Hey, welcome back to the channel.
So you all know that I've done a ton of Chromebook videos and on almost every
single one of those videos,
I get somebody posting these rumors and falsehoods about Chromebooks
that are just not true.
A lot of these have been carried over from when Chromebooks were first released,
where some of this information may have been true,
but 10 years later and things are completely different now.
So I thought I'd put this video together and these are 10 things that are just
not true about Chromebooks. The first one, and probably most prevalent,
is that you can't use Chromebooks offline. And that's just completely false.
Even with the native Chrome OS applications,
you can use many of those without an internet connection.
I'm even talking about like Google Docs and stuff like that.
You can do all your updates, all your changes, your new files,
everything offline, and then when you go online, it'll sync to, you know,
your online storage. Now,
there's also other options for using apps on Chromebook that do not need an
internet connection, like using Android apps and using Linux apps.
Those do don't need any kind of internet connection. Now,
when Chromebooks first came out, this was true.
You had to be online and you couldn't use these an offline mode. But again,
we're talking about 10 year old information that's completely outdated and
completely not true anymore.
Number two on our list is that Chromebooks only run web apps.
Now this was kind of true when it first came out,
they would only run the native chromos apps, which were essentially web apps.
Things are completely different again like 10 years later, and that's not true.
Like I mentioned in the previous comment, you can run Android apps,
you can run Linux apps,
and the support for both of those is just vastly increasing with
every iteration of the operating system to the point where most of the
applications that I use on my Chromebook are not native Chrome OS apps.
So again, this one is completely false.
Number three on our list is that you can't use Chromebooks on your desktop as a
desktop computer. This is also false. I've have a video on this,
I'll put a link down in the description if you wanna check that out.
But you can use your Chromebook as a full desktop.
Most Chromebooks have multiple ports on it, including HD m i connections.
So you can hook that up to your monitor.
You can use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse or wired keyboard and mouse and have
a full desktop setup.
Even if your Chromebook doesn't support or doesn't have the ports for display
out or you know, whatever you need, you can get a USB type-C dock,
plug that in to give you whatever ports you need and use this in a desktop setup
and then just unplug it and take it with you on the go. So again, not true.
Number four on the list is that Chromebooks are only good for kids. Now,
while it's true, Chromebooks are used a lot in education from, you know,
first grade all the way up through high school.
That's definitely not the only thing that they're good for.
A lot of people use them for personal use because a.
Chromebook meets their needs.
I'm always about getting a device that meets your needs,
not what people tell you you should get.
And all Chromebooks meet the needs of a lot of people,
especially with all the extra capabilities they have now.
Now they're also used by college students because they're inexpensive machines
that they can take all their notes on their class for,
and they're used a lot by smaller companies because a lot of newer companies
are switching their processing to the web and their storage out to the web and
Chromebooks were basically built for that scenario.
The reason why they're doing that is because they save on the maintenance and
the extra staff that they need to maintain on premises storage and on
premises processing and just move that out to cloud services and then use their
Chromebooks to access those services.
There is a whole list of companies that only use Chromebooks
in their uh, organization.
Number five on our list of 10 things that are not true about Chromebooks is that
Chromebooks are slow. Now, again, 10 years ago this was true,
they had slower processors, they had slower ram, they had slower storage.
Um, but that again, that was 10 or 11 years ago.
That is absolutely not true right now,
if you take a Chromebook and you get a similarly priced Windows
or Lenux laptop or a MacOS and older MacOS laptop
and you compare those, you're gonna get more speed from that Chromebook.
It's gonna start up faster. Applications are gonna la uh, launch quicker. Uh,
I'm talking about Chrome o s apps.
I'm also talking about the Android apps and in some cases the
Linux apps. Uh,
because you don't have the overhead of Windows and Mac Os and even some cases
the overhead of a Linux system. So pound for pound for price, for price,
if you do a direct comparison,
Chromebooks are at least as fast and in many cases faster
than an equivalently priced, uh, machine of another type.
Number six on the list is that you can't game on a Chromebook.
Now if your primary goal is gaming,
you're buying a computer to do gaming and that's your primary task,
you're right, don't get a Chromebook, it's not gonna work out for you.
But to say Chromebooks can't game, you can't game on a Chromebook,
that's just absolutely not true. There are multiple options for this.
Of course, there's all the cloud gaming, uh, services.
There's a bunch of 'em now and they all work great on a Chromebook. You can run,
uh, Android apps.
There's tons of Android games that work fantastically well on a Chromebook.
A lot of Linux games will run really, really well on a Chromebook.
And now in Alpha you can actually install steam.
Now I've shown you how to install Steam before in the Native Linux support,
but I'm talking about official support for Steam. You need, uh, uh,
11th or 12th generation I five or I seven processor.
But I've done some testing with this. I'm gonna do a full video on it,
so make sure you're subscribed if you wanna see that. But that works so well.
Even some games, uh, in Proton will work,
so you'll be able to play some Windows games. Uh, it's a,
it's amazing how well it works and it's a complete game changer,
which absolutely blows this. You can't game on a Chromebook outta the water.
Now, number seven on the list, I'm kind of laughing about this cuz it's,
it's goofy because I've seen it written exactly like this that you can't do
quote unquote real computing on a Chromebook. Now what does that even mean?
Real computing to one person is completely different than what it means
to somebody else.
And if you're using your Chromebook for what it was designed for,
if that's what your fits your needs,
you can be just as productive on a Chromebook as you can on any other machine.
Now if you're using specific apps on on Windows or Mac or Linux
or you are doing heavy video production or audio production,
stuff like that, yeah it's not gonna work as well on a Chromebook,
but Chromebooks were not designed for that.
So this real computing thing that is very subjective because
what one person's needs are are not gonna be the same as somebody else's needs
and you have to get the right tool for the job.
If the right tool for you is a Chromebook,
you could be just as productive on a Chromebook as you can on any other
computer.
Number eight on our list is that you can't do any development or programming on
a Chromebook, uh, , again, just not true.
There are multiple IDE integrated development environments that are available
for Chrome os.
I've done a video on installing Visual Studio Code in Linux on a
Chromebook.
There is built in support for Android development on Chrome o s.
So to say that you can't develop on it is just not true.
You can do full web development, you can use Visual Studio Code and uh,
develop in multiple languages. So it actually works really,
really well as a development machine. And I think, again,
this is one of the things that just got carried over by people that keep reading
things about Chromebook but never actually use 'em.
And these falsehoods just get perpetuated. So this one again is not true.
All right,
hang in there cuz we're at number nine on the 10 things that Aren't True about
Chromebooks and that is that they are cheaply made. Now this again,
when they first came out, this was absolutely true. The screens were terrible.
The build quality, the materials that was made out were terrible.
The track pads and the keyboards were horrible. The storage and everything,
it was just bad. They were bad , I will admit that,
but we're talking about 10 or 11 years ago with lots of iterations
and constant development and it's just absolutely not true anymore.
I just picked up today and Acer Spin 714,
this computer is beautiful and easily in a similar price range
is has much better.
Build quality than most windows laptops that are in that range.
Now I'm not gonna talk about, uh, you know,
Apple computers because there are none in that range unless you get an an older
used one. But price for price, uh,
a Windows laptop and this Acer Spin 714,
if you look at similarly price machines, this thing is a much,
much better build quality. It's very solid, beautiful screen.
The track pad and the keyboard are great.
I'm gonna do a full review on that computer,
so make sure you subscribe if you wanna see that. But just to let you know,
if you're looking at a similar price range, it's just not true.
The build quality is as good or better than a similarly priced
Windows or Linux laptop. All right,
so here we are at the end of the list and number 10 is that Chromo S is
Linux. Now I want to clarify something here,
because ChromOS is not Linux,
ChromeOS is built on Linux.
ChromeOS does not have the direct access to the hardware and
underlying system that Linux has. Just like Android is built on Linux,
but Android is not Linux.
You can't reach the same level that you can with a bare meta Linux
install.
So I always see people leaving these comments because I do a lot of videos on
how to get different things to work in the Linux support in ChromeOS
and people are saying, Oh, ChromeOS is Linux.
I understand where their confusion is, but again,
it's not ChromeOS is built on Linux, but there's layers there.
There's layers there that do not exist when you do a bare metal
Linux install.
And that's why they have this built in kind of virtual machine that allows
for Linux compatibility because they're trying to get around that to give you
some of that access so you can run some of those Linux apps. So yes,
ChromeOS is built on Linux,
but ChromeOS and a bare metal install of Linux are not the
same thing. So that wraps it up for my list of 10 things that are not true about
Chromebooks. When I was putting this video together,
I had a lot more things on this list,
but I wanted to focus on these 10 things because these are the things that I see
over and over and over again in the comments for my other videos.
If there's something I didn't cover that you want to talk about,
leave that down in the comment section.
If you have any questions about anything I talked about,
leave that in the comment. If you disagree with anything I said,
please leave that down in the comment section.
I just ask that you remain respectful to myself and to other people
that are leaving comments. I don't want to turn this into a battle,
but happy to have a discussion. Thanks so much for stopping by.
If you like this kind of content,
make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell.
I'm gonna be putting out a lot more stuff.
I'm gonna be doing videos on that AC or SPIN seven 14 and I'm also gonna be
doing videos on the official Steam support in ChromeOS.
So stay tuned for that and I will see in the next one.