How good are chrome books ?

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I was wondering if a chrome book would be a good laptop if i don't plan on using it for gaming? I just want a device with a good battery life, for the internet, watching movies and maybe writing

Yes, they're good for those things. We've owned two now. They're well suited as a small laptop to surf the internet and stream. Writing? If you wrote using a Google Documents or some other writing app from the Google Play Store.

Keep in mind you can't load software onto them like you can a regular laptop. Also, you can't download drivers for hardware like you can a laptop. You can print to/configure many printers to work with them but not all printers. You can't hook up a scanner to them that I'm aware of.

So...they're good for what they're good for but they're NOT the equivalent of a regular laptop in regard to functionality.

You can buy a lot of good PC laptops for the same money, in some cases the Chromebooks may be more reliable but they're slower computers for the price & they're also very low on storage space.

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A friend of mine had one (6-7 years ago) and pretty much hated it for the same reasons listed above and more. I think he returned it after a couple of days and got a similarly priced laptop instead.
I don't have any first hand experience with one, so I can't say.
I've had a few laptops ranging from free to less than $200 that worked pretty well after I got rid of windows, though.

I have a MacBook from 2009 that works like a charm. It's my only computer & I rely on it daily to do my schoolwork and other online pursuits. Get one of them instead of the Chromebook--it will allow you some independence away from Google.

I do not understand why anyone would want a Chromebook. It's a laptop that arbitrarily has limited functionality, that seems to serve Google more than the consumer. It really seems like a device that Google should be paying users to use, not the other way around.