Tell HN: Chromebook (Chrome OS) Is the Best OS for Browsing the Web
I know I'm late (way late) to the party but I just bought a very cheap Chromebbook and it beats both of my Windows and mac book i7 machines when browsing the web.
Both my i7s are fast but when browsing the web there's always a period of time when things slow to a crawl when web browsing or the never ending updates that tie them up at some very inopportune times.
I was surprised how smooth and hassle free it is. I use an ad blocker. I will still need my 2 i7s for work but I'm sold. If I'm browsing the web to relax I'm using a Chromebook from now on.
I know most people think of them as less than great but both windows and OSX have gotten so blotted that it slows down even the fastest CPU. Google has done a great job at optimizing the code to work well with low end CPUs. Both Apple and Microsoft should learn from it and create a web only OS. I can only speak for myself, but for me they are devices in search of a purpose. If I'm passively browsing, my phone covers that. If I need to do active work, then I use my laptop. For me, I don't have a need for the small overlap in the Venn diagram. I think they make great sense in the edu market and other similar scenarios. Have you tried an M1 based Mac? That’s also a different world from an i7 powered one. <^> this <^> Underneath the hype, a Chromebook is still a Linux-powered laptop OS atop whatever reasonably-capable hardware platform one throws at it. how so?
genuine question My MacBook Air M1 with 8GB RAM with 12 chrome tabs open feels snappier than my old work MacBook Pro 16" i7 with 32GB RAM and only a couple tabs open. Hell, just alt-tabbing between windows feels faster on the Air. Plus it does it all basically silently and cool instead. No matter what you do. You can’t heat it up, unlike an i7 that can be trivially turned into a hair dryer. I can’t compare with a chromebook since I haven’t used one of any level ($200 or $1200). But M1 vs i7 feels like a world of difference too. The hotter that I got my M1 MBA was when I was converting 131 GB of Flac files to AAC (~3k files). I believe it used all the cores continuously for around 20 minutes. It was still cooler than my old 2015 MBP at normal usage. Thanks! try Linux Mint with Chrome or Bravo browser on any old laptop with an SSD and it's golden! And you failed to consider the option of linux on a laptop. Chromebooks can run linux. I learned development on a Chromebook running Ubuntu. It's great being able to switch between the lightweight ChromeOS for browsing, videos and cloud stuff and Ubuntu for actual development.