Which Chromebook?

I was looking at the HP Chromebook 11. Does it run roll20 alright? Can it do the music, webcams, and the game? I also want to know if I can run cutepdf writer on it. I want to view pdfs while the game is running.

I've got the Samsung ARM Chromebook which uses the same processor as the HP Chromebook 11, and Roll20 runs fine on that (though the 11.6" screen does limit you a bit). Webcam and music work well, though you probably want to use a headset for the best results, just as you would with any other machine. Chromebooks have a built in PDF viewer, so you'll be able to switch to a different tab or window and read your pdfs while Roll20 is running. However, I just want to make sure you understand that applications written for Windows like CutePDF won't run on Chromebooks, which use a different operating system called ChromeOS. They're brilliant devices (I've now added a desktop Chromebox as I love my Samsung Chromebook so much), but you won't be able to run things like Microsoft Office or Windows games directly. Another notable limitation is that Microsoft haven't produced a Skype client for ChromeOS, and pulled the plug on a third party application that had Skype support. However, Google Hangouts work fine, are better anyway in my opinion, and you can also run Roll20 inside one if you want.

I should have just gotten a laptop. It runs roll20 slowly, and doesn't have video chat for QQ international. The closest it comes is google hangouts.

Ah, I use Google Hangouts anyway, so was happy with that. Yes, spending more on a full Windows or Mac laptop would give you a faster machine, but for the same price I think you'd find performance to be similar. Generally, I find browsing on the Chromebook to be significantly faster than on an equivalent Windows netbook.

The HP 11 is the one I use, and it's not faster. At least I raced an i5 lap the other day of the same price when my friend brought it over. He used that the whole session rather than using my chromebook. Though my chromebook was smaller, and I still like it better than having a third monitor for my desktop.

I'd love to know where you can buy an i5 laptop for $279! I think the HP 11 will grow on you the more you use it. That's certainly been the experience in my family. I'm now using a Chromebox as main desktop (that is faster, but more expensive) which runs Roll20 beautifully, driving a 1900 x 1200 monitor. My wife and mother have also switched to Chromebooks. They are more limited (currently) than Windows or Mac machines, but they are wonderfully hassle free.

I've had my eye on one of these. My main concern is photo editing. We'll not photos as such but maps and tokens I work with for roll20 how do you manage those with the Chromebook

There's a free Chrome web app called Pixlr Editor from Autodesk which works very well. It has layers and filters like Paint.Net, etc., and you can crop and resize very easily. Even better, you can open an image from a URL, so you can pull in an image that you find on the web very easily. To make it doubly useful I've installed an extension to Chrome called Pixlr Grabber . This is available from the top right of my browser at all times. I can select any image on the web, or a screen capture of a selected area, and open it immediately in Pixlr Editor. Incredibly convenient, and to be honest better than the way I had been doing it before. (Saving images to disk first, then opening in Paint.Net and editing them.) You could try both these out in Chrome on a Windows machine if you like. Not as powerful as Photoshop of course, but certainly powerful enough to manipulate images and tokens for Roll20. I'm not suggesting ChromeOS devices are suitable as your only machine (yet). I have a fast Windows 7 box which I need to boot up if I want to use something like Campaign Cartographer. But as a second machine, and particularly as a light, silent, laptop with good battery life that supplements your main desktop, the ARM Chromebooks are really, really nice. The Haswell ones coming out soon will have fans (which the ARM ones don't) so they won't be completely silent, but they should have even longer battery life and about twice the processing power.

That's great thanks. What you've described is what i would use it for essentially. I do most of my actual gaming on my desktop pc which will probably continue but I think the chromebook will suit my around the house needs so to speak. Thanks again