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I am a former Mac user and bought a Chromebook 2 years ago and never looked back. The Macbook had served its purpose for so long, and I had it since 2009, but n

I am a former Mac user and bought a Chromebook 2 years ago and never looked back. The Macbook had served its purpose for so long, and I had it since 2009, but no matter what I did, it was still running slow. Chromebooks were insanely faster. In the beginning, I enabled Developer Mode, installed Linux, and was relying heavily on a lot of the features that Linux had to offer, but Chromebooks pretty much have everything they need, in the form of extensions or websites that exist to perform a specific functionality, so there's a workaround for everyone. I got the T-Mobile-enabled one so I can travel anywhere with it. Love it and don't think I'll be switching to any other computer again anytime soon.

gchokov 10y ago
Yeah.. but it's not a MacBook.
faitswulff 10y ago
Does the T-Mobile plan include international data like their regular cellphone plans? If so, how well does it work abroad?
- mattbgates 10y ago
  I've traveled out of state with it but never out of country. You buy the plan you want and insert the T-Mobile SIM card. I had a really good plan at $10 for 5 GB a month which was plenty, because even if I ran out afterwards, which I hardly ever did (T-Mobile doesn't count data for Netflix or Pandora anymore), but it would just slow down to 3G speeds, which was still fast enough to check email and read webpages. I think I upgraded to another plan for $25 a month for unlimited data, not that I personally upgraded, but someone in my family needed to upgrade which automatically upgraded my plan. The SIM Card is a phone line with its own phone number. Of course, you can't call it or receive calls, but its technically acting like a cellphone with Internet. So as a phone line, you are connecting to a cell tower. So I can assume that if you go out of country, like any phone, you can enable roaming and it will find towers close by and use those, but those data rates could probably get expensive. Although T-Mobile is trying to become a true power player in the game against AT&T and Verizon and has definitely started to offer some really great plans. Read this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp -- looks like you can get on a plan that will cover you completely so you pay nothing. I know when my brother visited Canada and turned on his phone, he received a text message from T-Mobile that he could "continue making calls and texting without any worries about data rates." If you aren't covered in a specific country, I'm pretty sure you can call up T-Mobile and see if they can offer you a temporary package deal for like a month or a "pay as you go" deal if needed.
wastedhours 10y ago
I just went the other way and replaced my Chromebook with a MBP - the Chromebook is perfect for the vast majority of computer based tasks and a good percentage of what I do outside of work can be accomplished on it. Mainly just the lack of local development support for self learning and side projects was why I dropped it, but it's still my goto machine for holidays and throwing onto the sofa.
- BooneJS 10y ago
  Agreed. Chromebook does a few common things very well and at a good value.
asyncrony 10y ago
Are you using a cloud based IDE? I was kicking around the idea of getting one. My main concern was not being able to develop locally on the machine.
- ghaff 10y ago
  In my experience, though interested in hearing from others, they're pretty limited in that regard. It's one of the factors in whether I take my Chromebook or my MBP on a trip. Audio editing (for podcasts) is another; I use my desktop for photo/video editing in any case.

gchokov 10y ago

Yeah.. but it's not a MacBook.

faitswulff 10y ago

Does the T-Mobile plan include international data like their regular cellphone plans? If so, how well does it work abroad?

mattbgates 10y ago
I've traveled out of state with it but never out of country. You buy the plan you want and insert the T-Mobile SIM card. I had a really good plan at $10 for 5 GB a month which was plenty, because even if I ran out afterwards, which I hardly ever did (T-Mobile doesn't count data for Netflix or Pandora anymore), but it would just slow down to 3G speeds, which was still fast enough to check email and read webpages. I think I upgraded to another plan for $25 a month for unlimited data, not that I personally upgraded, but someone in my family needed to upgrade which automatically upgraded my plan. The SIM Card is a phone line with its own phone number. Of course, you can't call it or receive calls, but its technically acting like a cellphone with Internet. So as a phone line, you are connecting to a cell tower. So I can assume that if you go out of country, like any phone, you can enable roaming and it will find towers close by and use those, but those data rates could probably get expensive. Although T-Mobile is trying to become a true power player in the game against AT&T and Verizon and has definitely started to offer some really great plans. Read this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp -- looks like you can get on a plan that will cover you completely so you pay nothing. I know when my brother visited Canada and turned on his phone, he received a text message from T-Mobile that he could "continue making calls and texting without any worries about data rates." If you aren't covered in a specific country, I'm pretty sure you can call up T-Mobile and see if they can offer you a temporary package deal for like a month or a "pay as you go" deal if needed.

wastedhours 10y ago

I just went the other way and replaced my Chromebook with a MBP - the Chromebook is perfect for the vast majority of computer based tasks and a good percentage of what I do outside of work can be accomplished on it. Mainly just the lack of local development support for self learning and side projects was why I dropped it, but it's still my goto machine for holidays and throwing onto the sofa.

BooneJS 10y ago
Agreed. Chromebook does a few common things very well and at a good value.

asyncrony 10y ago

Are you using a cloud based IDE? I was kicking around the idea of getting one. My main concern was not being able to develop locally on the machine.

ghaff 10y ago
In my experience, though interested in hearing from others, they're pretty limited in that regard. It's one of the factors in whether I take my Chromebook or my MBP on a trip. Audio editing (for podcasts) is another; I use my desktop for photo/video editing in any case.