I’m thinking of getting a Chromebook. I need to use Office type apps, sync it with my Google Nexus 7, music, photos, print, etc. I know its cloud based but I feel that is a good think. What has been your experience?
Any preferred vendors/models, and why. I have wi-fi in the house and a fairly new Epson WF-3250 printer. Can I develop apps? If so, what languages can I use? Can I hang external devices off of it (mice, USB memory sticks, drives)? What about preferred hardware configurations for a Chromebook?
It’s an Acer C720 and I like it a lot for browsing and consuming content. Great battery life (8 hours), instant on (7 seconds from cold to browsing).
I have my own consultancy business and by using a combination of google docs and the microsoft one-drive I can do 95% of admin and work tasks.
As for synching with a nexus 7, I don’t do this directly but the cloud-based nature of my google account (mail, calendar, keep etc…) means it is all available to chromebook, phone and nexus 7 anyway. Works well for me.
The downside is that it is not a device for in-depth powerful image and video manipulation, nor any other massively graphic intensive gaming or work applications. We still have a big-screen desktop windows machine with full office software for such specific occasions but the chromebook gets the most use overall and certainly is the more portable.
Also, printing can be a bit of a pain but I don’t need to do too much of that.
I don’t mind the limitations, certainly seeing as it cost me £189 (and less than $200 in the states) and I have installed a full unbuntu release alongside the chrome OS and can hot-swap between the two desktops in a matter of seconds (without losing my work as I do so). With the full offline capability of ubuntu programmes I can get close to 99% of the functionality I need from a laptop.
I picked up a Samsung Chromebook about a month and a half ago. I love it, but I’ve hacked it up because I didn’t just want a wifi-dependent, cloud-based machine. I’ve put Crouton on it so that I can take it on the go without internet, working in LibreOffice, developing my own apps in Gambas and so on.
Without doing something like that, the only way to develop apps for a Chromebook AFAIK is to write them in HTML5 and put them up on a website. Then you can run those pages in ‘offline mode’ even when the wifi signal is down. (Or write just about any other kind of web app you like, which will run as long as you’re online.)
chrisk mentioned Crouton too. Will investigate. Thank you again Novelty Bobble. Its been so long. I think I began using Slackware back in '93. Somewhere along the line I fell by the wayside. Just gimme back that command prompt.
I honestly don’t see the advantage over windows laptops. Are chromebooks considerably cheaper, or what? It seems unnecessarily limiting, bound to wifi, and overall not great. Then again, I use my PC for gaming a lot, so…
Understand Budget Player Cadet. It all comes down to what you are doing. At work we’ve moved to the Google cloud (Gmail, Drive, and all of the other goodies. Everything I need is “up there” in “The Cloud”, except for development, which may be there too.) So for Office stuff, I can do Google, but if I want to fiddle with bits it would be nice to have a Linux distro to mess around with. The solution we were talking about above gives you both for less the 300 U.S. . Interestingly, Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel. For traditional stuff, I still have OS/X in the house, plus Nexus 7, plus iPhone, plus …
I love my Google chromebook. I only use it at home for web browsing and maybe a little word processing with Google Docs. My past two laptops were hurt by viruses even though I had virus protection programs, but I don’t have to worry about that with a chromebook. It boots up lightning fast and the battery power is amazingly long.
My experience with windows laptops …boot…wait…wait…wait…wait…try to click…wait…wait…wait…try to open application…wait…wait…eventually do something.
Then repeat this for every shutdown and boot.
For my chromebook it is…open lid…wait 7 seconds…begin work. When finished…shut lid…to start back up again…open lid and work.
We are getting a new and more powerful desktop replacement that will be windows 8 which I’m reliably informed is much better in this respect but it costs three times as much and three times the weight but no matter as it’ll be staying put on our shared desk.
Mine was pretty cheap, very light, has GREAT battery lifetime while the lid is closed, and is quick to get to work with. And as I said, not bound to wifi with crouton.
Earlier in 2013 and 2014, I used it for a few months and found it to be really unreliable. It would often mysteriously fail, or else undetect and then redetect my printer as a redundant one and then fail, or else suddenly print documents that failed a few weeks ago. By contrast I’ve had zero problems with the standard Windows network printing (same printers and same networks).
But that was with a Windows proxy, with Chrome acting as the print host. These days they make printers with Cloud Print support built in, and hopefully that’s somewhat better… but I have no firsthand experience so don’t know. It’s a neat enough idea that if I ever get another printer, I’d look for Cloud Print support – I’d just have to be on hand to troubleshoot it regularly.
I think so and the upshot is that when in Chrome mode there is a little less space to work with but in Ubuntu mode all of the Chrome files are available for you.
Doesn’t seem to cause me any problems and reverting back to chrome only and removing ubuntu is only a matter of a couple of keystrokes.