UPDATE: Monday 19th January 2015 – see bottom of article for changes.
Hello,
It has been a long time since my last post. In between then and now, I have fully recovered after my bicycle incident on the A45 (see last post), I have been going to the gym a lot and I have been cycling more than I think than the average cycler does at the time of year with the evenings drawing in and the cold snap settling in. Oh, and of course, I have been down to London so much so that I might as well move there. Maybe one day. This is my ‘gap year’ and I am sorting my stuff out. Bits and bobs I have been meaning to do for ages. One of them being . . .
Sat on my desk for the past couple of months has been my old Samsung N210 netbook. I bought it in the second year of Sixth Form back in 2010 and liked it so much I used it during my three years of university too. One gripe was the start up speed. So. Very. Slow. It came with Windows 7 Starter and although at first the familiar Windows environment was comforting, I soon realised that beyond a word processor, I didn’t really need anything else.
I have just saved myself £180 – with thanks to the glorious internet and here’s how.
I installed Chromium – a similar OS to Chromebooks with perhaps slightly less functionality. For any old devices, give it a try!
As I walked into PC World with my bicycle and looked towards the laptop section, I got a buzz. That’s what 21st century living is about. Bombardment of advertising, television programmes, movies, etc. etc, pushing towards the idea of keeping up with the Joneses. I need to have the newest. The best. The most beautiful. I asked the manager if I could lock my bicycle up in store, and he, with pound note signs in front of his eyes, immediately agreed.
But as I held the cheapest Chromebook in my hands I realised it was about the same size as the netbook I had four years ago. During the time I had had my netbook, it had bloated. Lack of maintenance meant that boot-up and any task henceforth was cumbersome.
I see no need to limit myself to a Windows system for such a device and I would never dream of a Mac so anything Google floated my boat.
As mentioned, I have a Samsung N210 and with that needed to purchase a new wireless card.
I now have the ability to easily produce as well as easily consume wherever I am. Watch this space!
Sam.
UPDATE: After using my new ‘Chromebook’ I soon noticed a couple of problems. Not with functionality – I could still log in and complete day-to-day tasks but I couldn’t download anything from the PlayStore nor did it aesthetically meet what I had expected from seeing screenshots. I had been putting it off for months and decided enough was enough. I dedicated a few hours to sort it out and sort it out I did do. A new memory stick and a fresh install of a very up to date version would do the trick, I thought. One memory stick is now in the bin. The version I loaded did not do the trick and could not connect to the wireless. Oh dear. I then read about Arnoldthebat’s Dev Server Updates and I instantly sought to update my previously installed version. I thought I had put one of his versions on originally but according to this post, I installed one of Hexxeh’s. Anyhow, it asked for a password in the command line. Password, blank, chromos, etc. I tried them all. Then I remembered reading someone that the password is ‘facepunch’. I entered Arnoldthebat’s line of code to update and it came back as failed. Tried again. Success! Voila. Beautiful! It works. 🙂 And then I did this to get flash, PDF etc working but I am yet to test it out.
