I recently had a friend ask my recommendation about buying a new laptop. She was looking at some display models at a big box store and she wanted to know more about Chromebooks, which were cheaper. She wanted to know if I thought she’d be a good candidate for a Chromebook instead of a laptop.
Let’s look at the differences and why you’d choose one over the other.
Laptop computers and Chromebooks look the same. They have a keyboard with touchpad and a flat screen. Many laptop manufacturers also produce Chromebooks.
Laptops will boot into an operating system – usually Windows 10 or 11 or MacOS.
Laptops have RAM memory, which is used by apps when you launch and use them. Laptops also have built-in storage (a hard drive), which may be a spinning disk or solid-state drive (no moving parts). The storage is for your programs and files.
Chromebooks also boot into an operating system, but it is the Google Chrome operating system, which acts a lot like Windows or MacOS, but there are some key differences.
Chrome OS is designed for web use. This means most of your apps will be accessed through the web, rather than downloaded and stored on the computer’s hard drive.
The way you save files is also different. Chrome OS defaults to store files in the cloud instead of a local hard drive.
Because Chrome OS is made by Google, the Google suite of web apps, like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive and more are all built-in and easily accessed because you use your Google account login to log in to your Chromebook.
Since Chrome OS uses mainly web-based apps, there usually isn’t a great deal of local storage available. Chromebooks can’t run Windows or Mac apps, but they can run many Android apps from the Google Play store.
Most Chromebooks have 64 or 128 gigabytes of storage,...
