick Surface Laptop.

Pixelbooks can run most Debian packages, so I've heard, and container work seems to be in the code base. I'm planning to try one out to see if it makes sense for the non devs at my company. Not allowing windows machines because security.

I am usually anti-google and I would never use a chrome book. But man! I had to edit a pdf a while ago and it was such a horrible experience on windows. A free app on adroid did it easy-peasy.

I would still prefer windows over a chromebook but I don't think people who prefer a chromebook are clueless either.

What kind of editing were you doing? I've found PDF-XChange[1] to be pretty good on Windows, it has all the annotation functions.

Disclaimer: Not in any way affiliated with PDF-XChange, just a long-time user.

[1] https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor

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