Need An Affordable Laptop for Black Friday? Buy a Chromebook

Google Chrome OS-powered Chromebooks aren't for everybody. We get that - they don't come with much storage, they don't come with too many functionalities, but if you're a student or a parent of one, Chromebooks can serve a purpose as bare-bones, lightweight laptops that you can buy for less than three hundred dollars.

Even without Black Friday pricing taken into account, Chromebooks cost a fraction of what Windows and Mac laptops cost. Consider that many of Apple's MacBook Air thin-and-lights cost over a thousand dollars, and Windows laptops about $500 or thereabouts. But with Black Friday pricing now in force, you can get machines such as Asus' 13.3-inch Chromebook for just $199.99 via Groupon - this is 20 percent off the original price of $250 for a machine that comes with an Intel Celeron processor, 2 GB RAM, and a 16 GB solid-state drive. These specs are anything but sexy, but Chromebooks, reiterating a previous point, are not for everyone.

Another benefit to take note of is the ability to use Chromebooks to work offline - this could be great for those who don't always have Internet connections to work with. And since these machines are usually designed for students, you don't need to worry about your school-age kid stuffing their hard drive with all sorts of games and non-school-related programs. Likewise, students mostly won't be tempted to do the same, due to the small SSDs Chromebooks typically come with.

Still, there's a way to work around the above limitation, and that's cloud storage. Earlier this week, and in preparation for Black Friday, Google announced that it is offering 1 TB worth of cloud storage, free of charge, to all Chromebook buyers between the time of announcement and the end of the year. The storage is free for two years, making this a fantastic value deal for holiday shoppers in the market for a simple, yet snappy machine like a Chromebook.

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