Last year, my beloved mini-pc finally gave up the ghost and I needed a replacement. Of course, being a mom of 7, money is always an issue.
Since most of what I do with a computer is online, I decided to go with a Chromebook.
Acer C710-2834 11.6-Inch Chromebook (Iron Gray)
The Good
Extremely fast. It starts up within 15 seconds and hibernates immediately. Upon reopening from hibernating, it takes less than 5 seconds to be ready to use. Have to reboot? That takes less than 30 seconds from start to finish.
No worrying about viruses either. The chrome operating system is updated very frequently at every 6 weeks or less and comes with built in virus protection.
Uses the Google Chrome browser which is quite fast as well. It has been my preferred browser for quite a few years and most websites are optimized for chrome now too.
The laptop is very lightweight. It is only 3 pounds and at 11.2 inches the screen is a decent size for displays.
It has enough storage space at 16gb to save your pictures and files and you can also store to Google Drive to keep your files accessible from anywhere online.
Dedicated email button to access your Google email quickly.
The battery life is amazing. I seriously can go almost all day on one battery charge. A huge difference from my mini-pc which lasted less than 2 hours.
The Bad
You can not print things directly from the Chromebook. It has to be linked via wifi to a cloud ready printer or to a Microsoft computer running Google Chrome. Not a big deal for a multi-computer household but it can be very inconvenient for someone wanting this as an only computer.
You can not print most coupons from this computer. NO coupons.com, smatsource.com, or hopster.com coupons. As a couponer, this is very frustrating.
And the most absolutely frustrating thing with at least my Chromebook?
It overheats with excessive use and will shut itself off. As someone who works in social media, I use my Chromebook excessively. I will often have many pages open at once and the overwhelming graphics on some sites will cause mine to overheat and shut down.
I don’t know if overheating happens to the average user. Honestly, it doesn’t overheat if I *just* watch a movie or keep the pages open a few at a time. This doesn’t seem to be a common problem but I have seen others report this issue.
In Summary:
Would I buy the Chromebook again? Probably.
But with the caveat that I have a decent desktop as backup.
The price is great advantage at under $200 and free shipping with Amazon Prime.
The Chromebook is great for travelling with. I brought my Chromebook to the Type A Conference recently and was very pleased with it. It travels extremely well. Is great for keeping up on social media in a rapid environment.
It does what I want, when I want 90% of the time. That dreaded 10% is when I am couponing. Without the ability to print most online coupons, this laptop is not for the frugal-minded extreme couponer. Here’s hoping that a fix for that comes along soon.
Acer C710-2834 11.6-Inch Chromebook (Iron Gray)
Happy Computing, y’all!
this post contains one of more affiliate links. All thoughts are my own and I was not compensated in any way.
Thank you for your truthful review. I had been considering a Chrome-book as a back up for my main computer. However like you I blog, therefore I’m sure it would be overheating on me as well and if I lost a post I had not saved into draft…. well I don’t think I’ll take a chance. I work far too hard to loose my work willy nilly.
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I haven’t ever lost work due to it shutting down.There is a setting to resume your work when you restart if that helps but I find that if I resume too quickly it will shut down again almost immediately.
I was in a hotel in Atlanta for Type A Parent Conference over the weekend and it only shut down once all weekend instead of the 5-6 times a day here in Florida, if that helps.