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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

MacBooks are out for me now that they have the touchbar and bad keyboard. I currently use a ThinkPad and it's pretty good, but the touchpad is mediocre at best.

I think a ChromeBook with really first class support for Linux apps is very compelling. I run Linux in a VM on Windows 10 on my ThinkPad and it's a great setup. A ChromeBook would be a very similar setup but probably with better native OS integration (for example they are exposing the Linux filesystem in ChromeOS's file browser) and this would all be a first class use case supported by Google.

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What about the XPS 13?

You mean pixelbook, $300 chromebooks would obviously be of poor build quality; although i am not sure of the hardware quality of pixelbook either. For me a thinkpad works pretty well for a linux machine.

A lot of the lower-end Chromebooks are surprisingly well built. Education is a huge market for Chromebooks, so durability is important. My Acer Chromebook is mostly plastic, but there are hefty metal hinges and a metal backplate for the LCD. I've dropped it several times and it just seems to bounce. The keyboard and trackpad aren't exceptional, but are perfectly pleasant to use. The only major downside is the screen, which is a fairly dim and low-res TN panel. Still, you really can't complain for the price.

FWIW, I have an Acer ChromeBook I bought for $99 brand new on Black Friday a couple of years ago. I have about 20 laptops at my disposal (including ThinkPads and MacBook Pros) but I use this one the most. The build quality is surprisingly good and the battery lasts forever. I installed Linux on it after replacing the firmware, but I'm excited that Crostini might make this unnecessary on other ChromeBooks (and maybe even this model). A very important bonus of Crostini is that it will not be necessary to put the machine in developer mode.

I have a Dell Chromebook 13 and the build quality is fantastic. It's my favorite laptop out of last gen Macbook Air, Dell XPS 13, Thinkpad, and Razer Blade. The keyboard on it is the only one that doesn't hurt my fingers to type on.

I have to disagree, surprisingly. I've got an Acer Chromebook 14 which is all aluminum, very thin/light, 14" IPS 1080p display, wonderful trackpad and a pretty solid keyboard. All for under $300.

Just got my parents a $500 Samsung Chromebook, and the build quality is incredible.

Macbooks continue to look less and less appealing to me, if Chromebooks somehow got Adobe CC, I'd switch immediately.

Yeah I am thinking mostly nicer ChromeBooks. But the nicer ChromeBooks compete quite well with ThinkPads, price-wise.

There are excellent CBs below $300. I have purchased several refurb Acer 14s for $200.

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