Sunday, February 15, 2026

Another Purchase for the Upcoming Trip

I'm kind of hoping to do a number of road trips this year, including several on a motorcycle.

Which means working on a laptop.

My current laptop -- a 2018 11.6" Dell Chromebook -- isn't bad for what it is, and in fact it's more computer than I absolutely, positively must have for doing a little work on the road. 8Gb of RAM, which is nice, and it's a touchscreen that can be used as a tablet, even though I never do that. But the screen is just too small. I think I paid $45 for it, refurbished, about four years ago. In fact, I bought two of them, and one of them is still Tamara's home machine.

The HP Chromebook arriving Tuesday is newer, and has a bigger solid state drive, but has the same CPU and less RAM (4Gb), and no touchscreen. And it cost more -- $60 refurbished. But it has a 14" screen, which I consider essential. My eyes are even worse than they were four years ago, and I always thought the 11.6" was unsatisfactory.

Since I have the older Chromebook as backup, I may install Linux Mint on one of them, as I prefer that work environment. That involves opening the machine up to remove a write protect screw so I can flash the BIOS. I didn't want to try that without a second laptop available. The old Dell has the built-in "ability to run Linux apps," but it just isn't the same.

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