Review - Lenovo 300e Chromebook

We've got a lot of Chromebooks going on here. This one is my daughter's Lenovo 300e which is ostensibly to be used for school work aSometimes, anyway. Notice the power cord. It typically isn't charged when it needs to be. 

Children...

Here are the stats: 

• Screen Size: 11.6 inches
• Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
• Processor Model: Intel Celeron 
• Processor Model Number: N4000
• Processor Speed (Base): 1.6 GHz
• Solid State Drive Capacity: 32 gigabytes
• System Memory (RAM):  4 gigabytes
• Graphics: AMD Radeon R4
• Operating System: Chrome
• Battery Life: (up to) 10 hours

This Chromebooks greatest weakness is its strongest feature: the storage space. Being designed for Education, children should not be saving stuff to the hard drive. The machine is meant for the cloud. And as a cloud-based machine, it does very well. The wi-fi is solid, as is the Bluetooth. 

As a sub $300, sometimes sub $200 machine, it has some lacks which make it a true cloud machine. There is no HDMI or Ethernet port. 

The speakers are mildly ok, which is actually desirable in the classroom. It does have a headphone jack which is the preferred method of listening for students. The stereo headphone jack also has microphone capabilities. The screen has the same performance factors as my HP-14dk1000 laptop in a smaller format, locked in at 1366x768. For schoolwork, this is just fine due to the assumed connectivity issue. Students won't plug into their phones and such for images of high enough resolution to make a difference. 

It has 2 USB A and 2 USB C ports, where one of the USB C ports is used for charging. Battery life is great if your child charges it. It also includes a standard camera and microphone, built-in. They are fine for Zoom or Google Classrooms. The lappy is rounded out with a micro-SD card slot. 

Normally I don't mention the frame or case, but the frame is solid with no flex and the case has a variety of textures for easy gripping. 

Performance is nice for basic Google Drive Work. It will run good-sized videos at a decent rate. At least for 1366x786 resolution.

As an educational laptop, it doesn't have guest mode or other features. It is a managed device. If you purchase one of these "refreshed" or used, it should be unassociated with the school district. If it isn't, I would suggest returning it. School districts have a protocol in place to release products for "refreshed" or "renewed" sales, it's worth money to them. If you find your "renewed" Chromebook has an administrator account, it is probably one of the zillion computers lost or misplaced by a child. It probably won't be worth the effort of "fixing" it even if you find such things to be trivial. 

Try a reputable reseller if at all possible. 

Review - Acer CB311-10H Chromebook

I have several Chromebooks to support my websites and my kid's educational needs. I will be looking at the Acer CB311 series of machines, but today I am reviewing the Acer CB311-10H. 

The black CB311 on the left, as compared to another 311 model on the right.

Display size: 11.6 Inches
Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768 Pixels
RAM: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 64 GB SSD
Graphics Coprocessor: Intel UHD Graphics 600
Wireless: ‎802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth

This is a sub-$300 machine, very often coming in at a little over $225 on sale. It's a lightweight machine for basic computing. At 2.42 lbs (1.79 Roman Catholic) the 7.83 x 11.65 x 0.71 inch machine feels solid. It even passes my one-hand carry test, where the machine still responds to the keyboard and trackpad while walking around. It doesn't flex at all. It's a rubberized, bombproof basic. 

The wi-fi is good and it has built-in Bluetooth capabilities. It features two USB ports, a pair of USB C ports, one of which is for charging, a micro-sd card reader, and a headphone jack. There is no large card reader or Ethernet port, which really shouldn't surprise you at this price point. 

The 11.6-inch diagonal screen feels well proportioned to this laptop but is on the small side. The resolution is capped at 1366x786 which isn't horrible on 11.6 inches. It plays video well enough but you can forget about 4k even though the dual processors and graphics card could maybe do it. It is also not a touchscreen, so there is that.  

The standard laptop camera and mic pair are fully functional and work rather well. However, you won't be mixing A/V on this machine without Linux. 

The one kick in the pants right out of the box is the speakers. It has two but they seem very poor on the first boot. Oddly, if you run the update they actually improve. I am not sure why this is, but it was a nice save by Acer. Granted, these are laptop speakers. Don't expect too much. Running Youtube or YouTube Music natively is nice and the machine does an adequate job of audio rendition. It's not like you work in a dance club. 

The other downsides are the lack of a mic jack, HDMI, and the previously mentioned Ethernet port. Well, it was cheap. USB do-dads are an option but I only use an external mic even though the internal mic and camera are nice. 

The CB-311-10H is not a touchscreen unlike other 311 models. 

Additionally, the lappy runs Android Apps and of course has all of the Google Drive features that are standard on modern Chromebooks. I also have Ubuntu 16.04 running in Crouton, so while the 4 GB of memory seems light, it is functional for basic work. 

All and all, this basic sub $300 laptop earns a solid 3 stars. 

App Review - DriveThruRPG Library

A few posts ago, I mentioned how the cloud saved many of my books in digital form. On logging into DriveThruRPG, I suddenly realized how many books that is. I counted to 100 and stopped. The website will pack up 10 files at a time so downloading them would be laborious. 

I also happened to replace my old Chromebook with a new one that will happily load Android apps, which lead me to the DriveThruRPG Library App in the Google Play Store or their website. It's a game changer and labor saver. 

Although this review is of the Android App, it comes in a variety of flavors including Windows, Mac and iOS. 

When you open the app, it asks you to log in. After that, it will sync up your purchased items in your library. 

Clicking a name will do one of two things. If it is a single file, it will open it. If there are versions of pdfs or multiple files, it will give you a list.  

The software can open the file one of two ways, in a browser on a Chromebook or within it's own build in pdf viewer. 

The build in PDF viewer is sharp looking an responsive. The main difference between browsing in a browser or dedicated PDF viewer in Android is you loose the ability to print. That was probably a bridge too far for DriveThruRPG to create in their viewer. Other than that one missing feature it's robust, including smooth rendering, table of contents or bookmark views. It's nice. 

All and all, I give it 5 of 5 Stars. 

The only negative I could find was that the storage directory is not easily accessible for file access or manipulation. That isn't really a knock on DriveThru's Library app as this would happen with almost all Android Apps because of the way that a Chromebook emulates the Android Environment. If you want to get at the files directly, open them in the browser and save them to your downloads. The only reason I can think of to do this would be to back them up to media or a different cloud environment. 

.jar files under XFCE, especially for Chromebooks

Good Evening, I recently purchased some wonderful software from Inkwell Ideas and came across a little hiccup. Under XFCE, for some reason, I cannot use the GUI window to flag my .jar as an executable.

It's not a huge deal, but some versions of Linux simply have a checkbox. I like easy. The "hard way" of opening or running a .jar file is to open the terminal and type:

java -jar filename.jar

Not so hard, I guess. But what if I simply want to double click that .jar file and have it open for me? The command is:

chmod +x filename.jar  

Reading the command makes me chuckle. "put the x in the box" is the command. Why not an easy little box. This is handy terminal usage information for all .jar files from Minecraft to Hexographer. One note on HexOgrapher is don't forget the little "o" between x and g. For whatever reason, I say "Hexgrapher" and then want to type it that way. It does not work, don't bother doing that.

I can't wait to review this software. It looks amazing. If you are wondering how you came to be here from MeWe, I am the author at These Old Games. The Unpwnd website is my tech site, which is not typically useful to RPG and OSR gamers. Not much can go wrong with pen and paper, so I like to keep them separated.

The machine that started it all...

In December 2010, I started a website called Pretender to the Power. I was recently back to school and thought I had a little free time on my hands. Not so.

Instead of learning how to blog, I spent much of my time with my Asus PC EEE 700 series machine trying to get a handle on Linux.

Today, I found that little machine shoved in a drawer.

I plugged it in and booted up. It worked. It has 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB on an SSD with an 8 GB SD card for supplemental storage space. It runs at 800 MHz and has a 7" screen.

It's a Kindle Fire without the touchscreen. Or a Fire with a keyboard.

Well, not quite. The Fire is on the left. Both had their uses but I find myself using my Chromebook for most tasks. How things change.

I purchased the EEE PC for $138 back in 2009 on NewEgg. It was an open-box return. For less than 200 bucks, I figured I could take a chance. It came with two 8 SD cards, a sleeve, and a charger. Out of the box, it ran Xandros. Xandros served for a time but I outgrew it.

I ended up running Netbook Remix, Ubuntu 10.10. It was simple and clean. And invigorated my curiosity about Linux. I never really looked back. My current Chromebook has a copy of Linux hiding in the Crosh.

I recently updated my C710-2487 Chromebook from 4 to 8 Gb and my first thought was to transfer the old ram to the Asus. No dice. Wrong type.

Of course, I found 3 other 512 mb RAM chips lying around, but with a single slot, that is no help.

I am trying to decide if I will keep my old Asus or let it go. Not sure. In the image above, note the large empty space begging for some new gadget to be installed. Oh... the pain of being a nerd.

The machine that started it all...

In December of 2010, I started a website called Pretender to the Power. I was recently back to school and thought I had a little free time on my hands. Not so.

Instead of learning how to blog, I spent much of my time with my Asus PC EEE 700 series machine trying to get a handle on Linux.

Today, I found that little machine shoved in a drawer.

I plugged it in and booted up. It worked. It has 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB on a SSD with an actual 8 GB SD card for supplemental storage space runs at 800 mhz and as a 7" screen.

It's a Kindle Fire without the touchscreen. Or a Fire with a keyboard.

Well, not quite. The Fire is on the left. Both had their uses but I find myself using my Chromebook for most tasks. How things change.

I purchased the EEE PC for $138 back in 2009 on NewEgg. It was an open box return. For less than 200 bucks, I figured I could take a chance. It came with two 8 SD cards, a sleeve and the charger. Out of the box, it ran Xandros. Xandros served for a time but I out grew it.

I ended up running Netbook Remix, Ubuntu 10.10. It was simple, clean and invigorated my curiosity about Linux. I never really looked back. My current Chromebook has a copy of Linux hiding in the Crosh.

I recently updated my C710-2487 Chromebook from 4 to 8 Gb and my first thought was to transfer the old ram to the Asus. No dice. Wrong type.

Of course, I found 3 other 512 mb RAM chips lying around, but with a single slot, that is no help.

I am trying to decide if I will keep my old Asus or let it go. Not sure. In the image above, note the large empty space begging for some new gadget to be installed. Oh... the pain of being a nerd.

Ubuntu Reinstall on Chromebook

There are many guides to installing Linux on a Chromebook. What I don't see are too many guides on what needs to be done afterwards. Using Crouton gives a very basic experience with Ubuntu, so a lot of things need tweaking.

One step that I often forget is switching to Dev Mode on a Chromebook can require a restart. Also, walking through the Ubuntu install also requires a restart. You can combo these together or do them one at a time. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is the restart option in Ubuntu will turn off your Chromebook. Think ahead.

I find the best way to get software easily is the Software Center. I know it can be buggy and odd, but it is a good place to start. Under the standard install of Ubuntu via Crouton, it isn't there and the terminal is the best option. First things first, make sure your install is up to date:

sudo apt-get update

This should only take a few seconds. Now you can get the software center:

sudo apt-get install software-center

The Software Center takes much longer to download and install. For whatever reason, sometimes the Software Center doesn't work. Simply repeat the command:

sudo apt-get update

The next thing I hit is a proper browser. NetSurf is 3 years old and kind of funky. It works fine in a pinch but doesn't offer a lot of features. I like Chromium.

A good word processor is a must and I am a fan of Libre Write. Write isn't the only game in town, you could simply use Google Docs, Abiword or WPS Writer. WPS Writer has the look and feel of MS Word, Abiword is a stripped down word processor which is easy to use and distraction free.

Stay tuned for more ideas of how to extend your Chromebook's usefulness.

The Strange Chromebook XFCE Glitch

This morning, I had some trouble with my version of XFCE on my Chromebook. Tab-Alt stopped working, the menu bar had vanished, the programs opened would not keep focus and the cursor was either X or invisible.

How I hate messing with a perfectly good distro. The solution is rather easy. Delete your ~/.cache/sessions directory and the functions come back after logoff/reboot. How simple.

Of course, I forgot you can't rm directories and needed to try three times before I remembered the rm -r modifier. So the actual command is above.

Whew! Thank god for Ubuntu and XFCE's easy of use. If this was Windows, I'd be screwed.

Incantato, il mio vecchio amico Alsamixer!

If you use Duolingo on a chromebook, you may have microphone problems. I tinkered around with the settings and chromebooks do not allow websites to access your microphone and camera by default. Change that by going into settings and Privacy.

Now for the surprise. This didn’t completely fix my problem. I did a little more searching and found that Alsamixer is the key. Press crtl+alt+t to pop open a new crosh tab. Type shell and enter.

Bamb! Alsamixer almost like linux. That shouldn’t be a surprise. One issue I did encounter was the function keys wouldn’t work even when I used the function key. Not all is lost. For some reason the search key needs to be pressed to invoke the function keys.

No problem. Press it with your desired function key. Escape to exit. 

I like Duoling to keep up on my Spanish, but it occurs to me that it is also useful for my horrible Italian. Duolingo lets you select multiple languages at the same time. I have no idea if there is a limit to the number, but I thought that I would stick to the two I know pretty well. 

New chromebooks are much better than the one I have. I'm going to start shopping for a new one soon. 

Next → Stupid Saucy and XFCE Minecraft Trick

Installing Minecraft on a Chromebook is simple. Get Crouton, install Saucy and XFCE then get stuck. Why stuck?

You need to change the permissions of the Minecraft.jar to be an executable.

On many versions of Ubuntu, it is a simple matter of right clicking and checking the “make executable” check box. Using the standard Thunar XFCE file manager, that isn’t an option.

You have a couple of choices here. Installing a new file manager is a possibility, but if you are running XFCE or other light version of Linux, maybe you simply don’t want to do that.

This is a great chance to use the terminal to do what you want. The command needed is “sudo chmod +x”.


As you can see from the screenshot, I am using XFCE on a Chromebook, so my directory line is a little different.

Terminal Refresh - Chromebook Users and Terminal

Years ago, I wrote a terminal cheat sheet over on pretendertothepower.com I think it is time for an update.

One command that I misunderstood from the beginning was sudo. This concept troubled me as there is a root account, which is sort of analogous to being an admin on Windows. Windows is bad news, because the admin account is so handy, or worse, required to do many standard things. This is not the case in all the various forms of Linux. xPud is a notable exception as you are always logged in as root.

By way of example, in Windows, the Admin account will not allow you to delete critical files from your system. At least, not without a lot of effort. Linux will happily allow the root user to delete ANYTHING!

Linux Rule One: If you don't know what outcome you need, root is NOT the tool for you.

On the other hand, you can gain temporary access to elevated privileges with the sudo command. This is actually the correct method for gaining privileges. Let's say you want to install some software, and you intend for all users to access it. The sudo command allows a user to gain privileges using their own password, not the root account password. The process creates a log of what is done in /var/log/auth.log; if mistakes are made, you can easily figure out what and when it was done.

In this example of sudo, we are going to install gedit. But we need to get ready for it.

sudo apt-get update

This command will tell your system to go and check what versions you have against what versions are available on the servers. It installs nothing. This is very important, because your linux computer has a local list of software available and it could be out of date. Update, update, Update!

The command for installing is:

sudo apt-get install gedit

Linux is made up of packages of software, in discrete chunks to make it more useable. The command apt-get install will put these packages on your system and make them useable.

You can go ahead and try to run both commands without the sudo. It will throw a nasty looking error.

Ok. Now we have gedit installed. We can open gedit without the sudo command. Type

gedit

As you can see, gedit is a very basic editor. We are going to use our elevated privileges and use gedit to do something a normal user cannot do. I am using a Chromebook with Crouton and I would like my Linux system to default to the $HOME/Downloads directory.

Let's fix this. Type sudo gedit .config/user-dirs.dirs to open the protected .config file.

What is not shown is all the activity in the terminal. At this point, since terminal opened gedit with elevated privileges, you should not close the terminal window.

Go ahead and change the text $Home/Desktop to $Home/Downloads.

I changed them all, but obviously you don't need to do that. Click save. You should see some activities in the terminal window.

Tomorrow we will look at using sudo for other purposes.

Chromebook's Task Manager

I have recently been suffering from some lockups and crashes. The need for a task manager was incredible and I lamented the lack of one.

How wrong I was. The hot key is Esc+Shift. Well. I feel stupid.

What I discovered using the task manager was that Adblock Plus was eating my RAM. Google Drive Sync, the ability to use and edit drive documents offline is also chewing on my memory.

As valuable as I find Adblock, I decided it to turn it off.

We shall see what happens.

Chromebook and Ubuntu - How do I right click?

If you are using Crouton on a Chromebook, there will come a day where you ask "How do I right click?" With Chrome, you tap with two fingers. In Ubuntu, this does work.

Nothing special is needed. Just hold the ctrl button and click. This also works with any Ubuntu variant and a Mac single button mouse.

Good to know, eh?

Multi Day Chromebook Offline Test Part 3

My questioning mind. Google Drive stores files locally. I wonder where? Could I find those files and drop them on a jump drive to edit elsewhere? I can’t see them anywhere on the hard drive and since this is an offline test of the Chrome OS, I don’t want to connect or fire up Ubuntu to poke around.

My other question is why doesn't the spell check work? I noticed that the spell checker for the Chrome Web Browser is working, but that function is apparently different than the spell checker for Drive files. I find it baffling; you would think they are the same tool.

The other funny thing is, I can’t delete drive files. I am sure that is a safety feature, but in messing around, I have created several “Untitled Documents” that I can't ditch. That is maddening to a file freak. Why can't I delete?!?

Well, I guess some mysteries in life are good.

Aw, who am I kidding. I am so gonna Google the answers later. 

Multi Day Chromebook Offline Test Part 2

As my multi day test of my Chromebook’s offline I noticed that I have some curious behaviors. Dropbox happily stores and updates information on my Chromebook hard drive by virtue of either manually downloading via the Chromebook’s App or automatically via Ubuntu’s capabilities.

Strangely, when I click Chrome’s Dropbox App, I am told I am offline.

I know that. The App doesn't do any caching locally even though the files are all present and accounted for. I have to manually navigate to the folder and open the files.

Some files open natively such as .jpegs or .pdfs. MS Word files open in Quickoffice, not Drive. From the Drive’s Open menu, I can't even access those files.

I could copy and paste information from Quickoffice to Drive, but that is just weird.

Or is it? I have to ask myself “why are you using both Dropbox and Drive?”. Well, the answer is Dropbox offered features that Drive didn’t have when I first starting using them, and now that each has more features, I am using them wrong.

I have 5 gb of space on Dropbox and over 100 gb on Drive. I should be using Drive all the time. I just can’t do it, because there are items I want to be available offline that drive does not handle. A copy of the Ubuntu installer for Minecraft. I suspect Drive wouldn't like that file at all.

Drive is a different sort of animal. It isn’t the beast of burden that Dropbox is. Dropbox stores data while Drive creates data. Someday I will adapt and figure it all out. 

Multi Day Chromebook Offline Test Part 1

I am currently offline today, but still wanted to do a little writing. Google Drive is an excellent writing tool and the offline capabilities are great. Drive offers a snap shot of my current files and the last time they updated.

In theory, I guess I could lose some work by not syncing or syncing in the wrong way but I won’t be doing this today.

According to my indicators, I have two hours of battery life from a fresh charge. Normally, this is four or more hours, but I am using 3pm-Player for music and charging my phone at the same time. This is a pretty big drain on the battery. Unpluging the phone and turning off the music cause the indicators to creep back to about 3 hours.

This particular model of Chromebook has a 300 gb hard drive and I feel that this may be killing the battery life. I hear it spin up from time to time while playing music and when the automatic save kicks in.

In offline mode, Drive does have some limitations. I can create a Doc, a Presentation, Spreadsheet or Drawing. Forms, Geogrebra, Python, Source Code and StackEdit are all unavailable. That is ok, I don’t really need those now, but my hyperactive mind wonders if there is a setting or option that I could select to make them active offline. I should Google that… later.

When writing offline, I am hesitant to edit a currently existing file. The reason is I do have my iPhone that is connected to drive and obviously could use another computer to connect. I don’t want to wonder what edit will appear first. Until I get comfortable with this offline cloud stuff, anyway.

All and all, this is pretty good. The tunes are rocking and the internet is safely held at bay.

The Chromebook Post I Always Meant to Write

For Christmas, my wife and I exchanged Chromebooks. I received the Acer C720 and she the HP Pavilion. We were replacing my Asus EEE and her Toshiba A210 and Macbook. We had some doubts about each machine as we were used either Ubuntu, Vista or OS X. However at the $200 price point, we thought we'd take a chance.

It's 145 days later and the report back from my wife is excellent: her Chromebook is used daily. Her favorite features are the quick boot time and the easy to use interface. It does nearly everything she needs.

She has two basic problems with her Chromebook. First, she can't connect her iPhone. This is the walled garden problem with iPhones. You just can't do it. The second issue is the lack of good MP3 player software. However, she found Spotify which is excellent on the Chromebook to address the lack of music.

My experience has been completely different. I am a power user and I was very concerned with the lack of offline capabilities, drawing software and photo editing tools. I have taken every step to avoid any problems by installing Ubuntu with Crouton. I cannot convey how easy this was, the Crouton is brilliant.

In my case, installing Crouton was premature. I do enjoy Ubuntu and all the powerful software that comes with it, but I discovered that I needed very few add-ons to make my Chromebook perfect for daily use. The Acer comes with a 300 GB hard drive plus 100 GB of cloud storage via Google Drive. I never have a lack of music. In fact, I can use Google Drive to store my basic music collection and download it to either my Chromebook or iPhone from my desktop. My player of choice is 3PM-Player, it reminds me of the old CD Player found with Windows 2K or Mac OS 9.

In the first few weeks of using my Chromebook, I was pining away for GIMP or Photoshop. Then I noticed that I was firing up Ubuntu and GIMP to do really basic editing. I guess I am more addicted to power tools than I thought. Talk about killing a fly with an axe. Recently, I added Pixlr to my machine and it meets most of my day-to-day needs. The Photo in this post was edited using Pixlr. The touchpad is not the tool for photo editing, but even a cheap mouse fixes this issue.

The only other downside is the "lack" of offline software for the Chromebook. The Chrome Store has tons of offline software, but for the longest time, it was hard to find. Recently, the Store added a checkbox filter for locating offline software which corrects the problem, sometimes. There are software vendors that try to sneak online stuff into the offline category, but those offerings stand out like a sore thumb.

I am really very pleased with our Chromebooks, I am starting to think of Ubuntu as a security blanket. I just can't let it go. Not now. But everyday, I'm learning to love my Chromebook more and more.

Notes about installing Crouton on a Chromebook

I opted for the Unity interface for Ubuntu. HowToGeek has a great set of instructions.

At the end of the install, you have a very basic Unity interface. Everything useful is missing. The absolute easiest way to fix this is to get the Software Center.

Open Xterm by pressing ctrl-alt-t. Now type in sudo apt-get update. Wait. The next command is sudo apt-get install software-center. Wait again. There is no icon again, so go to lens and search for it.

That is all there is to it. Get installing.

My short list of software is:
Firefox
Chromium (to match Chrome)
Stellarium (to match Chrome's Planetarium software)
Dropbox
VLC Player
Restricted Extras
Inkscape
Libre Office (Search for LibreOffice and scroll down a bit for the suite)
Document Viewer

At the end of the day, you will need to "reboot" Ubuntu to all changes to go into effect. Click the gear and click the restart option. This will eventually return you to Chrome. Go ahead and open the shell and type sudo startunity again.

Just 5 Things: Google Drive

This weeks edition of Just 5 Things covers Google Drive.

1. Google Drive is a cross-platform cloud storage solution.
2. Google Drive supplies 5 GB of space for free.
3. Drive supports the following files types: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Portable Document Format, Apple Pages, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, TIFF, DXF, SVG, EPS, PS, TrueType, XPS, ZIP, RAR, TXT, CSS, HTML, PHP, C, CPP, H, HPP, and JS.
4. You can edit most supported files.
5. Google drive will someday love Linux.