Other niceties: display so you can see what your cutting below, a touch-screen, a variable speed router, z-axis settings, dust extraction, and even cloud connectivity to transfer and share your designs.

Check out the video:

Still available for pre-order at $1699 before it goes up to $2099 retail.

We’ll walk you through what you need to know – what’s great, the limitations and how it compares to a traditional Windows, Mac or Linux laptop.

Of course, in the end your own requirements should drive your decision, but there’s a good chance you may have room in your home for a Chromebook.

What Is a Chromebook?

First some basics.  Chromebooks are laptops (typically in a notebook form-factor) running Google’s Chrome OS (operating system). None of the hardware is made by Google but instead by the usual suspects in the laptop world: Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer and Asus. Google makes the OS and many of the apps.

There are quite a few similarities with other OSes – it has an application launcher, a system tray and a taskbar.

But on the other hand, there is no installing applications like you would with other OSes. Instead you either run web-based applications or install extensions into the Chrome web browser. Everything is based in and around the browser.

This is worth restating in another way – you can’t decide to install Photoshop or your favorite text editor or play some PC video game on your Chromebook. If any of those things can be pulled up in a web browser, then sure (assuming they don’t require an above-average amount of memory).

A Chromebook comes pre-loaded with the OS – there is nothing to ‘install’ and near nothing to configure. Turn it on and in seconds you’ll be booted up.

You will need to have or create a Google account in order to log into your Chromebook. And to take advantage of the range of cloud-based services that Google has, you’ll want to create one anyway.

Specifications

Typically, Chromebooks weigh anywhere between 2 and 5 pounds and are less than an inch or so in thickness, i.e. very lightweight and hence, easy to carry around.

Battery life varies by model, but you can typically expect between 6 hours and 14 hours, even with continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi.

Chromebooks usually come with relatively smaller screens, maxing out at around 14 inches with an average resolution of 1366 x 768, which gives you high-definition viewing. You can get much bigger and high-resolution displays as well.

CPU and RAM

Chromebooks come with hard drives ranging between 16 GB and 32 GB. This may not qualify them to function as gaming laptops or video-editing hubs, but they’re perfect for making presentations and doing other work-related tasks. But keep in mind that the philosophy of a Chromebook is that it’s an extension of your computing life in the cloud, and that your data is all stored there.

The processor and the memory (RAM) of your Chromebook play a big role in determining how flawlessly it functions, particularly when multiple tabs are open along with video streaming and gaming.

As far as processors are concerned, the Intel Celeron chips work well, but if it’s high speed that you’re looking for, you’d be better off with a Core i3 processor. These machines come with longer battery life and better responsiveness.

Connectivity

With Chromebooks, you store almost everything to the cloud, but their ports can be limited. Still, the best Chromebooks comes with a variety of connectivity options. Naturally, they all come with Wi-Fi.

A Chromebook that has a memory card slot for you to upload photos from your camera should do well. It should also have several USB 3.0 ports and HDMI support. This makes it easy to display to an external monitor or TV.

Chromebooks typically don’t have a CD/DVD drive.

Price

Price is where Chromebooks shine. You can get a perfectly good Chromebook for under $300. For those who only need a machine to perform all Web-based activities – email, web browsing, video and text chat, and document creation & editing, the a Chromebook makes perfect sense.

Ease of Use

Chromebooks are very simple to use. If you know how to use a web browser and have used any Google apps, then you already know how to use it.

Security

Another advantage Chromebooks have going for them is in the area of computer security. Chromebooks run a Linux-based operating system that is immune to Windows-based Malware and viruses. While this does not mean that it’s some magical 100% secure system, it so far has a very small exposure surface.

Additionally, Chromebooks update their operating system and software/apps in the background automatically. There is no choice in the matter. In this way, you will always have the latest updates to fight both security vulnerabilities and OS bugs.

Conclusion

Chromebooks can make sense to those looking for a low-priced, portable computer for everyday functions such as browsing the Web. Fans and avid users of Google apps and cloud services will find it easy to use it. However, if you rely heavily on desktop software, you will be better off with something more powerful for creating/editing media or even gaming.

What you do get with a Chromebook is a hassle-free computer that is quick to boot and easy to use.

KeySmart prides itself on a precision-assembled product, a process that they show off in a video on their website, but it’s not a false claim. I could tell this as I was going through the steps of disassembling and then reassembling my unit.

Once I put my 3 keys into the KeySmart, I found that I could one of two ways on assembly – either leave the keys loose, or insert as many of the accompanying washers on the screw column so that when you tighten the 2nd bar on, the enclosed keys wouldn’t be able to rotate without some effort on your part. In the loose configuration, your keys are going to be spilling out all the time.

I ended up using the expander to increase the space between the 2 metal bars and to allow for more keys and/or accessories.

As you can see from the accompanying photo, I have those colored rubber overlays on 2 of my keys so I can tell them apart. These add to the ‘size’ of the keys and make it impossible given the length of the KeySmart to fold the keys together like they demonstrate in the product literature. That’s ok – I just made my config loose and squeezed the keys on top of each other instead of side by side.

You can also see in the photo where I’ve attached the KeySmart to my car key’s ring via an included key loop.

There is also an optional USB thumb drive you could purchase that fits on the KeySmart. Or perhaps you may be more interested in the bottle opener.

So do you need a KeySmart? Probably not. However, once you get your keys neatly packed away inside a KeySmart, it sure does look good! You can pick up a KeySmart for about $20 at Amazon or at KeySmart’s website.

Leveraging Notebooks and the Checkbox feature combined with a simple process and template note, I have a simple recurring task or to do list in Evernote synced across my phones, iPad and computers.

Step 1: Create three Notebooks:
_Archive Tasks : notebook for archived weekly task list
_Current Tasks : notebook for weekly task list and current shopping list
_Longer Term Tasks : notebook for longer term projects

Step 2: Create a standard template note:
Next I created a standard template note for an entire week starting with “Top Items for Monday”, then I split by categories such as Work and Personal then I have a standardized format for the individual tasks.

Breaking this down further, I start with “Top Items for Monday” followed by “Top Items for Tuesday” through Friday then I combine Saturday and Sunday into “Top Items for the Weekend” as my weekends tend to be less structured than Monday through Friday.

Under each “Top Items” header I include my Work, Gizmos for Geeks and finally Personal headers and repeat that under each “Top Items” header.

Finally, I use the Checkbox feature in Evernote to add my individual tasks. Each task has a specific purpose and clear step to perform. For example, instead of having a task that says “Do Taxes” I’ll have several individual tasks such as “Gather Work A W2”, “Gather Bank A Income Statement” and “Purchase Tax Software from www.taxsoftware.com”. Splitting larger tasks into consumable bites and providing details (phone number to call, etc…) to get the task done is critical.

As you can see by the screenshot, I have a daily personal task where I “Fill out MFP” and it takes on average 5 minutes to perform. MFP stands for MyFitnessPal which is a cloud service that tracks what you eat. I also try to keep track of estimated times so I do not overcommit tasks each day. In my experience, if my estimated time is more than 6 hours I will not accomplish everything on my task list due to pop-up tasks, general daydreams and life.

If I have an appointment I prepend the time to my note. For example, if I have a 1 on 1 meeting with my boss at 9a I would enter the following (note the phone number I needed to call is included):
9a : 1v1 Meeting with Boss call (555) 555-5555 (30 mins)

Finally, I do nightly and weekly processing to keep my list up to date.

Monday night through Friday night, I make sure all the tasks for that day have been completed. If not, I will move uncompleted tasks to the next day and re-arrange my task list. Remember, if I schedule more than 6 hours in a day I tend not to complete the list so I may need to re-arrange the rest of the week’s task list.

Additionally, I will review the next day’s tasks and update the task list with any meetings or tasks that have come up and must be completed.

On a weekly basis, on the weekend I copy my “Weekly Template” note to the following format:
YYYY-MM-DD – Weekly Tasks (ex. 2014-12-29 – Weekly Tasks)

The screenshot in this article is of my “Weekly Template” note. Next, I make sure all tasks were completed for the previous week and if not add to the newly created note. Finally, I add any new tasks that I need to accomplish during the week.

One last thing to note, I do not record every task item that I have. If a task item pops up and I can work on and complete it right away, I will not include that for example. I do not include standard task items such as “Brush teeth” either. The goal is to have an efficient and easy to consume task list that, when I have time, I can tackle an item quickly and efficiently.

This process combined with Evernote has been working in it’s current incarnation for the past four months. I do need to point out that some of the concepts are borrowed from Getting Things Done and Jenny Blake.

Hopefully this strategy will help you wrangle your tasks lists in. If you use a different strategy with Evernote, please leave a comment or send a tweet to @dfelteau as I’m always looking for tweaks to have a better recurring task list.

Being in the IT and information security field, this is a subject that we speak about constantly, and yet while there are thousands of articles online, there were no books that nicely encapsulated all of that knowledge.

Every week, thousands of passwords and/or identities are stolen, and those are only the breaches we know about. Don’t become a statistic – follow the easy-to-follow advice in our book to greatly reduce your exposure.

As a holiday special, we’re giving it away tomorrow, Christmas Day, 25 Dec 2014! 

We’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have a few minutes, help out other shoppers by posting a review on Amazon.

Alternatively, you could take a look at Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick for $39.  The Fire TV Stick does much of what the Chromecast does by connecting to your geek’s HDMI port allowing them to watch Netflix, Amazon Instant Video (Chromecast won’t allow you to watch that), Hulu Plus, YouTube, music and more.

Are you looking for a perfect socking stuffer?  If so, look no further than the Kinivo ZX100 Mini Portable Speaker which is currently $13.99 at Amazon (normally $30.95).  This ultra-portable speaker has a uniquely compact format where the speaker expands when you press on the top.  ERCD or Expansive Resonator Construction Design provides very good low frequency output for the size and price.  Finally, the speaker comes in a variety of cool colors from Purple to Pink to Blue to Red.

For less than $50 you can now get a Kindle for $49 at Amazon (usually $79) for your literature geek.  You can store thousands of books and even borrow thousands of books with an Amazon Prime account.

Less than $100
Another extremely geeky gadget for the gift guide – Philips Hue Lux Connected Home LED Starter Kit for $99.97 at Amazon.  Seriously, a lightbulb?  Yes!  Not only will this light bulb replace your typical 60 watt bulb with only 9 watts, your geek gets total control over the light bulb from their smart phone or tablet.  The Starter Kit has everything your Geek needs including a Bridge and 2 Light Bulbs.

Every geek loves statistics and more and more geeks are into health.  With a Fitbit Wireless Activity Wristband for $99.99 you can combine these loves by giving your geek the gift of quantifying themselves watching calories burned, steps taken, miles moved and sleep time.

Do you often see your geek working on a iPad?  This Pencil by FiftyThree is a digital stylus for most iPad devices for $59.95 and connects via Bluetooth Low Energy (or Bluetooth LE for the geek vernacular).  This is just an absolute beautiful stylus that will be a conversation starter for your geek.

If you Geek doesn’t have an Amazon Prime account, gifting an Amazon Prime account is a no brainer with free two-day shipping, unlimited photo storage, and exclusive access to movies, music and Kindle books.

Less than $200
You want to be a hero to your geek?  Get them a Nest Learning Thermostat (for Geek cred call it a T-Stat) for $199 at Amazon (typically $249).  Every geek wants a Nest as the T-stat learns your behaviors and automatically programs itself and saves energy by turning itself down when you’re away.  If you Geek wants to be in charge they can still remote control the unit from their smartphone, laptop or tablet.

Weather geeks absolutely love the Netatmo Weather Station for Smartphones which costs $149.00.  Tracking the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, indoor CO2 concentration and sound meter and providing real time notifications and graphs for data trending your geek will spend hours checking the data from the Netatmo Weather Station.

If your geek has a place for everything, the Epson LabelWorks LW-600P for $108 brings the label maker up-to-date with bluetooth connectivity to connect your smartphone to the device to allow a truly portable label making experience.  Talk about geeky, you can talk to your smartphone and the label maker will print out what you said.  Too freaking cool!

Over $200
If your geek is a music geek, they’d love the Beats Studio Wireless Over-Ear Headphones for $275.00 from Amazon (list of $379.95).  You get the great deep sound you hear in Beats Studio but in a wireless form factor!  Plus you can can get these in red, blue or standard black with red.  Personally, I also love my V-MODA Crossfade M-100 Over-Ear Headphones for $269.98 from Amazon (retail for $310) which is award winning, well designed and the main headphone used by many professional DJs.  You can’t go wrong with either!

Another great choice for the music geek in your life is the Sonos Connect Wireless Receiver for $349.  This awesome technology easily turns your stereo or home theater into a music streaming Sonos System allowing you to wirelessly play your own music, online music services an Internet radio.  The system is easily expandable without having to re-wire your house.

I’ve really not been a fan of the Microsoft Surface until the latest version – the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 which costs $899.  With it’s Intel 4th Generation Core i5 processor, 12” HD Touchscreen Display, 4GB RAM and 128GB storage running on Windows 8.1 Pro this tablet is powerful enough to replace your geek’s laptop too.  The Surface Pro has finally arrived.

Any price!
Besides gifting a Amazon Prime account for $99, most geeks are particular so you might want to go with Gift Cards from places like Amazon, ThinkGeek, Hammacher Schlemmer, Sharper Image, or Apple iTunes.

Here are a couple of Amazon’s most popular deals:
Breaking Bad Complete Series for $149.99 (50% off)
Seagate Backup Plus 5TB External for $139.88 (46% off)
Samsung 65” 1080p 240Hz 3D Smart LED for only $1497.99 (45% off)
$20-$50 Amazon Gift Card with Sonos components
LG G Watch for $149.99 (35% off)
Canon T5i with Kit Lens for $649 (24% off)

If you don’t have Amazon Prime, now is the perfect time to sign-up for a FREE 30 day trial to cover all of your holiday purchases.

Mobile usage costs are something many of us don’t think too much about when we’re home, but when we go on holiday, we often discover that it’s something we should have considered. Usually we can connect just fine, but hostel and hotel Wi-Fi is usually horrible, or ridiculously overpriced. Likewise, roaming fees can crush an otherwise normal phone balance, leaving even the most careful of us wondering how we managed to pull up such an outrageous bill.

If you’re among the many people who haven’t considered the real costs of their mobile bills and balances while traveling, then this article is for you. We’ll cover standard fees and rates, what to expect from carriers when you’re abroad, and some of the things you may need to do in order to be able to use your number outside of the UK, as certain providers block use outside of home to help prevent cost overages in the event your phone is stolen or lost, and you don’t immediately report it. This article is part of our series on keeping mobile usage costs down.

1) Pay Attention to Fees: As a general rule, mobile usage costs for roaming outside the UK are significantly higher. Typically you’ll spend around 55p plus VAT per megabyte in Europe, and up to £8 per MB elsewhere. To give you an idea of what that data figure means, you can send about 30 email messages of around 15 lines or so on 1MB of data. That’s assuming you don’t have a signature with images, and aren’t sending any photos. Considering that many modern mobiles will snap shots of 8MB and more per image, you could be looking at a data cost of £64 to send one image. Send 11 photos, and you would just as easily buy your special someone a new iPhone 6.

2) Discuss Network Discounts: Contact your network, and see what their plan options are. Some offer reasonable data plans when traveling abroad, which can be especially useful if you’re in Europe often. For places farther afield, you’re likely going to want a special plan. For example, Vodafone will let you use your plan minutes and such in Europe, but you’ll need to pay £3 per day in order to access that. Other carriers, like O2, will let you pay £1.99 per day for a 25MB data limit.

3) Make Sure You’re Not Blocked: Some networks, like Vodafone, will block you from international usage unless you’ve let them know in advance that you’ll be going abroad. Even a short trip into Europe will cause you to be blocked. Obviously you can still connect to Wi-Fi wherever you are, but you wont be able to use your phone for calls or to send and upload data when you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi signal. Of course, if you’re on holiday, that shouldn’t be an issue, as you should be relaxing rather than trying to catch work emails.

4) Think About Your Usage: Honestly, if you need to be connected, then you’ll have to get some sort of plan, but your needs will dictate the plan you choose. For instance, not having a plan, or getting the wrong one could set you back £150 a day or more if you just send a few photos. On the other hand, you could end up paying £3 or more per day for a plan you really don’t need. Consider whether Skype from your hotel or a café isn’t going to be a better use of your money. Often you can save enough for another night’s stay, or a night on the town, depending on where you are. If nothing else, the savings should at least cover a lunch.

5) Think About Going Local: Without exception, it’s always less expensive to pick up a SIM card wherever you’re traveling, and just get a local plan. Most countries offer a pay as you go plan on their local network, and you can get those for next to nothing. You won’t have the same home number for people to call you on until you’re back in the UK, but if you don’t need to be answering business calls, there’s no reason not to get a cheap local SIM. Additionally, if you will be making a lot of local calls, to taxi services, tour companies, or just to stay in touch with your partner or friends, you’ll save quite a bit more and in most cases get better reception by using a local network. Just shop around a bit before you pick up your SIM card to see who has the best plans. This can usually be done online before you leave for your trip.

Just find your network and visit the relevant site for information on what they do and don’t offer. As mentioned earlier, many times you’ll find it’s less expensive and less headache to get local SIM cards when you travel abroad. This is especially true if you’re visiting far away places like Hong Kong, or Mexico.

Disclaimer: This was a sponsored post.

GameUp from BrainPOP

This collection of free games is targeted to students in grades 4 to 12. The website covers a wide range of subjects including math, science, health, and social studies. There are no ads, and kids don’t need to register to play. The site is a curated selection of the best online educational games. The BrainPOP team has evaluated hundreds of games from different companies, and chosen those they felt were the highest quality for this site. Teachers can even view a lesson plan, which explains how they could integrate some of these games into their classes.

Club Penguin

This massive multi-player online game is centered on cartoon penguin avatars. A player’s job is to explore a winter wonderland and test all the mini-games available. All players will earn valuable coins which they can spend on the website’s virtual store. For example, you can buy your character some really nice clothes. Although playing the games is free, at some point you’ll have to buy a subscription to have unlimited access.

Neopets

Neopets is an excellent online platform for kids. It is packed with interactive games. Users will have a virtual pet and the action takes place in Neopia, a virtual world. Suitable for kids of all ages, the website allows you to create up to 4 virtual pets. Earn points by playing various games on the website, and use them to purchase foods, clothes, toys, accessories, and more. These online games will certainly appeal to kids who want to have fun, make friends, and develop their social skills.

Utah Education Network

This site hosts another curated collection of educational and free games from around the Internet. The group at the Utah Educational Network has pre-screened all of the games, ensuring that each of the games they feature is both useful and appropriate for students. They have games that cover every grade level, and every subject. Children find the site to be attractive and easy to navigate. The sidebar navigation lets you select age ranges, and choose between K to 2, 3 to 6, or 7 to 12.

PBS Kids

(also available on iOS)
For younger kids, this is a wonderful site. Some of the games here are educational, while others are just for fun. You can sort the available games by both skill level and subject area. Kids will find many of their favorite PBS characters here, like The Cat in the Hat, Curious George, and Clifford. Each character has a set of learning games for children.  While many of these online games are free, some of them are premium games which require a paid subscription. One outstanding math game on this site is PBS CyberChase.

FunBrain

Kids may not find this the easiest site to navigate, but they enjoy the games here so much they tend to return to the site over and over again. Reading games include such fun options as Grammar Gorillas and Mad Libs Junior. Math games include entertaining games like Math Baseball. There are also online comics and books, which are wonderful. It may not be the easiest site to find what you’re looking for, but there is so much here that your kids are sure to find something they’ll enjoy.

The Internet is packed with educational games for kids, on all the major platforms (Web, phones and tablets, etc.), and this was a mere speck of what’s available out there. Work with your kids to pick the best games and help nurture their built-in love of learning.