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well finally happened the thing every parent fears the most

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my son needs a Chromebook for school

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so if we're doing this I guess it's up

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to me to find the best dang bang for the buck Chromebook but wait

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this is gonna be a lot harder than I thought

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why can't they just be good like our sponsor cable mod makes cables

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please if you or a loved one isn't currently in

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grade school I wouldn't expect you to be aware of just how dominant Chromebooks

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have become in that space in 2019 there were 30 million Chromebooks deployed in

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schools primarily in the US and Canada and in January 2020 Google announced

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that that number had ballooned 33 percent to a whopping 40 million

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Chromebooks in classrooms around the globe and that is before the covid tech

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explosion and now my son is going to be joining the ranks of Chromebook users

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whether I like it or not but then maybe that's not so bad like

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many of you I've been guilty of dismissing chromebooks's glorified web

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browsing appliances because well that's what Google intended them to

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be but in the past few years they have become far more capable with Google

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adding the ability to run Android apps in 2016 introducing the Linux beta on

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all new devices released since 2020 for developer types out there and even

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allowing Enterprise users to run Windows through parallels

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allowing okay yeah the whole point of the

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school's Chromebook requirement is that the kids machines will be running Chrome

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OS and the two main selling points of Chrome OS are how easy it is to play a

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locked down Fleet of them that keeps the kids from doing anything too fun and how

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lightweight it is which indirectly makes Chromebooks crazy cheap I mean look at

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this thing a hundred and ninety dollars that's I mean new Windows laptops with

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msrps under 200 do exist but the ones

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that we've seen come from less than reputable manufacturers and I don't

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think that reputation is changing anytime soon I mean even the options for

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Windows machines around the 250 dollar Mark make no sense because they're

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basically just Chromebooks that have been saddled with the additional cost of

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a much heavier operating system so it's really in this low price tier that

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Chromebooks shine is capable and cost effective machines but what kind of

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sacrifices are being made to achieve these crazy low price points

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let's go shopping disclosure I'm an investor in framework

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a laptop company they don't make Chromebooks but I thought you should

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know all right let's see what we got here too big for a little kid opposite

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problem this one doesn't have any ports oh plastic

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These suck well this is a good price wow

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is that screen ever tiny not to mention those bezels

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is this YouTube video running at 720p with the CPU at 100 percent

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that's just embarrassing ooh look at

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this tiny thing that's cute well it's a tablet with a detachable

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keyboard cover oh uh

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boys this keyboard ever going to be cramped though for a child Maybe

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touch screen is nice to have for Android apps maybe some drawing it is a bit

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small though oh okay it's got emmc

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storage that's when they essentially embed an SD card into the motherboard

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and then use that as your system storage so really not very fast compared to an

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SSD and this is only 32 gigs but it'll

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be more responsive than a hard drive and with tight integration with Google Drive

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I might not need that much local storage and and since we're not doing any heavy

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Computing it doesn't need to be that fast but oh the Best Buy demo doesn't

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even fit on the screen properly I don't think this thing's going to cut it maybe

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we should look online for some other options oh Samsung has a Chromebook look at that

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Fiesta red built in S Pen nice a 4K

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screen okay at this screen size this is what 13

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inches kind of Overkill could hurt battery life a core i5 I don't think

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we've seen anything with a poor tier CPU yet feels a little Overkill too eight

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gigs of RAM is nice but while we love to joke about Chrome being a RAM hog and

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you don't have Windows sucking back a bunch of your resources and there's

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probably a reason that most Chromebooks only have four gigs 256 gigs of real SSD

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servers how much is this thing a thousand dollars if I wanted to spend MacBook money I

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would get a Macbook see you later Samsung okay how about this one Lenovo

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Flex 5 got a core I3 that should be

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adequate for watching an HD video and taking notes without being Overkill USB

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a for connecting devices at school to

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two in one that added flexibility could really come in handy screen looks pretty

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good too this is checking a lot of boxes right now and it's in stock of course we

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can't just buy the first thing that tickles our fancy this one says up to 12

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hours of battery life and knowing that he's my son he'll probably forget his

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charger so long lasting battery is good

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then again these all claim to have great battery life I guess that's another

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benefit of running low land Hardware in a lightweight OS

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but this display seems pretty loud is this a TN panel you know we recommended

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these types of displays in the past for gamers due to their super fast response

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times but the colors look bad and the viewing angles are terrible it's not

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something you want to put up with on a laptop and especially not in 2022 when

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IPS panels have become so affordable

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okay back to the Lenovo seems durable

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not too big not too small keyboard didn't wow me but none of them really

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did and the speakers are well they're speakers but at 370 US dollars I think

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this is our best deal let's buy it the weight Shopper Linus you aren't ready to

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make a decision yet you forgot to get hydrated

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lttstore.com and you forgot another big

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thing long-term support did you know that the support window of your Chrome

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OS device is determined by when it was released I mean that makes sense newer

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item it's going to have more life left in it but there is a big gotcha in there

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because devices made in 2018 are going to get automatic update support until

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2022. that's a period of four years meanwhile a device released in 2020 is

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going to be supported until 2028 this is because in 2020 Google promised

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that all new Chromebooks would receive eight years of automatic update support

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but they didn't bother to extend that eight-year guarantee to devices that

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were already released even if they were only a few months old so look closely

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and double check on Google's Chromebook support site which we're going to have

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linked down below it's really easy to make a mistake here like look at this

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Acer Chromebook 14. it doesn't look all that different from this Acer Chromebook

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514 but that first device is only going to be supported for seven more months

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while the 514 will be supported for seven more years my Flex 5 here is

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theoretically good until 2028 meaning that my son will be enjoying this

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mediocre Computing experience until he is well into High School

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will he darn it

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this is Linus Tech tips we don't take kindly to computers merely doing what

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they were designed to do which is why we're going to break out of Google's

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sandbox and see what this Chromebook can do from a gaming standpoint there are

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actually quite a few options these days we could use a game streaming service

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like GeForce now or Google stadia and if

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AAA games are your priority then this is going to be pretty much the only option

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and it's actually a surprisingly solid experience though I would strongly

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recommend a USB Ethernet dongle for a more stable connection if you're after

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lighter games man Android has a lot going on these days

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everything from SNES and Playstation emulators to Indie hits like stardew

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Valley that's honestly all that most people will need or even want

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but we can go deeper Chrome OS like

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Android is based on Linux and some very

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clever people have developed a Nifty way for us to install Linux on our machine

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called Crouton it lets us put our own Linux install intrude a self-contained

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directory that is separate from the rest of the system but this is essentially an

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exploit whoa what are you doing didn't you know Google has added their own

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implementation of Linux on Chrome OS through a project called crostini trust

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me it is way simpler to set up and much more secure catch is that you need a

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Chromebook from 2020 or later to use it so if you have a newer Chromebook we've

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linked a simple tutorial down below for you but note that due to the

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implementation crostini runs Debian in a VM the performance will take a hit so if

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you want to be running your games on the bare metal then keep following along

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because Crouton is your best option for

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now that requires you to activate developer

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mode on your Chromebook which will not only wipe all of your local files but it

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also makes your device more vulnerable to attacks and if the unit was loaned to

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you by your school or workplace this will for sure get you in trouble not to

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mention that there are numerous other caveats that you can pause and read here

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now I'ma just fast forward us following the instructions on the GitHub page

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we're going to have that link down below as well as you can see then in Crouton while we

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do have access to games via proton with

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this low tier of Hardware is not a super

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smooth experience like rocket league for example it's it's

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some relatively lightweight game but it's modern and requires a modern system

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and as you can see from just loading into the menu it's not going to go very

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well the game's barely running so let's lower our expectations and try out

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half-life 2. hitches but it's not half

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bad how about broforce this is a 2d game

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it's an action side scroller that is crazy fun especially to play with

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friends and honestly it's a pretty good

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experience which means that while Linux gaming can be a challenge I'm hopeful

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that as that continues to improve this is going to be a viable way to unlock an

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even greater library of games at least those that are light enough to run but

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there's evidence showing that valve is working with Google on a Chrome OS

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native version of steam that would allow games to run via proton on Chrome OS

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itself with no workarounds or VMS required the project is under the code

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name Borealis and some users recently

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spotted flags for it in Chrome settings meaning we could potentially see an

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optimized gaming platform for Chrome OS later on this year stay tuned but for

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now I'll have to settle for running unoptimized software on the sub-optimal

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hardware in the Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5. by I I mean my son

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which raises a key question lioness

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surely you could have afforded a premium Chromebook like the pixelbook go

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why did you cheap out then on your only begotten son

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I'm really glad you asked and it's because an expensive Chromebook is still

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a Chromebook and the way that I see it no matter how much money you have to

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throw around if you're spending more than about 500 US dollars on a laptop

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you're gonna be getting Hardware that's not going to be dragged down by Windows

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anyway so you might as well have something that can run Windows natively

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without a whole bunch of hackery and hassle in order to get it run because

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Windows is still a lot more flexible in

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