
Windows or Chromebook? A Best Buy salesman told me it isn't even close - tones411
https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-or-chromebook-a-best-buy-salesman-told-me-it-isnt-even-close/
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qes
Why is a Best Buy employee's opinion relevant? They hire teenagers off the
street who don't know anything but are willing to talk all day like they do.

I used to work there, albeit years ago, but the amount of misinformation
spewed by "product specialists" rivaled politics.

~~~
taurath
At some level, they understand what people who go into best buy look for and
buy. But those who work there usually have big personal preferences, so it may
wash out. They are rarely the super casual user. At the very least they're not
on commission (though they DO have sales targets, and sometimes those can be
for specific brands). Best buy built their business on taking the commission
model and not paying anyone commission.

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ryankrage77
Not really related to the topic at hand, but it's just occured to me that this
is what passes for journalism now.

~~~
MaupitiBlue
It’s a humor column. Lighten up.

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hyperman1
I've wondered about this a while ago: Is it possible to do real work on an
android or chromebook device.

I'm on trains, busses, ... a lot, in general without internet. And I just take
a laptop. Dont care about mac win or linux. I do some bookkeeping in a
spreadsheet, or some programming, I write some text.

I hate to do anything productive on this (cheap) smartphone. No keyboard or
mouse, basic software is missing,... It's great for consuming content, for a
quick search or checking a map. But as soon as I want to do something, it all
falls apart experience-wise. So I waste time in a game or HN when im on a bus,
instead of doing something I like or have to.

So how do you people do it?

~~~
chewz
Termux on Android plus Apple Bluetooth keyboard plus Chromecast to anything
with HDMI port is the most compact / portable enviroment I have. And quite
powerful with latest VIM, node, nvm, Go, awscli, gcloud and whatever you like.

For everyday work I use ChromeOS on MacPro 13 and 10 year old Thinkpad x230.
With Debian sid in chroot. All apps work in GUI (so in Chrome as apps) like
Instagram, Tinder, Spotify, Youtube Music, even MS Word. There is also
VirtualBox included.

I haven't used Windows laptop in 10 years or so. What am I missing?

~~~
millstone
You’re running ChromeOS on a 13 year old Mac Pro? What am I missing?

~~~
chewz
On 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina 2015..

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kerng
The power of marketing campaigns. It's a bit disturbing to see Google push so
hard for this - and still majority of ordinary of customers just want a cheap
Windows laptop. The Best Buy guy gave pretty reasonable advice. Also
confirming my suspicion that actually hardly anyone wants that expensive
Pixelbook. But as long as one can install Linux it should be fine - but I'd
rather pick a slick Surface Laptop.

~~~
verdverm
Pixelbooks can run most Debian packages, so I've heard, and container work
seems to be in the code base. I'm planning to try one out to see if it makes
sense for the non devs at my company. Not allowing windows machines because
security.

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badrabbit
I am usually anti-google and I would never use a chrome book. But man! I had
to edit a pdf a while ago and it was such a horrible experience on windows. A
free app on adroid did it easy-peasy.

I would still prefer windows over a chromebook but I don't think people who
prefer a chromebook are clueless either.

~~~
mmwelt
What kind of editing were you doing? I've found PDF-XChange[1] to be pretty
good on Windows, it has all the annotation functions.

Disclaimer: Not in any way affiliated with PDF-XChange, just a long-time user.

[1] [https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-
editor](https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor)

