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Comment by ConstantineXVI | Hacker News Reader

I ended up getting a Chromebook a few weeks ago as a cheap machine to hack and do interviews while my MBA was in for repairs. For not being much higher on the food chain than a thin client, it's pretty much perfect. Chrome's identical to Win/Mac/Linux Chrome (inspector and all); SSH works fine, "search" key (fka capslock) can even be remapped to ctrl.

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Interesting... What is the battery life like on it?

On the Samsung 550 (the only model my Best Buy had on the floor), didn't do any scientific testing but definitely in the 5-7hr range. It's noticeably thicker than a MBA, but not by much; and IMHO the 12" (matte!) size is the sweet spot on a laptop. Unsure on exact specs, but plenty fast enough. Keyboard and click pad are solid as well (best pad I've ever used outside of Apple). Provided you can work within it's niche, it's a great machine for $450. Was sad to have to take it back (not in a position to throw money around I don't absolutely have to).

So you bought it and then returned? Best Buy allows you to do this?

+1 to the chromebook. It's now my main laptop (although I can't run windows/mac based linux software on it yet :/

I can't see it becoming a main machine for me as-is. CrOS's laser focus on "the cloud" makes it extremely well suited for remote-centric work; if you can't commit 100% to doing everything from browser windows and remote terminals, you'll be happier with a more standard PC. For me, it's perfect as a backup but I'm too much of a control freak to be wholly reliant on a remote server.

I just got a chromebook and I HATE it. The software is ok, but I hate the hardware. Particularly the touchpad. Just awful. Doesn't do tap-to-click correctly and scrolls poorly.

I couldn't recommend it to anyone for anything other than a couch surfing machine, but then again, a tablet is just as good for that.

Which one did you get? The Samsung 550 is the one to get IMO, the touchpad is pretty great.

Is SSH built-in, or an app?

If you enable dev mode you get access to a full linux environment, including ssh.

You can even use ssh without dev mode, but it is crippled.

There's a built-in SSH as part of crosh[0] and a more usable version paired with a HTML-based terminal emulator as an app[1]

[0] basic troubleshooting shell in CrOS

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhomp...

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