Chromebook may be the most badass computer of all times
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July 23, 2024
It was one of those days. I had a 20-ounce plastic bottle of
Vitamin Water and a similarly sized plastic jar of peanuts. I was
working on something. I thought I grabbed the jar of peanuts.
Instead it was the Vitamin Water, roughly 3/4 full.
I had accidentally poured approximately 15 ounces of Vitamin Water
all over my laptop. It's one of those cursed incidents anyone would
dread.
Supposedly Chromebook is built to withstand those events,
considering that lots of schoolchildren use them, and school
districts and government agencies buy them. Still then, I did not
expect my laptop to survive this.
Yet, all keyboard and trackpad functions survived unscathed, and
the audio speakers work just as good.
And this is a $249 ASUS model I bought used for $100.
Aside from no dime goes to feed Microsoft, and the modern
Chromebooks are shipped with a full Debian installation that can be
activated with a few clicks, this may be the most badass computers
I have ever owned.
It turned out that all ASUS laptops are now tested against the
MIL-STD-810 durability standards used by the U.S. Department of
Defense, even the lower-end consumer models. That is a big leap
from the days of the flimsy EeePC (I used to have an EeePC 900,
which also shipped with Xandros Linux pre-installed, but after a
while I decided to install LinuxMint LXDE -- and later PeppermintOS
when LinuxMint dropped LXDE; even though ASUS marketed the EeePC as
quite durable it was actually very flimsy).
