I don't know what a "Chromebook 14" is. Perhaps you mean HP's so-named 14-inch model.
In the year 2000, I lost all my possessions, especially the computers and storage media. Subsequently, I enjoyed NPR and Coast-to-Coast on a radio, including the Hurricane Katrina coverage. I had no idea what New Orleans looked like in 2005.
By that time, I was living across the street from a large thrift store. Eventually in 2006, I was weak-willed enough to begin building a home network again, and the thrift store provided two essential products: keyboards and WiFi routers.
The WiFi router was probably obsolete and EOL when I purchased it, but it definitely worked 100%, especially because I took care at the thrift store, to select a compatible AC adapter brick for it. It was a basic Netgear model, with 4 Ethernet ports, original firmware, probably 802.11n; even though an acquaintance said he would hack into it, he was inebriated most of the time, and I would never know if the router or network was hacked. You wouldn't know either, in 2026. Most consumers don't know, and could never find out, if their edge equipment is compromised. But anyway, even while running Ubuntu 6.04, I accepted the router's default firmware, and that Netgear thing lasted at least 5 years while I had an ADSL connection, and one and a half computers.
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In the mid-1980s when I hung out at Radio Shack after church, I snapped up a lot of basic X10 kit. I collected the Dimmer Modules, the Appliance Modules, and later there was an RF remote unit available! The crown jewel for 12-year-old me was a central control unit that looked like a clock radio.
The control unit had cyan fluorescent display, simply the current time and alarm settings. And there were a bunch of control buttons where you could select an addressable Module, dim the lights, on/off, set timers, etc. And it was kind of amazing that everything plugged into mains outlets, and no other installation necessary!
My parents were constantly annoyed when I would sneak one of the modules onto a living-room floor lamp, or my favorite trick was cueing up a record on the turntable and then activating the Appliance Module to wake me up for school with Siouxsie and the Banshees or something. I was not allowed to persistently wire the entire house. I did not get into the journeyman electrician's job of replacing wall switches with X10 modules (those were slick). So, not even my shared bedroom was totally automated, but it was fun to experiment. It hopefully did not affect any neighbors. The pulse signals were said to stop at junction boxes, but there was still a House Code to set, in case all your flat neighbors wanted independent X10 networks.
I also never purchased the PC Interface that came with software. I believe I didn't yet have a compatible PC, anyway, and it seemed not in the spirit of a robust, predictable home automation. So yeah, my smart home devices worked without the Internet. How smart do you wanna get? My television set didn't spy on me, but everyone else does!