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I love our chromebook. Easily enough for seniors, beefy enough for any hardcore nix nerd (not me). Urban theft is not uncommon and the State has liberties at the border -- a easy to wipe cheap chromebook has some utility here.
No prolonged updates like our Win and Mac machines.
I could not teach my mother how to use the old iPad gen1 I wanted to hand down to her: tap here to turn on wifi, tap this app square to get the browser, tap here to enter your search, etc..
She was frustrated with learning gestures, what app does what; she just wanted to research places she likes to travel.
Chromebook: Just flip open and use; close lid when done.
Her reply: "That is perfect for me!"
She is used to going to the library and using the computer to browse there.
The typewriter came before the touchscreen-- keys vs gestures
Now I just have to get her a Google account.
I suspect a lot of seniors are in the same boat.
As for our use: I use the chromebook more than the iPad due to instant on and primarily the keyboard which i have to pair when typing on the iPad.
I get inexpensive Linux laptop with power management from ChromeOS courtesy of crouton.
Crouton adds a chroot and I journal with vim (vimwiki) and browse with Firefox. A key macro switches me back to ChromeOS.
Offline ChromeOS SUCKED like 6 months ago, but now with Caret and Text; editing is great and secure offline.
epubs are referenced (i read on kindle or phone) with Readium and I've yet to find a decent offline reader but primary use is web web web.
What do people use a computer for.... alot?
Other cons are lack of java based / enterprisey stuff like GotoMeeting but there are some remote software that I haven't tried weaving through yet. Also stuff not compiled for my Samsung ARM I have to build from source like Truecrypt.
I would tell all the pundits: try it for a month then go back to your land of downloading updates
Chromebook gets the 80/20 job done fer $250?!
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