I'm looking at getting a laptop to install linux for use with audio recording software ardour. But I'm looking at chromebooks with their ssd drives and it seems like a better idea than a laptop. Am I missing the point? Is there some reason, either the processor, ram or anything else that would make a laptop a better choice than a chromebook? The chromebook is $200 and the laptop is about $700. Will the chromebook run everything a laptop will run?

I'm a little confused by this. When I was looking into buying a laptop I looked at Chromebooks and saw that for the price of a Chromebook I could get a laptop running Windows for a similar price on which I could then install Linux, with Google Chrome if I wanted, and do everything a Chromebook could do and more. If you're seeing massively well-specified Chromebooks cheap where you are then google whether you can install a real Linux on one and go for it but my, admitedly brief, research showed the Chromebooks weren't cheap and didn't all have SSDs.

Chromebooks - from what I've seen - are slow, have very little RAM, and almost no hard drive space. If that matters for your application, then it matters. If it doesn't, then it doesn't.

I would put them more in the "tablet" category. Fine for web browsing, some light reading, editing documents, etc., but that's about it. They're the netbooks of today, but from what I can tell even less capable. I bought an Asus EEE pc netbook about 6 years ago, which is nearly as powerful and has a significantly larger drive than most of these brand new chromebooks, and it was the same price.

http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Produc...4AchoCJ0vw_wcB

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/2516236...3D808736685728

These are just 2 examples of what I'm talking about. Will these machines be able to run linux as well as a laptop?

My Acer C710 (4 gig or ram dual core intel 16gig SSD) was 99 bucks and is the fastest booting/running laptop I have.

But I have no I5 or I7 multi goob of ram laptops to compare to.

Like 273 says in way. You can run Linux various ways on a ChromeBook.

So I guess it depends on you and your computer skillz on what can or cannot be accomplished on a conventional laptop vs a ChromeBook. Plus how padded your wallet is.

Just take a look at the specification: Celeron, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD. Google that specification and I bet you'll see "refurbished" Windows machines at the same price at that specification.
By the way, I have nothing against Chromebooks and I think Chrome OS could be good for some people -- I just think that Chromebooks aren't nearly as cheap as you think they are.

The C710 at ebay will. It matches approx. what I bought for cheaper.

You might want to go with the C720 at Newegg though as it has a better cpu than the C710 and
there are lots of how tos on how to dual boot a C720 with ChromeOS.

So if I get a laptop ( without buying a new one) what is the cut off point in age that it becomes noticeably slower and unable to process. Is a 5 year old average laptop ( 4 gigs ram, 2.8 ghz, 5000 hd) much slower than a new one with the new chips. Is the i7 chips massively different in terms of speed and efficiency or will I be an older one be adequate.

OK, so it's $200 new but this is the kind of thing I'm typing about:
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_2rd9ifa4zz_b
Though, again, if a Chromebook really is a bargain where you are then, yes, you probably can get Linux mostly working on one and I suspect that wit ha newer kernel the touchpad may be a lot more usable.

I have to read these posts. You posted while I was writing. Sorry.

Yes it will be significantly slower, but it will STILL be much more powerful than a new chromebook. "Adequate" depends on your needs. It would not be adequate for my needs, but it might be for yours.

This.
My old EEEPC 1000 with a single-core Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (split across 2 chips) was absolutely great, if a little slow, for web browsing, watching the odd video and SSHing into my desktop and I was sad to see it go when it died on me. Certainly the Chromebooks linked to would handle Linux fine, potential driver issues aside, and anything of that kind of specification will be very usable if you're not wanting to load up the processor like I suspect suicidaleggroll is .

Ok, so I'm getting the picture. The chromebook is not the machine I thought it was. Can someone recommend me a decent laptop preferably used, to run ardour efficiently. And edit video on openshot. My old I ac does this with final cut x and I'm sure linux is more efficient than an old iMac. There must be a four or five year old laptop out there with a i4 or i5 chip that isn't an arm and a leg.

I think this is just a case of googling, surely? Or eBaying, or whatever site you want to use. One thing I noticed buying new, so slightly more expensive, laptops (in the $200 to $450 range) is that SSDs aren't standard all that often in the cheaper laptops so it may be best to buy cheap and add the SSD yourself.

Depends on the Chromebook. There's a chromebook out there with a Core-i7 and 16 GB ram...just depends on which one you get.

Best laptop (for price/value) I found was a cheap knockoff Chinese Macbook Air that came with Windows. It was 14" 1080p w/ Pentium N2840 (dual core non-hyper threaded) 4 GB ram 500 GB drive. While it wasn't a powerhouse, it was more than adequate for everything I'd need. Ran a FULL KDE desktop with all the visual effects turned on, with Firefox, Chrome, Kodi media center, VLC, Clementine (for listening to mp3's) etc. installed. Never had a single issue with anything I asked it to do. All that for $350. Sadly while using it to test some stuff at work it fell off a server and landed right on the LCD.

I'm kinda turned off the chromebooks because of how much work there is to install a REAL OS. I haven't found any that have a full firmware so you can just boot to USB and install linux like you can on a "normal" laptop. So I'd always vote laptop. For what you want, search for 84(or 5 if you prefer 15" to 14")60P or 84(or 5 again)70p. The 8460p is a 3 generation old Core-i5 or Core-i7 laptop from HP, with the 8470p being identical in design but one generation newer. I used to have an 8460p and my wife still uses one, and I still have a 8470p. 8460p's can be had off greedbay for under $300 now, and will work fine for what you want. Get one with a i7-XXX0QM and it'll have 4 cores hyperthreaded (8 simultaneous threads), and will be an absolute beast for a moderately inexpensive laptop. As was previously mentioned, buy one with a conventional hard drive and swap it out for an SSD, very few will have SSD's already. My $.02

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