No, for the stated purpose (an "instant on" portable remote terminal with long battery life), a Chromebook is far superior to a cheap windows laptop. The Chrome

No, for the stated purpose (an "instant on" portable remote terminal with long battery life), a Chromebook is far superior to a cheap windows laptop. The Chromebook will go from out of the box to fully configured in about 5 minutes. The cheap windows laptop will still be installing linux, and you'll be bashing your head against the wall trying to get the wifi to work because it's a weird chinese copy of a no-name device that has no linux or other open-source drivers.