Acer C7 Chromebook Review ⇥ theverge.com

David Pierce reviews a $199 laptop for The Verge:

I can easily get my fingernail in the seam between the lid and the bezel around the display, and I’m worried about other things getting in there too. The base’s two sections don’t come together cleanly, either, and there’s a sharp lip on the bottom as a result. Even the hinge sticks out awkwardly behind the base, like it’s about to come off. Every part of the C7 bends and flexes as you hold it, and I found myself babying it for fear it would break. […]

[T]he C7’s trackpad is horrible. It’s sticky as you move your finger across it, and the cursor jumps across the screen in response. It’s not even reliable as a pointer, since it’s always stuttering around. Two-finger scrolling technically works, but just barely: sometimes I’d swipe and the page would advance by about three lines, and other times it would fly down to the very bottom.

It gets worse. This sounds totally unusable in the real world. Yet it still gets a 5.5/10 because it has “solid performance” despite Pierce noting that “performance isn’t often the limiting factor with Chrome OS”.

Yes, it costs only $199, which is the same price as 19 bags of manure, something which is actually useful.