I need a new computer. Mine is dyng and I don't want to invest any more money into it. I need help.

[hunter]

64. I love my Chromebook. I hate babysitting expensive laptops.

If someone gave me an expensive Apple laptop, I'd give it away as fast as I could to someone who cared.

My personal desktop computers (and once expensive but not anymore laptops) run Debian. Usually it's with the Mate desktop. I have every computer I've ever owned, and most I've used, emulated on my desktop machine, complete with files and software.

The first electronic computer I built used an 1802 microprocessor. Nothing like "building" a computer today; in those days you soldered and wire-wrapped stuff together, and tried to debug errors caused by the off-spec surplus integrated circuits you'd bought, which were the only sort you could afford. The first personal computer I used for serious writing was an Atari 800. I wrote a lot of software for that and other 6502 machines.

I won't touch Windows unless someone is paying me. I quit using Windows on my own dime at 98SE.

I always do my heavy writing in markdown (pretty much the github flavor), and I write code in the pluma editor. The syntax highlighting is adequate for my needs. It's a lot more fun than vi was.

My first introduction to a real operating system was BSD, back in the later 'seventies. Switching from Windows to Linux was like going home again.

LibreOffice is installed on my Debian machines, but it cramps my writing style with useless distractions. Gotta keep things simple because sometimes I'm stupid. My first draft I'll write as fast as I can think. I edit it later. Only then do I export it to LibreOffice to be digested and made pretty for Microsoft Word or as a pdf.

A useful little markdown editor for Chromebooks is Mado.

All the kids in our high schools get Chromebooks. Teachers love Chromebooks too. My wife's sister teaches high school and requires all assignments be turned in electronically. That means no papers to carry home! If that had been the case when my own kids were in high school, I would have told them to buy their own damned computers if they wanted iTunes. I'd be the mean dad. I had to BUILD my own computers when I was a teen, and I can prove it because I've still got some of them...

Chrome is the only browser that matters anymore. It won the browser wars. The End. These days it seems most web developers are ignoring other browsers. If it works on an Android phone or tablet, and other Chrome browsers, done.