Awesome for 89, Recipe for destruction

A couple weeks ago I bought a Hisense Chromebook off a Woot deal. At $89 it was stupid cheap and I had no high expectations for the laptop.  It’s primary intended use was for races, to allow people to sign up on site or check results post race.  I never messed with a Chromebook before but I heard they are used by other timers in these roles very effectively.

So I started playing with it.  It did not take long for me to be impressed.  The laptop is light and seems to have decent build quality.  The Chrome OS takes a little getting used to but the learning curve was short.  The battery life is pretty insane, 7-8 hours which seems legit from my testing so far. The thing that impressed me the most was it’s ability to stream video, despite it’s low cost.  I was watching full screen YouTube videos last night effortlessly.  I really like this little Chromebook and will probably look to grab more if they pop up on Woot again in the future.

Did you know you can track your YouTube subscriber numbers in real time?  Me either.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with as the cause of the Egyptian airline plane that went down over the weekend.  I saw a story this morning that said some things they are finding point to some sort of explosion bringing it down.  However if this was a planted bomb I would think the responsible terrorist group would have been publicly beating their chest, taking responsibility for the tragedy.  The fact that the plane departed from Paris makes the terrorist angle seem more probable based on recent history.

Even if the planes demise is proven to not be terrorist related I have no doubt many will use this as an opportunity to fan the flames of hate and fear that are already burning at a high level.  Those two emotions are the primary ingredients used to manipulate and control the masses.