Of course, ask a half-dozen people about this subject and you'll get 6 different responses...
Between myself, my wife, my daughter, family, friends, we've had at least 8 CBs. None have failed. My wife is still using (and loving) the 2015 Pixel LS CB I got 5 years ago. Not even the battery has degraded. My daughter used one CB for her entire undergrad program. (I offered to get her a "real laptop" before she started as a Freshman, but she insisted she wanted a CB). The only thing I needed to do was add Eclipse and the Java JDK to it for one of her classes. (The programming nerds in her class were impressed that she was developing Java on a CB.) For graduation, I upgraded her to a Pixelbook CB. I rebuilt her original CB with GalliumOS -- a Linux distro optimized to run CB hardware. It's still running... Chromebooks run Android, Linux, Chrome apps, Windows apps... All except Mac apps. First-world problems indeed... And mostly a religious issue. I'm fine if you use Apple products. But I haven't a solution to suggest in that case! For the record, I have a Pixelbook (the photo), but I also have a DIY tower and a Dell 7710. The CB gives me portability + Pharo. (If you do go back to a CB, just be sure you check the specs: Intel CPU only, and be sure it can run "Crostini" so you get Linux containers.) -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html