#my chromebook had a good run but alas

[acircusfullofdemons]

Officially in the market for an actual laptop 💻✨

[abangtech]

Asus Chromebook Flip C436F review: Quick and slick – and now £100 off

If there’s one thing the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F proves, it’s that Chromebooks are growing up. It’s been a slow and painful process and Google has had to drag the industry kicking and screaming along with it, but there is finally a good choice of premium laptops running Google’s minimalist OS.

And the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F demonstrates precisely why this is a very good thing. Not only is this among the fastest Chromebooks we’ve ever seen, but it’s also a very good laptop in its own right, with specifications and usability that rival the best Windows 10 laptops from the biggest manufacturers.

READ NEXT: The best Chromebooks money can buy

What do you get for your money?

The Asus Chromebook Flip C436F is a premium ultraportable laptop that just happens to run Chrome OS. 

It’s very slim and lightweight, measuring a mere 13.7mm thick when closed. The very slim bezels surrounding the display make it feel small for a laptop with a 14in screen. It tips the scales at a mere 1.2kg and it has a 360-degree hinge, which means the display can be pushed back all the way around so it folds flat against the bottom of the laptop.

It all feels very solidly made and it’s handsome, too. There’s no play in the hinge, which feels very smooth indeed, nor much give or twist in the chassis. And it looks fantastic. The model that’s going to be sold in the UK has a white pearlescent finish to the lid, set off beautifully by chrome effect hinges and a finely perforated grille at the rear of the machine for venting heat.

As for connectivity, that’s not too bad, either. There’s a pair of USB-C ports, one on each side, which can be used for charging and connecting the machine to external displays and other peripherals. The 3.5mm headphone jack is found on the left edge and there’s a microSD slot on the right edge as well, although you shouldn’t need to expand the storage by much as there’s a 256GB SSD inside.

What’s it like to use?

The keyboard isn’t the best we’ve used on a Chromebook; that honour belongs to the Google Pixelbook Go. The keys don’t have a huge amount of travel and the feedback is less positive than I’d like, but it’s spacious enough and there are no big problems with layout. There’s no Caps Lock key, but that’s an issue shared by all Chromebooks, and you can activate that by pressing the Alt and Search keys together.

The keyboard is backlit, which helps when typing in low light. However, the transparent lettering on each key can make it difficult to read them in bright natural light, which was a problem when the sun shone directly through my office window. One bonus is that it has a fingerprint reader positioned in the top-right corner, just above the Backspace key, which makes logging in quick and easy.

Despite the small size of the laptop, it comes with a sizeable touchpad, measuring 130 x 66mm and occupying around 40% of the width of the wristrest. I found this both sensitive and reliable, and its size makes three- and four-finger multitouch gestures easy to perform.

There’s also a stylus in the box for sketching and taking notes on the touch display. Alas, this wasn’t supplied with my review sample so I can’t say how effective it is, but I do know there’s nowhere to stow it on or in the laptop, which is another minor irritation.

READ NEXT: The best Chromebooks money can buy

How about the screen and speakers?

The screen is a peach; in fact, I prefer it to the Google Pixelbook Go’s display. It measures 14in across the diagonal, has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and, since it uses IPS tech, viewing angles are great.

Measuring with our test equipment, it performed well too. Peak brightness reached 303cd/m² and colour coverage is good, covering 97.7% of the sRGB colour gamut with pretty decent colour accuracy. This display won’t play HDR material, more’s the pity, but it’s still a great laptop to watch TV and films on.

And you won’t have to don headphones every time you do, either, because the stereo speakers – located on the left and right edges of the laptop’s base – deliver full, clear audio. There isn’t much in the way of bass, but you get enough warmth to make watching the news or a documentary perfectly pleasant.

What about performance and battery life?

It’s hard to directly compare the performance of Chromebooks with that of other laptops because they work in a very different way. However, it’s still possible to make a comparison between other Chromebooks and, by this metric, the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F is a winner.

In a selection of browser-based benchmarks, it performed far better than any other Chromebook we’ve tested, including the Core i5-based Google Pixelbook Go I reviewed earlier in the year.

That’s mainly due to the fact that the Asus employs a 10th-generation Intel CPU, where the Pixelbook is stuck on 8th-generation chips. Here are some results from the tests we ran:

It’s certainly a very quick and responsive machine and there was no point at which I felt the laptop ran out of gas. I had tens of tabs open and it didn’t break a sweat.

It didn’t fare quite so well when it came to battery life, lagging behind the superlative Pixelbook Go. However, in the overall scheme of things, it was still pretty decent. In our battery-life test with all networking disabled, the display set to 170cd/m² and a video playing continuously, it lasted 10hrs 24mins before shutting down. That’s plenty good enough for a full day’s work.

Anything else I should know?

Don’t forget that Chromebooks like this aren’t restricted to just running browser-based software anymore. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436F will run Android apps, installable via the Google Play store, and it can run Linux and Linux-based software.

If you want to do the latter, you have to choose to install Linux from the Settings menu. Once done, it’s possible to install all sorts of stuff directly from the command line or by downloading DEB files and double-clicking. There’s a whole world of applications to choose from, from photo-editing software such as GIMP and full office software such as LibreOffice to development IDEs such as Eric and Wing. Think of it like an overpowered Raspberry Pi with a display and you’re pretty much there.

Should I buy the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F?

It’s hard to pick holes in what the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F has to offer. It’s a cracking little laptop: powerful and nicely made, with a great display, effective touchpad and decent keyboard. Battery life is very good, too.

However, it is expensive. Indeed, at £999, the only rival that comes to mind is the Google Pixelbook Go, which costs £1,329 for the Core i7 model with the same 256GB storage as the Asus, and £50 less for the Core i5 with 128GB of storage.

My choice would be for the Pixelbook but, if I’m honest, there isn’t much in it. The Pixelbook Go has a nicer keyboard and longer battery life, but the Asus has more storage, a superior display and a fingerprint reader. Whichever you choose, I’d wager you’ll be pleased.

Source

The post Asus Chromebook Flip C436F review: Quick and slick – and now £100 off appeared first on abangtech.

from abangtech https://abangtech.com/asus-chromebook-flip-c436f-review-quick-and-slick-and-now-100-off/

[joebustillos]

JBB’s Final Thoughts Episode 37: The Endless Assault of “New Normals”

Pondering the challenges of finishing the school year in “work from home” mode and how the world might change “after this is done.”

MP3 Version: https://joebustillos.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/jbbsfinalthoughts_e037_the-endless-assault-of-new-normals.mp3 Enjoy and please subscribe to my YouTube channel or subscribe to all of my blog posts (scroll to the bottom of this page, click the red FOLLOW button in the “Follow blog via email” box).

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Past JBB’s Final Thoughts Podcast Episodes

Resources/Credits:

music: Social Blindness – 22K by Smart Sound Music

All images and screen grabs by Joe Bustillos ©2020 except where noted

Nevada schools will stay shut the rest of school year (image by Rachel Aston), Las Vegas Review-Journal, 04-22-2020

CCSD Chromebook Deployment (images), CBS 8 News Las Vegas, 04-22-2020.

EduBlogs screens (images), retrieved  01-22-2020

Empty Las Vegas by Josh Metz, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2932568266766674&set=pcb.2932568556766645&type=3&theater, retrieved 2020-04-08

Episode Notes/Script/Post:

Joe Bustillos here.

Toward the end of last week I found out that the rest of the school year is going to continue in the current “work from home”/“emergency learning” mode. Side Note: many districts are calling this current mode “remote learning,” but those of us who have conducted actual online or remote learning reject the use of those words to describe what we’re doing because it wasn’t begun with any planning or guidance or technology support that actual remote learning requires. And any successes in this endeavor is entirely because teachers are determined to stay connected with their students and quite frankly we are used to being told to do the impossible and make it happen without the means to be successful.

2020-04-22 RJ: CCSD schools closed for the rest of the year

2020-04-22_NCTA: CCSD schools closed

Stickam Session 2009 – joe bustillos

2012-08-22 Full Sail University EMDT Wk4 Wimba at 7.53.06 PM

Henry Price works on a Pepperdine OMAET project while we edit the video(s)

Last week was also the week when Chromebooks were being distributed to families attending my school who do not have technology at home. Since week two, home room teachers have been calling homes to connect with their students and to verify contact information. The word was that a large portion of our students and families didn’t have any technology at home including any kind of smartphone. So the decision and implementation of distributing technology is a good thing. I just wish that this could have happened before we began the fifth week of our current situation (sixth week if you count the week of Spring Break that we still got). So, that leaves four more weeks until the beginning of the Summer Break. I’m curious how much can be done in that time, given the lack of direct contact.

2020-04-22 CCSD chromebook deployment1

2020-04-22 CCSD chromebook deployment2

2020-04-22 CCSD chromebook deployment3

2020-04-22 CCSD chromebook deployment4

I’ve been working like crazing creating instructional videos and trying to figure out how I might get students to access the curriculum. One of the other specials teachers, the music teacher, has been championing using the Seesaw platform because it’s not dependent on student email addresses and can be accessed with a smartphone. Before this began I had created individual blogs for the 4th and 5th graders to teach Internet communications and digital citizenship, but that got a little derailed. So I’m thinking that I will jump on the simpler Seesaw bandwagon for the primary grades (K through 3) and use Google Classroom with the intermediate grades (4 and 5) with the option for any 4th or 5th grade students to use the blog accounts I’ve already created if they want to. Now to figure out how to get the personal login information to each student without creating a security leak. Oh yeah, during the second week of this situation district IT decided to change how student passwords could be updated and/or recovered and I was locked out of that process altogether, making it impossible for me to assist my teachers in getting student emails up and running (another reason I am going with Seesaw with the primary grades…). Then toward the end of last week, I was able to update a student password, so I’ll be busy working on those classes that didn’t get setup after I was locked out.

2020-04-06-COVID-19 Work From Home-week4: Spring Break edition

2019-08-28 twinsies with Mr. Sharp

edublogs1

edublog-dashboard-post-view-original

edublogs2

It’s not exactly a “new normal” for me to work from home or begin and end my day sitting at my computer desk. I taught online for six-years at Full Sail University before coming to Las Vegas and have been an online student since working on my masters with Pepperdine beginning in the summer of 2001. That said, I do miss going to the local micro-breweries Friday evenings after work or going to the movies at the Orleans with my girlfriend, Deb. And I really wish that I hadn’t sold my trusty treadmill when I moved from Orlando in 2016. Before I sold it, I got a lot of mileage on that bugger because I had it set up so that I could work on my laptop, create assignments and grade student work while getting in my daily walks. I notice that most of the treadmills are sold out on Costco’s website. When I was working face-to-face in the classroom I was on my feet continually, so I’m going to have to find some solution before I put on too much quarantine-weight. I also recognize that concentrated creativity requires routinely stepping away/physical activity to keep the brain fresh and engaged. Oh, and we’re now in that time of year when it’s getting over 80° by 9am. Ugh.

jbb video editing

2010-05-12 Work space iPad-ified

2011-04-01 Office Still Life (keyboard)

2020-02-22 Sand Dollar Lounge with Deb

2014-06-14 Treadmill Workout/Tech Pix

2014-09-12 Treadmill Workout Pix

Alas, a little physical discomfort is nothing compared to the challenges many are facing particularly unemployment and job loss because few service businesses like restaurants, casinos and theaters (the bread and butter of Las Vegas) can be done from home. I am lucky that there is an “emergency learning from home” possibility, but as I noted earlier, there’s a lot of families who don’t have the means to do at home learning and are falling through the cracks and might not come back when things turn around. And who knows what this “turn around” might look like. The number of students re-enrolling in the Fall might drop tremendously, shrinking the number of teachers needed in the Fall. Just after the work-from-home order was given, I was lucky enough to secure a position teaching at a Middle School close to my place beginning in the Fall, but things are far from certain given that we have no idea what enrollment is going to be in the Fall or what challenges we’ll face when we’re hit by COVID-19’s second wave. Given my health history, I’m certainly not in a position to not take precautions and be very concerned about getting back into the business of working in close proximity with hundreds of potential walking germ factories. I hope they like me in my fashionable face-masks.

2020-03-24 Josh Metz – empty-vegas

Learning from Home – robots

2020-03-03 Reading Week – funny Hair Day

2020-04-28 n95-busted

2002-06-04 Twain computer lab teacher

2020-04-07 costco with bandana

I have been working in technology (officially) for over 40-years, since I hired on with the phone company in 1979, so I’ve made a study of the constant change brought about by the continuing changes in technology. I’m used to this and I’m always looking for benefits and challenges. But most of my fellow teachers do not easily welcome change. One year after one of my schools became a video-journalism magnet school, ten of the thirty teachers left that school for other teaching positions at other schools. Hell, my change of schools has nothing to do with the current COVID-19 challenge, but it certainly doesn’t help with the difficulty of starting something new at a new school, new grade levels, new administration and the possibility of the second wave of COVID-19 rearing its ugly head just after the beginning of the new school year. So, yeah, I’m okay with the computer stuff/working from home stuff, but I worry that the world outside my door will never be the same again and I am getting a bit old for this shit. Really. I appreciate a good challenge, but this is getting ridiculous.

pacbell by joe bustillos

1979-1995 The Pacific Bell Years-04-ANHM01 ITT T-CXR equipment

Kaypro II

Non-Linear Systems Inc., Kaypro 10

2001-04-15 FACT TV screen shots – 12

2020-03-30 teach from home

How are you coping? How do you keep your sanity? I do find myself watching way too many Graham Norton videos on FaceBook when I need a break from other computer things. What’s your guilty pleasure? Please leave a comment or a like where ever you are seeing or hearing this podcast.

Also, if you haven’t done so, please subscribe to either my blog or to my YouTube channel. If you found this on Facebook and clicked the link to my blog to watch this, please scroll to the bottom of the blog page and click the “Follow” button. Enter your email address and whenever I post another podcast you’ll get a message in your email. Because I recently moved my videos to a new YouTube account, I have very few subscribers. So, if you’re watching this on YouTube, please feel free to go to my channel, click the subscribe button and the little bell icon, so that you get an email message whenever I post a new video podcast to my channel. Alas, thanks to FaceBook’s precious little algorithm, it’s not enough to be my friend on FaceBook, if you are interested in getting these podcasts when they come out (which I’m working on getting one out every two-weeks)… So, it works better if you either subscribe to my blog or my YouTube channel (or both!). Enjoy.

JBB's Final Thoughts Episode 37: The Endless Assault of “New Normals” JBB's Final Thoughts Episode 37: The Endless Assault of “New Normals” Pondering the challenges of finishing the school year in "work from home" mode and how the world might change "after this is done."

[abangtech]

Asus Chromebook Flip C436F review: Quick and slick

If there’s one thing the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F proves, it’s that Chromebooks are growing up. It’s been a slow and painful process and Google has had to drag the industry kicking and screaming along with it, but there is finally a good choice of premium laptops running Google’s minimalist OS.

And the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F demonstrates precisely why this is a very good thing. Not only is this among the fastest Chromebooks we’ve ever seen, but it’s also a very good laptop in its own right, with specifications and usability that rival the best Windows 10 laptops from the biggest manufacturers.

READ NEXT: The best Chromebooks money can buy

What do you get for your money?

The Asus Chromebook Flip C436F is a premium ultraportable laptop that just happens to run Chrome OS. 

It’s very slim and lightweight, measuring a mere 13.7mm thick when closed. The very slim bezels surrounding the display make it feel small for a laptop with a 14in screen. It tips the scales at a mere 1.2kg and it has a 360-degree hinge, which means the display can be pushed back all the way around so it folds flat against the bottom of the laptop.

It all feels very solidly made and it’s handsome, too. There’s no play in the hinge, which feels very smooth indeed, nor much give or twist in the chassis. And it looks fantastic. The model that’s going to be sold in the UK has a white pearlescent finish to the lid, set off beautifully by chrome effect hinges and a finely perforated grille at the rear of the machine for venting heat.

As for connectivity, that’s not too bad, either. There’s a pair of USB-C ports, one on each side, which can be used for charging and connecting the machine to external displays and other peripherals. The 3.5mm headphone jack is found on the left edge and there’s a microSD slot on the right edge as well, although you shouldn’t need to expand the storage by much as there’s a 256GB SSD inside.

What’s it like to use?

The keyboard isn’t the best we’ve used on a Chromebook; that honour belongs to the Google Pixelbook Go. The keys don’t have a huge amount of travel and the feedback is less positive than I’d like, but it’s spacious enough and there are no big problems with layout. There’s no Caps Lock key, but that’s an issue shared by all Chromebooks, and you can activate that by pressing the Alt and Search keys together.

The keyboard is backlit, which helps when typing in low light. However, the transparent lettering on each key can make it difficult to read them in bright natural light, which was a problem when the sun shone directly through my office window. One bonus is that it has a fingerprint reader positioned in the top-right corner, just above the Backspace key, which makes logging in quick and easy.

Despite the small size of the laptop, it comes with a sizeable touchpad, measuring 130 x 66mm and occupying around 40% of the width of the wristrest. I found this both sensitive and reliable, and its size makes three- and four-finger multitouch gestures easy to perform.

There’s also a stylus in the box for sketching and taking notes on the touch display. Alas, this wasn’t supplied with my review sample so I can’t say how effective it is, but I do know there’s nowhere to stow it on or in the laptop, which is another minor irritation.

READ NEXT: The best Chromebooks money can buy

How about the screen and speakers?

The screen is a peach; in fact, I prefer it to the Google Pixelbook Go’s display. It measures 14in across the diagonal, has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and, since it uses IPS tech, viewing angles are great.

Measuring with our test equipment, it performed well too. Peak brightness reached 303cd/m2 and colour coverage is good, covering 97.7% of the sRGB colour gamut with pretty decent colour accuracy. This display won’t play HDR material, more’s the pity, but it’s still a great laptop to watch TV and films on.

And you won’t have to don headphones every time you do, either, because the stereo speakers – located on the left and right edges of the laptop’s base – deliver full, clear audio. There isn’t much in the way of bass, but you get enough warmth to make watching the news or a documentary perfectly pleasant.

What about performance and battery life?

It’s hard to directly compare the performance of Chromebooks with that of other laptops because they work in a very different way. However, it’s still possible to make a comparison between other Chromebooks and, by this metric, the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F is a winner.

In a selection of browser-based benchmarks, it performed far better than any other Chromebook we’ve tested, including the Core i5-based Google Pixelbook Go I reviewed earlier in the year.

That’s mainly due to the fact that the Asus employs a 10th-generation Intel CPU, where the Pixelbook is stuck on 8th-generation chips. Here are some results from the tests we ran:

It’s certainly a very quick and responsive machine and there was no point at which I felt the laptop ran out of gas. I had tens of tabs open and it didn’t break sweat.

It didn’t fare quite so well when it came to battery life, lagging behind the superlative Pixelbook Go. However, in the overall scheme of things, it was still pretty decent. In our battery-life test with all networking disabled, the display set to 170cd/m2 and a video playing continuously, it lasted 10hrs 24mins before shutting down. That’s plenty good enough for a full day’s work.

Anything else I should know?

Don’t forget that Chromebooks like this aren’t restricted to just running browser-based software anymore. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436F will run Android apps, installable via the Google Play store, and it can run Linux and Linux-based software.

If you want to do the latter, you have to choose to install Linux from the Settings menu. Once done, it’s possible to install all sorts of stuff directly from the command line or by downloading DEB files and double-clicking. There’s a whole world of applications to choose from, from photo-editing software such as GIMP and full office software such as LibreOffice to development IDEs such as Eric and Wing. Think of it like an overpowered Raspberry Pi with a display and you’re pretty much there.

Should I buy the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F?

It’s hard to pick holes in what the Asus Chromebook Flip C436F has to offer. It’s a cracking little laptop: powerful and nicely made, with a great display, effective touchpad and decent keyboard. Battery life is very good, too.

However, it is expensive. Indeed, at £999, the only rival that comes to mind is the Google Pixelbook Go, which costs £1,329 for the Core i7 model with the same 256GB storage as the Asus, and £50 less for the Core i5 with 128GB of storage.

My choice would be for the Pixelbook but, if I’m honest, there isn’t much in it. The Pixelbook Go has a nicer keyboard and longer battery life, but the Asus has more storage, a superior display and a fingerprint reader. Whichever you choose, I’d wager you’ll be pleased.

Source

The post Asus Chromebook Flip C436F review: Quick and slick appeared first on abangtech.

from abangtech https://abangtech.com/asus-chromebook-flip-c436f-review-quick-and-slick/