You are clueless about computers. Get down to Aldi and get yourself a Medion.

I'll give this deal a HOT.

Not because £279 is necessarily cheap but because if you get a good Chromebook, they are superb for basic every day usage - more than the sum of their parts.

- very fast and snappy
- instant on/off (non Windows 'wait for your dinner to cook' boot up routines)
- usually good battery life
- you can set up a dual boot configuration with Ubuntu etc
- vastly better protection against viruses/trojans/malware compared to Windows.

The other benefits of this one:

- all aluminium chassis (though 1.5kg is not necessarily light)
- 4gb RAM (useful if you have 20-30+ media centric Chrome tabs open)
- 1080p
- USB3.0 x 2 (just add a USB 3.0 128gb nano flash drive for storage)

I have 3 laptops at home - an Acer 720 Chromebook, a Dell XPS 13 and a Lenovo Y50.

For 80% of the things I do eg. web browsing, emails etc, I reach for the Chromebook over the others simply because it's faster and snappier doing those sort of tasks. It's also the smallest, lightest and cheapest laptop out of the 3, so I can take it around everywhere without worrying too much about it getting broken, lost etc.

ChromeOS would completely dominate the lower end of the market if Google put some resources into it instead of thinking that Android can somehow be ported to a desktop environment....

The only downside I would say - and this really a reflection of the market - is that you cannot get away with not having a Windows machine available to you somewhere simply because there's is no ChromeOS equivalent of certain software eg. Adobe CC, Lightworks etc. Even my label printer only comes with Windows based software.

Its cheap, yes it is a Acer but...

Not directly an answer to this model but here is some info about mine and why I like Chromebooks:-)

Its not for everyone but ChromeOS super easy to use so for the non technical, older and younger its actually great.
Its not Windows or a Mac both of which are pants.

You can stick a microSD 128Gb card in and notice no slow downs, I actually run Arch Linux off the SD card and it is super fast.

The build quality of my Asus Flipbook is fantastic all metal body and only weighs 900g!

ChromeBooks are also great if you want to run Linux because ChromeOS is basically Linux so you should be able to get drivers for what ever flavour of Linux you like.

This model is a Intel chip which if your running Linux is preferable, mine is a Arm Rockchip so I have to manually compile most software I want to use.

4 gig Ram is plenty for most things (I would not recommend 2 gig) I use it for coding etc. I don't use it for photo/video editing. Screen is plenty bright and battery lasts for long time.

I don't even use my i7 15 inch laptop with 16 gig Ram anymore as it just looks massive is heavy compared to my Chromebook and battery life is really bad:-)

Mine is a touch screen which works just fine in Linux but they are not for everyone.

Or you guys can choose the cheaper £200 (ish) one

i need 4gb ram now ;-) would want to find cheaper than 279 if im scrimping haha

It's a great Chromebook. Worth paying more over the cheaper one, I think, to get the extra RAM, better processor, and much better screen. Think I'd prefer silver and cheaper. I'm not sure this price is exactly a deal. Isn't it pretty much the going rate?

The cheaper ones are only 2gb and are available on and off for around £120-£130 mark

Car boot.

This is the cheapest I've seen around the web but there is a slightly cheaper 4gb that's in silver but with a slower processor from ebuyer

Sorry this item is out of stock..........:sunglasses:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/acer-cb3-431-14-full-hd-chromebook-gold-10148917-pdt.html?awc=1598_1476458858_bbad7cc54e50d6e78601d29ac6602587&srcid=369&xtor=AL-11&cmpid=aff~HotUKDeals~Communities%20%26%20UGC~47868&istCompanyId=9a35962d-802d-4e67-9721-0a3328ca1f02&istItemId=qqpxmxaa&istBid=t&awid=47868

I have this one and it is great running Linux, anything bigger just looks huge compared:-)

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-c100pa-10-1-chromebook-flip-silver-10134431-pdt.html?intcmpid=display~RR

I can't believe some people would pay £280 for this piece of junk:

- Manufacturer: Acer: rubbish!
- OS: Chrome, locked in
- Intel® Celeron® Processor N3160, mediocre!
- RAM: 4 GB, only?
- Storage: 32 GB eMMC, only?
- No touchscreen, wow!

Where do you find old people or young people that can't handle Macs or Windows? All my old relatives 70-80s have grown up with Windows, so aren't exactly phased by Windows 10 or any of the other operating systems, at the end of the day, what's so special about ChromeOS it's icons and mouse/touch, pretty much the same as all PCs/Macs. My children had no trouble picking up Windows 7, 8, or 10 with the incentive of getting onto Minecraft or whatever their favourite application is at the moment.

ChromeOS may have advantages in price and security (if you trust Google), but I don't understand anyone expecting it to be easier to use than 'real' computers.

mike

The nice thing about a Chromebook is that all the documents are backed up everywhere. When my daughter used a PC for school work, she would often find that she hadn't saved the document in the right location - was it on a USB drive, Dropbox, in an email etc. She then had a Chromebook and it just worked. She had the same files on a computer at school, or the Chromebook. It is switched on and ready to type within 10 seconds of opening it up. The battery lasts a long time, and it was fine for pretty much everything that she wanted to do.

It works best if you have internet access (you can do some stuff without). You might need to choose a printer carefully to get it to work, and the WWW interface to Microsoft Office documents can be a bit flakey.

My son bought a £300 Windows laptop about the same time. In theory he can run games on it, but in practice it is much slower, to start up, and to navigate. He is asking to get a Chromebook as well. With Windows I have to spend some time every so often to check that the updates are working, check for malware, update Java etc.

She has a Toshiba Chromebook 2, but that is no longer available. For sub £300 Chromebooks with a full HD screen there is this one or the HP G4 for £290 http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/hp-chromebook-14-g4-intel-celeron-n2940-4gb-32gb-14-inch-chrome-os-chromebo-p5t65ea/version.asp

The reviews for this Acer say that the screen quality isn't very good. However, it has an aluminium case. The Toshiba has a lovely screen, but the case is plastic and a little fragile.

I'll give this deal a HOT.

Not because £279 is necessarily cheap but because if you get a good Chromebook, they are superb for basic every day usage - more than the sum of their parts.

- very fast and snappy
- instant on/off (non Windows 'wait for your dinner to cook' boot up routines)
- usually good battery life
- you can set up a dual boot configuration with Ubuntu etc
- vastly better protection against viruses/trojans/malware compared to Windows.

The other benefits of this one:

- all aluminium chassis (though 1.5kg is not necessarily light)
- 4gb RAM (useful if you have 20-30+ media centric Chrome tabs open)
- 1080p
- USB3.0 x 2 (just add a USB 3.0 128gb nano flash drive for storage)

I have 3 laptops at home - an Acer 720 Chromebook, a Dell XPS 13 and a Lenovo Y50.

For 80% of the things I do eg. web browsing, emails etc, I reach for the Chromebook over the others simply because it's faster and snappier doing those sort of tasks. It's also the smallest, lightest and cheapest laptop out of the 3, so I can take it around everywhere without worrying too much about it getting broken, lost etc.

ChromeOS would completely dominate the lower end of the market if Google put some resources into it instead of thinking that Android can somehow be ported to a desktop environment....

The only downside I would say - and this really a reflection of the market - is that you cannot get away with not having a Windows machine available to you somewhere simply because there's is no ChromeOS equivalent of certain software eg. Adobe CC, Lightworks etc. Even my label printer only comes with Windows based software.

shame about this one comment, but chromebook isn't for everyone.

Everyone one else makes some good points. This will be my first time buying a chromebook but i'll mainly be using it just to surf the web and other simple things that do not require a full desktop experience.

Can this run Android apps? Infact, is there any Chromebook that can run all or most android apps?

oos

back in stock!

£250 directly from acer

​Enjoy your Chromebook, we have bought 5 over the last few years, friends and relatives have also now gone ChromeOS. Never looked back. Hassle free, virus free, lightning fast etc. etc. etc. Welcome aboard

I'm waiting for the new Acer R13 due out immentley, it looks good!

Looks very nice. Could be pricey though if its $399 in the US!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzBaX5hpxtM

Chromebooks now outsell MacBooks world wide I read recently ...

Sorry, but this seems hideously under-specced for the money, £280 for a Celeron processor and 32GB eMMC?! Nothing wrong with either of those but that's closer to what you'll find on a £150-200 machine and it's not like Mac OS where you must own a Mac to run it (exclude Hackintosh), Chrome OS will run on any normal machine. I appreciate it has a nice metal body, 4GB RAM (vs the normal 2) and a 1080p display - am I the only one who still thinks it's a bit overpriced?

Thanks - I'm glad no-one came back flaming for that comment, I still reckon it's probably worth £200 at most though (the upper end of what I said). It's not just 32GB storage, it's 32GB of slow storage - I guess ChromeOS will make the most of it anyway but still. I guess 1080p IPS display, 4GB of RAM and thin metal chassis might just be ok if that's what you're after, but I guess my point was, it's all standard off-the-shelf hardware otherwise.

Yes I validated my comment by admitting it was an odd mix because despite the casing and 1080p display, the 32GB eMMC and Celeron (Atom-class) CPU while still capable hardware is consistent with sub-£200 machines. I guess the closest comparison is something like an off-lease Dell Latitude E6430 or HP Elitebook 8470p which are metal bodied, usually fitted with true SSDs, proper 3rd gen i5 processors and high-res panels (1600x900) and will happily run Chrome OS. I just don't think it's good value personally; merely an opinion that I'm entitled to, and I did invite others to discuss and they said it probably is a little overpriced so I guess I'm not going mad.

Even if you compare it to an Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook with Chrome OS loaded it would be ample.

You may be missing the whole point of Chromebooks and the Chrome OS is that you don't need high spec CPU's! Plus low power need = looooooooooonnnnnnnng battery life. And cheap computing for non pc savvy (and some that are) people.

I don't understand spending this much on a web surfing device? I'm pretty sure I've seen £150 14" Lenovo laptops that would be fine for surfing the web and come with a proper OS.

You know you can remove/disable many of those redundant services you'll never use?

A £150 14" Lenovo running Windows is slower than a tranquillised hippo when browsing the web. A Chromebook running Chrome is fast and snappy.


Not enough for there to be a significant performance increase. Windows is pure bloat. ChromeOS is fast and light.

Ah, the beauty of technical illiteracy!

A £150 14" Lenovo running running any version of Linux or *Bsd will outperform the fastest Chromebook on the market.

Please stop ignoring superior technology, like Open Source! Chrome OS is not entirely Open Source.

A £150 14" Lenovo will be running the slowest cheapest HDD available and have some low spec CPU as well as probably being limited in RAM. In basic every day use it will be slower than walking through a river of treacle....

If you want Linux, just run a dual boot setup on a Chromebook.

The slowest HDD will be faster than eMMC. eMMC is not the same as SSD and it's as fast as a SD card. An old(ish) thinkpad can be upgraded with more RAM and a proper SSD. You can get a barebone X220 and stick 16GB of RAM and an SSD and it will be faster than any Chromebook. I concede that a Chromebook will have a longer battery life and will be much lighter, but if portability and weight are at stake, better off to use a good tablet.

That's news to me. As far as I am aware its pretty much the other way around. Yes emmc is slower than SSD but faster, particularly on read than on a slow spinning disk. Smartphones use emmc technology, so imagine how slow they would be with a spinning disk!

Smartphones use flash storage because it's the only thing that fits in. Have you tried fitting a hhd or ssd into a phone? You're comparing apples with oranges. A Chromebook is just a slimmed down laptop. I'm not knocking it down, but they are just overpriced. I repeat. For the same money you can get a very good second hand laptop on which you can install any Linux distribution.

Er no obviously not. The point is to illustrate the nonsensical comment that emmc memory with no moving parts is slower than the "slowest HDD" spinning disk. Smartphones and tablets would be dog slow with a low end spinning disk.

You keep on missing the point. Yes, emmc is slower than hhd and yes, £280 for a laptop with modest specs is too much. I've done my best to explain that but you can't handle it.

Your tone is patronising when quoting me and giving your "expert opinion" to me on better alternatives to the discussed product. I don't need your opinion directed specifically to me about his when not only I am fully aware of multiple alternatives, but I have actually even agreed with your opinion that the item is overpriced. But maybe if you read my posts properly you would have noticed that. If you must quote me stick to the point I've raised about your post regarding emmc's .

You have stated “The slowest HDD will be faster than eMMC”. Well, slightly off on a tangent, but the latest smartphones for example have superfast emmcs so clearly what you have said is wrong.
Now if you can “do your best to explain” and link up some sites that show that 2.5" laptop hard drives, normally found in the previously discussed/compared cheapo windows laptops/netbooks, are demonstrably faster than a standard emmc in a chromebook, I'd love to read them.

OK, you're either a troll or very dense. I give up!

No don’t give up, just when you were doing so well!
No seriously, you could have just said sorry for your condescension, or somehow at least tried to back up your incorrect statements.
Instead you just added further insults.
This definition of the word troll actually seems to characterise your insulting and incorrect postings rather well:

A person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online post.

For the record, for anyone interested in the eMMC speed debate, here is one quote from the internet:

“In everyday use, performance of eMMC storage is somewhere between speed of HDDs and SSDs”

This would indicate that eMMC’s are slower than SSD’s (obvious to most people familiar with PC tech) but faster than standard HDD’s. In addition laptop HDD’s are normally much slower than 3.5 desktop HDD’s so in effect are the slowest of the spinning drive family. Plus many laptop setups with 2.5" HDD's are likely to have drives that power down to save energy after some time, potentially resulting in a delayed spin up time, leaving a potentially slower end user feel compared to an always on, no moving parts, eMMC.

​i totally disagree with you. I got a old c720 Chromebook with 2gb of ram. I bought me a £280 laptop with i3 processor with HDD and maybe double the ram and in no way is this faster than my Chromebook. it's running Windows 10 and I even spent more money upgraded the ram to even more and the HDD to ssd and boy it's super quick to boot up, faster than my Chromebook in fact but it's still something missing. when you use it it still a slower experience than my Chromebook! surfing the web it's much nicer on my Chromebook it's just much smoother. I hardly use my laptop and it's brand new. so regarding your comment. Your figures are great but in reality it don't work. No way does a £150 laptop with a HDD be faster, smoother, more portable and power useable than a basic Chromebook experience.