Anecdotally: My 12-year-old daughter uses her phone to text friends and her Android tablet (Nook running Cyanogenmod) to read books from the library in the Kind

Anecdotally: My 12-year-old daughter uses her phone to text friends and her Android tablet (Nook running Cyanogenmod) to read books from the library in the Kindle app. She's constantly dragging around a Chromebook because "it has better speakers" and the folding screen doesn't need to be held to show YouTube videos. The 10-year-old daughter (not old enough for a phone (for us), reads paper books) drags around another Chromebook for YouTube and writing. The 8-year-old son uses a Kindle Fire tablet to play games and read books we've bought. We replaced the iMac in the kitchen with a Chromebox and that's been hugely popular. The old iMac was six years old and very slow. My 10-year-old has had some trouble at her school because they use MS Office and she's not used to having to save her changes. She's written 6730 words in her story for English class since the start of November in Google Docs and we transfer it onto a flash drive so she can take it to school. My wife and I have MacBook Airs but I would find it tempting to replace mine with a new Toshiba Chromebook (1920x1080 IPS screen for $330) if my MacBook died today. I'd like shell access without necessarily needing root access. Trying shell access meant flipping a switch on the Chromebooks that brought up a scary warning every time I opened the lid. This was a couple of years ago and I hope things have progressed.