Acer C7 Chromebook

[booman]

My Gateway netbook finally gave up on me:

• Battery is dead
• CMOS battery is also dead
• Pad left click doesn't work
• Ethernet LAN port doesn't work

I have been searching for a replacement netbook and they are definitely in decline. Probably because the price of tablets is low enough.
But I still want my x86 netbook so I can still run my old games.

I found this: Acer C7 Chromebook

Pretty nice specs for $212.00
I can install Mint 14 and use native Steam & Desura for my games. Then I can also run PlayOnLinux for other games.
I know Inteh HD 2000 is bottom of the line for video, but that is what I had in my Gateway netbook and it sill played a large number of games.

what do you think?

[chrisbard]

If you manage to install linux it will run great with those powerful celeron processors!

[Daniel ~]

Why install Mint 14...No Way! Not when we have Mint 15 RC that outshines even Mint 14!!

Please Don't make me chase you down and twist your arm like You did with Mint 14...this time...you should just trust me! LOL

(Posted from my Mint 15 desktop! )

[booman]

What???!!!
Already???

I bought the Chromebook yesterday, it should ship in 2 days

[Daniel ~]

Think of it as Mint 14's bigger better brother...":O}

Ah...what's a Chromebook? No wait! I remember now! I'll need pictures to verify! LOL

[chrisbard]

Great news from steam and linux mint 15, I had to hold my horses at 0:28 - 0:35! Good lad I think he knows what he's doing! I might try linux 15 soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=64YCVpxB1ok

[Daniel ~]

As a wise(ass) man once said:

"This time you should just trust me" ":O}

[booman]

My Chromebook should arrive tomorrow... he he he
I'll play with Chrome OS for a bit, but I know as soon as I find that it won't play my games... I'll be installing Mint

[booman]

I"m posting from my Acer C7 Chromebook!
After 4 tries, I finally got ChrUbuntu installed!
Mint was a No Go, but Ubuntu will work just fine!
I'm currently installing Wine, PlayOnLinux and guess what? Its a 64-bit system so I have to install the 32-bit libraries! A first for everything!

[booman]

I know its a Chromebook and the Intel HD 2000 GPU isn't all that fast, but I had the same GPU in my Gateway netbook and it did play a lot of games.
Facebook games ran fine of course, but I was also able to get some DOS games and old directx 9 games running

[chrisbard]

you reckon someone will be able to install windows?

[booman]

Unfortunately you can't...
Chromebooks have a unique firmware (aka BIOS) that is "read only" and doesn't support a Windows boot format. Google would have to release an x86 BIOS just for booting Windows media.
It was actually smart for Google to write their own firmware because it gives them more control over the hardware and the boot process.

Its kinda like a Mac... special firmware that won't allow Windows installations even with an Intel CPU and chipset.

The only reason ChrUbuntu installs is because someone wrote a script that installs an Ubuntu-compatible version of Linux.

I couldn't install Mint because it requires me to install it on a flash drive and running it from the flash drive instead of the hard drive. Now that would be a slow operating system.

When solid state drives prices get lower in a few years I plan to upgrade to one of those and install ChrUbuntu again.

[chrisbard]

I see cheers for sharing light on the matter!

[Daniel ~]

At lest your OS is properly priced...":O}

[booman]

Update:
ChrUbuntu is pretty awesome!
I have played a few older games with PlayOnLinux and even Facebook games run pretty well.
Unfortunately Flash is no longer being developed for Linux, so online Flash games have been a struggle. It just depends on which version of Flash the optimize the game on.

Otherwise, my movies are playing just fine with VLC
I even found a Remote Desktop program that works with our Windows servers at work.

As of now, it does almost everything my old Gateway Windows XP netbook was doing.
Go figure...