I use an 18 inch Asus Vivobook which I find good for Teams and Zoom ( I am part of Gordon Ross's Tai Chi/Qui Gong Group- good to see him large!)

I use an android phone and partake of several What's App groups. The group for Pickleball uses a poll for numbers attending each week and works well.

I have used a computer for research when I did the Nurse Practitioners Course 30 years ago but consider my skills to be limited and I want to learn more generally and keep up to date. For example how will technology be used when the credit/debit card system is demised.

Sue

I first got drawn in to the world of IT on a very brief 'introduction to computers' workshop at my employer. Commodore Pet to try writing a basic program to convert Fahrenheit  to Centigrade, it worked. I then saw an advert in a newspaper for the Sinclair ZX80 and decided to get one. Progressed via a Video Genie and Sinclair QL to a Schneider PC clone. At that point I persuaded my department to purchase an Apple II Europlus with Apple Write and Visicalc. To cut a long story short, I ended up doing an MSc Information Systems Engineering in 1996 and began to do IT support including building small client server systems  for my department with Visual Foxpro. I retired early from my main role in 2003 and went back 12 hours a week just on IT support, before finally retiring in 2010.

Since then I have been helping with software to time motorcycle speed hill climbs and I am the administrator for the Vintage Motor Cycle Club Forum (PHPBB). In January I began assisting at my local U3A Smart Device Drop In Clinic, which is held in cooperation with a local community association. Weekly 2 hour sessions where the problems people need help for are very varied. Sometimes I am only one step ahead of the 'client'.

So, on the basis that there is always something to learn when it comes to digital skills I have ended up here. Lately I have been using AI to reengineer the timing software. I use the Anthropic Claude Model both as a desktop client and the Claude Code Command Line Interface. The speed which I can generate code is amazing, but I code in a language I am familiar with, so it's not just 'vibe coding'. Plus I test, test, test ;)

Looking forward to reading the threads here and contributing if I can add anything useful.

A Google search for “virtual machine on chromebook” came up with the details for me.

I don't have a Chromebook, so haven't been able to try it.

As I understand it, Collabora Office is a version of LibreOffice intended to support collaborative work. It was originally developed by Collabora Ltd. in close cooperation with The Document Foundation, which maintains LibreOffice. Unfortunately, those two organisations seem to have fallen out and are no longer talking to each other.

Despite using the computer over the last 20 years or so, my skills remain basic at best. I'm hoping to pick up tips and information from this group to help me get more out of the digital tools available. At the same time, I hope I can contribute to the group by discussing my own experience with these tools...