Often times, I don't want to take a notebook with me on my leisure travel. But, even when traveling for pleasure, I still have to answer some work-related emails and edit stuff in our content-management system. Even my purely personal internet and computer usage is relatively type-heavy and productivity-driven. So sometimes I end up taking a business laptop anyway. And when I don't and travel with my 9.7 inch tablet + bluetooth keyboard instead, it's not really satisfactory.

The fact is, I have little use for my tablet apart from reading the occasional e-paper or from browsing FT. I think I'd be much better off with a small and compact Chromebook as I really need the keyboard and the touchpad or point stick.

What Chromebook do you guys suggest? Price is a factor, it shouldn't cost significantly more than USD 300 (definitely no more than USD 400).

I'm not a fan of Chrome OS so I'd like to install a Linux distro on it. I don't imagine I need much local storage space. I guess the screen and keyboard quality should be competitive for my price range. GPU performance is pretty much irrelevant to me.

tl;dr Suggestions on a light-weight, compact Chromebook with decent screen and keyboard which can run Linux? Price around USD 300, USD 400 max.

Why can't you just log into your main machine from a Chromebook and not bother with Linux?

For one, I don't want to be limited to the web plus Android/Chrome OS apps. I want to have the option to run locally installed desktop linux software and work offline. For another, I trust the Linux distro of my choice better than Google's Chrome OS (I guess Chromium OS might work for me but I still think a fully-fledged Linux desktop is more powerful).

Very good. I'm not an expert, but I got the Acer Chromebook 14 and I'm quite happy with it. You need to decide if you need touchscreen control. You will find that the cheaper ones are mouse/trackpad only. And make sure to get one that can handle Android Apps.

Asus makes pretty solid Chromebooks. I would check out their c101. Decent screen, good keyboard, and in your price range. While more expensive, the c302 is a bigger better version of the c101 that would be worth checking out.

I have a Samsung Chromebook pro with a chroot/crouton Linux installation and it's great.

I picked up a used asus c100 for $140 and it's fantastic for travel. It's incredibly lightweight and small, but the keyboard still feels nice. It does runs android apps. The only problem with running linux on c100 or c101 is that they have an arm chip so fewer programs play nice than an Intel processor like on the c302.

Can you still run android apps if you install Linux?

Also just wondwring if anyone knows if there is a noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p on a 11 or 13" screen?

Thanks 😀

You have to run android apps on chromeos, and they won't work on linux. However, it's a simple hotkey to switch between operating systems if you use crouton. I leave it running both and haven't noticed any problems with it slowing down, but make sure you get at least 4gb of ram.

I have a Samsung XE500C13 that I just ordered from Amazon last week. It has an 11-inch screen and weighs about 2.5 pounds. The battery life seems excellent and the charger is small. I paid $203 and so far I am very pleased. it works great with my Verizon hotspot on my iPhone. I am normally a Mac user with an office full of Mac stuff so I was reluctant but I think my new little friend is going to do all I need it to do.

The monitor is going out on my 13 inch MacBook so I will need to decide what to do with it soon. My wife has a 15-inch MacBook Pro which we took on a trip 2 weeks ago dragging it through airports, I won't do that again. This Samsung Chromebook is the perfect travel companion.

I've been looking at Chromebooks for a long time, because I like the whole thin client idea. I’m not impressed with the current crop:

I don't know whether you've seen this post - https://blog.lessonslearned.org/buil...nt-chromebook/

They don't install Linux on it but wonder whether it would fit your needs.

Been looking to do something similar in the UK but can't quite find a Chromebook that 'fits the bill'

I'm a bit confused when you say rules and exceptions. Intel processors are faster and will run better, but absolutely destroy battery life. However, most cheap chromebooks will have arm processors that get pretty decent battery life. There's rumors of qualcomm putting the snapdragon 845 chip into chromebooks (no timeline has been released), which will have built in lte support and will most likely have 20+ hours of battery life. Hopefully they come out sooner than later!

That's exactly what I'm after. With Lightroom (and, increasingly, development tools) in the cloud, an always on/always connected Chromebook is stating to make sense. Oddly enough, Windows is going the same way (and Apple is rumoured to be moving away from Intel starting in 2010).