[intellegacy]

I bought a new chromebook a few months ago. One of the nicer ones, not the super cheap one.

I'm just as disappointed as I was when I first used a chromebook 4 years ago. It's slow, already crashed once - requiring a full re-install, the touchpad barely registers my finger, and it loses battery in a few days. Seriously if I leave it alone for a few days it drops from 100% battery to like 5%.

For $449 I'd rather buy a 5 year old macbook air than use another chromebook. I'm selling mine.

[jonathansizz]

It sounds like you got a defective unit. I've used half a dozen Chromebooks across the price spectrum, and none have had any of those problems (even the lowly Acer C720 from years ago). In particular, battery life and touchpad are usually excellent on most Chromebooks. Usually it's the screen that's the weak link, which is one of the reasons that makes these new Samsung models interesting (along with Android apps and possibly the pen).

[knz]

The C720 was/is an awesome chromebook! Mine is still going strong and is perfect for 99% of my use. Is the screen as nice as a MBP - nope, but I think it was under $200 vs $2,000+. Not all chromebooks are created equally but some of them are excellent value for the money.

[sowbug]

Which model, and how much did you pay? Your experience is not at all typical.

[anigbrowl]

I had one of the original beta Chromebooks and I loved it to death (literally) - so much so that I am occasionally tempted to get one on eBay even though it would run at a crawl now. Disappointing that it doesn't seem to deliver.

[NotSammyHagar]

I think yours was broken. I have had 3 chromebooks and all of them worked well. I have never had to reinstall. These things can break as they were made by humans,but I think yours is defective. What brand was it?

[apetresc]

A few days?! That's a killer feature for me... most laptops can barely get through half a day.

[docileninja]

I think he meant that it looses its charge without him using it.

[wcarron]

Well, my 2013 MBP does that, to the point that if I leave it for 6hrs it's out of battery such that I cannot even turn it on. Real shitty. Don't know if I'm just bad at this stuff or if most computers do that.

[brazzledazzle]

Your battery might be shot or it might not be really sleeping. Either way you can try changing it to hibernate instead of sleep using a command line utility (pmset I think). Not nearly as convenient but if your battery is dying that quickly convenience is probably secondary.

[wcarron]

Probably not really sleeping. Holds it's charge when I do more. Most of the time I just close it and leave.

[brazzledazzle]

You've probably already looked but console might actually tell you exactly what the culprit is. This has happened to me in the past a couple of times. Once with an app running in the background that I can't remember the name of that wouldn't even let the screensaver start, much less sleep. The other time was because of a kernel extension shitting the bed on a regular basis. If you're curious what non-Apple kexts you have installed you can see them like so:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

They're at /Library/Extensions/ and you can disable them like this:

kextunload /Library/Extensions/Some3rdPartyModule.kext

Even if it's not a kext it's good to keep tabs on kernel extensions you have installed. I hope that helps and apologies if you're already aware of all that.

[chrisweekly]

Probably common knowledge but a PSA just in case:

Keeping batteries fully charged all the time makes a HUGE difference in their lifespan and ability to hold a charge. If you regularly let a battery run down under 25% you're directly contributing to the "won't hold a charge" problem.

[fencepost]

I can't speak as well to the bottom end, but if your hardware provides the option (ThinkPads generally do, at least with Windows), cap the charge at somewhere between 80 and 90% to maximize battery lifespan, and set it to not start charging unless it's at least 10-15% below that maximum charge level.

At the fully-charged end of things, think of the batteries like latex balloons - if you repeatedly fully inflate them they're going to have problems sooner than if you just mostly-inflate them every time.

[mcphage]

They mean in standby, not in use.