Google Chromebook in China?

[Chengdutch]

Hey guys ,

I was wondering if anyone owns a chromebook in the forum and can tell me its functionality (since alot of apps run through google)

I will move to Chengdu in 2 weeks and i own a chromebook , if chromeOS doesnt work I will install linux before I fly.

[Rick in China]

Good question and I haven’t heard it asked here before. I haven’t run ChromeOS and havne’t researched it in depth, however:

From what I understand you wont have any issue with an already configured Chromebook, ie. if you’re looking to activate or update, you’ll likely have connectivity issues in China.

Once your box is good to go elsewhere, travelling to China only really means you can’t use the blocked services – which are probably the common Google services you’d expect, like search/mail/youtube…the best bet is to get a VPN if you’re “moving” to Chengdu, because long-term, a VPN is gold. I used StrongVPN for ages (since 2007?) but recently changed to ExpressVPN, and used the tag from .. shit, another forum member and we did escape-the-room IRL together .. yeah, I used that when signing up, gave him and me both a free month, here’s mine 😀

Express VPN

Why did I change — well, StrongVPN is very anti-torrenting and often I’d find for some reason (probably alcohol related) I’d be on VPN while uTorrent was still active, and get a warning, eventually warnings became so piled up it was a make or break. StrongVPN is great, I think it’s faster and more reliable than Express from my experiences, but Express gives no fuck about your traffic whatsoever – and to me, that is valuable as well.

[Chengdutch]

thanks ill be sure to install VPN before I leave as I will be there for at least 4 years :p

[j.slemmer]

Smart move Rick 🙂

But thanks for the referral before, can always use those extra months for free. Didn’t know it was you that used it.

[Charlie]

You will likely need to have a VPN running for it to be 100% functional in China, which to me would make it probably not worth the hassle. I feel like non-Chinese Android phones are in a similar situation, where the phone is significant crippled when it’s not running a VPN, but having a VPN constantly running doesn’t seem very practical on a laptop, in my opinion. You might want to look at getting a home router which has VPN software running, so that you don’t need to worry about running a VPN on the laptop. Then everything will just work without any fuss.

As Rick already said, having a solid VPN is essential.

[Author]

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