Anecdotal point: I have the exact same Acer Chromebook 11 that the OP mentions in the article, which I bought for around $150 USD. It all feels like plastic, but has been very durable for me.

Case in point: I was assaulted and robbed last year walking on the street, while carrying this laptop in my backpack. I don't have much else in the backpack and it's a thin one without padded protection. The robber pistol-whipped me and I fell to the ground. He kicked me in the back once (while I have the backpack on). My Chromebook took most of the force. There is still a visible dent on the front cover of the laptop right now, as a result of this. It still works perfectly (other than the dent being an aesthetic issue). This was a year ago and I am still using this Chromebook.

I also had none of the issues you mentioned with keyboard switches, power adapter plugs, etc. Maybe it's a manufacturer thing and not a Chromebook thing? Maybe Acer is better?

I'm glad you survived the assault, but I am curious: he robbed you but didn't steal your laptop? Was it too cheap for his taste?

A laptop you need to fence (small chance of getting caught) and potentially need to wipe/unlock it depending on security settings. Cash OTOH is easy.

Took my wallet. Didn't take my phone or backpack. Just after the cash.

Acer should hire you as their spokesperson.

You should never give that chromebook away, it may have saved your life!

What did you lose in the robbery? What city was this in?

SF Bay Area; near a BART station.

I think "mugged" is the better word here.

Sam Vimes' Boots theory of socio-economic unfairness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...

I'm loathe to go down this rabbit hole, but I have anecdotal experience here. My wife convinced me to buy a pair of what I thought was very expensive boots. (Wolverine 1000 Mile boot). They are nice, and supposed to last "a very long time."

There's a hidden cost though. I recently had them re-soled and had to buy some laces (this is after about a year and a half of wear) and the cost of re-soleing the boots was also very expensive! I'm not sure I am saving much over the cost of regularly buying less expensive boots.

The key to shoes lasting long is taking care of them. Don’t wear them in the rain. Give them a break evey couple of days. Most importantly you have to keep polishing them. At least once a week. If you take care of the upper leathers of a shoe, they can last pretty long, not to mention that any shoe with good arches is worth it.

For throwaway shoes that you cant resole, I like Ecco. Excellent!!

What good are boots that you can't wear in the rain and you have to polish more than 50 times per year? Even if polishing only takes 12 minutes, you'll spend more than 10 hours per year just on maintaining that one pair of shoes/boots.

I just want my feet covered; I don't want another hobby...

Personally, I've found that polishing my boots is a really enjoyable task, it's quite cathartic to sit there for a few minutes with dubbin and a brush and clean your boots up.

It's funny, because I used to hate polishing my school shoes as a kid.

I only polish my boots around once a month, so it's a couple of hours a year. I spend more time sewing up clothes and sewing on replacement buttons, which I've also discovered now that I'm an adult is a cathartic activity.

There's something nice about trying to distance yourself from the throwaway disposable consumer culture we have now, and actually fixing things.

I guess I've become a hipster.

I don't want to put words in your mouth or anything but I find a lot of enjoyment out of "menial" tasks as well and attribute it to practicing mindfulness without realizing it.

I recently had to sort huge boxes of legos for a hacker space. It sounded miserable but it really was relaxing just letting the mind blank out.

I should take better care of mine. I've never polished them and they look pretty shabby.

Any tips for polishing? I've got the gear, just never used it.

I know, I know - Youtube is that way. :-)

Use a horsehair brush to get whatever chunks of crap off - I pick up a lot of mud, maybe you do too. Remove any remaining dirt or dust with a wet rag, maybe a little saddle soap if they're really filthy.

Wipe off any lingering water, let the leather dry, and then apply a thin layer of mink oil - work it into the creases, that's where the leather will split if you don't keep it supple.

Let that dry, and then apply a very thin layer of polish with a damp - not wet - rag. Work it into the seams; if it's not under your fingernails, you're not trying hard enough. Once the entire upper is done, give it a few minutes to sit, so the wax can solidify a bit, then buff it lightly with long strokes of the rag. Repeat with another thin layer of polish.

You won't get much of a shine the first time. The temptation is to apply polish more heavily, but then it just gets sticky. Next time, you can buff it more firmly, and next time more firmly still. After a few goes, you'll have enough of a layer built up to develop a proper shine, and then it's just a few minutes of maintenance at a time. You'll never get a really good gleam off anything but black leather, but anything else will still look much better than if you don't put the effort in. Same for any leather that's not full-grain, but it still helps. And don't polish suede! Just brush it.

Mink oil every half-dozen times or so is enough to keep cracks from forming; more often than that and it'll soften the leather too much.

I get ten or more years out of a good pair of boots this way. Dress shoes are more delicate, I suppose, but they'll still do better with proper care than without. Good luck!

How many miles did you put in?

It literally takes me like 3 years and a few 1000 miles before my shoes need resoled...

I have no idea but not 1000 miles. I wear them to work and back. Apparently I'm hard on shoes?

I didn't think they needed to be resoled, but I don't know shoes. My wife is the "fashionista". :-)

I've owned the same pair of Danner Mountain Light II's since 2012 and have never had them resoled or serviced. These boots have been with me to 15+ countries including trekking in India, have been on many, many hikes and all I do is clean and polish them every few months. I estimate I have walked at least 2000km in them, never had any issues. Can't recommend Danner enough.

Dress shoes need a lot more love. The uppers should last at least a couple decades if well cared for, but soles that thin won't.

In my experience, that theory doesn't necessarily hold up in my experience. I've had <$100 boots last longer than proper Made in England Dr Martens.

I guess that is a consequence of fashion becoming the primary driver of cost, rather than actual quality.

Just as a counter point I've got a cheap C720 I got 4 years ago for lightweight mucking about, and it has held up to daily use perfectly fine. I wiped ChromeOS and installed mainline Linux on it, which has great support for it. No problems with the keyboard, screen, power supply, or anything, and I've had to open it to remove the flash-protect screw, and it's survived several moves, travel and outdoor use.

I suppose I could be just lucky, but as is I could probably use it for another 4 years without trouble. The biggest issue is the soldered in RAM which is only 2GB. But that's plenty for emacs, light firefox, and even videos since it's got hardware decoding acceleration.

Seconding the C720, mine runs Arch Linux just fine on 2GB. I only have to be careful not to open too many browser tabs.

How are you treating them? I'm using a 2014 Toshiba Chromebook 2 which is made entirely out of plastic and while it's not in perfect cosmetic conditions it's still 100% functional and doesn't show any signs of impending failure. I've dropped it on hard and soft surfaces alike from table height, and I've had it under 20 or 30 pounds of other objects fairly regularly. The charging cable still makes a good connection but I've been particularly careful not to use the chromebook or the charger as a handle for the other respectively as I've seen so many other people doing. I'm nearly three years into using it and nothing critical has broken.

That's a $300 Chromebook, though. Bought three for the family, two had the screens go bad, their support is non existent.

I find it amazing, but maybe I was just lucky. I bought a cheap plastic HP ultrabook a decade ago and it survived four years of being carried every day on a backpack on the bus and being taken to camping vacations. Sure, it had scratches aplenty, and a couple of broken spots on the outer rim, but it worked fine.

[OP] I've owned this laptop for almost 2 years, and it's been heavily used, first as a work laptop for a year (I used EC2 instances for 'real stuff') and then a home laptop. Still works perfectly and looks fine. We'll see how it holds up...

Anecdotally, I have never has a laptop die in over 20 years except for the backlight failing after many years on my second hand Toshiba T1100 and my aged HP 2510p becoming flaky after a few disassemblies to clean dust out (and attempting to use better thermal paste on the heat sink).

Where are you getting a $300 aluminum Chromebook?

My Asus C100P was around $280 when it was released. It is now down to $230. The 4GB model specifically, because it is my daily driver and I do my dev work on it.

I do "actual computing" on it too, since it is has way more ram and disk than any of my cloud stuff.

Do you still have ChromeOS on it?

Of course not. I've documented some of that: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/

These days you can find a first-gen Chromebook Pixel for about $300 or so:

https://swappa.com/buy/google-chromebook-pixel-1st-gen-lte-u...

If you don't mind that it's four years old at this point, it was by far the best Chromebook I ever used, and my girlfriend is still using it as her daily driver (I gave it to her because I thought it was too nice a piece of equipment to gather dust in a drawer).