Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

What is the least-expensive in the store these days? Is it really a computer or merely a terminal?

I was browsing a few stores recently (you know those places that actually exist, have an exterior and interior?). I looked at the computers and, being as cheap as I am, sought the least-expensive one. The result:

The Acer C7 Chromebook

The above link goes to the Best Buy site, but I think I was in a Staples or something when I saw it in person. It has an 11.6″ screen, a keyboard, and some memory and processor inside. What kind of processor? Who cares? It seemed to work as I visited the parts of the Internet that interest me.

But can I program it? Well, I can go to Amazon AWS and write programs there. I can go to Google drive and DropBox and Amazon S3 and all those places where I can store all the files I would ever have.

I guess we have once again come full circle. Nice computers are really terminals connected to other computers. I can write novels and poetry and everything on those other computers. It sure is nice of those other people to loan me their computers at no cost. I do, however, have to connect to those other computers, and that might be inconvenient at times.