Chromebooks
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There have been several discussions about Chromebooks here. I wonder what the different people ended up with? If you have recently bought one, which make and model did you get, and what do you like or not like about it.
The time has come for me to pull the trigger on two of them. I'll be going with one that offers LTE for one, and without LTE for the other, so it would be great to hear from recent Chromebook owners.
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Mine is old, but is an Asus and I love it. It's been great, and was only $179 new.
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Bought one for my daughter for school in July 2019. Acer 4GB RAM and 32 GB Storage. Spent $299 but a lot of the research I did said that the ones that were under the $150 range were crap but who knows. With her school being a complete Google classroom type, she hasn't had any issues with it.
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I have an HP convertible, forget which exact model without going to get it. It's one that has a low end Intel CPU, so it can do all the Debian and Android apps in addition to the chrome plugins. Great machine for on the go.
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I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
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@JasGot said in Chromebooks:
I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
There's always a risk. Lenovo could easily create BIOS add-ons that force whatever OS it's aware of to download crap from the interwebs and install it.
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@Dashrender said in Chromebooks:
@JasGot said in Chromebooks:
I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
There's always a risk. Lenovo could easily create BIOS add-ons that force whatever OS it's aware of to download crap from the interwebs and install it.
That was a Windows only thing leveraging WPBT. Pretty sure they can't do that with ChromeOS because normal boot mode will only boot signed versions of ChromeOS and does a verification of the firmware and the kernel.
And they don't use a normal BIOS in normal mode. The legacy booting uses SeaBIOS.
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from http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/disk-format
Google Chrome OS devices
Google Chrome OS devices (x86/x86_64/arm) have custom BIOSes that use yet another boot method to ensure that the user is running only the bits that are intended. Instead of a separate bootloader and kernel, there is one binary blob contained in its own GPT partition. That blob is cryptographically signed and the signature is verified before booting. Under normal conditions, the process is:The BIOS searches the first drive (only) for a GPT partition identified with our special ChromeOS Kernel Type GUID (fe3a2a5d-4f32-41a7-b725-accc3285a309). There should be two (image A and image B). Attribute bits within each partition table entry select which of the two is the most recent (or valid) one.
The first 64K bytes of the kernel partition are reserved for the signature header for verified boot. Following that is the 32-bit part of the kernel, a few data structures, and our bootloader stub. BIOS verifies the signature, loads the rest of kernel stuff into memory, and invokes the bootloader stub.
The bootloader stub is just an EFI application. It sets up any tables the kernel needs in order to continue booting, and jumps to the kernel's 32-bit entry point.The Chromium OS build process creates signed kernel images needed by the Chrome OS BIOS and installs them in their own partitions. They are signed with test keys that are found in the source tree. Official releases will of course be signed with private Google keys.
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@stacksofplates said in Chromebooks:
@Dashrender said in Chromebooks:
@JasGot said in Chromebooks:
I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
There's always a risk. Lenovo could easily create BIOS add-ons that force whatever OS it's aware of to download crap from the interwebs and install it.
That was a Windows only thing leveraging WPBT. Pretty sure they can't do that with ChromeOS because normal boot mode will only boot signed versions of ChromeOS and does a verification of the firmware and the kernel.
And they don't use a normal BIOS in normal mode. The legacy booting uses SeaBIOS.
That wasn't a Windows only thing. That is (we have no evidence that they've actually changed this) in the wifi driver stack for all supported operating systems. Add all the outright lies during that debacle and everything since, and Lenovo is a known bad actor.
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@travisdh1 said in Chromebooks:
@stacksofplates said in Chromebooks:
@Dashrender said in Chromebooks:
@JasGot said in Chromebooks:
I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
There's always a risk. Lenovo could easily create BIOS add-ons that force whatever OS it's aware of to download crap from the interwebs and install it.
That was a Windows only thing leveraging WPBT. Pretty sure they can't do that with ChromeOS because normal boot mode will only boot signed versions of ChromeOS and does a verification of the firmware and the kernel.
And they don't use a normal BIOS in normal mode. The legacy booting uses SeaBIOS.
That wasn't a Windows only thing. That is (we have no evidence that they've actually changed this) in the wifi driver stack for all supported operating systems. Add all the outright lies during that debacle and everything since, and Lenovo is a known bad actor.
The only one I ever saw was injected from the BIOS with WPBT. And it would have to be windows because Linux wouldn't use their wifi driver stack unless you downloaded it. And that doesn't change the fact that you can't do that with ChromeOS anyway.
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Oh you're referencing superfish. That was something different. What @Dashrender was referring to was the WPBT injection which happened on like a single product line of their systems.
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Get a large screen, i have generic Chromebooks, both 11 in and 14 in and the 14 in makes a huge difference.
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@jt1001001 said in Chromebooks:
Get a large screen, i have generic Chromebooks, both 11 in and 14 in and the 14 in makes a huge difference.
Yeah I still have a Toshiba Chromebook 2 from 2015 and it's got a 13" 1080p screen. It does make a big difference.
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Has anyone ever turned a Win Laptop into Chrome? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/13/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-a-sleek-chromebook/
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@krzykat said in Chromebooks:
Has anyone ever turned a Win Laptop into Chrome? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/13/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-a-sleek-chromebook/
I have. Used two laptops for my kids. It isn't a true Chrome OS but it works well. The kids were able to see all they should have for school accounts.
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@krzykat said in Chromebooks:
Has anyone ever turned a Win Laptop into Chrome? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/13/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-a-sleek-chromebook/
I do that to Linux all the time, but not to Chromebooks.
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@WLS-ITGuy said in Chromebooks:
@krzykat said in Chromebooks:
Has anyone ever turned a Win Laptop into Chrome? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/13/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-a-sleek-chromebook/
I have. Used two laptops for my kids. It isn't a true Chrome OS but it works well. The kids were able to see all they should have for school accounts.
Do those run Android apps like some Chromebooks do? That would be a big benefit. What about Linux apps?
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@JasGot said in Chromebooks:
I have read here in a few threads that Lenovo really took advantage of users with hidden access to the laptops. For this reason I have never considered Lenovo again. (Not that I was a fan before).....
But I see over and over how much people like their Lenovo CBs, is there any risk in a Lenovo CB or laptop?
So my feeling is that the way that these are used, and Google's oversight of them, probably make them a lot likely to be safer. But I'd be wary to some degree. Like if I'm using it for school or social media, I'd feel pretty good. If I was using it for military, corporate secrets, trying to overthrough the government, or banking I'd not be so comfortable.
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@scottalanmiller said in Chromebooks:
@WLS-ITGuy said in Chromebooks:
@krzykat said in Chromebooks:
Has anyone ever turned a Win Laptop into Chrome? https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/13/how-to-turn-your-old-slow-laptop-into-a-sleek-chromebook/
I have. Used two laptops for my kids. It isn't a true Chrome OS but it works well. The kids were able to see all they should have for school accounts.
Do those run Android apps like some Chromebooks do? That would be a big benefit. What about Linux apps?
I don't have them anymore I had to buy an actual chromebook for my oldest daughter. With it not being a true ChromeOS they wouldn't put it on the student WiFi so she was always on the guest wifi and complained because it was slow.
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My reason for asking is kids school units and wanting to have controls. I just installed circle for the house - great for controlling online time for kids. Would be great if I could convert a win laptop to a chromebook that allowed the installation of the android circle app so that I could monitor more closely what they are doing on their computers. Free allows me to see how much time they spend on each app as well as their browsing history.
