Deal or No Deal: Switching to Chromebook

marcam129

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Jan 12, 2015
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So recently my technologically inept girlfriend who lives alone spilled water on her only computer which was a MacBook Air. Naturally it is glitching out and on its way to the grave. Money is of concerns so I was thinking of getting her a Chromebook. She doesn't do much other than Netflix, YouTube, emails.
However, since this will be her main and only computer I was wondering are Chromebooks still good for all other random activities that people do on computers that you normally don't think about such as

- Printing: Can you print to any printer if you need to. Do "drivers" become a problem? Do they work on both wire and wireless?
- File Management: She takes a lot of pictures with her phone and probably will want to plug her phone in to move them to a larger SD/flashdrive. I know they play well with external media, but what about reading data off of another mobile devices?
- Casting: I want to guess they are compatible with Chromecasts (I wouldn't be surprised if not tbh). And are they compatible with other casting devices Roku, Firestick, etc.?

If you have a Chromebook and can answer any of these questions it would be greatly appreciated. Also can anyone tell me how your experience with them were, and if you know of any other limitations that can be problematic.
 
For a primary laptop, I would not get a Chromebook, but that is just me and I have never used one before. I recommend a relatively inexpensive laptop like the following Acer for $350 which has a Core i3-7100u and a 1080p screen.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-33BM-15-6-Inch-Processor-Generation/dp/B01K1IO3QW


Chromebooks can print to Chromebook compatible printers (which uses Chrome Cloud Print). If you do not have such a printer, then you will need to print to a network attached printer because Chromebooks sends print jobs through the network. This means you cannot simply connect an inexpensive printer to the Chromebook with a USB cable.

The following video demonstrates how to print from a Chromebook and Android phone to a network attached printer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4rdtyKRttw