Having had the Chrome vs Windows 8.1 thought, I went looking. Turns out Toshiba has same same 13" units and someone has already done the comparison on the $300-400 Toshiba matching units.
It's elephants vs donkeys again -- this time with a young lady discovering what she really uses a laptop for.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/20/5505468/toshiba-chromebook-satelite-nb15t-r...Google vs. Microsoft: a cheap laptop showdownThe short of it was that Chrome won -- for what the lady or her mother actually did with the machines they liked the Chromebook better.
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Adding insult to injury, Chrome 32 is available to load on any Windows laptop or desktop now days, it starts like any program, executes, and vola !!! you are actually running Chrome OS now and you Windows is being hibernated for a while.
Seeing your hardware run quick and clean and getting ALL the ChromeOS advantages makes you able to try Chrome out on your own on your very own machine.
And a gentle point is made by the folks putting it out -- if your Windows machine gets sick on you
as long as your Windows will boot at all you can still get to Chrome OS and keep on trucking.
And that brings up another pathway for the soon to die XP people --- go Chrome 32 instead of Mint Linux.
Once you are in Chrome 32 you are wearing the big red suit temporarily .... but if you step in something out on the net and it goes BANG you can sorta expect it to find your Windows laying there hibernated up underneath your Chrome 32 and to go munching on its familiar MS food source.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/chrome-32-takes-windows-81-way-beyond-any... "If you use Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and are a Google fanatic, you're going to love the latest version of Chrome. It's a standard browser for the desktop; it's a browser app for the Start Screen; it's the Chrome OS; it's an oddity and much more, all in a neat little package. You really have to see it to believe it. I'll describe how to download, install, and use Google Chrome 32 in Windows 8.1.
Get Chrome 32
You don't have to go to the Windows Store to get the new Chrome. To get started, launch your current browser and go to the Google Chrome page. On the Chrome site, click the Download Chrome button (Figure A)."Wow, Google has just made it possible for you to temporarily leave MS because you are pissed off at them, without really leaving at all.
Plus they have just given XP people a way to get on the web that is much more secure than Windows.
Is this the easy upgrade path to XP that everybody has been looking for?If it isn't already, I suspect some smart programmer person is going to figure out how to do it and post a bootloader mod for Chrome 32 so you can pick it at boot time just like a Linux distro.
Now, wouldn't that stick a finger in MS's eye right smartly? They were planning to rob the XP people for some money and now the XP folks all go Google Chrome on them instead?
And if what the young lady says is true, a lot of disgruntled Win 8.0 and 8.1 folks might just jump ship as well. The psychology is right, people wanted Windows because they were afraid of change, but now Chrome 32 is here and it works better, so they can have both things with no conflict.
What MS is going to hate is folks are going to learn that Chrome OS really is better, and you can get to it painlessly.
People will soon get past the extensive FUD campaign that MS put out with the pawnshop actors and all -- people can try it out themselves now and judge for themselves.
Justin, you got your ears on? You can do this. Art can do this. You can do this right now and try it out for a while and see if you like it. ..... and you can jest chuckle a bit while you do it, because it is obvious you are jest putting some lit bamboo slivers up under MS fingernails when you go to doing it --- you can jest feel them squealing up underneath it all in an impotent fury when you leave their MS Explorer control.
Hee hee, and all them warnings and notices when you come back to Windows pointedly tell you that you are now returning to being under MS Explorer's control. They hates it bad, they do.