Surfing, crappy flash games (probably the source of malware leading to software glitches), chat, Facebook, Netflix, taxes, pirated tv /movie streams (another source), crappy mp3s (another source). She searches for things like “new movies streaming free star wars” and clicks through links until one works.
Chromebook is the ideal thing for that. Basically no maintenance ever, super cheap, solid.
I’m writing this on an asus flip that I bought in 2016, which I use for a lot of browsing time where I’m not doing actual productive crap on the computer.
Your sister in law sounds like the reason for her laptops breaking tbh and less any problem with the brands themselves. She doesn’t take care of her electronic possessions properly and abuses them.
Yeah, unless you are gaming or need specific programs, the Chromebook is really a nice product for most people.
Yeah maybe. Most chromebooks are smaller form factor and also disappointingly low quality (Asus or Lenovo, the trackpad on which didn’t work on the demo version at the store). Performance does not seem adequate - lower end Celeron processor for a $400 Chromebook vs i5 in a $500 laptop with Windows. But there are a few 14’s to check out.
She does run 10+ tabs with flash games as mentioned plus streaming - performance is a factor. And no, changing her habits is not possible at this point :).
I do that on my chromebook, web performance is pretty much trivial for a computer.
The Asus Flip from 2016 has no issues at all even at 2 years old now, and now chromebooks can also run Android apps, so you can do a bunch of the crap that she seems to be interested in.
It’s worth giving a shot, just because it requires essentially zero maintenance. It never breaks. Nothing really can go wrong with it.
I got some for my parents a while back, and I haven’t really had to deal with any kind of IT support issues since.
It seems like quality chrome book laptop have started to show up in the last 2 or so years. Before this, you had Google’s expansive options and cheap netbook options, but that is changing.
There is always to the Surface Go, but everyone recommends avoiding the bottom entry, since it is too slow.
I second a chrome book. Nice ones exist for the uses you’ve mentioned. They prevent a lot of BS and even if she manages to.hose it, it resets so easily.
Reviews including David Lee who raised the flag have confirmed the patch fixes things nicely. The laptops are fine, and approximately 30% faster than last year’s comparable models.
Not really 30% faster, unless you’re running highly-threaded stuff like cinebench, which is what all the youtubers use because they render video all the time. Difference between 4 and 6 cores on the 15" model is minimal for most workloads. The 13" moves from 2 to 4 cores though, and that is a huge improvement.
I agree, and know that cores matter less for day to day use, especially more than four cores. But the original issue and associated anger was about performance in this type of use.
Yep, just needed to counter apple’s “the 13” model is twice as fast!" marketing hype.
There was significant wailing and gnashing of teeth about how crappy Apple’s designs are and how they are a horrible company and should feel bad.
Instead, it’s the QA having a bad day. One probable cause I saw was the testing units had the key, but the production ones did not.
The fact that the problem was fixable in software doesn’t excuse it, still a major failure from Apple. It just means that it’ll be forgotten soon rather than “you’re holding it wrong”.
Sure but even though it was still an error a lot of the wailing upthread was wrong.
Not that I’m expecting an apology or anything. I don’t even own a Macbook, but my relatively expensive Lenovo has a terrible trackpad, and it seems from the forums that its a widespread issue.
No, that is crazy. I guess software can fix it all. I am sorry I doubted Apple.
I agree, but I find a QA issue a lot better than a massive engineering flaw they shipped knowing it was busted, which seemed to the major thesis.
Only when software was the issue to begin with, which in this case it at least partially was. Apparently a firmware difference caused the OS to manage thermals by dropping performance down to the 800mhz minimum, instead of a gradient.
So it’s still going to get throttled, but not all the way down to the bottom?