[rkv_2401]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

When we upgrade to SSD and increase RAM, will the Geekbench score of an old desktop change? That is, does Geekbench measure the performance of processor only or the entire system?

Good question! I've not used Geekbench much since the Geekbench 3/4 days, as it used to be only for phones, but it's a CPU benchmark and these "CPU" benchmarks SHOULD only test how many instructions per second of various types of instructions (Integer, floating point, etc.) and test these across the variety of CISC instruction sets that have been added over the years. e.g. AVX enables huge speed ups in a lot of calculations, it seems particulary in floating point calculations. So the benchmark should be programmed in a way that a machine with AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 (if applicable to the test) should take advantage of it, thus correctly rewarding the machine for it's newer instruction set and penalizing older machines.

Additionally, it should be big enough to utilize the full cache of the CPU to award higher scores to CPUs with more cache, without being so big that it depends on your memory transfer speeds as well.

However, looking into it's internals (https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbe...-internals.pdf), it's clear that Geekbench has evolved a lot, and some of these productivity workloads (file compression, photo library and likely a few others) may also depend on how much RAM you have and especially on what speed/latency it's running at. This also assumes the very old machine has enough RAM to run whatever version of Windows + background RAMs comfortably without interfering with the benchmark. SSD vs HDD should not make a difference here.

A simple RAM upgrade with a mismatched set will result in the lower of the two speeds/slower timings if same speed (higher latency) being applied, and that may slow it down by a bit. Even though the system itself will likely perform much better with the extra RAM.

But I wouldn't read too much into Geekbench other than getting a ballpark estimate, anyway.

There is a valid reason for the way Microsoft manages resources. Let's say you are running tasks in the background that are processor intensive. For example:

- Large file transfers or zipping/unzipping
- 3D Rendering or video editing
- Large set data analysis

While that is happening, you would also want to work on something else, since the above tasks take a long time.

In the above use case, Chrome OS/Chromebook will falter badly, even if you equip it with the latest hardware. That's because Chrome OS is designed to throttle background tasks in favour of "foreground" tasks. As a byproduct, you get stable performance (for normal tasks) even if the hardware is below par.

Correct. Most desktop-based OSes manage it that way. What I meant was that on the slower machines I've used, they follow this behavior not only for user programs but also something like OneDrive syncing in the background, Defender running an ill-timed scan or Windows Update downloading some updates which results in it slowing down to a crawl even though the machine can easily handle the bare OS, a Word document + YouTube in the background.

There is also tons of bloatware, like the Xbox Game Bar that's great if you want to record gameplay, not good on a slow machine already struggling to catch it's breath. The search bar w/ads is horrific now, takes a full 3 seconds to load up on a 6-core i7 at near idle. All these things add up to provide a bad experience for the users on a low-power machine. Some of it is part of the desktop OS experience. But all I know is, Win10 wasn't as resource intensive, and machines that ran Win8.1 perfectly fine struggled with Win10, too. My Surface Pro 2 was never slow a day in it's life while running Win8.1, and that's while doing intensive coding and testing w/ an Android emulator, but I would say it's barely able to browse the web with the latest versions of Win10. It's not overheating or anything either, just...slow. In fact even my Surface Pro 6 (8th gen i7, 16GB RAM) has been far from snappy since I installed Windows 11. This is an easy win for any competitor, and I'd happily switch those machines to Linux if I could reliably say that drivers wouldn't be an issue.

Right now, I have Firefox with 6 tabs open, using up 2.5GB according to Task Manager, Steam in the background doing nothing, and Teams and Skype. But my machine is still using 12.5GB of RAM(80%) and has 31.8GB committed (used) out of a total of 41GB of available memory (including page file). I guess a lot of this is because of SuperFetch, the cache I mentioned earlier. But at least some of it is also because of some Windows processes that I don't strictly need to be running.

[-xplora-]

hi

Fundamental issue with ChromeOS and generally sandboxed browser based OS is you have to make do with what is possible, so your realm is confined.

Another issue is Google since past decade has become the Evil microsoft was once was, so without a google account you cant do pretty much anything with google services and chrome OS, however with win11 you have options of offline accounts. Privacy rules being blatantly obfuscated by every major tech giant, google is number one. This is the sole reason why I use Brave for YT browsing and avoid using YT premium on my account. Even if you turned off every tab they still access so much data to narrow down.

ChromeOS is severely limited in its hardware and peripheral compatibility, so any old printer / scanner or specific device, good luck with finding the right driver for it.

Usual hardware that accompanies ChromeOS is at the low-end, there is not a single half decent laptop in the market, let alone flagships with ChromeOS making it a poorman's OS. So even if you have the right software on android / web platform but you don't have enough hardware to support that software whats the point ?

Majority of productivity software in specific areas still are on Windows and few on MacOS, they might have a light version for android but that's it, and I dont think any major Enterprise provider is interested to cater that miniscule userbase, its the same story why most companies have not bothered for a "linux" version.

ChromeOS is by design an online OS, moment you are unplugged, you are limited to a great extent, yes you can do a few workarounds and things offline but its severely limited.

And ofcourse my biggest gripe would be loss of desktop office, e.g. Excel, any heavy duty stuff and excel online / app just falls apart it needs the desktop version to do heavy number crunching.

[NiInJa]

While Chromebooks were poverty spec few years ago, the introduction of Chromebook Plus has really changed the game in my opinion. They are properly challenging Windows laptops with higher specs and better performance compared to Chromebooks that ran on Celeron and similar cheap processors. The only problem is the asking price of top spec i5, 512GB chromebook plus matches with many Windows laptops, and then, making a choice becomes easy

I dabbled with the idea of getting a Chromebook Plus before getting a good deal on Dell G15 laptop for almost the same price.

Here is why I chose Windows over Chromebook:
- Steam support is still in beta, and as mentioned above, some games may crash, updates are a big unknown.

- Chromebook's RAM are mostly soldered, one can forget about upgrading RAM for performance boost (although 12 GB sounds a lot). I am guessing same is the case with Hard drives.

- I work in a field where I need Excel, VB and Powershell. I have Linux VM if I need to code/test bash scripts.

- Space and weight were not an issue for me. If I wanted a compact laptop just for browsing and content consumption, I can get a nice Tablet with bluetooth keyboard for occasional writing.

Having said that, I like Chromebooks for what they are, for school going students, its a perfect companion. I plan to get one for my kid in the future. With 4G/5G data packs becoming cheaper, I wish all of them came with a LTE/5G sim slot, that would save the trouble of connecting it to a mobile hotspot.

[Its_Arkk]

1 Thing I would like to point out to people who want to go for ChromeBooks is not to get the ones with eMMC storage type, they are slower than SSDs and wear out faster overtime as compared to SSDs and as they are soldered to the motherboard you cant upgrade them.

[Jupizire]

Thanks @smartcat. Very informative. Appreciate the alternative to Windows and MacOS that Google has created.

My case is - smartphone is enough to take care of my entertainment needs. I use laptop for more serious stuffs like using TradingView/ MS Office/ Power BI/ DBMS like Oracle or mySQL etc. Any OS that doesn't support these kind of applications would diminish the utility for me.

Another experience - I was forced to use Google Workspace applications like Docs, Sheets and Slides for 6 months simply because my client was using Google for their office mail. It felt so slow, primitive and non-user friendly compared to MS Office. The keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive. Even as simple as a copy-paste operation in Docs was so slow, even with a very good internet connection. On like-to-like comparison of browser based apps, MS Excel and Word are so smooth to use compared to the counterparts from Google.

So yes, until Google improves Chrome OS's usability quotient, many professionals may find it difficult to use it. But yes, education sector is a well suited use case.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Unlike poverty spec chromebooks we typically see, this one has decent hardware (Core i3, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Full HD 1080p display)

This poverty spec grade is what is in use at our sons school. Our son hates the chrome book due its sub par performance. I stopped looking at chrome books due to this. I still feel the Core i3 is the wrong cpu for it. You don't put an x86 cpu into something like this. They should get ARM in there. Its even more efficient and runs cool, as we've all experienced on our phones.

Thanks for sharing. I might just attempt an install on a relic of an old AMD desktop machine I have. As long as it runs stable, I'm cool with it.

[vinu_h]

I used Chromebooks extensively while I was with Google and the experience was great which is why I still do even though I switched sides . The OS is light weight which allows for an almost instant bootup, effortless 9 hrs of backup, UI is just right and allows for a hell a lot more customisation than MS or Apple. Coolest part is that one can flash a ChromeOS onto any compatible laptop, be it your old windows or a MAC one.

While the OS itself is free of charge, the admin manageability features in the enterprise and edu versions cost around INR 4k per year & INR 5k one time resp.

[warp_10]

Definitely an alternative for Windows. With the future of Chrome hanging in balance with Google antitrust case, there might be some concerns, but I believe, Google will figure a way to indirectly keep themselves in play even if they end up splitting.

But, here is my real concern - Most of the apps might not have support, or do not have full fledged support. My aunt got a chromebook on my advice a year back, her primary use was to take classes for her students online through Zoom. But only after getting it, we realized that the native Zoom app in chromebook does not support virtual background (needs to be done through a round about way through PWA, back then). Though it might sound like a trivial use case, that was the primary use case.

With adoption rate being a question, chrome OS is definitely few notches below in adoption even compared to its sister OS ie. android (let alone compare with Windows). Btw not all apps on android works natively on chromebook, especially if the app requires access to any h/w access (though some might support work around by access through the browser).

[IRideScent]

I recently saw an offer on 15.6 Acer Chromebook plus, priced under 20k. It have hdmi ouput as well.

My use cases are
1) I do surfing and trading on ICICI.
2) While offline to watch downloaded movie/tv shows by kids/elders.

Is it okay for offline movie watching? I'm not very good with other OS.

Currently I am using a 10 year old windows laptop which is having some or other hardware issues. I dont think it's going to hold well maybe another year or so.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Before buying a chromebook, I installed Chrome OS on my old desktop to see if I like the UI

I installed Chrome Flex OS on an old AMD A4 APU. It has 16gb of ram and a cheap SSD drive in it.

Oddly, the preparation of the Installer took almost an hour. I suspect the USB stick drive I was using is past its prime. Its over 8 years old! The actual install to the desktop was done in 20 minutes. Still long but anyway.

It works great. For such an old CPU, its surprisingly responsive to use as far as browsing goes. Haven't really tried anything else. I can't get to the Play Store to download games. It could also output to 4k on my Sony TV.

The cpu barely gets to 20% average utilization when idle. On Windows, this cpu used to run almost flat out, even when the system was not doing anything. All it took was opening Chrome browser and it would cripple the system.

One issue that I did run into was external hardware compatibility. The system refused to recognize and even power my TP Link TPL-WN822N USB based wifi adapter. Its completely dead. So the alternative is only wired ethernet. I have read on forums of others running into this issue on specific Realtek based wi fi chipsets. This TP Link Unit does use one of those lousy chips. Not a lot I can do.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

I installed Chrome Flex OS on an old AMD A4 APU. It has 16gb of ram and a cheap SSD drive in it.

All my hardware/software experiments are conducted on a desktop of similar vintage -> 2nd gen core i5, but with 8 GB RAM and 500 GB SSD. Perhaps I can throw in another 8 GB RAM stick and rename this desktop as "Speedy Gonzales"

I can't get to the Play Store to download games.

Deep inside Chrome OS Flex website, Google has dropped a line saying "Google Playstore" access is not available on Chrome OS Flex. That's probably because Google wants you to buy Chromebooks. As an alternative, you can checkout apps and games from all the Linux appstores (For eg, https://flathub.org/). If you want step by step instructions to install the appstore and the apps, let me know (or you could just ask chatgpt!)

[SmartCat]

I've been using the Chromebook as a daily driver for a week now. I plugged it into a 24 inch external monitor though. I've closed the lid of the laptop for dust protection, but I reckon it might increase heat generation. Instead of shutting it down overnight, I just let the system go into sleep mode.



Does not have a HDMI port, so bought an adapter. Does not have an Ethernet port (faster than Wifi) either, so there is one more adapter!



Online Excel is somewhat irritating. Whether it is inserting a row/column or dragging a cell, it doesn't have the "feel" of Windows Excel. Also, switching between tabs, there can be minor hiccup sometimes (my Excel sheet is 4 MB with multiple tabs & graphs). However, it seems to have all the features, and like Windows Excel, fills up the screen completely.



Android Whatsapp on a Chromebook works like an Android app. Right-click does nothing. But you have to click and hold the left mouse button (like you would press & hold/long press on a smartphone)



It recognized the printer immediately & started printing without asking for any additional drivers. However, the subwoofer on from my old old creative 2.1 speakers sounds a bit dull. Need to the scour the internet for troubleshooting this one.

[vinu_h]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Does not have a HDMI port, so bought an adapter. Does not have an Ethernet port (faster than Wifi) either, so there is one more adapter!

An all in one like this should do the trick. I use it.

Online Excel is somewhat irritating.

Excel works best offline even on windows or Surface pro laptops. It isn't a native online tool like Google workspace is.

[DSK0909]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Never mess with dad's computer. Far simpler to take the desktop to a computer shop and:

- Replace hard disk with SSD (Rs. 2,000 for 256 GB)
- Add 4 GB extra RAM (Rs. 1,000) and make it minimum 8 GB

You can keep the old hard disk as D drive with all the other data. Note that Windows has to be installed on the new SSD. This is such a low hanging fruit but significantly improves usability of an old desktop/laptop

I was planning to buy a Chromebook for wife for her part time WFH duties. This suggestion helped me a lot

I got a 512 GB SSD installed + fabrication job as the hinges were broken on the lid. Costed 4300/- in Pune.

It already had 8 GB RAM. The laptop has got new lease of life and I hope it runs for another 2-3 years.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by DSK0909

It already had 8 GB RAM. The laptop has got new lease of life and I hope it runs for another 2-3 years.

16 GB is even more useful and you can transform this old laptop with the 'sleep mode' hack:

- Open frequently used applications (MS office, Zoom, whatsapp etc). For frequently used websites (eg: gmail), keep it open in a separate browser (say Microsoft Edge). For regular browsing (where you open/close tabs), use Chrome. 16 GB RAM gives you ample room to keep all these applications open at the same time.
- Never close any of these applications. Just minimize them or use Alt+TAB.
- Never shutdown the laptop either. Just put it in 'Sleep' mode end of the day.

Now:

- In sleep mode, the entire session is stored in RAM. Click on the mouse button and you start from where you left.
- Since you never closed any apps, there is no irritating wait-times for an application to load.
- Sleep mode uses negligible power. Just remember to reboot the PC once in 15 to 30 days. Also, disable hibernation since it is slower than sleep mode when waking up.

So with SSD + 16 GB RAM + sleep mode hack, the old laptop/desktop will remain fast and usable for many years. Even a desktop uses minimal power in sleep mode. To make switching between apps easier, utilize the taskbar and install both Windows native apps and PWAs (progressive web apps),
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadge...ity-tools.html (Windows/Chrome/Android Power User Tips, Hacks & Productivity Tools)