So my mum is going through her "let's have pictures of us together" and I'm looking for a way for my siblings and parents to automatically upload pictures of us together. Can anyone tell me if Google can handle that when one of us takes a picture with another one(s) of us?

Something like if if I type Family in Google Photos, it will automatically pull all pictures with at least 2 members of my family without me tagging everyone individually.

So the Note 5 won't recognize the note if it was written in landscape mode? Not a big deal, but is there a setting to get around this?

Any experiences w/ chromebooks? Pretty sure they're Lol in the tech world but $150 is so cheap..Wonder if it'll work for mom who just does email/facebook/words-w-friends.

Chromebooks are good for the basics, but I think for most the main issues will be:

1. A crappy touchpad
2. A crappy screen
3. For many, the deal breaker is no MS-Office on chromebooks, and only Google Docs or Office 360. I personally don't find those alternatives acceptable, but others might.

IMO, the sweet spot for parents right now is ~ $600-$700 - a basic dell/lenovo with 8gb ram and a 256gb SSD. Take a look at the Asus models and Dell 5000 and 7000 series,

http://www.amazon.com/Zenbook-UX305L...1%7C3545275011

or possibly something with the new low power chips like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Zenbook-UX305F...s=lenovo+ux305

$600-$700 seems a bit too high. I would say $500ish is a better target.

Also for a laptop, at this time I would only buy a Sky Lake i3/i5/i7 6xxx processor based machine. (Your last recommendation) Battery life, battery life, battery life!

I would buy a chromebook for grandparents or anyone technically challenged.

Thanks. I'd have to pull a Seinfeld & lie about getting a hot deal to get something good though, Lol. My folks still act like I'm a poor college kid & won't let me spend >$200 on them. They are technically challenged & don't really need Office so maybe it's not a terrible idea. The white 15" Acer looks like it has a decent screen?.

i'm very happy with my chromebook. cheap, light, great battery life (10+h).
but i use it more like a tablet compared to others.

I bought my wife a Chromebook for Christmas on BF last year to replace a laptop I had given her 4-5 years earlier. One of the best ideas I've ever had.

She can do everything she needs/wants to do on it. I have rarely had to provide "tech support." It seems almost indestructible, and if she manages to abuse this one as much as she did the laptop, it is inexpensive to replace.

Agreed. Or less. My mom just got a $400 Lenovo. Can't imagine why she'd spend more.

Yep.

SSD's are cool and super fast but Windows 10 already boots pretty darn quick. I would mention one other upgrade suggestion that most people pass up: A backlite keyboard.

Once you have one, it's tough to ever go back to a normal keyboard.

How quick? I'm curious since I'll probably be in the market for a new laptop in 6 months or so? My windows 7 desktop boots up in under 10 seconds w/an ssd. I've gotten used to tablets/smart phones that anything over 30 secs seems like a long time.

W10 is notably faster than any other version of Windows post 98, especially if your motherboard supports UEFI.

Still, no Windows computer is booting in 10 seconds but thanks to good ideas from MS like hibernate and sleep people think it does.

Any thoughts on that new Nexus 6p? Looks pretty damn spiffy, just wish the screen wasn't ENIAC sized

ditto for me. Chromebook was perfect for my wife. if you are only looking for browser based stuff (email / facebook / shopping / etc) they are great options

people are always like "but for $150 more you could have a real windows laptop" and I'm like "yeah but it won't be 2 pounds and super thin" which is a really nice benefit. also the trackpad and keyboard are actually high quality.

also of benefit - super easy to use, fast bootup, etc.

Right, I tend to agree that most people don't need much cpu power, etc. It's more the other usability items on laptops + MS Office that are dealbreakers for me.

Do any of these chromebooks actually have decent screens or touchpads?

Why not get the 5x instead? 5.2" and was only $300 on sale recently.

I personally don't care about a backlit keyboard at all, but I'm a touch typer.

after smashing another phone I broke down and bought the Droid Turbo 2 on the black friday deal Verizon had. I still would prefer a smaller phone for my hobbit hands - the big screen has benefits but I would trade that in for a smaller screen / easier one handed operation.

Like:
- shatter proof screen. like, knowing that Verizon will snap replace it, that is a great feeling.
- SD card slot. its been a few years since I was able to just pop in my 32gb card filled with music. so easy, so nice to have it all on there and not worry about hard drive space
- regular moto active display stuff. definitely love this stuff, and for some reason the built in moto weather widget is so much better/faster/less buggy than anything I find in the play store

not like
- again, only thing is I wish this was like 15% smaller

also - is there is a way I can replace icon size? feels a bit like I'm using a grandparents computer, everything is so big

the touchpad on my chromebook is actually excellent - better than a lot of windows ones I've used. the screen on mine sucks, but I have a real old chromebook, since then they've improved a lot

Small but potentially important input into this Chromebook discussion:

From what I've read they made it super easy to install Linux on it. If you get a 4 GB RAM/32 GB SSD model (not hard), you can turn it into a pretty fully functional PC. I'm not sure what any of the non-MS office solutions offer that the Google solutions don't, but it would also let you do some other stuff - programming, art, extra games, etc.

Obviously that's not an unbelievable amount of RAM, and along with Ubuntu it's probably going to have some limitations, but hey for $400 you're getting a pretty awesome dual-solution kind of machine. I would probably go this route myself if I didn't already have a good laptop from school.

Two years ago the Chromebook Pixel (starts at $999) received high praise from the inventor of Linux for its "beautiful screen".

He also replaced Chrome OS with Fedora 18.

Swappa story...

I bought a phone from what I figured was a safe seller. I received the phone and the IMEI number checks as good. However in AT&T's internal system it is marked as "Reported stolen" However, for some reason it is not blacklisted.

I try to return the phone. Seller says suck it. Swappa says "not our problem". Paypal says they see nothing wrong (!?!?!).

Sigh.

Same here. I don't get all the fuss about this, but I guess a lot of people must need to look at their keyboards.

I never met a touchpad I liked. To get my wife's chromebook set up initially and the rare occasions I've had to do anything on it, I use an old Logitech wireless trackball that I've kept for a spare in case my current one craps out. But this is the only chromebook I've ever used (and it's a cheapie), so I don't know how screens compare.

Ya that's probably where it should've launched. The fact that the 6P's $500 was an obviously better value than the 5X's $430 (for the same storage) does not compute with the "there's no market for smaller phones" theory imo.

Thanks for all the chromebook thoughts. Think I'll pick up the Toshiba 2 unless there's a better idea.

Toshiba 2 is the way to go. Make sure to pick the 1080p version.