That worked well... for a while. Then the power cord for the old laptop went bad and it wouldn't charge the battery or power the laptop any more. This wasn't the end of the world because I have a laptop at work that I can bring home any time and use it for whatever I need. But I didn't really like carrying home my work laptop every night, especially because it tempted me to do work... first world problems, I know.
I primarily use computers at home to surf the web and do e-mail; though I have switched to doing almost all e-mail on my smartphone these days. I realized that I don't need a hugely powerful laptop or one with a large screen, like the one that I gave to Nate. So, I started looking around and decided that I would try a Chromebook. If it met my needs, I couldn't go wrong at $250. They even have a version for $199.
The Chromebook, if you aren't aware is basically a small laptop made by Google (about the size of the Mac Airbook 11). Only it doesn't run Microsoft Windows or some Apple OS or even some mainstream flavor of Linux. It actually runs some scaled down version of Linux, but to the user it just runs Chrome... the Internet browser by Google.
Everything that you do in a Chromebook, you do in the browser. It doesn't have a large hard drive or the ability to install software on the device itself. Everything is cloud based. I save all my files to Drop Box or Google Drive (though I can save some files locally on the small built in hard drive, or a thumb drive or SD card). You can create Word, Excel, and Powerpoint compatible files, but you must do it using Google Docs online. You can do g-mail or your normal e-mail, but you must do it online via the Chrome web browser.
The Chromebook is small, light weight and so far has excellent battery life. I really like that mine is quiet, because it doesn't have a normal hard drive, like we're used to, and it doesn't have a fan. The main limitation is that if you are somewhere that doesn't have WIFI available, then you are severely limited with what you can do on the Chromebook, because everything it does is cloud based in the Chrome browser. This isn't a concern for me because I rarely ever take a PC anywhere with me and if I do, WIFI is usually available. Google is getting better at making more things available in offline mode. This problem is minimized in that I can always borrow Nate's laptop or run to the office and grab my work laptop if I need to.
There is a Chromebook store where you can download 'apps' or 'extensions' to be able to add some functionality to the Chrome browser (Angry Birds, Mint, Evernote, Internet TV, Kindle Cloud Reader, etc.). The selection here is a bit limited, but it seems to be growing quickly, much like the Google Play store for Android phones a few years ago.
I really like my Chromebook and recommend it for someone on a small budget who is just looking for something to use to surf the web and send e-mails. You can do the other normal computing stuff as well, you just need to find the right cloud based solution for it, like Google Docs. One note of caution, mostly for older folks and you know who you are, just like any small laptop with 11.6 inch screen, you might want to test one out at the store to make sure that if the font is too small, can you adjust it to be big enough to be comfortable for you and still not make the display render everything else too wonky.
Check 'em out: http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices.
I bought the Samsung Chromebook 3.
