It’s Time to Consider a ChromeBook

• Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
• VGA Camera
• 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0
• HDMI Port
• Bluetooth 3.0 Compatible

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I’m back.  Man, this has been a busy August here on Lopez!  OK, so I said I’d let you know how my ChromeBook experience is going after I had some time to live with it for a while.  The bottom line is, I love it!  And what’s not to like?  It’s silver.  It’s shiny. It has a non-glare screen.  Set up was easy (though I have to admit, I had to do it twice).  Google has a cool command under advanced settings called “Powerwash” (aka factory reset).  I had to try it out, and it works great.

Once online and configured, you appreciate the really fast boot and shutdown times, great application response times (depending to some extent your internet connection speeds).  But even on our sluggish CenturyStink connection, performance is reasonable.  Google has also provided a set of ‘applications’ for you to start out with that allow you to do e-mail, and create documents, spreadsheets and slides (notice I didn’t use Microsoft’s names for these apps – but Google goes to great lengths to try to be compatible with Microsoft’s document formats).

There’s also the ‘Store’ where you can get other free apps like Pandora, FaceBook, Outlook.com, Netflix, Dictionary, Kindle Cloud Reader, Picasa, DropBox, Weather Channel, Rdio, Google News, and on and on.  It’s not quite the set of applications you’ll find with Google’s Play Store for Android devices, but it’s fairly generous.  And there’s a reason for that.  You don’t really install apps on a ChromeBook like you do on an Android tablet.  The ChromeBook only stores links to Web pages that provide the application functionality.  For example, Kindle on a ChromeBook doesn’t give you the option to read Kindle books off-line, but only on-line via their Cloud Reader.  To be perfectly clear, the ChromeBook isn’t as interesting if you’re not connected to the internet (slow or fast connection).

What’s more, the ChromeBook has SD card, and USB 2.0 and 3.0 slots, and you can load up your 16gb SD card with music, photos, videos, and the like, but the ChromeBook players for local content are fairly lame.  They’re there and usable, but they’re limited.  What Google would like you to do instead, and encourages you to do by giving you an extra 100gb of ‘cloud storage’ when you buy a ChromeBook (which expires in 2 years if you don’t pay up – Google Drive storage rates available here) is to load all this content into the cloud and access it from any device from there.  This is really a great model (in the real world).  But here on Lopez, with our slow and intermittent internet access speeds, it doesn’t work so well for large media collections.

That said, ChromeBook has some limitations, but it really is a marvelous invention and those who have ChromeBooks, even here on Lopez, love them.  I find my ChromeBook to be very handy and in fact it gets used more than any of my Apple or Android devices.  It hasn’t attempted to replace my trusty Lenovo T400s Windows 7 laptop (which I’m using at this very moment to write this blog post), but in a pinch, the ChromeBook would be able to do this as well.

The ChromeBook is a very capable, low cost, laptop equivalent and is worthy of your consideration if you’re looking for an inexpensive, light weight traveling machine.  Battery life has been great at around 6 to 8 hours, startup and shutdown times are instantaneous, the full-size keyboard and touch pad work perfectly.  I don’t believe I would try to improve a single thing.  As mentioned earlier, there are a few different vendors providing ChromeBooks, but the only one I have seen in captivity is the Samsung model (mine is the XE303C12).  The only accessory I felt was needed once I purchased my ChromeBook was a neoprene sleeve from CaseLogic (available here for $15.50), or the same thing from EliteGear (available here for $10).  This will help protect your ChromeBook from the elements and the inevitable oops.  Once in the sleeve, the ChromeBook will bounce.  Without the sleeve, its life could end abruptly.  Not good…

So it’s apparent I’m quite impressed by the Samsung ChromeBook.  I think you will be too and with the proper expectations about what the ChromeBook can and can’t do, it will be money well spent.

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More on ChromeBook.  The first thing is, I had a chance to test my ChromeBook on a high-speed ComCast network back east.  Believing it would/should ‘just work’, imagine my surprise when it couldn’t hold a connection to the wireless network.  I had high expectations, but something wasn’t configured properly on the network side and there was no joy for my precious ChromeBook, or for my new ChromeCast device for that matter.

But on my return trip from the east coast, I used the ChromeBook extensively in the San Francisco and Seattle airports with no issues.  This ChromeBook is an amazing traveling companion and definitely worth considering if you’re a frequent flyer.  So impressed am I with Samsung’s ChromeBook that I had to purchase a second one (refurbished from TigerDirect for $180 + shipping totaled just under $190).

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Update on my east coast ComCast problems: Well I’m back in Pennsylvania for my 40th High School reunion and decided to try to solve my ChromeBook/ComCast connectivity issues from my last trip.  My first test employed a BobjGear Ethernet Adapter for Android.  Checking the web for advice about how this USB ethernet adapter would work with the Samsung ChromeBook, I was confident it ‘would just work’, and guess what, it did!  By bypassing the NetGear wireless router, the ChromeBook was getting great throughput.  So this clears ComCast in all this, and implicates NetGear (which is fair enough considering NetGear’s checkered history with their wireless routers).

But still, I wanted to wirelessly connect my ChromeBook to ComCast, so purchased and tested the TP-Link TL-WR702N Wireless N Nano Router.  I selected this router for price, portability, reputation, and simplicity.  For simple AP functionality, this router is supposed to be plug and play, although it has several other modes that it can be configured to support. But being a simple guy, I went for the plug and play mode, plugged the unit into the back of the existing NetGear router which is connected to the ComCast modem, and voila, it just worked too.  At this moment, I am happily computing on my ChromeBook at a break-neck internet speed peaking at ~25 Mbps (eat your heart out Lopez – these are the speeds you get in a rural county outside Philly).

The bottom line is, don’t bad-mouth ComCast (or even CenturyLink) if your ChromeBook isn’t behaving properly on your wireless network.  It might just be your router… did I mention, I love my ChromeBook.

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Off-line test results:

First, to use ‘off-line mode’ on a Samsung ChromeBook, you’re going to have to enable this mode.  To do so, go to drive.google.com in the Chrome browser, select ‘More’ on the left side, then Offline.  This will enable offline mode and now you will be able to log into the ChromeBook when you’re not connected to any network (very handy in its own right), will be able to view and edit documents in your Google Drive, view downloaded Kindle books, and use other ‘off-line’ apps provided in Google WebStore (check out the special ‘Offline Apps’ section of the Store).

I haven’t found anything especially annoying about offline mode yet, but I haven’t use it very long.  I’m a little concerned about how offline mode uses available memory, but my fears so far are unfounded.  I’ll report back if I run into any serious issues running in this mode.

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Thought’s about ‘kiosk’ and ‘guest’ modes:

Try as I might, I was not able to coax my ChromeBook to go into ‘kiosk mode’.  Here’s the procedure (use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+K at initial startup. Select Enable in the dialog box to allow your device to run kiosk-capable apps…).  Sounds simple enough, but I can’t get it to work.  No big deal though, since ‘guest mode’ works just fine and is enabled by default.  For ChromeBooks to be used in public places, I’d go into Settings, Users, Manage other users, and leave ‘Enable Guest browsing’ ON, check ‘Show usernames and photos on the sign-in screen’, and check ‘Restrict sign-in to the following users’ with only the Owner account listed there.

Now when guests want to use the ChromeBook, they will see the Owner name/login, but can only ‘browse as guest’, and when they select ‘Exit guest’, browser and search history, cookies, downloaded files and bookmarks all disappear.  Up until that time, the devices is completely functional, files can be downloaded and saved to a USB memory device, etc.  This makes for a very functional mobile platform with no residual risk to the platform or user privacy, as long as the user remembers to exit guest mode or shut down when they’re done.