[jrockway]

I got my mom a Chromebook. It's the most successful computing experience so far, but I was quite surprised by a few things.

She didn't realize that the password to log in to your computer was the sync'd to her Google password. So she would type some random password 5 times, until the Chromebook said "use your Google password to reset your Chromebook password", and would then log in with that. Every single time.

Some website managed to convince her to switch to developer mode to install a non-web-store extension that overwrites the new tab page and search functionality with ads. Chrome is a little more aggressive about not letting you change the New Tab page these days, asking you occasionally if you still want the extension to control it (even for the new tab page I use, an extension from Google).

But despite that, she got a lot out of the computer, so overall it worked quite well. And we fixed those two issues, so I don't think there are any problems now.

[jff]

> Some website managed to convince her to switch to developer mode to install a non-web-store extension that overwrites the new tab page and search functionality with ads

I'm not even mad, I'm honestly impressed both that your mom went to such lengths and that a website managed to convince a layperson to do such a thing.

[victorhooi]

Wow, that is some seriously impressive social engineering...lol. And some determination from your mother =).

I assume this wasn't a device where she had to open the case and short out some jumpers to enable Developer Mode? =)

[i336_]

Is it really harder to change the new tab page in Chrome OS anymore? Wow.

[jlgaddis]

I wanted a completely blank, empty new tab page, nothing on it whatsoever.

I had to create my own "extension" and load it up in developer mode to get the exact functionality I wanted (an empty page).

[i336_]

Ah, gotcha. That's not the absolute end of the world.

I've been using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jonikckfpolfcdcgdf... (on standard Linux) for ages myself.