Laptop vs chromebook vs something else. I’m confused!

[Mykittensmittens]

I have two DC. One y8 and one y6. Both get homework which they use an old home laptop for. The y6 DC will undoubtedly get more homework of this type when he moves to high school next year. High school provides ‘office’ type applications for homework via logging in to their network.

I want to buy the DC each something to replace the shared use of the very old home laptop.

For efficiency I think chrome books would be okay. As I understand it the difference is that less stuff is ‘stored’ on the chromebook vs a laptop - is that right?

There is no expectation of using it for gaming or suchlike as they have a console for that. They also have old Samsung tablets they use for minecraft/roblox. It would just be for homework, a bit of internet use, and perhaps plugging in a drawing mat type thing.

I’m such a Luddite and I’m nervous to order chromebooks if I’m not understanding their purpose well enough. Can anyone who knows these things tell me if I’m probably on the right lines?

Thanks.

Chromebooks are a laptop shaped device with a Chrome browser. You will need to be connected to the internet to use anything (via Google Drive). I would definitely not get this for a child.

Choose a simple laptop with Microsoft Office suite.

DS has a chromebook for his homework but his school use Google classrooms and the Google versions of word/excel etc so its fairly straight forward, it all just works. He has his school account and a personal account as too separate log ins so that school work doesnt save to his personal google drive (online storage) and vice versa.

There is very little storage space on the machine itself, its mainly for storing apps. You need to be connected to the internet to be able to do much with it, although you can work on documents offline and save them to upload later.

We went for the biggest storage we could at the time which I think was 128gb. He doesn't use it for gaming or anything, as we are a google/android house rather than an apple house, it works well for what he needs.

Chromebook. No faffing.

DS has had his since the start of lockdown last year and is yr10 now. You can set internet restrictions on if you wish.

Thanks.

@rattlemehearties I’m so loathed to do that and pay for two lots of office when they only use office for homework and that’s accessed via google classrooms? Hence my confusion!

I was also reading on some reviews I could use family link (as I do on their tablets) so could restrict use.

I’m really not sure they’d use it without wifi anyway.

One thing I’m further confused about though is expiry. I’ve seen some reviews asking for expiry dates and on the Lenovo one I’ve looked at it says 2026. Presumably that means post 2026 you can no longer run system updates? By which point DS will be 15 and DD 17 and probably will have updated tech anyway?

I guess the old laptop (4 years old) could remain as a backup for creating anything which needs to be saved? DD does like taking photographs with a proper camera. Can I attach an external hard drive to it?

They do expire. And it's not just a matter of no more system updates, it eventually becomes unusable, screen goes blank. You do get loads of warnings though. And your files are still in your Google account. That's why you need a younger model, rather than a cheaper, but older one.

Ref attaching things, they still have the normal usb type ports etc . Mine has 2 usb ports, a hdmi, and something I've no idea what it's for... Mine also has a headphone jack.

I couldn't go back to a normal laptop. No annoying waiting for updates to complete.

@Mykittensmittens

Thanks.

@rattlemehearties I’m so loathed to do that and pay for two lots of office when they only use office for homework and that’s accessed via google classrooms? Hence my confusion!

I was also reading on some reviews I could use family link (as I do on their tablets) so could restrict use.

I’m really not sure they’d use it without wifi anyway.

One thing I’m further confused about though is expiry. I’ve seen some reviews asking for expiry dates and on the Lenovo one I’ve looked at it says 2026. Presumably that means post 2026 you can no longer run system updates? By which point DS will be 15 and DD 17 and probably will have updated tech anyway?

I guess the old laptop (4 years old) could remain as a backup for creating anything which needs to be saved? DD does like taking photographs with a proper camera. Can I attach an external hard drive to it?

MS Office will always be free to download on a home PC provided they log in with institutional log on details. It is part of the educational licensing deal Microsoft have

@Mykittensmittens You'll be fine with a Chromebook. It can run (almost) anything that runs inside a web browser, so if your kids use Google Classroom, they'll be fine.

They do have very limited internal storage, so you won't be storing a lot of photos / videos etc on it, but you can connect a USB stick or external hard drive to it via USB and store files on there.

There's a list here of devices you can attach and filetypes it'll support
support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183093?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Ccompatible-accessories-for-chromebook

Personally I've just bought a laptop for my daughter for her to do her schoolwork on, the only reason I didn't go with a Chromebook is that she enjoys gaming. Even with the laptop I won't be getting her Microsoft Office, as she uses the software through Google Classroom for her homework.

With regards to family link, you're correct that you can set up on a chromebook, you can either blanket block all adult sites or only allow access to certain sites that you whitelist.

And finally, with expiry dates. Pretty much every device these days comes with a limit on how long they'll support it for. Most phones for instance will stop getting updates a set number of years after its released, usually 2 or 3. They'll still work after that, but you won't get the latest updates. Chromebook updates work in basically the same way.

A normal laptop with Windows works slightly differently, in that you can get update to Windows for a much longer period. For instance, Windows 11 has just come out, but windows 10 will continue recieving updates until 2025. You can also upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for free (as long as your computer can handle it) so you don't really have to worry about security updates.

As your Chromebooks will recieve updates until 2026, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Your kids are likely to have needed to upgrade for other reasons by then anyway.

Hope the above helps, I'm in charge of buying hardware and software for work so know most of this stuff like the back of my hand, so feel free to @ me if you've any more questions

Thanks so much. And thanks for the offer @fdgdfgdfgdfg if I get stuck during the selection process I will shout for you!

I’m looking at spending a little more - for one with 128gb and a touchscreen. Now I’m wondering if I should hang on for Black Friday for an Amazon deal…..

If the school use Google classroom a chromebook is perfect

Its worth waiting to see, but I'm not expecting a lot of deals on electronics this year. Theres a silicon chip shortage that's affecting everything from laptops to cars to washing machines at the moment, a number of companies have been raising prices

Another daft question but rather than storing everything on Google drive, I presume you can store it on a local network cloud based storage system (we don’t keep any files on our computers any more after clogging them up horribly with photos for years!)