Tonight I discovered something pretty amazing. I was messing around with my Chromebook (a Samsung Chromebook with the 11.6″ screen, I just bought recently) and my Windows 7 machine side-by-side. (I originally had the first Chromebook, the CR-48, and finally upgraded to a newer model last month.) As I was working 
on my Chromebook, I thought that I should check to see what the Internet speed I am currently getting. I fool around with my router settings every so often, such as switching WiFi Channels to avoid neighbor’s signals, etc. So I ran the speed test and discovered something unexpected.
In running a speed test on my internet at Ookla’s http://www.speedtest.net, I discovered that my Chromebook was getting almost double the download speed as my Window’s 7 SP1 machine.
My results are below:
Internet speed on my Chromebook
Internet speed on my Windows PC
I ran the Chromebook test first. I ran the Windows test second, the moment that the first test completed.
If you look at the upload speed, it is virtually identical, so it is on the download where there is a huge variance. I am fairly confident the difference in speed is from the Windows Defender virus scanner, doing its job, scanning the download, but I am not 100% sure. It is a company laptop, so I have no choice in virus scanners or other system level software. There may be differences in network cards, etc., but I think it is likely the software. It is my educated guess at this point though.
I never realized that the Chromebook, being a pure internet device, would get faster internet. But when you consider that you are not needing any anti-virus software, or other scanning, it makes sense. You can enable the option “
I’m curious if others are seeing this large of a speed discrepancy between a Windows PC and a Chromebook and any thoughts on this. Post a comment and let me know if you have seen a Chromebook internet speed faster than Windows.