Chromebook 11 for 99 pounds - well worth it

So my “mistakenly cheap” Chromebook 11 arrived this week and I’ve been playing with it. I’m actually very impressed. It just works. The keyboard is OK (although it is missing a row of function keys at the top) and the trackpad is useable and responsive. The screen is a bit of a weak spot, in that it has a big thick bezel and the contrast could be better, but the browsing experience is good. The battery life is very good, especially the standby time.

I’ve not added any programs to it just yet, but I did have a go at using Chrome to talk to a Connected Little Box processor (an ESP8266). To my surprise, it mostly worked. I can use the terminal program to talk to a device and the program uploader runs to completion, but the uploaded code doesn’t seem to stick. It is probably something to do with the way that the browser disconnects from the device after upload. I’ll have to take a look.

For the price I paid (99 pounds) it was a steal. It looks pretty sturdy and would be a great first machine for school use. It seems to run my Begin to Code with JavaScript (available at the end of the month - order your copy here ) sample code just fine. If it could run Visual Studio Code it would be completely perfect. Apparently it is possible to install Edge (my browser of choice) on the machine, but this involves setting up a trial version of the Linux environment which I’m a bit too lazy to do just now.

I can’t see how anyone involved in selling this machine can make a profit, which means that it must somehow be part of Google’s world domination strategy, but if you want something you can just throw into a bag to take away with you, and you don’t want to have to worry too much about losing/breaking it, this would fit the bill perfectly.