I hadn’t intended to buy a Google Pixelbook in 2017. I was more or less managing with my sluggish Toshiba Chromebook 2, and paying $999 for a glorified Chrome browser seemed utterly wasteful to me, no matter how refined the hardware looked. But a fantastic deal changed my mind, and so I found myself unboxing Google’s wonderful first-party Chromebook after having it shipped halfway across the globe from the US to Lebanon.
At the time, few people knew what a Chromebook was. To me, an online writer who spent 95% of my working day inside Chrome and WordPress, a Chromebook was the cheapest machine for the job. But the Pixelbook was an exorbitant Chromebook: 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, two USB-C ports, an Intel Core i5 processor, and a 3:2 high-resolution display. It was overpowered for the job and overpowered for Chrome OS, but perfect for someone who wanted a future-proof investment.