Samsung Chromebook 3 review

(image borrowed, sorry, I am a horrible person)

I'm a huge Chromebook fan but I'd never bought myself one. (I bought someone a Samsung Series 2, and I use a work Acer C301.) I finally bought one recently, however, when a laptop died shortly before Black Friday. I like Samsung's products (no jokes about batteries!) and the "3" looked pretty good from the reviews. Here are my thoughts about it, after using it for a month.

To remind the reader, it is very inexpensive ($150-200 depending on store and sales) so one shouldn't expect much from the components: Intel Celeron 1.6GHz 3050, 4GB DRAM, no USB 3.0 or USB-C, decent 11" video and WiFi. It's /very/ light and has one claim to fame: the keyboard resists spills. Another thing they did right: micro SD slot! No more adapter! No more wasted space!

Despite being on the light side, the screen hinge and keys feel solid. I like the form factor. The keyboard feels good, although the arrow keys are tiny and "bury" themselves pretty easily. The Acer is better here.

The problems show up when I start to use it. It feels slow. When it's slow, it seems to be using WiFi - fetching Google search suggestions, waiting for Google apps to respond, waiting for a site to load, waiting for authentication to complete, etc. - so it's a little hard to blame the Chromebook. However, the Acer has no such trouble (except for one spreadsheet I have) so I suspect that it is indeed the Samsung. I verified that it is using 5GHz during these tests.

I've caught some bugs:
- When I logged in the first time, it went into a reboot loop. It didn't stop until I turned off all the extensions in my profile on another computer. :/
- One time, with the lid closed, the battery died. I guess this doesn't always suspend it.
- One time I returned to it after a day, with the screen still lit. This might have been because I was cycling the power-cord.
- One time, after opening the screen, it didn't respond, despite holding the power key for 11 seconds. It finally responded when I opened the screen a hair wider. Weird...
- One evening, it couldn't maintain a connection to a Chromecast. I tried again the next evening and it worked fine. The next evening, it worked fine for one video, then couldn't keep the next video running. Still trying to narrow down the conditions for failure...

On the bright side:
- Putting it into dev mode went well, and I installed Crouton without issue. I haven't played with it much, however.
- It does everything that I've asked it to do. There isn't a website that I've visited that it couldn't display.
- TODO: Try Android apps!

Summary:
- A little slow (compared to faster Chromebooks.)
- A little unreliable, but bearable
- Worth every penny!

This Christmas, Unity's Best Friend: Retailers

"I never met a customer I didn't like." may be a funny quip, but this season, it may be providential for national unity. We're hearing daily that the racial hatred drumbeat is getting louder. The country needs someone on the other side speaking for racial tolerance and unity. That someone may be retail.

Marketplace recently noticed that some retail sales were drastically down after the election  - down to 25% of pre-election numbers.

Maybe this is temporary, but if it impacts Black Friday, then it could easily wipe out the 3.4% gain that the NRF predicted.

With all these neo-Nazis running around yelling, "Go home!", and half (!) of retail's customers being "minorities", what is retail to do?

Clearly retail needs to get the word out that minorities are welcome at their stores. They need to make it crystal clear that the stores will protect and welcome them.

Remember: Right now the minorities don't know who their friends are. They assume that the other half of the country voted for their deportation. It would be welcome news to hear the weighty opinion of the gargantuan American capitalist system give its blessing to the "minority" shoppers.

Would the stores simply be doing this because of the potential sales? Doesn't that mean that they don't truly - in the bottom of their jingling hearts - love each and every person?

Sure, but a convenient friend is still a friend.