Chromebooks? What do you think?

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Anyone have one.

I had a first generation iPad that I used to bring on trips. But, even with later generation iPads, it was hard to be "productive" on them, even having bought a blue-tooth keyboard.

Since I have a decent desktop, I never really wanted a full-sized lap-top.. not something I really needed to spend the money on them. A few years ago I started buying netbooks for travelling and I liked them, but they are slow, have awful battery life, and are susceptible to viruses. They aren't usually powerful enough to play any games, so their small size and the ability to handle Office was their big benefit.

But then, for much cheaper than even a low-end netbook, I got an Acer C720. I call it a big score! Though it's a mobile device, the Chrome browser that runs it is not a mobile version of that browser.. it's the full browser. Websites and videos play on this thing great. Even the youtube annotations show up (they don't show up on "mobile" versions of youtube) and everything I write in Google Docs is instantly saved to my Google Cloud.. which by the way is much more versatile than iCloud.. I can't even store photos on iCloud. I also have the option to use Word Online and QuickOffice to get writing done.

In a sense, the computer is disposable, or it might set a trend wherein the Chromebooks are marketed that way.. if I leave this somewhere I can buy another one, and since the one I lost can't be opened without my gmail password and everything is saved to my Google Drive cloud, I lose nothing and I risk nothing.

What do you guys think of Chromebooks?

 

[ebusinesstutor]

My concert with Chromebooks is two fold:

1. How capable will they be when offline?
2. Can't run Windows programs

Yes, they have Google Docs instead of Word or Excel, but sometimes there are formatting things that get lost when you convert Word docs to Google Drive. For basic use, this is fine, but as a consultant I don't think Google Docs will work fully for writing my reports. And Google docs doesn't do macros.

I do use a lot of cloud based software and Chrome is my default web browser but I alao use many specialty Windows programs that would not run on a chromebook

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I was worried about the formatting too, but usually I type my stories in new times roman or garamond.

In any case, when I use Word on my main computer, I can simply highlight the entire text and change the font to fix the issues. Plus there are two versions of Word (that I know of) that can be used on a Chromebook, and one is QuickOffice, and the other is Office Apps.

If I'm going to do major work that uses macros, I can wait till I get home. I can think of ideas on the Chromebook and refine how it all looks later.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It's not that hard to find out what Chromebooks are capable of when offline.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I also have an Ubuntu operating system on a stick with Open Office. I can bring that with me and boot that up on a Chromebook