Acer C720P Touchscreen Chromebook

[LinusTech]

NCIX: http://bit.ly/1meVIl6

Amazon: http://georiot.co/1V5n

 

The C720P from Acer is the first inexpensive touchscreen Chromebook and also the first of these cryptic devices that I've had the pleasure of playing with. Consider this a review of not only the device, but also my experience with Chrome OS.

 

 

 

 

edit: the video will be live in an hour and a half or so. It's still uploading. Sorry the uploads have been slow, my remote uploading solution hasn't been working lately

[Intervalence]

ooh, care to elaborate on your remote uploading solution? 

[LinusTech]

Basically right now I need to download to my PC (fast upload at the office, fast download at home so all good) then upload from my PC to YouTube (slow upload at home so not good).

 

[Meteora]

Chrome os? what is that, a google operating system

[ThePcMasterRace]

Chrome os? what is that, a google operating system

its a google skinned linux

[JAKEBAB]

this video is unavailable wtf??

[Biased Opinion]

I think its time for asus to step it up and send you one.

[BarcodeBandit]

Could you put linux on it?

[JohnPreston]

Hmm, one of the big selling points is the long battery life.

To bad that part isn't brought up in the review.

[tboxy]

cool vid 

[ross06187]

I work in a It environment. we have a high volumes of laptops about 3 a week all different makes.  So far crome books as the dumbest devices we have ever seen.  The second you loses WiFi it become sort of useless. (This is probably about 50% of the time in our environment)

 

Don't know if you have a sample of the Asus transformer book t100 but seriously at this price point nothing comes close to this thing.

 

It has most of the functionally of a Crome book but is windows 8.1 its also the same price point as an ipad not sure how asus can make this thing at the price they do but if some one was thinking about one of these i would consider a T100 first unless you actually needed chrome os.

 

my point  here is i am not sure who they are targeting, i could see it working allot better if everyone was using Google docs but that just does not happening right now.   In my environment there is the MS office wall were at some point if not daily your going to need to interface with MS office.

 

 

has anyone ever noticed that asus want to auto correct/spell correct all the time to anus.  I bet they have to filter there outgoing mail for typos.

[ShadowCaptain]

i actually really like chromebooks, its not the sort of machine i would buy for myself, but my mum and dad? definately, no viruses and if it does somehow break it just redownloads the OS and reinstalls through the net, very simple and easy interface, fast and good battery life and they can do their basic documents and video call my siblings all within the same easy to use interface. also because its all cloud saved they dont have to worry about backing up their data all the time as its automatically synced with google docs.

 

also great for kids / grandparents, or even just as a something to take notes on and browse the web at the local coffee shop .

 

i think that most average people spend most of their time browsing the web, not downloading and playing back videos, not downloading steam and installing games but doing emails, checking their banking, facebook/twitter, youtube netflix etc. and i think this is the perfect machine for people who want that

 

as long as you dont go expecting a laptop replacement and you find tablets too fiddely (clunky OS, have to have bulky cases or carry keyboards around and OTG cables) then its a good device

[KatanoWaki]

Perfect device for the parents and kids. I saw a lot of college kids getting them to take to class and take notes. I wouldn't mind getting one and slapping Ubuntu on it.

[ADaviii]

I can see some great things to use this device for!

With good battery life (as mentioned in this thread), this would be great for college students to take notes on throughout the semester without having to worry too much about whether or not their battery is going to die out on them.

I also learned that it's possible to boot Ubuntu (or Linux Mint) on the Chromebook. This should be a nice cheap, but strong enough device to run Linux on!

I do worry about the touchpad though. I'm so use to my Windows touchpad and have used a MacBook touchpad. The Chromebook one sounds...a tad underwhelming .

[pippy02]

Hey Linus how does Hangouts differ on Chrome OS from Windows, because from the video i couldn't see any difference.

[ZavAdven]

I love my Chromebook, I got it when my Toshiba Qosimo went kaput, expecting it to be barley good enough for my college classes while I saved up for a new laptop. Immediately wished I'd bought the Chromebook up front. It's amazingly light and the battery will often last 2 full days of classes. While no I can't game on it, and program compatibility is very limited, I have a desktop that I use for those.  For school work, document creation, web browsing, and hangouts, it's awesome.  

 

However, I live in a city that has wifi everywhere I go. If for what ever reason I lose connection to the internet, it my Chromebook does become rather pointless. I can play movies from a flash drive, and make documents and such offline, but much of it's basic functionality depends on the internet, such as spell check.  

 

TLDR: For the price, you'll be hard pressed to find a better solution for taking care of school work, office work and the like. It does what it was meant to do incredibly well, but not much else.

[MBisFrenchy]

The battery life in my opinion is what sells these. Remote desktop would be fun to do with these. Also like the use of the HDMI connector and the SD card slot which is missing now on most ultrabooks. Yes there is no comparison but they kept it thicker to keep the ports.