I’ve been using a Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook now for well over a year. Over time I’ve come to appreciate how useful this device is in practical day-to-day usage.

Some will criticize that a Chromebook is only useful when connected to the internet, to which I reply that that may have been legitimate a decade or so ago when the Chromebooks were new, but not now.

Firstly is the hardware environment compared to the price. This Chromebook is equipped with an Intel Core i3-1115G4 running with four cores at 3 MHz. It has 8 GB of memory and a 128 GB SSD. I can’t recall the type of screen, but it doesn’t matter, as the screen is bright and clear. The keyboard is full sized and backlit for those times you want to write in the dark. All of this can now be purchased for around $400.

Secondly, this Chromebook (and others, such as my wife’s HP) now come equipped to run Linux as a virtualized environment, complete with a bash shell to work in. The Linux version available is Debian 11/bullseye. It comes complete with GCC/G++, make, and Python. If I want additional tools installed there’s apt. I did install Visual Studio Code and a few plugins. You can even install and develop with Rust, if that’s your thing. In other words, I have a complete development environment that gives me at least 90% of the functionality of my Macs and my desktop Linux system. And all of this with the portable convenience of a lightweight Chromebook.

Thirdly, there’s the convenience of Google Docs. If I need to write a formal document, or work with a complex spreadsheet, if my Chromebook is networked then I can open up those types of documents and just work.

As for network connectivity, I have the ability to pair my Chromebook with my iPhone acting as a personal hotspot for my Chromebook. I have a wireless plan that has unlimited data, which is quite cheap these days.

And for those who keep clamoring for the Year of the Linux Desktop, well, guess what. A Chromebook is Linux, and if I minimize the Chrome browser, I get a desktop, just as if I’d installed a distribution on a bare machine. The “value proposition” of a Chromebook is far better than any Windows notebook, and that value is due in no small part to Linux as the foundation OS on the Chromebook.

I’m way past the point where I want to buy the most expensive and thus the fastest computer hardware. When a GPU board, such as nVidia’s RTX 4090, retails for an eye-watering $1,600, that’s when I realize I’m not the target demographic for this hardware. And that’s before you’re ready to drop thousands more on the last AMD or Intel processor and supporting system. The pricing of high-end computers has reached the level of high-end cameras, meaning more expensive than I can possibly afford, let alone justify.

I can justify, and thus budget, for a good quality Chromebook. After over a year of usage, this little machine keeps on ticking along, and I couldn’t be happier. The tools, and the OS, are transparent to me. I can just open it up and get my work done. And before the nervous Nellies start nattering on about Google/Alphabet’s so-called surveillance via the Chrome browser, I don’t care. If you’re that concerned and paranoid, then you’re the perfect customer for Linux installed on a notebook, but using Firefox instead of Chrome.

Oh. One other nice feature. All my critical documents and data are up in my Google account. This allows me to move from Chromebook to Chromebook. Meaning that if I somehow destroy my current machine, I can buy another device, log in, and pick right back up where I started. It’s not a pure “cloud” experience, but there’s enough that I can recover quickly in case of a disaster.

For me a Chromebook is the Mary Poppins of personal computers, being practically perfect in every way.