Foreword： A while back I got bored and decided I needed a computer, a “tinkering” toy, with two main goals: Try out the latest system updates — an aggressive platform Try out all kinds of new distros After weighing things back and forth, my requirements for this device gradually became clear: It has to be cheap, the cheaper the better, and the specs as high as possible Ideally it supports various form factors — a keyboard, a touchscreen, and Linux-friendly. I mainly use Linux, since I’m already tired of Windows Durable and light, because after testing I’ll usually just toss it in a corner to gather dust Ideally some expandability and serviceability, like a ThinkPad Occasionally usable for emergency work — the kind of thing you can toss anywhere without feeling bad

Not long after I sold off my HP Chromebook X2 11, I regretted it badly. I couldn’t find a tablet that met my needs anymore. Sure, that knockoff Surface from HP had all sorts of crappy problems, but compared to Android tablets that can only play games and watch videos, its advantages were pretty obvious. Then I saw this thing on eBay: Lenovo Chromebook 10e Another Chromebook tablet. Performance-wise it’s about the same as the Duet, but the difference is it actually has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and it comes with a keyboard cover that looks pretty solid. The only catch is it has no trackpad, but who cares—it’s a tablet, it has a touchscreen!

I remember once saying, angrily, that Android tablet productivity is all shit. And then I went to a Xiaomi store and tried one out, which only confirmed it. Even on the “Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro,” productivity is still a pile of shit. My biggest complaint is that the IME on Android still can’t do proper cursor-following; in a lot of cases you still get the idiotic “type up here, pick characters down there” setup. Not to mention the browser being unusable… In the end I decided to try the Chromebook Duet. I picked one up on eBay, plus a USI stylus. Bought before the price went up — the seller listed it at 50, realized the next day he’d undersold, and jacked the price up in a hurry. But I’d already bought mine.

Everyone knows my main machine used to be an X1 Carbon 2017. Unfortunately, I lost it earlier this year. After that, my wife was actually on board with me buying a new one, but the X1 Carbon 2021 was about to launch and the rumors said it was a big upgrade — new 16:10 screen, better GPU and CPU performance. So I decided to wait. But while waiting, I still needed a laptop to get work done. So I started looking: Performance has to be passable Keyboard has to at least be usable Screen at least 1080p, color gamut can’t be terrible Strong battery life Build quality as good as possible

I picked up another Chromebook recently, bought on Taobao. Probably leaked out of some factory somewhere. It’s an Asus Chromebook Flip, the ARM CPU version. The upsides are obvious: IPS screen, 1280x800, it flips around, it’s touchscreen, and the battery lasts forever. The Chromebook I bought before got sold off. Reason being I never actually used Chrome OS — the moment it arrived I wiped it and installed Ubuntu. Using it felt no different from a ThinkPad, and honestly worse than a ThinkPad, so what was even the point. This time I decided to actually give Chrome OS a proper try. But I’m in mainland China, and for certain reasons using this thing here definitely isn’t as smooth as in the US — bound to be a lot of pain. Though that’s more of a 2014-era take. How is it now? The answer: not bad.