Interesting

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/01/back-to-the-very-very-basics/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60485

For reasons that are not important now, I have found myself in the possession of a lightly used but still somewhat recent Asus Chomebook, of the sort that one can pick up for less than $200, with 4GB RAM, 64GB of onboard storage, a less than spectacular screen resolution, and a keyboard without backlighting, which means on this dark gray version that once the lights dim, its usefulness will compromised for all but the most talented of touch-typers. It’s been a while since I’ve used something this basic (I’m writing this piece on it now), and inasmuch as my daily driver laptop is a reasonably specced-out M4 MacBook Air, I was curious how I would feel about it stepping down from that.

Answer: I… don’t hate it? I don’t love it, to be clear, and it’s not something I would likely ever choose over using my Air. And there are some things about it which are pretty egregious, that are clearly the result of this thing clocking in at under $200, most notably a screen that would have to work to be called “washed out,” and a track pad that feels genuinely terrible to use, especially coming from a MacBook, which have what are acknowledged to be the best trackpads in the world. It is as plastic as the day is long, and given the paucity of its RAM and the inevitable end of ChromeOS, this computer is so close to the line between “useful” and “e-waste” that one might as well give it a balancing beam.

On the other hand, the keyboard doesn’t suck to type on; it’s a basic chiclet board but it’s nicely spaced and the keys don’t feel overly mushy. The onboard i/o puts the Air to shame: Both the Air and the Asus have two USB-C ports and a headphone jack, but the ASUS throws in a USB-A and Mini-SD card as well (I don’t suspect that the USB-C ports on the Asus are Thunderbolt, but they can port out to an external display, which ain’t chicken feed). Plus the ASUS webcam has a manual privacy shutter, which, frankly, is a thing every laptop with a camera should have regardless. It’s not the absolute worst! You could spend $200 on much more questionable things!

Every now and again I do the check-in with myself on what might be the bare minimum I would need, in terms of personal possessions, if less than wonderful things came to pass I had to live in deeply reduced circumstances. And without going into great detail about the thinking process about this, one of the things I’ve decided is that if I had an acceptable laptop, that would go a fair way toward my needs in terms of audiovisual entertainment, and personal creativity. A decent laptop is a television, a radio, a window to the world and an instrument of expression.

This Asus is… not up to the task of being my acceptable laptop in this circumstance. Too limited by tech and by software, basically. I’ve been a long time enjoyer of Chromebooks, and loved my Pixelbook from back in the day. But Chrome ultimately never won the argument that a thin client to the Internet was all you would ever need, and now that ChromeOS is going to be folded into Android at some nearish point, it never will. Chromebooks will go into the west as forever the “second laptop,” the one you used when you didn’t have actual work to do.

(What laptop do I think it probably the closest to my Lowest Acceptable Spec? I think at this point it’s obvious: a MacBook Neo, which has all the advantages of a Chromebook, including price point for some mid-spec Chromebooks, and also can run more complex software that one would need for creative work, and not be totally reliant on an online connection to do it. It’s tempting to say the Neo is overhyped at this point, except I don’t think it actually is; at $600, it basically takes a knife to the Chromebook value proposition for everything but barebones educational use. It’s not the laptop I would want — that’s my Air — but it would certainly do.)

Considering that I do have a MacBook Air, and an iPad Pro with a “Magic Keyboard,” which essentially takes care of all my laptop-ish needs, what might I use this little Chromebook for? Basically, as a guest laptop, if someone visiting needs to do something that requires a full-size keyboard or a screen larger than the one on their phone, but didn’t happen to bring their own laptop with them. And… that’s pretty much it? As I said, I don’t want to entirely discount this laptop; it’s better than I expected for less than $200, and it fulfills its own admittedly modest brief perfectly well. It’s just that I don’t know how much longer this particular brief is going to need to be fulfilled.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/01/back-to-the-very-very-basics/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60485