![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/george_dog_cat_sausage_debate.png\" "\\"george_dog_cat_sausage_debate.png\\"")
In November, 2015 I reported about my new Asus Chromebook Flip and 2015 Toshiba Chromebook 2 with Intel i3. Text of that review is in Nosillacast 551<\/a>.<\/p>\nNearly a year later, I\u2019m very pleased with both.<\/p>\n
The 2015 i3 Toshiba Chromebook remains on Amazon for $476<\/a> even though Toshiba is reported to be withdrawing from the \u201cgeneral\u201dcomputer market (anandtech.com\/…<\/a>). The 4GB Flip\u2019s current Amazon price is $269<\/span> $335<\/a>. <\/p>\n All that\u2019s old news.<\/p>\n What\u2019s new is that Google just released the stable version of ChromeOS 53 which brings a potentially huge number of Android\u2019s 2.2 million Apps to Chromebooks, beginning with the Chromebook Flip and Acer\u2019s R11, both touchscreens in a convertible form factor.<\/p>\n Will the option to install Android Apps be a market winning game changer for ChromeOS? It certainly adds a new level of utility to systems which have none of the maintenance or malware problems of Windows, and which sell for as little as $149 new.<\/p>\n That said, how well do Android Apps work on a Chromebook?<\/p>\n To test, I installed three of my favorites, Firefox, the Snapseed Photo Editor, and KeePass Droid for local storage and creation of encrypted passwords. What\u2019s to say? The three Apps work on the Flip in the same way as on my Android Phone and Tablet, and that\u2019s quite well.<\/p>\n I found one limitation followed by a related, and important, surprise.. My little Flip, with just 16GB Internal, seems only able to access Android apps and data from its internal 16GB. I worked around that by copying photos from its SD Card to internal storage so I could edit them in Snapseed. It\u2019s possible this will be fixed in future software, though another solution is increasing the standard size of internal storage. Amazon has a pre-release order page for an upgraded $299 Acer R11 Touchscreen with 32GB of storage and an Intel Processor<\/a>.<\/p>\n The important surprise came as I began assembling links to my Show Notes and the audio file to send to Allison.<\/p>\n The photo I edited in Snapseed is clearly in Snapseed. But after 15 minutes using the Chromebook\u2019s File Manager to find it to attach to an email, I had to conclude that simply wasn\u2019t going to happen.<\/p>\n