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unruly
May 12, 2002

YES!!!
TPM Firmware updates. Sucks that it takes a powerwash, but it's mostly painless.

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MrNemo
Aug 26, 2010

"I just love beeting off"

Quick update: Just got my C302 back from ASUS' servicing after it stopped accepting a charge. I hadn't had it that long (Black Friday sale) so it's a little concerning that it basically became unusable after a couple of months but they replaced the battery and sent it back under warranty so that's nice.

Annoyingly I had a bit of an issue with getting it collected as it took them a couple of days to process RMA request and arrange collection and then had some issues with the courier (turned up way late the first day, he said he'd reschedule on the Friday and on Monday discovered he hadn't so it ended up getting to them just before a the 4 day Easter weekend) that meant I didn't have it for the one foreign trip I've taken this year. Which meant having to do a load of work on my old Windows machine which is slooooooow. I have to admit I'm really, really liking how fast this feels in comparison. Hopefully it's not the start of a series of hardware issues.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



MrNemo posted:

Quick update: Just got my C302 back from ASUS' servicing after it stopped accepting a charge. I hadn't had it that long (Black Friday sale) so it's a little concerning that it basically became unusable after a couple of months but they replaced the battery and sent it back under warranty so that's nice.

Annoyingly I had a bit of an issue with getting it collected as it took them a couple of days to process RMA request and arrange collection and then had some issues with the courier (turned up way late the first day, he said he'd reschedule on the Friday and on Monday discovered he hadn't so it ended up getting to them just before a the 4 day Easter weekend) that meant I didn't have it for the one foreign trip I've taken this year. Which meant having to do a load of work on my old Windows machine which is slooooooow. I have to admit I'm really, really liking how fast this feels in comparison. Hopefully it's not the start of a series of hardware issues.

Why did you have to deal with a courier? I sent back a C101 to Asus and the process consisted of: print label, apply to box, drop off, wait for return shipment. It did take them 2-3 weeks to work on it but the process was painless.

MrNemo
Aug 26, 2010

"I just love beeting off"

I'm in the UK, Asus has outsourced RMAs to some small company here and they did a courier collection and drop off. I'd have had to pay if the problem had turned out to be something not covered by the warranty.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Hey, we've got some refurb'd CBs on Woot if anyone's interested:

Here's the HP 13; they have the Pentium model left, with 4 GB of RAM, for $280. It's a couple of years old, but that's still a good deal for what's basically a Pixel model. The build and display are excellent, and I'm typing on one of these right now.

The Samsung Plus is $350. I still think it's worth it for the display, if you can deal with the keyboard. If you do a ton of typing like I do then maybe look at another model (or else try it in person somewhere to see how it works for you) but otherwise this would be great for reading, browsing, and running Android apps.

This HP x360 is $210. It's probably OK for a cheap model, if you want something fairly rugged but disposable. The dual-core CPU is OK; it's better than the N3050/N3060 on the other options, but I'd still prefer a quad-core. Other than that there's nothing special about the build or display (this is a ruggedized EDU model.)

NewFatMike
Jun 11, 2015

Samsung Chromebook Pro got refreshed with a backlit keyboard!

https://search.app.goo.gl/yHYNx

Worf
Sep 12, 2017

If only Seth would love me like I love him!

Good find- I'm checking out those specs and uh, is that literally the only thing that they changed?

NewFatMike
Jun 11, 2015

That appears to be the case, but I don’t think MSRP changed, so good get still?

Worf
Sep 12, 2017

If only Seth would love me like I love him!

NewFatMike posted:

That appears to be the case, but I don’t think MSRP changed, so good get still?

Huh, I don't remember but I thought it was less than $600 before. Thats totally just going by memory though. I haven't really kept up on them much since electing to go with a different model entirely

I'm probably conflating that with the price of refurbs or the plus or something

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



I think the Pro was originally $550, the Plus $450, but the point is that the prices start to drop after a little while so you don't have to pay MSRP unless you need it NOW.

halokiller
Dec 28, 2008

Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves


At the very least could have improved the keyboard layout or increased the storage to 64gb rather then sticking a backlight then bumping up the MSRP by $50 and calling it a day.

halokiller fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Apr 16, 2018

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


AFAIK new units are still getting the phantom touch issue so I'm not sure LEDs behind the keyboard is the hardware revision they should have been working on.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



halokiller posted:

At the very least could have improved the keyboard layout or increased the storage to 64gb rather then sticking a backlight then bumping up the MSRP by $50 and calling it a day.

Yeah but there are higher-end versions with more storage, RAM, and faster CPUs.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer
My girlfriend wanted a Pixebook so I ordered her one. Turns out she had also ordered herself one due to the £100 offer expiring that day. When hers arrived it was so beautiful that I immediately became jealous and decided to keep the spare one for myself. So now I have a £1k Chromebook I don't really need.

A couple of Android games I tried had hosed up touch controls but most seem fine and framerates are excellent. Zen Pinball even has keyboard support which makes me very happy. Hardware is gorgeous as everyone knows already. The pen seems like a gimmick but she likes it for doodling and I figured I'd keep it anyway.

The real reason I justified keeping it is that Linux container support seems to be on the way. If I can run Android Studio on the thing, even if ADB support is a bit wonky, it becomes a very interesting device.

One thing I noticed: Chrome two-finger forward/back navigation swiping seems a bit broken, is this normal? It sometimes kind of gets stuck between the two pages and I have to swipe or tap again to fix it.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Tunga posted:

One thing I noticed: Chrome two-finger forward/back navigation swiping seems a bit broken, is this normal? It sometimes kind of gets stuck between the two pages and I have to swipe or tap again to fix it.

Yup, I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it has to do with difficulty tracking multiple touch points; if I do it more deliberately, with both fingertips stacked vertically instead of almost horizontally as is more natural, it seems to work better. More commonly though I just use the back/forward navigation keys since they're right there (in the function key row.) Also Alt+left/right does the same thing, and I usually have one thumb on Alt anyways to use it with up/down for page up/down.

LionArcher
Mar 29, 2010


Okay thread, looking at all the options I’m thinking I want a Thinkpad chromebook 13. Any rumors of an updated one? I care about the keyboard the most, and screen second. Considering for full HD they coast around $580, I’m a little leery. especially if a new one is on the horizon. Also, I’m debating between that and an Acer 14, and the price difference (almost 300 bucks) is nuts. In terms of speed, I only need it to run a word processor, Spotify, and have a few other tabs so the speed of those Chromebooks should be fine right?

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer

Atomizer posted:

Yup, I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it has to do with difficulty tracking multiple touch points; if I do it more deliberately, with both fingertips stacked vertically instead of almost horizontally as is more natural, it seems to work better. More commonly though I just use the back/forward navigation keys since they're right there (in the function key row.) Also Alt+left/right does the same thing, and I usually have one thumb on Alt anyways to use it with up/down for page up/down.
I switched to Chrome OS beta channel and it now uses an arrow animation (similar to MacOS) which suffers none of these problems and looks better anyway. So that's solved I guess.

unruly
May 12, 2002

YES!!!

Tunga posted:

I switched to Chrome OS beta channel and it now uses an arrow animation (similar to MacOS) which suffers none of these problems and looks better anyway. So that's solved I guess.
You can change the animations in the chrome://flags option, too. God I hated that lovely slide over animation. It was a crapshoot as to whether or not it was going to work the first time...

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



LionArcher posted:

Okay thread, looking at all the options I’m thinking I want a Thinkpad chromebook 13. Any rumors of an updated one? I care about the keyboard the most, and screen second. Considering for full HD they coast around $580, I’m a little leery. especially if a new one is on the horizon. Also, I’m debating between that and an Acer 14, and the price difference (almost 300 bucks) is nuts. In terms of speed, I only need it to run a word processor, Spotify, and have a few other tabs so the speed of those Chromebooks should be fine right?

The Thinkpad 13 is solid. You can get it with some decent CPU and RAM options. The FHD display is a necessity; it's only midrange as it is, and the base HD one is worse (which is typical for Lenovo.) I haven't heard any rumors about an upcoming upgrade. The keyboard is good, it's the typical curved keycaps like you'd find on Ideapads and I'd presume some or all current Thinkpads.

The regular Acer 14 is a decent entry-level CB; the FHD display is perhaps a little better than the one on the Thinkpad, but the CPU is worse (usable, but at the lower end.) The build quality is very nice for the price, with a faux-macbook air metal chassis. The keyboard is a standard flat-keycap CB style, not backlit.

On the other hand, since you were originally considering the Thinkpad CB, the comparable option is not the aforementioned Acer 14 but the Acer 14 CB "For Work". This is effectively Acer's Thinkpad, and it has the same performance options, a good FHD display, a backlit keyboard (standard keycaps,) and it's at least as rugged as the Lenovo, but with a self-draining, spill-resistant keyboard!

For your purposes, if this is your first CB the Acer 14 should be fine, especially that refurb for <$200. You may want to upgrade eventually though, especially if you spend a ton of time on it. For similar money, I prefer the Acer For Work over the Thinkpad, otherwise they're ultimately pretty close.

hotsauce
Jan 14, 2007

Tunga posted:

One thing I noticed: Chrome two-finger forward/back navigation swiping seems a bit broken, is this normal? It sometimes kind of gets stuck between the two pages and I have to swipe or tap again to fix it.

Edit: well I'm dumb and was beaten twice, maybe three times above. Oops.


Boy do I have a treat for you. Go to chrome://flags and do this:

Find "Overscroll history navigation" and change it to "Simple."

It's so much better. No more lag or entire web page graphical animation. Just lightning fast back/forward with swiping.

fanny packrat
Mar 24, 2018
I posted about this in the laptop thread, but does anyone have a recommendation for a ≈$100 Chromebook with a touchscreen? I'm traveling this summer and I'd like something light for notes, including handwritten if possible, but also cheap enough that if it gets stolen/destroyed I won't be too upset.

I've been seeing the c720p (4GB) at around that price on eBay. It seems like a good option, but I'd also be interested in something newer/better and not appreciably more expensive.

edit: I found an R11 about an hour away from me for $100. That's a no-brainer, provided it's legit, right?

fanny packrat fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 27, 2018

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



fanny packrat posted:

I posted about this in the laptop thread, but does anyone have a recommendation for a ≈$100 Chromebook with a touchscreen? I'm traveling this summer and I'd like something light for notes, including handwritten if possible, but also cheap enough that if it gets stolen/destroyed I won't be too upset.

I've been seeing the c720p (4GB) at around that price on eBay. It seems like a good option, but I'd also be interested in something newer/better and not appreciably more expensive.

edit: I found an R11 about an hour away from me for $100. That's a no-brainer, provided it's legit, right?

The Acer R11 is a solid recommendation. I forget all of the hardware variations, but as long as the one you're looking at has an N3150/3160 and 4 GB of RAM then that's a great price. The display is 11", WXGA, and is a decent-quality IPS (IIRC.) It has access to Android apps on the Play Store on the Stable channel, and it's a convertible so you could fold it all the way around and use it as a tablet. I've never used tried handwriting on a touchscreen CB but I'm sure it's doable. There are drawing Android apps that might also suffice. (Note that you'd have to use a generic capacitive stylus.) The keyboard is just fine.

Otherwise, there's really nothing else that I could recommend that's quite that cheap. You'll like the R11 though.

Worf
Sep 12, 2017

If only Seth would love me like I love him!

https://www.adorama.com/as302cadh75g.html?utm_source=rflaid913004

quote:

Asus C302CA-DH75-G Chromebook Flip 12.5" Full HD Touchscreen Notebook Computer, Intel Core m7-6Y75 1.20GHz, 16GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, Chrome OS

that is a pretty beautiful machine probably. but at $929 it seems pretty stupid to grab that over the base pixelbook with the significantly better screen?

i'm just speaking conversationally, with the xps 13 either would be pretty redundant for me :shrug:

fanny packrat
Mar 24, 2018

Atomizer posted:

The Acer R11 is a solid recommendation. I forget all of the hardware variations, but as long as the one you're looking at has an N3150/3160 and 4 GB of RAM then that's a great price. The display is 11", WXGA, and is a decent-quality IPS (IIRC.) It has access to Android apps on the Play Store on the Stable channel, and it's a convertible so you could fold it all the way around and use it as a tablet. I've never used tried handwriting on a touchscreen CB but I'm sure it's doable. There are drawing Android apps that might also suffice. (Note that you'd have to use a generic capacitive stylus.) The keyboard is just fine.

Otherwise, there's really nothing else that I could recommend that's quite that cheap. You'll like the R11 though.

Great, thanks for the input! I've read a few accounts of people using them to take handwritten notes, and yeah, I'll definitely need a stylus because I have terminal sausagefingeritis. I'm still trying to pin down with the seller the exact model, but I'll probably end up taking it regardless. It seems like a good price for something that fits my use-case.

MC Hawking
Apr 27, 2004

by VideoGames
Fun Shoe
Just wanted y'all to know that Shadowrun: Returns and the Dragonfall DLC work great on the C302 and don't get kicked out of memory even when running a high tab load in Chrome. Definitely worth $5 for both games.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Statutory Ape posted:

https://www.adorama.com/as302cadh75g.html?utm_source=rflaid913004


that is a pretty beautiful machine probably. but at $929 it seems pretty stupid to grab that over the base pixelbook with the significantly better screen?

i'm just speaking conversationally, with the xps 13 either would be pretty redundant for me :shrug:

Yeah, the PB has a better display (at least if you prefer 3:2 over 16:9 FHD) and more storage for around the same price, plus the stylus support. Granted the high-end Flip has more RAM and a faster CPU, but the former is really the only meaningful upgrade. I'd still rather have the i7 PB with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

MC Hawking
Apr 27, 2004

by VideoGames
Fun Shoe
Although I mentioned the smoothness of Shadowrun Returns in my previous post, ever since the last system update I've been having a ton of problems with hung screens and full system non-responsiveness.

I'll shut the lid and open things back up and it'll be totally frozen. Or it'll go to sleep, I hit the unlock and punch in my pin then it'll go unresponsive to touch or keyboard input.

Sometimes when I have 4 or 5 tabs open in the browser and nothing else, when I close the screen it'll crash completely and reboot itself having lost everything I had open.

I'm on the stable channel and honestly I'm getting really irritated by how jankey things have gotten recently. Anyone else run into system instability from the last couple updates?

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



MC Hawking posted:

Although I mentioned the smoothness of Shadowrun Returns in my previous post, ever since the last system update I've been having a ton of problems with hung screens and full system non-responsiveness.

I'll shut the lid and open things back up and it'll be totally frozen. Or it'll go to sleep, I hit the unlock and punch in my pin then it'll go unresponsive to touch or keyboard input.

Sometimes when I have 4 or 5 tabs open in the browser and nothing else, when I close the screen it'll crash completely and reboot itself having lost everything I had open.

I'm on the stable channel and honestly I'm getting really irritated by how jankey things have gotten recently. Anyone else run into system instability from the last couple updates?

I've not had the same issues (for the most part I've been using an HP CB 13.) Occasionally the system may hang for a moment or two, and will often recover itself, but overall I've found ChromeOS to be remarkably stable, especially considering how long I can go between reboots (which are basically only when I have a pending system update.) That being said, on one system or other (e.g., the original Asus Flip C100,) I've had Android app-related instability which may be what you're describing. I do have quite a few apps installed on this CB yet haven't noticed any system instability caused by that, although I just don't use them that much because I still use other Android devices for that purpose. You can troubleshoot this by uninstalling suspect apps (including but not limited to Shadowrun) until you've found the culprit, or by uninstalling the entire Play Store instance (Settings -> Google Play Store -> Remove Google Play Store), at least to give yourself a fresh start.

MC Hawking
Apr 27, 2004

by VideoGames
Fun Shoe
You know what now that you mention it, most of the time full lockup happens is when I'm running an Android app. I'll keep an eyeball on things and see if there's any correlation.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



MC Hawking posted:

You know what now that you mention it, most of the time full lockup happens is when I'm running an Android app. I'll keep an eyeball on things and see if there's any correlation.

It probably is, because by itself ChromeOS is quite solid. The Android implementation isn't perfect, and you'll have different results on different systems, but otherwise it's still pretty useful if not completely reliable.

Ethereal
Mar 8, 2003
Is there a way to locally sync/backup a google drive folder to an attached disk/usb drive?

What i'm really trying to figure out is, how to not have to re-download my entire photo library/other files every time I may need to powerwash a chromebook. Any ideas, or help here would definitely be appreciated!

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Ethereal posted:

Is there a way to locally sync/backup a google drive folder to an attached disk/usb drive?

What i'm really trying to figure out is, how to not have to re-download my entire photo library/other files every time I may need to powerwash a chromebook. Any ideas, or help here would definitely be appreciated!

I don't know that this is possible, because as it is ChromeOS is designed to make your Drive account feel like easily-accessible local storage. You should just be able to access your photos on your Drive account without having all of them downloaded locally all the time, at least as long as you have a network connection. If you have been maintaining files locally on the CB's internal storage, you could always simply back that up before a Powerwash and restore it after. I just don't know of any backup software (which would take the form of an extension) although you could try something like this.

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

MC Hawking posted:

Although I mentioned the smoothness of Shadowrun Returns in my previous post, ever since the last system update I've been having a ton of problems with hung screens and full system non-responsiveness.

I'll shut the lid and open things back up and it'll be totally frozen. Or it'll go to sleep, I hit the unlock and punch in my pin then it'll go unresponsive to touch or keyboard input.

Sometimes when I have 4 or 5 tabs open in the browser and nothing else, when I close the screen it'll crash completely and reboot itself having lost everything I had open.

I'm on the stable channel and honestly I'm getting really irritated by how jankey things have gotten recently. Anyone else run into system instability from the last couple updates?

My Asus C302 has started to freeze occasionally too since the latest update to the stable channel. I don’t use Android apps very often on my Chromebook anymore (in my experience they usually don’t work that well) so I doubt that it is that.

Google probably slipped a bug in the latest release, oh well. Not surprising since this laptop is a low-cost, low volume product. I don’t think Google is putting much effort into these non-education, third-party designed Chromebooks.

fondue
Jul 14, 2002

Are any of the chromebooks good to draw with or am I still better off with an iPad?

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



fondue posted:

Are any of the chromebooks good to draw with or am I still better off with an iPad?

Some of them come with a dedicated stylus (as opposed to a generic capacitive one) like the Samsung Plus/Pro and they work with Android drawing apps, but I don't do any drawing myself so I can't advise you specifically on that subject. If you could find one of the Samsungs or a Pixelbook in a local store like Best Buy you might be able to try out that functionality in person.

MrNemo
Aug 26, 2010

"I just love beeting off"

I've used the pixel book stylus for writing and found it worked really well. I don't know how well that transfers to drawing though.

fanny packrat
Mar 24, 2018
I picked up my R11 on Friday and have been loving it so far. Being a hideous, gruesome ogre of a man I really enjoy flipping the screen around and using it as a huge tablet. The only issue I have right now is printing to a networked device, but I'm not too worried and I think I can probably get it sorted out.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good way to play music from Google Drive? I have about 90GB of music there, and I have found Google Play Music to be kind of a pain. In a perfect world I would figure out how to trick my computer into thinking that my Google Drive folder was a local resource, and then use Poweramp. I may end up getting a tiny 128GB usb drive and just downloading the whole shebang.

The best tool I've found so far is Music Player for Google Drive (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/music-player-for-google-d/hnfeekfpnjbdmelcapngdgkjnhgijjkh/related?hl=en), but I'm not crazy about it.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

It sounds like Drive is also a pain to use in a manner its not intended.

Have you tried getting help to fix your problems with GPM?

This is sounding suspiciously similar to an XY problem.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



fanny packrat posted:

I picked up my R11 on Friday and have been loving it so far. Being a hideous, gruesome ogre of a man I really enjoy flipping the screen around and using it as a huge tablet. The only issue I have right now is printing to a networked device, but I'm not too worried and I think I can probably get it sorted out.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good way to play music from Google Drive? I have about 90GB of music there, and I have found Google Play Music to be kind of a pain. In a perfect world I would figure out how to trick my computer into thinking that my Google Drive folder was a local resource, and then use Poweramp. I may end up getting a tiny 128GB usb drive and just downloading the whole shebang.

The best tool I've found so far is Music Player for Google Drive (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/music-player-for-google-d/hnfeekfpnjbdmelcapngdgkjnhgijjkh/related?hl=en), but I'm not crazy about it.

If you have a networked printer, and another PC on the network set up for it, you can use GCP to take care of this easily (instructions in the OP;) this is exactly how I'm set up in my home.

You can possibly use the Plex Android app to play your music. It's intended for remote video streaming, but can play music, and can now access local files. I've never used it for this purpose but it's free and you can give it a shot. Of course, if you have the PC from the previous paragraph, you could just run PMS on that and have it stream your music (which is also the second function my GCP server PC provides) unless this is an issue of offline access.

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Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
So while looking for an IRC client with XDCC support that runs on chrome os or android I found some articles about this crostini project which seems really cool. Basically it's an ongoing project at google that will allow chrome os users to run native linux apps in a container.

https://chromeunboxed.com/news/run-linux-apps-pixelbook-container-crostini-video/

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