when I was a kid they had a special room in the school for kids like me who
wanted to learn about computers but then suddenly poof out goes to the computer
lab and in comes these things Google's
partners have sold 100 million Chromebooks in the last 3 years 100
million though kind of makes sense when you consider how many of these devices
are purchased by schools or by parents who were forced to buy them by schools
but it may not just be schools in the future come think of it with that many
of them out there there may be one in your house right now and you better get
used to it because Google has made their Linux-based OS so polished over the
years that these students are growing up with an experience that may just be good
enough for them to not think of this as a Chromebook but just as their laptop
could 2020 something finally be the year
of the Linux desktop but dressed in a chrome costume I believe it will which
is probably horrifying to just about everyone so let me explain after a quick
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your new rig today Chromebooks originally launched with miserable specs
I mean even iPhones had more storage space not to mention useful apps you
might want to fill it with and given their limited functionality not to
mention their short commitment to software updates compared to a Windows
or a macOS machine it's no wonder that people saw the first Chromebooks for
what they were underpowered junk but Google's been playing a long game
something that softpedia recognized way back in 2015 when they said Microsoft is
engaged in a silent war and is losing
just four years after being introduced Chromebooks were slowly eating up market
share not at home but in schools which I
mean kind of makes sense most students especially below the college level only
really need email a web browser and the
Google productivity suite and getting the schools on board was easy due to the
cost the cheapest iMac which is what many schools used to have in their
computer Labs is over $1,200 now so uh hm let me see I can
have 30 of these and they don't even move or I can have 150 of these h tough
call Google also helped the schools manage these enormous fleets of machines
by investing heavily in administrative tools for the Google workspace
environment account management shared access to files and storage support for
group collaboration these have all made it easy to adopt the Google ecosystem
and that's even ignoring the general ease of use and convenient Cloud
synchronization so in this way Google's kind of The Pusher giving kids their
first hit hooking them while they're young if you think about it do you know
anyone who buys an iPhone just because they already have an iPhone and they
just need a new one familiarity is King but come on lius I can hear you saying I
mean how does any of that help with this supposed long game if Chromebooks are
still underpowered e-waist well that's the thing Google recognized that problem
and this is the fix Chromebook plus
promises a new minimum standard for Chromebook devices delivering improved
performance power powerful included software and longer support up to 10
years all while targeting a $400 starting price this unit from Acer is
right around that Baseline of Chromebook plus it has a 1080p 15in display a core
I3 12 Gen processor 8 gigs of ddr5 RAM
and 128 gigs of storage and we saw this thing for as cheap as
$270 at Best Buy now there are entry-level Windows machines around that
same price or in some cases even lower but they make awful compromises on
everything from performance to display while also running a heavier operating
system and by the time you're looking at something running Windows with a 1080p
display you could be paying 50 to $100
more for that Windows license well you
know what's not heavy and has no license fee Linux which has always been the
Beating Heart of chromos just now it's a
lot easier to unleash these days it is literally one checkbox
to enable a Linux terminal and to start downloading Linux native software like
blender just a simple command and
blender's installed classroom takes about 30 minutes to run with BMW sitting
at around 15 minutes so all right it's
not the fastest thing in the world but guys if this was a Windows machine at
this price in these specs you'd be very impressed for about $250 $ this is very
usable for day-to-day tasks and in a pinch as we've shown you can even do
some light real work on it and it's not just blender Ken live is a video editor
that works on here as well as audacity which is a powerful open- source audio
capture and editing program the list of native Linux applications really is long
and continues to grow with the help of the open source community and of course
some corporate players who have played a role as well with a huge driving force
behind the recent gaming Renaissance on Linux being valve who has dumped
significant resources into the proton compatibility layer allowing tons of
non-native Windows games to be played on Linux and as of quite recently I this
loading bar ever goes away even Chrome OS time for some distractions from my
studies let's give it the old restart look I didn't say it was fast this is
very slow with screen capture running this could be a problem I I will
try yeah you won't be kickstarting your Twitch streaming career with this setup
I'm afraid
o yeah I'm going to stop screen recording
all right yeah this will work oh okay yeah I think it's basically
just when it needs to animate quite literally anything it struggles tried
plugging it in no improvement I don't think it's a performance issue I think
it's more of a proton translation layer issue let's try something that I know
runs a little better Hollow
night all right this is more like it
this is great this is perfectly
playable let's try a different
game this is running great too look
obviously you're not going to be playing AAA games but within the confines of
what the hardware can handle you can use proton DB to show what game games are
natively supported or you can use steam link to remote into a different computer
or a cloud-based gaming service it's all pretty cool right I mean when I was a
kid I would have loved to be able to play even simple games and have an
affordable device that I could call my own and even the camera is reasonably
decent so is the microphone and I don't even have anything too negative to say
about the keyboard considering the price now you might still think that these
devices are just e-w and I get it it's
not like I'm going to be switching to Chrome OS as my daily driver anytime
soon but how many people do you know who
basically use their computer to call man on the weekends or pull up a recipe for
baking you might not agree with me about this but guys mark my words acceptance
for cloud applications even heavy ones like 3D modeling animation tools and
video editing is at an all-time high and Chrome OS will work its way into the
market as a daily driver operating system for for many people after they
leave school and join the workplace where the onboarding process could be as
simple as adding their work account to their Chromebook that they already own
might not be this year and it might not be next year but I see you Google and
I'm kind of into it if it means that the year of the Linux desktop can finally
move Beyond meme status what we'll never
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link below and get gaming today if you guys enjoyed this video go check out the
one where I went and bought my son a Chromebook or excuse me a laptop Chrome
based folding device what what's the term we're using for these either way
they've definitely improved since then and I see that trajectory continuing