Wife bought a cheap laptop

[aunt betty]

I think that's what it is...
Pretty sure it has zero memory so asking the collective how I add it.
Assuming an external hard drive... Of course then the operating system probably won't handle that. I don't know...
Here's what she got. I tried telling her it's not a computer with a memory...

[aunt betty]

[assateague]

Acer is a pretty good company. There's probably a little door in the bottom where you can upgrade the memory

[Woody]

Dude, you need some new shoes.

[GoBlue82]

looks like she picked up a chromebook, a cheap laptop that runs the google chrome OS. these are designed to be more like interfaces to the cloud than stand-alone traditional computers. so, it probably has a super fast SSD (solid state drive) for a hard drive that is also super small, probably around 16gb. That's because the on board storage is primarily to house native apps while any content files and data are stored remotely in the users Google Drive, which has like 100gb or something free.

The processor and memory are probably fine since these are made to be fast machines, but it sounds like storage is what you are concerned about. Here, you have a couple options. Unfortunately, due to the nature of these boxes, it is probably not realistic to change the internal drive, both because a bigger drive would take up more space, and because of the way the OS is configured. An external drive should work just fine though, though the official Google advice would be to load everything to your Google drive. You can get good external drives really cheap right now. What would be even better would be a network drive, which is basically just an external hard drive that you could plug into your wireless router, then every computer on your home network could share it.

[aunt betty]

Yep. U r right. Still trying how to save a picture onto googledrive or whatever the hell its called. The notebook or whatever is fast and the screen is clear. If I hook my speakers up it plays videos nicely. Just gotta get used to it and figure out storage.
It has 16gigs built in but its for APPS.

[aunt betty]

haha, figured it out...

[GoBlue82]

okay, did a little more research:

looks like you have either the acer c720: https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/chrome/devices/acer-c720-chromebook.html#specs or the acer c7: https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/chrome/devices/acer-c7-chromebook.html#overview

both look like pretty good little tools. the big thing to remember about chromebooks is that they are designed to be always connected to the internet. the are built around the idea of software-as-a-service (SaaS in the tech/mktg world) which is basically that old software that you install on your local hard drive is antiquated, bulky, and un-manageable (how is a company realistically supposed to support a piece of code written twenty years ago that some guy has installed on a machine that is older than the customer support person he is talking too?). so, most of the "programs" on a chrome book will actually be web-apps that run from the web-browser: browser based tools like google docs and google spreadsheets replace Word and Excel. These are always the latest version and constantly being updated, so it is an obvious advantage... for the software company. the problem is they are dependent on an internet connection, and a high speed one at that, which means that a significant, though increasingly invisible as the corporate world forgets that life exists outside the internet, segment of the population would not be in a situation to benefit from the light hardware overhead of cloud computing.

sorry, i got on a rant for a second.

anyway, if you have a high-speed connection at your house, and your wife doesn't have to do any heavy computing/is mostly using it to browse the web and check email etc. then you have a great computer for your needs and it should do everything you need. you will need to either get a Google Drive subscription or an external hard drive though for things like documents and photos that you want to store in file form.

does that help?

[GoBlue82]

haha, figured it out...

nice. i knew ya could do it.

[Woody]

haha, figured it out...

That is terrifying.

[aunt betty]

haha, figured it out...

That is terrifying.

You crack me up. I've had a pc with internet since 1996 roughly. This cloud shit sounds cool...Smokey. lol

[aunt betty]

We get our service for $19.99/month, it's fiber optic, and we have WiFi so internet is anywhere in the house. Wife LOVES how she can now look up a recipe from in the kitchen. That's always good. She's happy, I'm happy.

[assateague]

Fiber is the shit. You must be a recipient of the Broadband Initiative upgrades. Pisses me off that there are places that can get 100M symmetrical fiber for less than $50 a month, and I'm stuck with 20M coax for $100.

[Olly]

Fiber is the shit. You must be a recipient of the Broadband Initiative upgrades. Pisses me off that there are places that can get 100M symmetrical fiber for less than $50 a month, and I'm stuck with 20M coax for $100.

Either you live in the country or you don't.

[assateague]

Precisely. Tax dollars to fund fiber rollouts was (and is) just stupid.

[aunt betty]

Sorry AT. There are a ton of gubment buildings in this city. Spread out all over so they made a big fiber optic network. I just happen to be lucky and in one of the residential areas they included in the new system. We got in early and got free installation, a $3000 savings.

[aunt betty]

The cable company, Comcast, Pisses off C-U and the two cities built that fiber optic grid to spite them. Soon they will be selling cable cheap as well.

[assateague]

Good for them. I hate Comcast.

[huntall6]

I have the Samsung chrome book. Love the hell outa that thing but I can't save anything. But saving stuff on the hard drive is not why I bought it. You'll notice it's a good amount faster than a regular computer.

[aunt betty]

I have the Samsung chrome book. Love the hell outa that thing but I can't save anything. But saving stuff on the hard drive is not why I bought it. You'll notice it's a good amount faster than a regular computer.

Yeah, its fast. Good video too. Speakers are weak but I have an external system.

I think its a nice little thing and is exactly what we wanted.
Getting the google drive figured out will take time. I guess I can save pics from my camera to that, then access them from the notebook, laptop, whatever.

[assateague]

Does it have a usb port for a thumb drive?

[GoBlue82]

if it is the 720, then it should have a slot for the sd card from a camera on it, otherwise you should be able to just connect the camera straight to the USB port. then, yeah, load them to google drive. if you have android phones, you can connect them to the same google drive too, then you are basically sharing everything between your devices all the time.

[aunt betty]

if it is the 720, then it should have a slot for the sd card from a camera on it, otherwise you should be able to just connect the camera straight to the USB port. then, yeah, load them to google drive. if you have android phones, you can connect them to the same google drive too, then you are basically sharing everything between your devices all the time.

I kind of gathered that...getting there may take a good minute.

[aunt betty]

Oooh, found the slot. Right here.

[aunt betty]

For fifty bucks I can get a 64 gig card. That would hold a lotta pictures and some video. I kinda want it to download and store pics so I can trash the forum with pics from Arkansas. (kidding)
I kinda messed up and emptied a lot of good stuff onto my sick old pc.
Trying to figure out a way to sort through all that and store it before I put the damned thing to rest.
It has to happen. I have almost five years of Arkansas duck hunting stored in there.

[Feelin' Fowl]

Get an external hard drive and move everything off of the old computer.

Then you can give it the Office Space, fax machine treatment!

[GoBlue82]

For fifty bucks I can get a 64 gig card. That would hold a lotta pictures and some video. I kinda want it to download and store pics so I can trash the forum with pics from Arkansas. (kidding)
I kinda messed up and emptied a lot of good stuff onto my sick old pc.
Trying to figure out a way to sort through all that and store it before I put the damned thing to rest.
It has to happen. I have almost five years of Arkansas duck hunting stored in there.

Just get an external usb enclosure for the old hard drive. Then you can pop the old hard drive into it and have access to everything on it and get rid of the rest of the old box.

[aunt betty]

For fifty bucks I can get a 64 gig card. That would hold a lotta pictures and some video. I kinda want it to download and store pics so I can trash the forum with pics from Arkansas. (kidding)
I kinda messed up and emptied a lot of good stuff onto my sick old pc.
Trying to figure out a way to sort through all that and store it before I put the damned thing to rest.
It has to happen. I have almost five years of Arkansas duck hunting stored in there.

Just get an external usb enclosure for the old hard drive. Then you can pop the old hard drive into it and have access to everything on it and get rid of the rest of the old box.

Huh? What about power supply for the drive? External USB enclosure. ..hmm.

[GoBlue82]

The enclosure will supply the power to the drive, you just need to make sure you get one that fits your style of hard drive.

For example, newegg has several very cheap http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0VN-0003-000H1