Maybe this is a hot take. However, a lot of the Chromebooks that were deployed by schools during covid are build like tanks while being super lightweight and having great battery life. Meanwhile the old thinkpads are 10 years old and are probably starting to wear down. Many Chromebooks support coreboot these days so theoretically they have the potential to be more private and secure. Some of them are also arm which means that they are more efficient from an architecture perspective.
Edit:
I like how incredibly controversial this is. I have successfully split the votes
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Chromebooks? Built like tanks?
Maybe if you folded origami tanks and spritzed them with water. They’re cheap, they’re cheaply made, and they’re made to be e-waste.
It depends
There are a lot of devices geared toward schools. Many of these devices are certified to be dropped and have keyboards that are completely sealed. They are designed for students who are abusive and highly destructive. Some even have military certifications. I’ve scene these devices survive being stepped on and covered in coffee
As an IT technician in a school, I have to repair Chromebooks of many different models on a regular basis, mostly from Dell and Lenovo. I haven’t seen one that I would consider durable yet. All of them use butterfly switches that break when a child rips off the keycap, meaning the whole keyboard has to be replaced. It is also common for the brass inserts into which the hinges are screwed to pop out of the plastic on most models due to rough handling. We also had one Lenovo model where almost every device we put into service developed a no power issue due to the same ceramic capacitor going short. Of course, the display panels are just normal panels that crack when struck - that is probably the most common damage we have to deal with.
Most Chromebooks from the last 5 years have 8 GB of RAM and 32/64 GB internal drive. That’s not enough to satisfy the kind of user who would buy a Thinkpad.
I have 4 Chromebooks that I converted to Linux, from the era before the aforementioned, with 4 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal space (and just 1366x768 res – kdenlive and some cad apps don’t fit in that res, not even some of the DE pref panels fit!). At 16 GB internal disk, only Debian fits in there properly. Mint and all ubuntu-based ones, or fedora are either out of space, or with only 1 gb left (Debian leaves 8 GB free). Also, it’s near impossible to use a modern web browser to browse the web with 4-5 tabs at the same time at 4 GB of RAM – you always hit the swap sooner than later. So it’s literally bare bones experience.
The newer Chromebooks, with 8 GB RAM and 32/64 internal space are definitely better, but still nowhere near the “modern” specs required to run Linux properly (especially if you also want to do some video editing). In fact, look at the Cosmic DE. While it’s new, and without any code fluff, it requires a minimum of 2.4 GB of RAM just to boot (which is more than gnome/kde).
So yeah, Chromebooks have nothing on Thinkpads. Not for the kind of users who buy thinkpads anyway.
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2nd comment with the same typo, are you using dictation?
Probably we don’t need new Thinkpads. And the old either. The main motivation behind the desire of people to by old Thinkpads is a desire to be a part of the club and culture, to look like a hacker, a geek. The same motivation had early apple fanboys. I hope smarter people will become less dependent from such crowdthinking phenomena not more.
Old thinkpads work well and (opposite of Apple) they are cheap. I buy them from familiarity but am open to other suggestions in that price range.
Don’t feed the trolls, please.
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Pfffft…the hell they are.
First off, so few models of Chromebooks even allow you to bother sideloading or outright install a Linux distro over ChromeOS. Eventually, Google cut that stuff out so now almost every Chromebook now won’t allow you to do that without going through some Developer Mode loop that makes you think you’ll get by.
Secondly, Chromebooks are just e-waste. That’s their design. They’re only made to be online-only “laptops” with just an expiration date attached to them, that date being how long Google wants to bother supporting it with security updates provided something doesn’t break down first within the first two years.
Thinkpads have more longevity, they’re built well and they’re meant to go the distance. Chromebooks has been and will continue to be a joke.
You haven’t scene how tuff some of these devices are. You can get them for cheap and they last all day and can be heavily abused.
Maybe comparing them to thinkpads is a stretch but I could see a use as a travel device.
https://zipso.net/chromebook-specs-comparison-table/ I didn’t know there were so many Chromebooks. I’m no longer in school (for long time) and don’t know if German schools get any netbooks or Chromebooks to work with.
Thinkpads are fairly powerful as laptops go. Are you talking about some very strong variety of chromebook here?
The ones from schools are very tuff. I wouldn’t call a 10-15 year old thinkpad powerful
I think they mean powerful as in compute power, and since they’re designed to be thin clients, the answer is no. They’re universally underpowered the day they come out.
No way. My T420 with a 3.4ghz 4c8t i7 absolutely outpaces any celeron POS Chromebook. Either you don’t have much experience with good (T-series) Thinkpads or you don’t have much experience with Chromebooks.
Hot take. 🍿
Actually these devices are pretty cool as the usually have a TDP of 5-7 Watts
I don’t disagree, I was just commenting from the angle of how enthusiastic many are about ThinkPads.
I don’t know too much about Chromebooks myself, so I look forward to the banter in order to learn more.
I am on a backpacking trip with my son right now. I wanted a laptop but did not want to carry anything heavy and did not want to be upset if it was broken or stolen.
I bought a 2013 MacBook Air off eBay for $60 and put EndeavourOS on it ( 128 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM ). The webcam did not work out-of-the-box but the driver for that was in the AUR ( so just a simple ‘pacman -S’ post install ) and everything else worked perfectly.
The apps I have used so far on the trip are LibreOffice, Firefox / Edge, Email, IntelliJ IDEA, and Microsoft Teams. I built an up-to-date version of the Ladybird browser just to check-in on the status. The MacBook has performed wonderfully and exceeded my expectations.
I guess my point is, even when my requirements were perfect for a Chromebook, I still did not even think of one. This machine is so beautiful, I cannot imagine why I would settle for a Chromebook next time. How much cheaper is it going to be than $60?
My old Thinkpads disagree.
Lot easier to swap parts on a thinkpad.
That’s a fair point
Modern Chromebooks are typically slower and more resource limited than even quite old laptops ( like Thinkpads ). They may also be difficult to service and expand.
Chromebooks as a class may become common devices. Sadly though, I think most of them are destined to be e-waste.
My experience differs. I used a Chromebook that had a Celeron and it worked pretty well, not much worse than my Ryzen 5 4000x laptop on Windows or Linux.
Not sure if Linux would run better or worse than ChromeOS on that Chromebook.
I have been repurposing my EOL Chromebook, and I don’t think they will ever be able to compete with ThinkPads. I like my Chromebook since it is so damn small, however the specs are really bad. And everything is soldered right on the motherboard. So I have 64GB storage (plus an SD-card) and 4GB RAM. I have enabled ZRAM so the CPU is helping out a bit. But even so I struggle with the memory. Browsers are such memory hogs!
I’m not so sure… for the following reasons:
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Despite using a version of the Linux kernel in ChromeOS, Chromebooks don’t always have the best hardware (ie. driver) support from the mainline kernel used by most distributions. That’s why there are niche distributions like GalliumOS which provide tweaks to support the touchpad and audio devices in many Chromebooks. It’s similar to how Android is Linux, but it’s not standard Linux as we are familiar with (so the hardware support is different).
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Many Chromebooks have really poor specs: low-wattage CPUs, small amounts of storage, low amounts of RAM. While they may be newer, they are actually probably less performant than older laptops. This has changed in recent years with the new Chromebook plus program (or whatever it is called) which mandates a reasonable set of baseline features, but that is talking about current Chromebooks and not the ones from the COVID era.
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Related to the previous point, many Chromebooks are not serviceable or upgradeable while Thinkpads and some recent laptops are. You are unlikely to open up a Chromebook and be able to replace say the RAM or SSD, which would be a show stopper for a lot of people that like Thinkpads.
So… unfortunately, I think this take is a bit of a miss and I dont’ really see it happening. I would be happy to be proven wrong though since my kids have two Chromebooks from the COVID era :}
The thing is Chromebooks are flooding the market. You can get a devices for like 40 USD
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As others have mentioned, perhaps while the metaphor is weak, your spirit is strong!
My kid’s Chromebooks (I purchased for them before the school provided) reached EOL before they finished elementary school.
I installed Linux (Gentoo) so we could continue using them. When power is correctly configured, they were very cool to use as a quick tool to search for something, answer an email, write a quick document and other simple tasks. They did not work well as workstations as an old Thinkpad might.
Since they are so light, and the battery lasted forever, we would leave them on a counter, and pick them up as needed.
