I picked up a Samsung Chromebook a week ago due to a variety of circumstances. Primarily due to the fact that I have just recently moved to a new city and won't have access to my actual desktop PC for a few weeks while my wife and I deal with selling our old home, buying a new one, and moving. For those that know me, I am a Google loyalist and live largely within the cloud of Google Apps. I was bringing my tablet (Motorola Xoom Wifi) and my smartphone (HTC One S) and while I love and use both as daily drivers, I knew that I would want something that was a bit better at browsing the web and had a full(ish) keyboard, and so a Chromebook was the obvious choice.
These are my feelings and thoughts now that I'm a week into using the notebook. If you're looking for a detailed review with full hardware specs, you'll be able to find those details in other top quality review websites. Personally, I'm more interested in sharing my user experience.
Build
The build quality for this laptop is pretty good, probably par for what you expect. It's a plastic (or poly carbonate maybe) body which makes it nice and light, but definitely not as nice as an aluminum body. Obviously an effort to keep costs down, which is fine for my expectations. The body does have the slightest bit of give in the right front corner which tends to be the corner that I pick the computer up with when it is opened, and so it creaks once in a while. I wish it didn't do that, but I think it's a matter of sounding worse than it actually feels.
The keyboard is the 'chiclet' style, and feels very nice. The key sizes are nice and I find it very comfortable to type on. I do however miss the Delete, Home and End keys. I don't miss the Function keys though (F1, F2, etc...) which have been replayed by keys like Back, Forward, Reload, Full Screen, Next Application, Brightness and Volume controls.
The touchpad is multitouch, and performs well. Like most modern touchpads, there are no buttons, the entire touchpad itself can be clicked if you prefer that sense of feedback. I tend to find my self just using the old tap method for the touch pad controls.
The screen isn't amazing, but it works well for what it's designed for. The off axis viewing is pretty poor, but no worse than my wife's laptop which cost about 4x as much 5 years ago. Again, it's a cost control decision, and I'm more than satisfied with the laptop's build given it's sub $250 price.
Chrome OS
I want to start off by saying that I 'get' Chrome OS. I could see myself replacing my desktop in the near future with a Chromebox (similar to a Chromebook, but you plug your keyboard/mouse/monitor into it). I'm not sure how many Chromeboxes are out there, but that's neither here not there. I think that if a lot of people really assessed and tracked the amount of time they spend at their home PC, they'd find most if not all of their time was using a web browser, or in an email program. There is a lot of noise about ChromeOS's inability to run local non-web applications. I don't do a lot of photo editing, video editing, or even a lot of document based work, so I can exist on my laptop entirely via a browser. What ChromeOS offers me is speed, simplicity, and cost control. I've covered the cost control piece, but right now I want to talk about the speed. ChromeOS is able to do something that Microsoft has been trying to claim for years, and that is an extreme fast boot. You're talking about seconds from being powered off, to being at the desktop sign-in. Once I put my desktop password in, in less than 2 seconds, I'm logged on and the browser is open and loaded. There is something to be said about how impressive this is, and the benefits of running a lighter OS than Windows, or even something like Ubuntu.
As a completely browser based OS, the browser's performance is key. The browser performance is what sold me on the idea of using a Chromebook rather than just use my tablet while I'm here alone in Toronto. As much as I love my Xoom, the browser experience simply isn't the same as a desktop browser, either in speed or in the rendering of the websites that I use. Some websites treat the Xoom's browser as a mobile browser, and some don't. The Chrome browser on the Chromebook is fast and smooth, and I have experience no issues in terms of flash based websites. The original iterations of ChromeOS had the browser stuck in fullscreen, with alt tab based navigation between tabs, and minimal UI. The current experience gives you a desktop with customizable wallpaper and a quick launch/taskbar along the bottom. You can also resize the browser and run multiple windows on the desktop at once. In my experience, I'm running it full screen anyways, but I can appreciate other users having a choice. It also makes things a little easier for brand new users to feel comfortable in an approach that is consistent with the last 20 years or so of computing.
The expected 'applications' are here. Youtube, Gmail, drive, etc... Blogger wasn't installed, but was easily found in the chrome market, but really these applications are shortcuts to the websites. The Google Docs (word processor, slideshow/presentation, spreadsheets, etc..) all work offline, so you can edit your docs, and they will sync up when you'e online next. Unfortunately, apps like Gmail and Calendar don't seem to work work offline, which is weird to me. I have no problems using Calendar and Gmail offline on my tablet, so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is with them on Chrome. It's entirely possible that it's an issue with the settings and will be something that I need to investigate further. [Updated below] The reality of my usage is that I'm always online with the laptop anyways, and carry my tablet around for more casual offline usage.
Something that I haven't had a chance to test out and play with is the Chrome Remote Desktop. This is a browser extension that allows you to take control of any desktop where you have a Chrome browser and the Remote Desktop installed. This could be the most useful application on the Chromebook, as it could allow me to make my way through rare situations where I need a unique desktop application. The reason I haven't had a chance to use it yet because my desktop is current in storage, so I cannot speak to it's performance.
One of the common complaints is that you could spend a little more money, get a windows based laptop, install the Chrome browser and get the same access you have on ChromeOS, PLUS the option for desktop/windows software. However, my experience with ANY Windows based PC (and any Ubuntu system) is that they simply do not age well. As apps get installed, and drivers get updated, the system runs relatively slower. I say relatively for a very important reason. The CPU doesn't run slower, but the bloat and increase in size of operating systems makes for more overhead. If you have a PC from 1997 running Windows 95, and have never installed OS updates, new drivers or software, realistically it should run as fast today as it did 16 years ago. My father, in fact, has a PC from the late 90s, running Win98 that isn't connected to the internet. He ran the same accounting software and original printer on it until just this year, with no problem. Meanwhile the main family PC running Windows XP and connected to the internet provides a much more negative experience for the end user.
While ChromeOS is ALWAYS up to date (OS updates are automatic in the background, and the OS needs to be verified in order to boot, making it very secure) the relative lightness of the OS and focus on simplicity gives me every reason to believe it will have a longer life in terms of relevance. Remember, all of the 'apps' installed are pretty much links to a website with minimal impact on the OS itself.
There is one thing that I am disappointed in is that the games available on the Chrome Web store aren't filtered to exclude games that won't run on ChromeOS. Now, I'm not under any delusions that this is a gaming laptop, but I did expect that if I can see games in the Chrome Web store that they would run on the ChromeOS. Basic games like Mahjongg play fine, and the required Angry Birds is there too, of course. You can even install Angry Birds locally to play offline. I haven't played much of the games, so I can't give you a feel for how well, or how many of the games work. I simply know that I ran into a few that did not.
Overall, I've been very VERY pleased with this laptop, and will likely miss it when my wife joins me in Toronto. Right now, she has a full fledged laptop for gaming that doesn't leave the desk because of it's size/weight, and an HP netbook that she takes with her when she's working outside of the house. Right now the plan is that she inherits the Chromebook to replace the netbook, and that a new desktop will replace her laptop.
If you're looking for a PC to surf facebook, twitter, or any other websites and aren't looking for something to install your accounting software or games onto, I think you would be well served by this nice, light, fast laptop. As we come up to Google I/O (their annual developer conference and generally full of product announcements) I'm very interested to see what else is coming from ChromeOS.
[update] I have confirmed that the Calendar and Gmail do work properly offline, I just hadn't set it up properly (and in the case of Gmail, installed the Gmail Offline app).
No comments:
Post a Comment